The wind whistled through the cracks in the shattered wall, and the echo of silence was louder than any scream. The ground was still damp with the blood shed by the last monster. Adam stood, his chest heaving, his eyes heavy with war, his hand still gripping the sword that had become an extension of his body.
Behind him, Zera approached slowly, her flowing hair touching the exposed wounds on her back, but she did not complain. She said in a faint voice:
— "We made it through... at least this part of hell."
He didn't answer her. Instead, he scanned the horizon with glassy eyes, as if searching for something that had not yet been created.
Laboubo whispered from his shoulder:
— "Adam... did you hear the voice?"
Adam turned his head suddenly. "What voice?"
— "The one that sounds like a heart that no longer wants to live."
His limbs froze. He realized he hadn't been imagining it. In the moments he killed the monster, he felt something more than blood. There was a voice... the sound of someone being killed inside him.
Zera moved closer and placed her hand on his chest:
— "You're breaking slowly, Adam... This world doesn't want to keep you whole."
He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. Her wounds were like war tattoos, and her eyes were a mirror of what remained of his soul. Then, slowly, he embraced her. Not an embrace of love, but an embrace of survival.
But the world did not grant them peace.
The ground shook beneath them. It wasn't a quake, but a pulse. A pulse coming from deep within the earth, as if Nimora's own heart had awakened.
A purple rift tore through the wall, as if someone had ripped the fabric of reality. A human arm emerged from it—long, slender, and colorless.
Laboubo whispered:
— "That is not from Nimora... It is from the world that existed before Nimora."
Adam stood frozen, time itself seeming to contract in that moment. Then the rest of the body emerged: a man with no face, no eyes, but his mouth was agape in a silent scream. He did not walk but slid across the ground like a specter tearing through gravity.
Adam asked slowly:
— "What... is this?"
Laboubo replied with a single phrase:
— "The First Shadow... the beginning of the end."
The entity rushed toward them at the speed of light, its energy slamming into Adam's bones as if stripping him of his very self. The space shuddered, and the air around them burned. Zera screamed, but her scream turned into a distorted echo. Time shattered.
Then...
Everything froze.
Adam found himself somewhere else. A white ground. No sky. No boundaries.
And he heard his grandmother's voice...
— "Adam, you've begun to touch the truth, but you refuse to see it."
He turned quickly. She was standing there, with her pale face, wearing a dress she had worn in an old photo he'd hung on the wall.
He whispered:
— "Am... I dead?"
She smiled but did not answer. Instead, she pointed behind him. Adam turned and found three doors.
The first was covered in ash, the second had water flowing from it, and the third... pulsed like a heart.
His grandmother said:
— "Choose your door, Adam. One will return you. Another will complete you. And the third... will show you who you truly are."
He hesitated.
Then...
He reached his hand toward the door that pulsed.
---
### Motivational Quote at the End of the Part:
**"Fear does not mean weakness... it means you are still fighting for something worth it."**