X. The Last Night

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The room was empty.

 

No food. 

No visitors. 

No keys. 

No stone.

 

Even the chair Yama had used was gone.

 

Nico stood in the center, listening. 

 

But there was nothing left to hear—not even the hum behind silence. 

Just stillness, so complete it began to feel like pressure.

 

He stepped outside.

 

The hallway stretched longer than before. 

Shadows reached where they shouldn’t. 

The doors looked like doors, but they no longer felt like entrances. 

 

Just shapes pretending to have depth.

 

He walked.

 

The compound had changed. Not in any way he could name. 

 

But everything seemed one step removed from itself. 

 

The walls curved differently. 

The sky was too close. 

The wind moved without touching anything.

 

He thought of the woman last words: 

You’ll wish you had taken something with you.

 

Maybe she was right.

 

Maybe he already had.

 

He reached the courtyard. 

 

It was brighter than it should’ve been, lit by a moon that didn’t cast shadows. 

The gravel underfoot made no sound.

 

He sat on a low wall, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. 

 

Not to keep warm. 

To keep together. 

 

Because something in him had begun to loosen. 

Not like a thread unraveling—

but like a knot forgetting why it was tight.

 

He tried to remember his name. 

It came slowly. 

Then it left again.

 

There were no stars overhead. 

Just a sky that looked like memory—

deep, but not real.

 

He closed his eyes. 

 

For a moment, there was only breath. 

Then a voice. 

 

Not Yama’s. 

Not anyone’s. 

 

Just a voice, like the one that had been asking all along.

 

If you are not your name…

If you are not your past…

If you are not even the one asking…

…then what remains?

 

He didn’t answer. 

 

There was no one left to answer.

 

The stone was in his hand. 

 

He didn’t remember picking it up. 

But there it was—

heavy, smooth, warm.

 

He stared at it. 

 

And for the first time, 

it didn’t feel like an object. 

 

It felt like a question.

 

The sky flickered.

 

He stood.

 

Walked past the gate. 

Past the outer wall.

 

Out into the sand.

 

He didn’t look back.

Not once.

 

The desert was waiting.

 

Not vast.

Not cruel.

 

Just… there.

 

Like a witness 

with nothing left to record.

 

Each step felt quieter than the last, 

not because the world hushed, 

but because he did. 

 

The burden of shape, 

of story, 

of effort—

draining gently, 

like ink dissolving in water.

 

He no longer wondered if he’d find Yama again.

 

He no longer wondered what came next. 

 

He simply walked.

 

At some point, he stopped.

 

The stone was gone.

 

Or maybe his hand was.

 

He sat down, cross-legged, 

facing nothing in particular. 

 

And closed his eyes.

 

He didn’t fall asleep. 

But something ended.

 

And something else—

something vast and silent—

opened in its place.

 

It didn’t speak. 

It didn’t need to.

 

Because what remained 

was the one thing 

that could never be spoken.

 

Only known.

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Continue to Part XI: Nico's Return

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