Inside, Raven did not fear the darkness. He feared what came before it. That short moment before thoughts fade, when the mind becomes empty enough to hear itself.
The inner silence in the room was dense. Not a silence of absent sound, but a silence of fullness.
Raven sat still, yet inside he was not calm. His thoughts did not come as sentences, but as weights. Pressure on his chest. Tension in his limbs. A sense that something was waiting to be named. A question without a voice. Sometimes, he felt that his very existence was a question. Not: Who am I? But: Should I be? He did not know who planted this question. But it was always there, quiet… and persistent.
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The Body
Raven was not weak, but he was not comfortable in his own body. He felt his limbs moving slightly behind, a fraction of a second delayed from his decisions. As if the body was something given to him, not chosen. Sometimes he would stare at his hands for a long time, as if to make sure they were still there.
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Memory
His memory was not empty. It was… fragmented. Pictures without context. Sounds without faces. A maternal feeling without a name. When he thought about it, he did not feel nostalgia. He felt a cold weight at the back of his head.
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Emma (Inside)
Emma was not a thought but a constant. Her presence in the room was like a reference point. When she was there, the inner rhythm calmed. Not because he fully trusted her, but because she did not demand. She did not ask him to be better. She did not fear him. She did not try to interpret him. And that alone was rare.
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Darkness
The darkness was not an entity. It was a state of alignment. When he tensed, it tightened. When he relaxed, it receded. It did not speak to him. It did not offer anything. Yet it was always present when everything else collapsed. Raven did not call it a power. He did not call it a friend. He called it—in his mind—the thing that does not leave.
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The Thought of Existence
One night, between incomplete sleep and unclear wakefulness, he thought:
"If I disappeared… would anything change?"
The thought was not suicidal. It was calculated. He tried to imagine the room without him. He saw no difference. And that scared him.
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Resistance
It was not resistance to the world, but resistance to inner oblivion. Raven did not want to be important. He just wanted to be noticed. Even if only by himself.
And here, something small happened. So small it went unrecorded. He decided—without words—to stay. Not for Emma. Not for the world. But because nothingness did not deserve him yet.
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End of the Chapter
Raven did not change. But inside, the collapse stopped. And this… was the first victory.
The years would continue to pass, and one day he would reach the age of fifteen and stop there. But before that, he had to learn how to inhabit himself. Because those who do not understand their inner world will not survive when the paths begin to open.