The moment his skin touched his mother's, the sphere of flesh and iron exploded, instantly transforming into fine sand that fell to the ground with a dry rustle, erasing the horror. The exposure felt liberating; that screaming mass of moans and cries had quieted in an instant, bringing a second of peace and silence.

  But under Etan's fingers, his mother had transformed into a statue of white marble, an eternal, pulsating figure that radiated a superhuman warmth. Etan looked into her stone eyes before the transformation was complete: there he found no anger for what he had caused, nor fear for his fate. He found only immense pride and a love that no transmutation could ever extinguish.

  Etan remained alone in the silence of the destroyed room, his hands still reaching for that mineral warmth.

  Etan remained still, his breath coming out in gasps as if his lungs were filled with shattered glass. Amazement struck him with the force of a hammer: around him, the monstrosity of flesh and metal had vanished, reduced to a pile of silent black sand that covered the floor like dirty snow. But in the center of that void, she stood tall.

  He couldn't believe his eyes. The terror that had paralyzed him a moment before changed into a frightened reverence. This wasn't the death he knew, this wasn't his father's dismembered body. This was something sacrilegious and divine at the same time.

  With shaking legs, Etan dragged himself toward the marble figure. Every joint ached, every joint in his body creaked, but he no longer cared. He threw himself at the statue's feet and, in a gesture that defied every fear he had, wrapped his arms around his mother's stone waist. He buried his face against the seemingly cold, white marble, expecting the rock's icy indifference.Instead, he was hit by a truth that took his breath away.

  "Mom..." he sobbed, pressing his ear against the statue's side.

  Beneath the smooth surface, Etan felt a vibrating heat, a heat that belonged not to the stone, but to life. It wasn't just warm stone, then he felt it: a pulse. Slow, deep, like the tolling of a bell submerged in the ocean, but unmistakable. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  The statue was a marble cocoon. Elara was inside, trapped in a stony sleep, alive. The stone pulsed beneath her fingers, responding to her touch with warmth. Blood vessels could be seen beneath the creases of what had once been skin, and a single tear fell on her mother's impassive, marble face.

  The world ended not with a bang, but with the rustle of black sand settling on marble.

  Etan was still there, his knees sunk in the dusty remains of what, moments before, had been a crowd of nobles and servants. The banquet of ruin had become a silent charnel house. The acrid smell of ozone and burnt iron filled the air, mingling with the sweet scent of cut flowers instantly rotting under the residual influence of the cube.

  There were no more screams. There were no more whispers. Only the dull tolling of his mother's heart beneath the cold surface of the statue. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  Etan didn't dare lift his ear from Elara's marble side. He feared that, by severing that contact, that heartbeat might die forever, leaving him forever alone in a universe that no longer had a center. His father, Lord Valerius, lay a few meters away: a shell of purple and flesh, stripped of his mind, a monument to the inefficiency of Balance in the face of pure chaos.

  “Look what you’ve done,” the Voice murmured.

  Its tone was different now. Gone was the venomous sarcasm, nor the roar of battle. It was a tired, trembling voice, filled with a realization Etan had never heard before. It was the voice of someone who had looked into the abyss and discovered that the abyss was the same color as his eyes.

  “You wanted to save her, Etan. And look… you made her eternal. You locked her in a prison more secure than the one she built for you. But she breathes. She suffers in the white.”

  Etan slowly pulled away, his limbs shaking violently. He looked at his hands: they were bare, stained with ash and marble dust. He no longer felt the blue warmth of before, only a cold emptiness rising up his arms. The power had retreated, leaving him naked and vulnerable amid the debris of his life.

  He turned to where Marcus stood. The cube was gone. The white-haired man had vanished along with his four-dimensional horror, leaving behind only questions that burned like open wounds. Marcus knew. Marcus had seen what Etan was capable of, and even in his terror, his eyes had shone with a hunger Etan would never forget.

  The boy stood up with difficulty, staggering. His white hair, a sign of his overloaded power, fell over his eyes like a shroud. Around him, the shadows of the room seemed to lengthen, black claws grasping for the only remaining light: the warmth emanating from his mother's marble body.

  He had to take her away. He had to hide her. Because if Marcus was still alive—and Etan felt in his bones that he was—he would return to finish what he had started. Or worse, to possess the secret of that impossible transmutation. Etan bent to pick up his gloves, now reduced to shreds of useless leather amid the dust, but stopped. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel the urge to cover himself. The monster was already out. The world knew. And Elara's heartbeat, inside, was the only compass he had left in a land of ghosts. The silence that followed the explosion was more violent than any scream. It was a void that pressed against Etan's eardrums, broken only by the hiss of dust slowly falling onto the rubble. He tore away from his mother's marble chest. The smell hit him like a slap: it was no longer the scent of incense, expensive wines, and spiced roasts that had filled the room moments before. The air now smelled of ozone, that metallic, pungent tang that lingers after a lightning strike, mixed with the visceral odor of fresh blood and the sour smell of burning flesh. But there was something else, a smell of old earth, of an uncovered tomb, coming from the black sand the sphere of flesh had turned into. Etan tried to take a step, but his foot slipped on something slimy. He lowered his gaze. Inches from his boots lay what remained of his father. Lord Valerius was no longer the powerful, composed man who had led him to the table. He was a mass of luxurious robes soaked in too bright a red, ending abruptly where his neck should have been. The cube hadn't cut the flesh; it had removed it from reality, leaving a sharp, antiseptic, almost artificial edge. Etan felt his throat tighten. A bitter, hot taste rose from his stomach. He doubled over, hands clawing at the ash- and debris-strewn floor, and vomited violently. The sour taste of bile added to the stench of the room, a miserable human reflex amidst a divine disaster. He continued to shudder, his lungs rasping for air, tears blurring his vision. “Look at him,” the Voice croaked, but it wasn’t a command, it was a strangled moan. “Look at your ‘Balance.’ It’s gone, Etan. There’s no one left to tell you where to stand. It’s just us and the silence.” Etan wiped his mouth with the back of his bare hand, shaking. For a moment, the pain of losing his father was drowned out by a sudden, cold thought that shot through his mind like an electric shock. Marcus. The white-haired man. The alchemist who hadn't looked at him like a boy, but like a treasure to be flayed. Etan leaped to his feet, ignoring the pain in his joints that felt like glass. He spun frantically, his white hair whipping across his dirty face. Where was he? Marcus couldn't be dead. Not him. Not after looking at him like that… Etan still felt that hunger, a sick desire that went beyond curiosity. Marcus didn't want to understand his power, he wanted to possess it, he wanted to devour it with his eyes. Etan began to search for him with his gaze among the ruins of overturned tables and mutilated bodies. Fear, true fear, returned to gnaw at his stomach. If Marcus was still there, in the shadows, Etan was wounded prey. He searched through the rubble, behind the broken columns, his senses straining, expecting to see that mad smile at any moment or hear the whistle of the black cube again. "Marcus!" he tried to scream, but the name came out as a strangled gasp, lost in the emptiness of the room.The room seemed empty of every presence, yet charged with an invisible threat. Marcus seemed to have vanished into thin air, as if the shadow had swallowed him, leaving Etan alone with a mother of stone and a father reduced to dust and blood.

  “He hasn’t gone far,” the Voice whispered, becoming slimy again. “Do you smell the air? Its stench remains. It’s watching us from somewhere. Just waiting for us to fall asleep… it’s hungry for you, Etan. Do you feel how it craves you?”

  Etan wrapped his arms around himself, feeling his bare skin exposed to the cold of the destroyed room. He was terrified. More than when he’d been in his sterile room. Because now he knew there was someone out there who wasn’t afraid of the monster, but wanted to become one with him.

  Etan stepped back, but his shoulders hit the cold marble of his mother’s side. There was no more room to escape. He looked up and his heart stopped in his ribs. Marcus was there, hovering above him, thrusting forward with a frenzy that was inhuman. He wasn't attacking him, he was devouring him with his eyes. His pupils were so wide that they had swallowed almost the entire iris, reduced to two black holes filled with a sick ecstasy.

  From his mouth, open in a trembling grin, a thread of drool dripped, lost in the folds of the dark velvet. Marcus didn't even seem to notice; his entire existence was focused on Etan, on his naked skin, on the secret pulsing in his veins. He stared at him with a hunger so intense it seemed physical, a hunger that sought not food, but the very essence of the matter Etan had just bent at his feet.

  Etan's terror ceased to be an idea and became flesh. Marcus hadn't run away. He hadn't disappeared. He stood there, a breath away, enjoying every shiver, every tear, every retch. He was waiting for the moment when Etan would be weaker, more naked, so he could study him up close.

  "More..." Marcus exhaled, his voice a wet rasp, laced with sadistic joy. "Show me again how the world shakes when you touch it. Show me the taste of that emptiness..."

  The man reached out, fingers twitching with excitement, bringing them close to Etan's face. He didn't want to strike him. He wanted to touch the source of the miracle. Etan smelled Marcus's breath, a mix of old wine and madness, and realized with absolute horror that he wasn't in the presence of a murderer, but of a worshipper who wanted to dismantle him piece by piece to understand how he worked.

  "Kill him now!" the Voice screamed, but this time it was a cry of panic, not power. “Touch those sick pupils! Turn him to stone, turn him to ash, do something! He’s eating us alive with his eyes!”

  Etan was paralyzed. Marcus was there, looming over him like a mountain of obsession, toying with his prey, savoring the terror emanating from the boy’s pores before delivering the final blow. It was a game of cat and mouse, where death is just the last, boring part of the fun.

  Marcus leaned in even closer, the shadow of his body smothering Etan against the marble. The thread of drool wet his chin, but he didn’t blink; he continued to stare at the boy with that electric hunger, as if reading the molecular composition of his luxurious white hair.

  “Look at this beautiful mess, Etan,” Marcus whispered, his voice like the caress of glass on metal. He gestured toward the room, toward the black sand dust that had once been human flesh. “Do you think all this… this charade… was planned for tonight? No, little…monster. Tonight was supposed to be just a prelude. An exhibition of curiosities for old fools and pot-bellied ministers.”

  He laughed, a dry, hissing sound that made him shrug.

  “Study, Etan. Knowledge requires years of solitude, of calculations, of failed experiments. But true power… the power that tears the veil of the universe… that comes only from suffering. Only when matter is pushed to the limit of pain does its true architecture reveal itself. I spent decades torturing iron and mana to achieve this,” he gestured madly at the void where the cube had once floated. “But you…”

  He leaned so close that Etan felt the feverish heat emanating from his skin. Marcus’s eyes widened even further, his eyeballs throbbing with red capillaries.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “You are the unexpected. You are the variable that has accelerated. Your presence, that odor of emptiness you emanate, has shaken the Cube more than my formulas have in ten years. You anticipated everything. You unleashed the hunger of the raw matter of time.”

  Marcus reached out a finger, brushing the air a millimeter from Etan’s cheek, savoring the terror that made the boy tremble.

  “So do not look at me with those tear-filled eyes. Do not seek mercy in this room. The blame for this massacre is yours alone, Etan. It was you who called the abyss. It was you who caused your father to die simply by existing. I only wanted to study the light… it was you who forced it to be devoured.”

  His face twisted in a grimace of sadistic pleasure. “My ultimate goal is something your broken little mind could not even dream of. But know this: tonight you have proven that suffering is the quickest key to divinity. And I intend to make you suffer until you are nothing but a pure source of creation.”

  “Kill him…” The Voice in Etan’s head was a strangled gasp. “He’s blaming you for your father’s murder… he says you are the Cube… touch him, Etan! Silence him!”

  But Etan couldn’t move. He was crushed by Marcus’s distorted truth, by the weight of blood he felt coursing through his own bare hands.

  The silence of the room was shattered by a sound Marcus hadn’t expected. It wasn’t a cry, nor a moan.

  Etan raised his head, but the expression on his face had changed. His brown eyes had narrowed to icy blue, and when he opened his mouth, the voice that came out wasn’t his. It was a female voice, dry, sharp like a blade of ice hitting a sheet of metal. A voice that brooked no reply, charged with a thousand-year-old weariness.

  “What is that thing, Marcus?” the Voice asked through Etan’s lips. “What was that Cube?”

  Marcus froze, surprised for a moment by the change, but then his grin widened, delighted by the novelty.

  “Oh… so there’s someone in there,” he exhaled, drool still smearing his chin. He straightened slightly, as if speaking to an equal. “That, my dear, is something I retrieved from far, far away. Not beyond the seas that traders sail, not beyond the mountains that defy the sky. But beyond time. Beyond space itself.”

  With a dramatic, trembling gesture, Marcus reached into his filthy tunic and pulled out a second object. It was another black cube, identical to the first, but as the light of the dying candles illuminated it,He touched it, and the matter began to vibrate with a screeching sound. Before the wide-eyed eyes of Etan and the presence that inhabited it, the cube crumbled, turning into gray dust that slipped through the alchemist's fingers.

  "See?" Marcus laughed, a hoarse sound scratching his throat. "This is just a prototype. An unstable shell. It took me years of experimentation, sacrifices you wouldn't even dare imagine, to achieve those single ten seconds of madness and destruction you saw before."

  He leaned back into Etan's face, the smell of his lust now unbearable.

  "Imagine, little monster... imagine what I could do with ten seconds of you. If an empty, unstable shell obliterated a Minister and transformed a room into a charnel house, what could the power coursing through your veins do if it were channeled into a perfect structure?"

  Marcus's fingers clawed at the air in front of Etan's throat, as if trying to tear out his words or his soul.

  "Tonight it was your fault because you accelerated the process, but the result... the result is the masterpiece I've always dreamed of. You are not a boy. You are the key to a door that time has tried to keep closed for millennia."

  "He's mad," hissed the female voice in Etan's head, but this time its coldness trembled slightly. "He's not looking for magic. He's trying to undo creation. Etan... we have to leave. Now."

  Marcus didn't wait any longer. The hunger in his eyes transformed into a ruthless, surgical action. With a movement so swift it was almost invisible, he pulled an alchemical scalpel from his sleeve and brought it down on Etan's bare hand.

  The boy didn't have time to scream. His pinky finger snapped off with a clean snap. Marcus, his hands trembling with sick ecstasy, took the piece of flesh and cut it in half again. One half he placed with obsessive care in a pure white handkerchief, as if it were a relic of a god; the other half, still warm, he held up before his wide eyes.

  "I want to know," Marcus exhaled, his voice reduced to a wet rasp. "I want to taste what the origin of everything tastes like."

  He opened his mouth, ready to swallow the piece of flesh whole, but in that millisecond, something impossible happened. Etan felt no pain. The emptiness in his chest had become so absolute it numbed his nerves. The coldness brought him abruptly back to himself: the female voice faded and he regained consciousness, his brown eyes clear and terrified again.

  The fragment of finger Marcus had tucked into his coat pocket reacted to the Cube's proximity, or perhaps to Etan's fear. Matter went mad. In an instant, the fine dark fabric of Marcus's coat began to mutate, turning to pure iron.

  Marcus barely had time to stifle a gasp of surprise before the weight of the metal crushed him. The coat now weighed hundreds of pounds, a rigid armor that dragged him to the ground with a dull roar, pinning him against the splintered marble.

  "Damn... little monster!" Marcus cried, thrashing uselessly under the weight of his own transformed suit. His face was pressed against the floor, but his eyes still searched for Etan with tireless ferocity. "Run! Run, coward! Do you think this will save you? You can never get far enough!"Etan, his fingertip silently bleeding, began to back away toward the exit, stumbling over the remains of the feast.

  "The hunt has just begun, Etan!" Marcus shouted behind him, his voice distorted by anger and the weight of the metal. "The faster you run, the more I'll want to catch you! I'll find you! I'll dismantle you until I know how you did it!"

  Etan turned and ran. He ran past his father's headless body, past his mother's pulsating statue, past the carnage of his previous life. As he reached the immense doorway of the hall, his vision began to darken. The trauma, the blood loss, and the superhuman effort dulled his senses. He fell forward, toward the darkness of the corridor.

  When he opened his eyes again, the silence of the hall had vanished.

  Etan felt the cool, damp grass against his back. A gust of icy wind tickled his face, carrying with it the scent of fresh water and pine. He opened his eyelids with difficulty, expecting to see the destroyed ceiling of the palace, but above him lay a carpet of stars so thick they looked like luminous dust.

  He stood on the shore of a still lake, black as obsidian. In the sky, the three moons shone with an almost unnatural intensity, bathing him in a glow that seemed to warm his skin, as if to heal the wounds he carried within.

  He was alive. He was far away. But the tolling of his mother's marble heart still resonated in his mind, a signal that would never leave him in peace.

  Etan raised his left hand with an effort that seemed superhuman. The little finger was there. The skin was pink, new, unscarred, as if matter had decided to repair itself out of pure instinct. But he felt no relief. He looked at that finger with icy detachment; His flesh no longer belonged to him, it was just a building material Marcus wanted to chew.

  He tried to sit up, but his strength deserted him halfway. He fell back onto the grass with a stifled groan. His body was a dead weight, drained of all energy, drained of the blue heat he had unleashed in the palace. He could only lie there, staring at the moons dancing on the surface of the lake.

  "Are you there?" he whispered into the silence, his voice barely a whisper.

  "Always," the Voice replied. But it wasn't the usual acid hiss. It was tired, its vibrations dulled, as if it had run with him for miles through a mirror maze.

  "What will we do now?" Etan asked.

  For the first time in seventeen years, the question wasn't filled with hatred. He felt a strange warmth expand in his chest, a fragile feeling that felt terribly like affection. That presence, which he had cursed and feared, was the only fragment of his world that hadn't crumbled. She was the only one who knew the taste of his terror. She was the only one left.

  "I don't know, Etan," she replied, and the sound of that name spoken so softly made him tremble. "But the time for hiding in stone rooms is over. Marcus won't stop. The world has smelled you. We must act. We must move."

  "I can't..." he murmured, closing his eyes. "There's nothing left inside me."

  "Then give me the place," she whispered. "Close your eyes, Etan. Rest in the darkness. For once, let me look out."

  Etan obeyed. He abandoned himself to that welcoming void, feeling his consciousness slip into a dreamless sleep.

  The air around the boy's body began to vibrate. There was a sharp sound, like bones rearranging themselves and muscles stretching with the fluidity of molten gold. Etan's body changed, his shoulders becoming smaller, his facial features softening, losing the rigidity of marble. His white hair lengthened, becoming a cascade of pale silk that shimmered under the light of the three moons.

  The girl opened her eyes. They weren't Etan's eyes; they were a blue so deep it seemed electric.

  She stood up with a grace Etan had never possessed before. She felt the damp grass beneath her bare feet, a cool, stinging sensation that tickled her skin. She took a deep breath: the air smelled of pine resin, clear water, and that wild scent of wet earth she'd never been able to smell through his dulled senses.

  The sound of the lake, a rhythmic, gentle splash against the stones on the shore, seemed to her like the most beautiful music in the universe. There was no longer the hum of twisted matter or the whistle of the Cube. Only the world, naked and real.

  She brought her hands to her face, touching her skin, then raised her gaze to the sky. The three moons bathed her in their silver, gold, and opal glow. She remained still, letting that warm light bathe her, a thin smile illuminating her lips. For the first time, she wasn't a tenant in the darkness. For the first time, the Voice had a body, and the world was finally a place she could touch without fear of destroying it.

  "So it is like this..." the girl whispered, and her voice was both melody and ice. "This is what light looks like when you don't want to eat it."

  As the girl stood, lulled by the moonlight's reflection, Etan found himself sunk into an abyss he didn't know.

  It wasn't sleep. It was a total absence. He felt as if he'd been wrapped in layers of thick, wet wool; every sense had become muffled, distant. He tried to scream, but he had no throat; he tried to look around, but he had no eyes. He was deaf, mute, and blind, a point of consciousness lost in a room without walls or light. The only things that reached him were the echoes of her senses: the scent of pine was a faded memory, the sound of the lake a distant hum.

  Etan understood. He understood that this wasn't just tiredness. It was a prison.

  "It's terrible..." Etan whispered into the emptiness of their shared mind. "It's like being locked in a cage with no doors. I feel nothing... it's like being dead, but still thinking."

  The girl turned toward the water, gazing at her reflection: a creature of otherworldly beauty with silver hair. She answered with a coldness that shook what little remained of Etan's consciousness. Her mental voice was imbued with a bitter, almost cruel condescension.

  "Oh, really, Etan? Are you uncomfortable?" The girl raised a bare hand, watching how the opal moonlight made her skin shimmer. "Now you know what I felt. For seventeen years. I lived in your closet, eating only your crumbs of pain, watching the world through a keyhole you kept closed with your bites and your gloves."

  Etan remained silent in the darkness. The guilt, the real one, crushed him more than Marcus's grip. He had never thought that the Voice was a soul compressed into a dead corner of his body.“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and for the first time that word wasn’t directed at his mother, or at the world for its power, but only at her. “I didn’t know… I couldn’t have known your silence was so heavy.”

  The girl stiffened. The anger that vibrated in her bones seemed to suddenly deflate, struck by that disarming sincerity. The night wind blew through her white hair, carrying with it the cry of a distant night bird.

  She didn’t respond with words. But on the girl’s perfect face, under her right eye that shone with the light of the three moons, a single, large tear appeared. It wasn’t a tear of marble, nor of metal. It was warm, human, and it slid slowly down her cheek until it fell into the grass, like the last barrier collapsing between two strangers who had shared the same blood for their entire lives.

  Then, the void filled with questions. Etan wanted to know everything. Where did he come from? Who was he? Why was she there?

  “There are no answers,” she replied, looking at the moons. “I don’t know who I am. I was born in your pain. I never even had a name.”

  Etan looked through her eyes at the largest moon, the brightest, the one that guided the others through the darkness. He remembered a word from an ancient language, a sound that tasted of light.

  “I’ll give you a name,” Etan said. “Your name will be Tsuki. It means Moon. Because you’re the only thing that shines in this disaster.”

  The girl repeated the name, savoring it.

  “Tsuki…”