Silence fell again, clammy, like a damp cloth on the back of Niyus's neck. The recording stopped abruptly. No ending. No scream. Just a dull hum, as if the device refused to give up the final second.
He remained seated for a long time, eyes vacant, while Rivhiamë barely whispered in a corner of his mind.
A she. A Myophore… with her own will….
_ And maybe a face, he added in a low voice.
He stood up, his limbs stiff, and returned to the room above. He walked slowly, looking again at the manuscripts, the scattered objects, but this time with a burning question:
How can a host survive long enough to transmit such a precise memory while being digested alive?
A glint caught his eye. Beneath a cloth blackened with dust, half-hidden behind an overturned piece of furniture: a frame, oblong, of matte bronze, adorned with hand-engraved inscriptions.
He bent down. Removed the cloth.
A mirror.
But it was not an ordinary mirror. It reflected nothing-not even his hand passing in front of it. Its surface was like frozen black water. A fault-mirror, he thought. He had heard of them. Forbidden relics, capable of echoing lost identities.
Rivhiamë immediately intervened, wary:
Niyus… you know what that is, right? If this mirror has captured a fragment of her… you might hear her. Worse… she might hear you in return.
He nodded, his fingers trembling on the frame.
I'm not going to speak. I'll just… listen.
And he placed his hand on the glass.
The mirror pulsed.
Then, a fluid, ethereal voice, saturated with a strange magnetism, slowly rose:
"You used my name… without understanding it. You thought you had stolen a fragment of my form. But it was I who began to wear yours."
"There is almost nothing left of the priest. Not even his fear. I digested everything. Slowly. Until he begged me to finish…"
Silence….
"He gave me a name… an Unborn Name. But a name is still a door, Niyus. And you just turned the key."
Niyus straightened abruptly, breaking contact.
He was sweating.
Rivhiamë, shocked, dared to ask:
You… you heard her?
He exhaled slowly, his gaze fixed on the mirror, which still throbbed faintly.
She… knows I exist now.
"And she remembers you," added Rivhiamë. "Because you listened to her."
The wind blew low on the heights of Eslil. A mist too thick for the end of the season covered the rooftops. The dogs no longer howled. The crows watched the alleys as if waiting for a signal.
In a side alley, old Ema, vendor of ashes and wool, had stopped short while dropping her bundles.
She saw a reflection.
Just a reflection.
Not in a window. Not in water. But in the air itself-as if the light carried a memory that was not its own.
A woman passed there. Or rather, an assemblage of women, poorly stitched together in the shadows: a silhouette in a long, torn linen dress, locks of hair belonging to several ages, fine then calloused hands, a composite voice reciting names Ema did not recognize but that all sounded like someone she had once known.
"This is not a vision," Ema murmured without understanding, "it's a… montage."
And then, the air around her tightened.
At the other end of the village, in the abandoned school, neighborhood children sometimes came to play.
But that day, they did not return.
That evening, parents found their little marks on the ground: circles made of hands, traced in wet earth, and a word in the center, written in a forgotten dialect:
"Feed her."
Niyus, back in his room at the sanctuary, felt something in his throat. A dry cough. Then a metallic taste.
He spat into a handkerchief: a thread of black light throbbed there, like a detached nerve.
Rivhiamë whispered, chilled:
She is coming back through the traces. She remembers all her forms… And she's beginning to recognize you as a door.
After a long detour in the village, Niyus returned from the ancient place where he found a black mirror engraved with ancient characters. With Rivhiamë's help, he managed to decipher a forgotten name, engraved not on the mirror, but in its reflection. The name resonated like a death rattle forgotten by the gods. And when he spoke it…
The wind rose around Niyus. The trees twisted their branches as if to flee the syllable his mouth slowly traced.
Niyus (in a low, almost trembling voice):
Shaï… Thaêl…
A wave of silence rippled outward from him. The flames in the lanterns went out, the air grew heavy, and miles away, in the village…
At Amu's, in the temple of seals:
The black malachite necklace, forged by Amu herself, suspended above an onyx pedestal, trembled. The rune chains containing it vibrated, cracked, then-a sharp, metallic, brief scream.
Amu (worried):
What the…?! That's not possible…
The necklace shattered into shards of black light, then… a void. An emptiness. And inside that void, she stood.
A black silhouette with ivory skin, naked beneath the darkness, scarlet eyes, curved horns. She sat for a moment, as if returned from a dream without duration. Then she stood. Her gaze swept the walls, the seals, Amu, the elders-but she did not attack them.
She murmured, without moving her lips:
He called me.
Then she walked. Without fear, without hatred. Each step made the dust vibrate.
She ignored the villagers' screams. Ignored the spirit arrows. Ignored the priests. She walked through the light as if she did not exist within it.
At Niyus's, in the clearing of the black mirror:
An icy breath descended the wooded slope. Something was approaching. Someone.
Rivhiamë (in his head, barely audible):
She's coming, Niyus… She's coming. You called her back… only you could…
Niyus turned, and in the inverted halo of the mirror, she appeared. The being. Shaï-Thaêl. Whole. Free.
She said nothing. She looked at him.
And in her gaze, there was no hatred.
Only an expectation.