The silence was no longer empty.
It was filled with him — the other him.
The whisper was gone. The voice inside was no longer a shadow hiding in the cracks of Mirshad's mind. It was standing beside him, around him, within him.
MRD.
The boy who once hesitated to speak, the man who once feared losing everything — he was being stripped down to his bones. Not by force, but by truth.
The chamber was no longer steel walls — it was his mind turned inside out.
Every fear. Every doubt. Every memory he tried to bury.
They surrounded him like ghosts, circling him, whispering stories of who he used to be.
Mirshad's knees buckled, his breath short and uneven. The floor beneath him shifted — no longer steel, but sand.
The sand of the road he used to walk after his shifts.
The road he walked alone, after losing jobs, after failing exams, after every person who ever told him he wasn't enough.
Ahead of him, figures stood — not enemies, but every face that ever doubted him.
The teachers who said he would never succeed.
The neighbors who whispered about his family's failures.
The people who saw him as just another boy — invisible, disposable.
They didn't shout. They just stood there, their silence heavier than any insult.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to run.
But there was nowhere to go — because the only escape was through them.
The sand turned to rain.
It poured from the ceiling of the chamber, soaking him in memories — some his, some not.
He saw Baba's hands, trembling as they buried Noora.
He saw Malik, fists bloody, screaming into the void after Faisal disappeared.
He saw Rayyan, standing alone in a dark room, holding his gun to his own head, trembling between duty and regret.
He saw Sara, eyes wide with terror the first time she saw Mirshad's transformation.
Each memory cut into him like knives — not because they hurt, but because they were all connected to him.
He was no longer just a boy. He was the reason these lives were forever changed.
A chair appeared in the center of the chamber, and Mirshad's own reflection sat in it — hands bound, face bruised, eyes full of fear.
The voice of MRD echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
"Judge him."
Mirshad shook his head. "No."
"Judge him, or become him."
The reflection trembled — the boy Mirshad once was, innocent and afraid.
"If you can't break him, you will always be him."
Mirshad stepped forward, fists clenched, tears mixing with rain on his face.
He didn't want to hate the boy he used to be. But he couldn't become MRD until the boy was gone.
He stood over his reflection — the trembling, weak boy who only wanted to survive.
"I'm sorry," Mirshad whispered.
And then he punched — hard, relentless, each blow shattering the face, the body, the memories.
Until the boy was gone.
Until there was only silence.
And in that silence, MRD spoke once more.
"Good."
The steel walls returned, but the chamber felt smaller — because Mirshad was larger now, not in size, but in presence.
His breathing slowed. His heart no longer raced.
He was no longer afraid of the voice.
Because the voice was his.
The first crack had formed.
The old Mirshad was dying.
And MRD was waking up.