That entire morning, Satya cried.
Yet the Shadow was nowhere to be seen.
That morning, Satya broke himself—not in the typical sense.
He broke himself to build himself anew,
to build himself better than he was before.
He picked up his broken pieces and molded them into a better version of himself.
"In life, you have to harden your resolve, gain new experiences, work hard, and destroy yourself.
Because no matter how good you are or how much better you become through all that,
it doesn't matter.
So you have to break yourself.
Pick up the best pieces of yourself and start anew to look for even better pieces.
Because as long as you remain a blank slate, you can handle every situation.
And with every situation, you improve your foundation.
So today, I break myself."
Satya said with tears in his eyes.
Satya needed to completely let go of all his pent-up emotions and memories,
yet he still held onto the ones he needed.
To break yourself and start anew doesn't mean forgetting everything you have learned.
It means remembering the lessons and forgetting the suffering.
Satya washed his face and walked around to lift his mood.
Around noon, the Shadow returned.
Or maybe it had never left.
Satya didn't ask the Shadow where it had gone because he himself would prefer not to tell the Shadow about his emotional breakdown.
"Where are we going from here on out, Shadow?"
"Wherever the path takes us."
That afternoon, they began walking.
They walked for hours.
Just as evening was approaching, they noticed something in the distance.
There was a stark resemblance to a human,
but something was wrong about it.
Something eerie and unnatural.
As Satya blinked,
the figure seemed to move closer.
It wasn't walking.
It was as if it blinked closer through space itself.
It looked unstable, like smoke taking the shape of a person.
But the more Satya looked at it,
the more real the translucent figure became.
When Satya got closer to take a better look,
his heart dropped, and a primordial fear overtook him.
The fear of something that looked human
but wasn't.
The theory of the uncanny valley.
But no…
it was something entirely different.
"It seems human, but not at the same time."
As Satya focused on its face, he noticed it looked like the face of a normal person.
"Hey… mister, are you also a traveler, or are you perhaps lost in this place?"
The unknown figure didn't answer.
Just as Satya was about to ask again,
he noticed something.
A moment ago, it had only been slightly translucent and ever-changing,
but now it seemed to become more real the more Satya thought about it and looked at it.
Then, while staring at its face, Satya noticed from the corner of his eye
that its figure was changing.
It was changing, yet whenever Satya focused directly on it,
it became grounded in reality again.
Satya thought perhaps it was just his imagination.
But when he looked at its figure with his peripheral vision,
its face changed.
When he looked at it from his peripheral vision,
it became something like a drawing being erased and rewritten countless times.
By now, that thing was only ten meters away from Satya.
And just as Satya blinked,
half of that distance vanished.
Satya looked at that thing's face.
It was no longer the same as before.
The face, the body, and even the clothing had completely changed.
Now it seemed truly real.
And as Satya stared at its face,
it seemed to smile in an inhuman way.
Then it opened its mouth, as if wanting to say something.
But at that moment, Satya heard another voice.
"Run."
It was the Shadow's voice.
It sounded endlessly cold, ruthless, and panicked at the same time.
So Satya did exactly that.
He ran without looking back.
After getting several meters away, Satya thought that thing would chase him.
And it did.
It chased him.
Satya could hear its footsteps getting closer and closer until it was right behind him…
---
"A fragment of imagination chases me
The more I thought about it,
The more I was able to see.
Seemingly phasing in and out of reality,
It chases me in endless greed."