The desert had no end.
The sun blazed high in the sky, merciless. Each ray burned like a curse. Chains jingled with every step on the dry rock or burning sand. The procession stretched for miles: a hundred slaves, thin, wounded, barely alive. Their shadows sprawled like ghosts across the cracked earth.
He walked, there in the middle of them all, wrists bound, gaze empty.
He had no name. No voice. Just a body that obeyed.
One step. Then another. And another.
If he stopped... he knew what awaited him.
"We're all gonna die before nightfall," muttered an old man behind him.
"Shut up," hissed a woman farther ahead. "They hear everything."
"I'm not scared of them anymore. I'm not scared of anything."
A guard cracked his whip against the ground. Silence fell again. Even the wind grew quiet.
The young man didn't even turn his head. He stared at the horizon, where the heat made the air shimmer with mirages. He hadn't spoken in days. Maybe weeks. He no longer kept count. Nothing mattered anymore. His thoughts were like the desert: vast, barren, scorched by forgetfulness.
Why am I still alive?
He didn't know.
But every step forward was a challenge thrown at the world. One foot after the other. A silent insult to the universe.
A man collapsed beside him. The pull on the chain made him stumble.
He caught his balance without even glancing down.
The body didn't move.
"Leave him!" barked a guard. "We don't need the dead."
The iron was unhooked. The body abandoned. Just another carcass in a world too vast. The vultures were never far.
He heard another slave sniffle, maybe cry. He didn't bother to look.
Everyone dies.
But me… I walk.
The wind blew hard. It carried the scent of dried blood, burnt leather, and sweat. The chains weighed on his shoulders, rubbed his wrists, tore into his skin. He hadn't felt pain in a long time. What hurt now was the absence of everything.
A supervisor passed close to him.
"You. Eyes down!"
He didn't react.
The whip cracked. A sharp pain tore through his back. He staggered but remained standing. A guard stepped closer, glared down at him.
"Filthy silent bastard. One day you'll die like the rest."
He didn't answer. Not a word. Not a look. He simply resumed his march.
The sun was setting. The sky turned red. The sand took on the color of blood. There was less talking in the line now. Groans replaced prayers. The chains became the mournful song of the condemned.
At last, the orders came. The procession stopped at the edge of a dry canyon. Leather tents were hastily erected. The slaves were shoved into cages. The young man was separated from the others, as always. A stone cell, more distant, colder, awaited him.
"That one. Tie him up like before. He doesn't sleep with the others."
"Why?"
"Because even breathing, he scares us."
The guards laughed. He did not.
They threw him to the ground, dragged him to the wall. Two chains clinked as they locked onto his wrists. Rough stone beneath his knees. Dampness clung to his skin. He slowly raised his eyes. A crack in the ceiling let in the moonlight.
And there, at last, in the silence… he thought:
I'm still alive.
But why?
He no longer moved. Only his slow, labored breathing proved he was still alive.
The silence of the night had texture. Thick. Oppressive.
Each minute stretched like a rusty blade, eating away at his mind.
He had been on his knees for hours, his back against the stone, his wrists chained mid-height, pulled back toward the wall. His body screamed in pain, but he did not cry out. He had been silent for so long, he no longer remembered the taste of a scream.
I could pull. Hurt myself. Maybe I'd bleed enough to die.
Coward's thought.
Tempting thought.
But he stayed. Eyes open in the dark, staring into nothing.
His eyelids burned. His cracked lips barely trembled.
He was thirsty. Not just physically, but vitally.
He would have given anything for a drop of water. Just one. Even mud.
They won't give me anything. Not me. Not what I've become.
Muffled laughter sometimes rose from the other cages. Not joyful laughs.
Fractured ones. Laughter from people who had suffered too much to still cry.
"Where do you think we'll sell them?" he heard a guard say in the distance.
"Doesn't matter. As long as we get paid."
"The one in the back... his eyes are empty. Like a demon."
"He never speaks. That's not normal."
"Exactly. Those are the worst."
They laughed again. Then walked away.
He closed his eyes. Slowly.
He didn't want to hear. He wanted to disappear.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, there were no chains. No body.
Only an abyss.
Am I sleeping?
Or am I dying?
He felt himself fall. Yet didn't move.
His mind was the one falling... far.
A moment later — or maybe an eternity — he no longer felt his arms. Nor his legs.
There was no ground beneath him. No walls around.
Only emptiness... an infinite void speckled with light.
Stars, colored mists, glimmers pulsing softly, like hearts in the void.
He floated.
He tried to scream, but had no mouth.
Tried to cry, but had no eyes.
He was nothing but a thought, naked, exposed to the universe.
And then… he felt it.
A presence.
It didn't come to him. It had been there from the start. It was the void itself.
It didn't speak. It didn't move.
But he understood.
It had called to him. Or maybe he had reached it on his own.
He no longer knew.
What are you…?
No answer.
Only a shiver. A cosmic vertigo.
A feeling that crushed his soul with a single glance… without eyes.
There was no face. No shape. No voice.
But an intelligence. Inhuman. Unfathomable.
Something so vast, his mind almost shattered.
Why me?
No answer came. But he felt… something open within him.
A breach.
A dark light, soft and cold, silently seeping into every corner of his being.
Then the void folded in on itself.
The stars went out.
The fall stopped.
He opened his eyes. Suddenly.
He was back in the cell.
Breath short.
Sweat dripping from his forehead.
The chains still there.
But he knew what he had seen wasn't a dream.
He stayed still, staring at the crack in the ceiling.
The silence was no longer quite the same.
Something had changed.
Not in the world.
Within him.
But he didn't understand what—
not yet.
He didn't know how much time had passed since… that.
The illusion. The dream. The void.
He was back in the cell, but nothing felt the same.
He was always thirsty. Hungry. Cold.
And yet, his heart was beating harder than before. Too hard.
As if it wanted to burst out of his chest.
Why am I shaking?
His fingers trembled on their own.
His muscles tensed and relaxed, as if a current was surging through his body.
A shiver slowly crawled up his spine.
He tried to sit up, but a sharp pain slashed through his neck like an invisible blade.
He winced.
A metallic taste flooded his mouth.
Blood.
He turned his head slightly—just enough to see a dark stain on the ground.
His chains clinked. He was still bound. And yet, it felt like the very walls were holding their breath.
The silence had grown heavier.
As if the air itself… was listening.
Then, it began.
A pulse.
Deep inside his skull.
Boom.
A flash of light. Behind his closed eyelids.
Boom.
A vertigo, like falling again—but this time, without leaving his body.
Boom… boom… boom.
He opened his eyes.
The darkness felt more… alive. The shadows vibrated. The stones breathed.
The world hadn't changed, and yet, he saw it differently.
He saw too well.
A tiny insect crawled on the wall, several meters away. He could hear its minuscule legs scraping the stone.
A slave whimpered in a nearby cell—he could hear his breath, his grinding teeth, his faint heartbeat.
What… what is this?
His body burned inside. Not an unpleasant warmth, but… ancient.
Deep. As if a torch had been lit within his core.
He closed his eyes, hoping to snuff it out.
But inside… he saw.
Not with his eyes.
Not with his thoughts.
With something else.
He saw an abyss. An endless chasm, where dark masses spun slowly like dead planets.
He saw nameless creatures crawling beneath a sea of silence.
He saw a mask. Floating in the void. A mask of black and red, with no face, no eyes—yet it stared at him.
He opened his eyes, panting.
His chains rattled again.
But this time… he felt they wouldn't hold forever.
Not because they were worn.
But because something inside him was awakening.
Something ancient. Asleep.
Dangerous.
He didn't understand.
But he wasn't trembling anymore.
He was afraid.
But not of what surrounded him.
He was afraid…
of himself.