When Zera opened her eyes, the pale blue light filtering through the glass ceiling of the cave struck her features with a strange pallor. Adam was kneeling beside her, his hands still trembling—not from fear, but from the truth that had struck him like a thunderbolt.
"You..." he whispered, his gaze unable to break away from her eyes. "You're not just Zera... are you?"
She shook her head slowly. "I am her shadow... her reflection, exiled from the Great Mirror when she decided to betray the Law of Purity."
Adam swallowed hard. He was beginning to understand now why her actions always carried contradictions, and why no one but the two of them could touch her pendant with its shattered edges.
"Does this mean you... you are from Nimora?"
"I am from the void beyond Nimora, where souls no longer fit for either good or evil are cast away."
At that moment, the ground beneath them ignited. The rocks trembled, the walls cracked, and from one fissure emerged a creature resembling a living mass of smoke, with multiple faces shifting every second. It screamed not with a voice, but with a vibration that pressed against Adam's brain.
"You..." the entity said, "You seek to unearth truth from the ashes of time?"
Zera tried to stand, but her body was still torn from the previous battle. Adam gestured with his hand, and the earth responded, firing volleys of fiery rocks toward the creature.
But the entity was unaffected. It absorbed the attack as if nourished by it.
"This is not a creature from Nimora..." Zera whispered, "but from shadows yet unborn."
Adam ran toward the wall where his grandmother's symbol was carved: the triple eye and the open hand. He pressed the center of the eye, and a flash erupted, opening a small door. He pushed Zera inside, shouting, "Run, I'll hold it back!"
Zera screamed, "Adam, don't!" but the door closed between them.
Inside, Zera found something unexpected: a mural painted by Adam's grandmother herself, depicting a boy with Adam's face standing beside a woman who looked exactly like her... but labeled "Lima."
Zera muttered, "This is impossible... Lima died a hundred years ago!"
Outside, Adam stood amidst smoke and ash, his body glowing with the white light inherited from the pendant. He raised his hand and declared, "I am Adam, bearer of my grandmother's legacy, and I will expose your lies, all of you!"
The creature swallowed a portion of the darkness and lunged at him, but the ground shook again—this time not by the creature's doing, but by the return of something older.
Grandmother's voice echoed in Adam's mind:
> "When you hear the hum within your bones, know that the hour is near."
Adam raised the pendant, but it did not ignite as usual. This time... it melted.
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### 🕯️ Quote of the Day:
> "Truth does not die, but it may hide beneath a thousand layers of ash... your task is to dig until your fingers burn."
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## Part 62: "The Unheard Voice"
Nimora was trembling. Not from cold, but from something else... something like an internal boiling, as if its layers were silently cracking. Adam stood at the edge of one of the black hills, watching the red clouds swirling above the "Pool of Silence," the spot Zera had told him hid a secret not to be approached.
Beside him, Laboubo stood silent, unlike his usual self. Adam looked at him and found him paler than usual, as if a specter was draining his colors.
Adam said in a low voice:
"It's approaching... I can feel it in my bones."
Laboubo nodded, then said in a broken voice:
"It is the ancient shadow, not the entity you faced before... older, older than you can imagine."
Adam took a step toward the pool, and the water suddenly changed color, from stillness to a raging, dark red. Circles formed on its surface, and within each circle, a human eye looked upward, at him.
He retreated, but the ground absorbed his feet for a moment, as if unwilling to let him escape.
Then, a strange creature emerged from the heart of the pool. It had no definite shape, constantly shifting from one form to another—from an elderly woman to a boy, to someone who looked exactly like him.
A voice emanated from everywhere and nowhere:
"You are but a fragment of an ancient memory, Adam... and you were never meant to remain."
Adam suddenly felt a cold sting in his spine—not the cold of the air, but a kind of unbearable, icy truth.
"What do you mean?"
But the entity did not respond. Instead, it dissolved into thousands of black insects that flew around him and landed on his skin.
Adam screamed, but his scream went unheard.
Suddenly, his voice no longer worked.
His mouth moved, but the air did not vibrate.
"I... I can't speak?!"
Laboubo gasped and approached him, saying:
"You have entered the Pool of Silence. It traps sound... and sound in this world means existence itself. Without a voice, you begin to fade."
But Zera appeared at that moment, running from afar like a red storm.
She threw something resembling a small crystal stone at him and shouted:
"Break it over your heart now!!"
He did it without thinking. The moment the stone touched his chest, the earth shuddered, and his voice screamed into the horizon:
"I am still here!!!"
The insects dissipated into the air.
Zera, her face covered in dust and sweat, looked at him and said:
"You are not a fragment... you have always been the heart. They are the ones who tried to convince you otherwise."
Adam knelt, his heart pounding.
He whispered to himself:
"If sound means existence... then I will scream until the end."
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🌀 **Humanity Test Paragraph:**
Have you ever felt like your voice goes unheard, not just literally but metaphorically?
Answer honestly: What is something you've kept inside for too long and wished someone would hear?
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