Darkness. Zal saw nothing.

  Suddenly, an intense light erupted in his eyes.

  Immensely large threads, their ends unseen, began to swirl. A golden light—beautiful and alluring—emanated from them.

  "Sometimes, before the storm arrives, the sky shows its most golden hue. This is nature's deceit."

  Zal was watching these luminous threads in his sleep when a melody reached his ears:

  ?"Z... Za... Zal!"?

  Zal jolted awake. ?"What was that? That voice... whose voice was it? Where was that place?"?

  He put his hand on his head. He was sweating. A dry cough squeezed his chest and bent him over for a few seconds. When he calmed down, he wiped his sweat. ?"Maybe it's just the stress these days."?

  He looked at the window. It was dark outside. He closed his eyes and listened. Chirp... chirp... chirp...

  It was the sound of crickets. And within it, the ever-present rasp of his own breath.

  He dressed and left the room. He needed to walk. He needed to escape this room whose walls felt like they were closing in on him.

  He quietly opened the door so Adam wouldn't wake up. He went down the dark stairs. The outside air was cold and damp. The rain had just stopped, and each of his steps on the wet cobblestones made a ?"squelch"? sound. His breath formed a misty cloud in the cold air.

  "The city asleep seems a livelier entity. Because in silence, all its wounds become visible."

  He heard the sudden bark of a dog. And then, a short, muffled whimper.

  Zal involuntarily moved toward the sound. In a narrow alley, he saw a few men circled around a dog. When they scattered, what they left behind was a piece of hell: a dog without a tongue, without ears, without a tail, with blinded eyes and broken legs.

  Rage boiled in Zal, but his body reacted before his mind did. A coughing fit bent him over. When he could stand again, the men were gone. Zal, with trembling steps and a chest burning like a furnace, moved toward the dog.

  He knelt beside it. The animal was taking short, rapid breaths—the last signs of life.

  ?"You know the difference between you and me?"? Zal said, his voice a grating rasp. ?"You're just going to die. It ends. But me..."?

  And he began to tell a story. A story he had never told anyone.

  ?"I was a child of war. I lost all my friends. Then, slowly, my family got sick. They said because of chemical weapons from that very war, they only had two years to live. But me... I lasted four years. I survived for four years. For four years I had to be a witness. A witness to the death of my mother, my father, my little sister..."?

  A cough seized him, but he continued, as if by speaking, he was drawing the poison from his wound.

  ?"The worst part is that after that, I left my hometown. Because nothing was left there anymore. During my travels, I became acquainted with a very ancient religion. It was the religion of most Western countries. I liked it. Maybe I just finally wanted to belong somewhere. I went to the central church. I worshipped. But guess what happened?"?

  Zal took a deep breath, as if gathering strength for the final part.

  ?"That very church, that very nation that had started the war with my country, was collaborating with them. They wanted to give them the religion's most valuable artifact—something called the 'Thread'. I... I lost control. While we were praying, I distracted the others and went and set that Thread on fire. Guess what happened? I came to this world. Maybe it was divine punishment. I don't know. I barely survived. I ended up with a psychopath named Keil... He probably went insane because of me. I escaped from him and went into absolute darkness. Then guess what happened? The same world, but now, if my guess is correct, about fifteen hundred years later. And by chance, I created a myth. A myth that now a Sage built who is officially a god..."?

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  "Confessing is easier near the dead. Because they never judge. They just take your secret with them to the grave."

  When he finished speaking, a heavy silence fell. Then Zal, with a slow but decisive motion, looped his arm around the dog's neck and with one swift, precise movement—as if the illness had temporarily granted him strength—broke its neck. The suffering ended.

  At that very moment, his coughing stopped. The heaviness in his chest vanished. His breathing became deep and calm. This sudden relief was terrifying.

  "The deal was struck. Zal ended a suffering, and in return, was temporarily freed from his own. This was his first contract with the shadow."

  Now his mind worked with a cruel clarity. He picked up the discarded threads beside the dog. He tracked the men, one by one, to their homes. He noted the addresses in a small notebook he always carried. With the efficiency of a hunter, he returned to the first man's house. He knocked.

  The man shouted from behind the door: ?"Who is it?!"?

  Zal gave no answer. He just knocked.

  The man grumbled and opened the door. Before he could even see Zal's form, a solid punch to his jaw sent him fading into darkness.

  Zal, with swift, silent movements, tied him up with the same threads. Then, house by house, he brought the others. Five men now lay on the floor of the first house's kitchen.

  The work was done. Zal stood and suddenly, the real fatigue—the deep fatigue of his illness that he had temporarily forgotten—engulfed his entire being. His vision darkened. His knees buckled and his body, lifelessly, fell onto the kitchen floor.

  ---

  Then, that thing rose.

  Zal's body rose, but with a smoother, weightless movement. As if the scaffolding of muscle and bone was now being operated by a skilled puppeteer.

  "And thus, the shadow was freed from its cage. Not as a feeling, but as an operator."

  The skin of his face in the dim moonlight streaming through the window took on a deathly pallor—an unnatural, ghostly whiteness, like marble pulled from the depths of a grave. There was no sign of illness. His posture was straight. His breath imperceptible.

  He calmly moved toward the stove and kitchen shelves. He reached out and took the cleaver—a heavy, sharp tool—from its place. The cold metal felt perfectly natural in his hand.

  He moved toward the first man. He placed his hand on the man's motionless shoulder. The man came to and opened his terrified eyes.

  ?"What did you do to the dog?"? The voice was Zal's, but softer, almost curious.

  The man stammered: ?"Sir... Sir... I made a mistake... I swear... it won't happen again..."?

  Then, a smile appeared on the face. But this smile was not natural. His mouth stretched to the sides without the participation of the cheek or eye muscles. The skin of his face, especially around the mouth and eyes, formed sharp, unnatural wrinkles—as if it were a plaster mask cracking under pressure. And while his face was contorted by this exaggerated grin, his eyes were empty. Lightless, unfocused, and merciless, like two black holes in that white face.

  With that same smile, his hand moved toward the man's mouth. The man screamed, but the cold, strong fingers pried his jaw open. Then, he brought the cleaver down into his mouth with maximum force and precision. The sound of shattering bone and splattering blood filled the space.

  "His violence now had a cold logic. A twisted calculation: for every wound, a larger wound. For every silence, an eternal silence."

  That being moved on to the rest. He continued his work with the same mechanical efficiency. When the work of dismemberment and blinding was finished, he stood for a moment in the bloody silence. The smile slowly faded from that white face, as if it had never been there.

  Then, with a practical motion, he took off his bloody clothes, put on clean ones from the homeowner's closet, and burned the previous clothes in the sink. Small flames danced a sinister image on that white face. He muttered to himself, a voice imitating Zal's, but emotionless: ?"The fire department will find out quickly... maybe I overdid it."?

  He did not look in any mirror. He had no need to see himself. He was the executor, not the spectator.

  Then, the body left the kitchen and vanished into the darkness of the street.

  ---

  Zal regained consciousness with immense pain—familiar pain that had returned with doubled intensity—on the cobblestone street, far from that house of horror. His memory was completely blank. He had no image of that bloody kitchen, of the terrified faces, of the sharp cleaver in his mind. Nothing. Only a pounding headache and a vague feeling of immense guilt whose origin he did not know. As if a part of the previous night had been scissored out of the book of his memories.

  Only a vague instinct led him to the dog's alley.

  He found the puppies beside their mother's corpse. He knelt on the ground—a body where every muscle now screamed—and gathered them in his arms. They bit him in fear, but he did not let go. The warmth of his body melted their fear. And then, his tears flowed—tears for the dog, for the puppies, for his family, and for the profound loss he felt within himself.

  "That night, Zal showed two faces of himself to the world, without even knowing it. The first face no one remembers—not himself, not his victims: a being with a white face and a crooked smile, in a dark kitchen, settling debts with a cold blade. The second face only the orphaned puppies saw and remembered: a wounded human, with a tired, tear-streaked face, offering kindness on the damp cobblestones. And the most terrifying secret was that both faces belonged to him."

  The sun had now fully risen. The promised day had begun. The Thread around his wrist was indifferent, but Zal knew within him that something had awakened. Something that had been nourished by the dog's suffering and had now nested in the crack of his soul—something that had swallowed a part of his memory as a down payment.

  The journey to the White Tower was no longer a quest. It was an escape. An escape from the shadow that now lived in the mirror within him—a shadow whose contract was sealed in blood and had a face whiter than death. Zal had not seen that face, but he felt its presence in a void in his memory, and in the weight of guilt without a source.