The ground was dry and blackened. As if the memory of the place had been scorched white-hot and then cooled too quickly, fractured into scattered memories.
Niyus pushed open the decrepit door of the annexed sanctuary. A forgotten place, sealed by layers of dust and indifference. The smell of old incense lingered, a strange blend of rancid wax, leather, and sacred herbs.
On the floor, on the table, even in the corners-sheets. Dozens of pages covered in nervous handwriting, sometimes crossed out, sometimes clear as if engraved in a breath. Fragments of thoughts abandoned, as if the author had never known whether he was writing for himself or for someone else.
"Day 12 - He observes me through myself. It's fascinating. I feel my thoughts bending to his, and yet I remain myself. Perhaps more than ever."
"Day 23 - I think he listens to me, but he only answers with dreams."
"Day 41 - He revealed himself. Halfway. As if my fear was a window, not a barrier."
"Day 70 - He sows something in me. Not eggs, no. Images."
At the center of the room, a stone pedestal. Cracked. Almost faded, as if gnawed by an acidic memory. But on it rested an object: an artifact of metal and glass, worn, but still vibrant. A kind of ornate medallion, crossed by fine lines, some of which pulsed faintly as Niyus approached.
He reached out his hand.
When his fingers brushed the surface, a voice burst in his head-not a scream, but a succession of overlapping thoughts, compressed into an instant.
"WEAVE. NOT BIND. I didn't want to be a host. I wanted to be a speaker. A willing mirror. A conscious vessel. I thought that if I guided the Myophore, it would no longer need to devour."
"But I forgot that it's not an entity… it's a tension. A form that cannot bear itself. A refusal made flesh. And I, I tried to give it a structure. Perhaps I… imprisoned it in myself without meaning to."
"If it still wanders… it's because the thread I wove was never broken. It's not survival, it's continuity. I embroidered an echo."
Then, nothing.
The medallion cooled in Niyus's palm. It no longer shone. But it carried within it the residual sensation of a gaze-not hostile, but indeterminate, as if suspended between two thoughts.
Niyus opened his eyes again. His throat was dry. Around him, the silence seemed denser than before. And on certain sheets, the sentences slowly shifted, as if being rewritten by a capricious memory.
With a trembling hand, he noted:
"The priest did not want to survive. He wanted to understand. But his attempt at harmonization may have trapped the Myophore in a loop. A loop ready to close elsewhere, on someone else."
Then he froze.
A drop. Something had just fallen on his sleeve. Reddish. Barely viscous.
The ceiling, up there, was weeping tears that did not exist in ordinary reality.
As everything seemed to darken, as the clues dwindled like ashes too old, Niyus was about to leave the decrepit chamber of the priest-scholar. He dragged his feet, dejected, fatigue weighing on his shoulders like invisible chains.
But suddenly, a dull crack. Under his boot, a slab gave way. The ground rumbled and split with a muffled groan. His foot slipped, his body tipped-he fell.
A cushioned impact. The smell of ancient mold. Of rotten leather and melted wax.
He was in a cellar.
A secret passage, sealed for decades. Entire shelves gnawed by moths, lined up like the teeth of an old monster. And there, under a sheet blackened by centuries-a hundred recordings: scrolls, sound gems, plates engraved with words, vocal notes.
Do you think... this could help us?
The soft, curious voice of Rivhiamë echoed in his mind.
We'll see, murmured Niyus, still shaken.
He grabbed the scrolls. Sorted them. Some bore dates, religious symbols, others had hastily scribbled titles. But about twenty had no markings left. The ink erased, the labels torn off. Impossible to tell which might concern the Myophore.
So, he sat down. And began to listen.
One by one. All of them.
The first entries-1 to 60-spoke of strange experiments. The priest detailed his attempts at mental communion, mapping emotions, inverted prayers to provoke visions. He spoke of deep faith, a state of belief so absolute it could alter matter or bend the egregore of a collective mind.
But nothing about the Myophore.
Niyus was exhausted. His eyes bloodshot. His temples throbbing. A saturation migraine overwhelmed him.
I'm wasting my time, he whispered, his forehead in his palms.
He was about to leave… when he noticed a scroll half-hidden behind a cracked pillar. He hadn't seen it.
Its label was completely blackened, as if someone had tried to erase it.
But listening closely, he heard… a breath.
He played it.
[Recording No. 73 - duration: 3 minutes and 36 seconds]
The priest's voice was no longer the same. Hoarse, painful, as if coming from someone who was no longer quite there.
"...I saw it. It doesn't want to kill me. It wants… to teach me. It passes through me. It absorbs me. What I think becomes its skeleton. My memories are its bones. It started speaking with my own words before I even finished my sentence…"
"...I discovered something. It does not live by itself. It has no self. It has no being. It is an echo. It is what I have not expressed. It lives in the blind spot of my regrets..."
"...But now, it digests. It synthesizes. It stitches me back together. It erases what contradicts me within myself. And it becomes me. It no longer parasitizes me. It manufactures me within itself. I… I am being… synthesized."
"...I feel it. When I die, it will not die. It will have enough of me to remain. It will have my identity, but recomposed… It will no longer be a parasite. It will be an entity. A whole thing. A usurped soul. And then..."
"...then I fear… that no one will be able to tell the difference anymore."
"...if it smiles with my mouth... if it prays with my thoughts... what will be left of me, in this world?"
Silence. Then a wheezing breath. Then nothing.
Niyus stopped the recording.
His hands were shaking. The wood of the scroll creaked under his fingers.
_Identity Synthesis... he murmured. It can become a person... If it has eaten the soul to the core.
He finally understood.
It was not just a parasite.
It was a chrysalis-a being becoming real by assimilating the unreality of another.
He stood up, his gaze clouded with dread.
And mentally noted: "If you don't destroy what it believes itself to be, it will survive the death of its host. Because it will become."
He played another recording.
"I saw her… before she existed. Before she had form. I thought it was a he. A rough thing, scratching at my soul."
"But as the days passed… when she began to speak with my voice, to laugh in my memories, I understood. It was a mistake. It was not a he."
crackling - wheezing breath
"Her. Yes… her. Because I fed her. Because it was through me that she was shaped. And what she became… was nothing like a mask. It was a gestation."
"Gender, she did not carry it. She digested it."
At that moment, in the cellar, Niyus would have recoiled. The revelation struck him, an idea he hadn't wanted to formulate:
A female?... Wait, then all this time…
Rivhiamë, as if shivering, murmured in his mind:
"Surprised, aren't you? She wasn't him. She was no one. Until she became someone."
"And now… she remembers being someone."
The more Niyus listened to the recordings, the worse the priest seemed to become.
A silence, grainy with saturation, preceded the first words.
Then, a breath. Snatches of whispers. As if someone tried to keep speaking without having a tongue anymore.
"Day… no. Night… maybe. I don't know anymore. She is here. I am not alone in my voice."
Niyus felt his throat tighten. The priest's voice was unrecognizable. Trembling. Eaten away.
"I saw her… before she existed. Before she had form. I was the one who gave her… this name. A name without a beginning. An unborn name. I thought I could understand her. Shape her."
"But she… she didn't take my body. She drank my self. Not all at once. Little by little. And now, sometimes, I speak but they are no longer my thoughts. They are hers passing through me. Piercing me."
dry crackle – the recording skips slightly
"I understand. She had no identity. And that's what made her hungry. She didn't want to kill me. She wanted… to become me. To know what it is to be."
"I tried… I wanted to keep her between two states. I contained her in a kind of soul fragmentation. I paid a price I no longer have words to describe. But…"
The voice drops further, and for several seconds, only a rattle is audible.
"If one day… someone finds this… she is not dead. Not asleep. Just… incomplete. And she knows… She knows how to take on what she has consumed."
"Her name… the Unborn Name… I engraved it in an object. The only one that does not lie. The glass-fault. The mirror without reflection. It is..."
The tape cuts off.
Silence.
Niyus was frozen. Sweat clung to his temples. Rivhiamë whispered in his mind:
"She... You heard it, didn't you? It wasn't a parasite. It was a gestation."
Niyus exhaled softly:
She didn't possess him… she ate him. Until she could become him. And now, she waits. Maybe she's already… somewhere. Or watching through me.
He stood up. The glass-fault. The mirror without reflection. That was the object to find. Where the unborn name had been engraved. The only clue to the identity of the Myophore.
And if he found this mirror, then maybe… he could speak to her. Or worse: give her the last thing she must never be given. A true existence.