Morning was just another myth.Light seeped through the cracks of the closed window, but it didn't fill the room. It looked more like it was afraid to enter…As if it sensed that this place was unfit for light.
Adam lay on the floor.No mattress, no pillow, no cover.His body was tilted, as if it had fallen days ago and never tried to rise.
His eyes were open, but there was nothing in them to suggest he was seeing.His blinks were slow, rare.His breath was ragged—not from exhaustion… but from indifference.
In one corner, some stale bread.In the other, a toppled chair and a cracked mirror.A smear of rotten food on the wall, as if he had once tried to eat… then changed his mind.
No sounds.No messages.No one knocked on the door.
Everyone had forgotten him, or chosen to.
He wasn't thinking about Mary.Nor about Mila.Nor Neil, or the world, or even death.
All he felt was an invisible weight pressing on his chest,as if the air was thick enough to choke him,as if every breath required a decision.
Days passed… then something worse than days:
Hours.
Time no longer moved… it crawled over his skin like rust.
Even sleep… became painful.Every time he closed his eyes, he saw something he couldn't remember—but it jolted him awake.Then he returned to stillness.
One evening,without any reason…he sat up.
His body trembled slightly from the change in position, as if his muscles had forgotten how to move.He stared ahead—not at something, but at "what wasn't there."
Then, in a hoarse voice, as if he hadn't spoken in ages, he whispered:
Adam:"I used to wish… I had died instead of her."
Silence.
Then he continued, his tone closer to crying—but without tears:
"Or that we had died together. Or that I had never been born at all… nothing would've gone wrong."
Then a long silence…
Silence that lasted until the sun disappeared,and cold crept in through the cracked glass.
Only then… did he do something new:
He stood.
He was weak, trembling, but he stood.He took one step, then stopped.
He stared at the ground beneath his feet, as if it were exposing him.He felt something like nausea—but deeper… a quiet hatred for himself.
He raised a trembling hand and placed it on his chest.He found nothing but emptiness.An emptiness that resembled him.
He whispered in a rough voice:
"If I had been stronger… this wouldn't have happened."
He pressed his fist harder against his chest, as if in a futile attempt to lean on something lost:
"If I hadn't always run away from everything… if only… if only I had looked at her one last time."
His breathing quickened, but it wasn't anger.He was collapsing… inwardly.
"She died… and I… I'm the reason. Because I was here. Breathing… living… while I couldn't protect her."
He looked at his hands as if they were foreign:
"With these hands… I did nothing."
Silence.Then his voice trembled more as he whispered:
"Even Mila… even Mila was stolen… and I stayed here cursing the dark… did nothing… was nothing…"
A memory flashed: Mary's face as she smiled, reaching her hand to him in his childhood, protecting him, watching him with a mysterious tenderness.He felt his heart would fall out of his chest from the pain.
"If I hadn't been born… if she hadn't had to be my mother… maybe she'd still be alive."
He clenched his fist until his knuckles turned white, his voice barely audible:
"I'm the cause of all this… that's what I don't want to admit."
He remained standing there, blaming himself, punishing himself mercilessly, as if pain was the only thing he deserved.
After long minutes, he lifted his head, his eyes red:
"…I don't deserve to ask for forgiveness."
Then, lower still:
"But… I'll try… to fix something… even if I'm the last person who deserves to."
Then even lower, as if his breath was too heavy for his chest:
"…I don't deserve to ask for forgiveness."
His voice trembled:
"I don't even deserve… to live after her."
He slowly reached out, gently touching his chest as if searching for a heartbeat he no longer wanted:
"If I could… if I could just stop here… disappear… dissolve… instead of breathing in a world where she's gone."
A single tear, silent, slid down his cheek.He didn't wipe it away.As if he no longer had the energy to resist or accept.
"Sometimes I wish… that night… that I had died instead."
He hugged his arms in silence, trying to warm the emptiness inside.But the cold continued to gnaw at his heart mercilessly.
"…This is the punishment… that I remain here… breathing instead of her."
Then he whispered, barely audible:
"I wish… I no longer existed."
Standing there, alone, between cold walls, he had no certainty left—except that life itself had become a burden he wished to shed.But after that last whisper… silence didn't come.
Instead came a flood of thoughts he didn't trust, didn't fully understand.
"If I killed them… all of them… would she come back?"
A thought flashed like lightning—wicked, meaningless.And yet… he couldn't deny his heart beat for it, just for a moment.
Then another, stranger thought:
"Or maybe… if I became worse than those who killed her… if I gave them what they gave her… I might find peace."
But then… his inner voice slapped him:
"Coward.""You don't even have the courage to hurt anyone.""You're just a shadow… unable to become a monster, or return to being human."
He dug his fingers into his hair in frustration, trying to silence the lethal noise in his head.
"Or… maybe… if I just waited… life would end without needing to do anything."
But he quickly cursed himself:
"You wish for the end but you don't dare ask for it. You hate them all but you don't dare take revenge. You hate yourself… but don't even have the courage to end you."
His personality in that moment was not pure.Not noble.Not stable.
It was just shards:A child screaming: "Mom… come back."A bitter man whispering: "If they all died… I'd be free."And a defeated shadow replying: "No one will return… and nothing will end."
Minutes passed as he drowned in a storm of thoughts that resembled no one but someone who had become half ash, half something else without a name.More minutes passed…And the silence grew so heavy it almost crushed his bones.
Then, without warning…
A sound burst from his chest that didn't sound like his own:
A scream.
A long, hoarse, beastly scream… as if it wasn't a human voice.As if it was the scream of something broken forever.
It echoed in the empty room, bounced off bare walls, then returned to him like mockery.It wasn't a scream for help.Nor a scream of protest.It was just… the explosion of pain that could no longer be held.
He kept screaming until his vocal cords gave out, until his voice became mere breath—panting like his heart was about to stop.
His body finally collapsed to the floor, his back against the cold wall, eyes wide open without tears…
But something inside him…had truly died.
The next day…No new dawn rose in Adam's life. Only the color of the sky shifted—from gray to a lighter gray, as if life mocked the idea of beginnings.
He sat on the same floor, in the same position, as if his body was stuck in time while the outside world crawled on.
He didn't wash his face. Didn't eat. Didn't truly sleep.He only closed his eyes for hours, watching the abyss inside himself.
The thoughts that haunted him weren't entirely human.He wasn't just sad…He was rotting from the inside—as if his soul boiled in hatred, froze in apathy, then reignited in sick regret.
"If I hadn't existed… maybe she would've lived."
Then:
"No, maybe death was better than living next to me."
Then:
"If I had been stronger… I could've stopped them."
Then:
"Stronger? I never even wanted to be anything in the first place."
His contradictions became a perfect trap.Every thought disproved the one before.Every feeling destroyed its sister.
He spent the day trapped in this mental hell, drawing thoughts on the wall with ash-covered fingers:Circles… symbols… names… all meaningless.And when he looked at them in a daze, he saw he had written:
"I'm the reason."And below it:"But why am I still alive?"
In the evening…He finally stood.He walked to the window, looked at the world.Nothing had changed.People moved, the city breathed, life went on as if Mary had never died.
But inside him…a new idea was being born.Strange, terrifying, quiet like poison.
"If weakness has no meaning… then strength must have a purpose."
His voice was a whisper, but his eyes had grown deeper—darker.As if the idea of revenge was knocking—not violently, but with seductive permission.
Does he want to save his sister?Does he want revenge?Does he want everything to vanish… or for him to erase everything?
He doesn't know.
But he… is no longer the same.And what comes next…will not be entirely human.