Year 135, Month 1, Day 1, Time 2:55am
Location: City of The Simple.
Somewhere in the city of the Simple,
in a narrow, dim room lit only by the weak glow of a single candle. The walls were crumbling, and silence reigned.
Only the slow rustling of pages and the faint whisper of wind sneaking through a broken window could be heard. In the corner sat an old man on a rickety wooden chair. His shoulders hunched, eyes sunken behind cracked glasses. In his hands, a tattered book, its yellowed pages worn and fragile.
He paused his reading for a moment,
ran his trembling hand across his forehead, then sighed—a slow, heavy sigh, as if it carried everything he had never said.
He was reading… a strange book. Its title was no less bizarre:
"Who Knows Who It Is? Perhaps It's Me."
His eyes wavered across the lines,
as if each word was digging up something ancient inside him—as if he wasn't reading for the first time, but remembering.
He whispered gently as he turned a page:
"Did... perhaps the train go to the mountain early?"
He fell silent, looked up at the ceiling, and then continued, as if speaking to someone no longer there:
"Yes... it went. And never returned. No news after it left—no trace, no whistle, no smoke... But I still know."
His grip tightened slightly on the book, his voice now tinged with conviction:
"That... The train didn't vanish. It's still there—deep inside the frozen mountain."
He lifted his gaze toward the mist beyond the window, as if the mountain were closer than he thought.
"And maybe... in three days' time, in three strange nights yet to come, I am certain..."
He smiled a sad smile, his eyes brimming with untold stories:
"That its roar will be heard again. But this time… the roar will be different. A roar filled with hell."
Then he fell silent. A long pause. Then he added bitterly:
"The mountain is quite..." He sighed.
Then, in a hoarse and broken voice, he read:
"How long has it been? I no longer know what time is..."
"My head hurts, and that thing moving around... annoys me. But... I can't do anything."
He paused. His eyes trembled, as though he was on the verge of tears.
"Am I in a nightmare? I hope so... I don't want anything else except to return to…"
His voice rose slightly, then faded:
"… return to where? I don't even remember where I'm supposed to return to. I don't even know who I am…"
His voice quivered, and he lowered his head.
"Or maybe… I was never allowed to know."
A final whisper, barely audible:
"I can't speak anymore... Even speaking feels distant."
The old man continued reading, his voice low as if whispering to himself. Then—He suddenly stopped.
His wide-open eyes froze—blank, unblinking, motionless. Silence devoured everything.
Suddenly, from between the pages of the book, a black substance began to seep out…
A thick, oily liquid—like polluted water— spilled slowly across the floor, but spread with terrifying speed.
It reached the legs of the table… the walls… even the ceiling.
The air thickened.
The light vanished.
Then, without warning— the black substance stopped.
As if something had pulled it back inside—into the heart of the book.
But by then, the old man was no longer the same.
He had changed. His body now black as coal, smooth and glossy, no features except a strange, unnaturally wide grin…
His arms were unnaturally long, dragging along the floor, as if his joints were broken—but still moved.
No eyes. No ears. Just standing there—still in the middle of the room.
Then he spoke as he moved his limbs:
"How?... How am I moving?" He said it in a halting voice, as though the words themselves hesitated before emerging.
His joints made soft cracking sounds, as if time had settled between them like dust.
He felt a shiver pass from his fingertips down his spine—but it wasn't cold… It was pure, unfiltered astonishment.
He had forgotten this feeling. Forgotten the weight of a body, the resistance of air on skin, and that simply standing… was a small miracle.
He stood there, stunned, gazing at his palms as though they were returning to him after a long absence. He didn't know how much time had passed—but he knew one thing:
He was finally… moving.
Then in a childlike voice, one filled with unsettling joy, he said:
"I still can't see… but I can move!"
He smiled wider… Then laughed. Laughed like someone who had forgotten how to laugh, like someone who thought his mouth had forgotten how to move. His laugh trembled from a chest that had remained silent for years.
He had been imprisoned—not behind bars,
but forgotten by the world. Trapped in a body that couldn't move, in a time that showed no mercy.
His eyes? Gone. But his heart had seen everything.
His laughter was not joy. It was a silent explosion of pain that had whispered inside him for years. A laugh that resembled weeping, but with no tears. A laugh that seemed to apologize to life… and thank it at the same time.
But after a while,
As he explored each movement of his body,
laughing in delight at his newfound freedom,
Something strange crept into him…
Warmth—unfamiliar warmth.
The room, once always cold and silent,
now felt warm—as if someone had kindled life within it. And in that warmth, memories began to slip in.
But they were not his… They were memories of a young man—A young man he didn't know, yet somehow… he did.
In one such memory, the young man stood in a strange place, speaking with someone faceless—as if rage or sorrow or time itself had wiped the man's face clean.
The young man shouted, his voice full of suppressed anger:
"J… H…"
Then, in a trembling voice, he continued:
"I've come back."
Suddenly, with a burst of emotion,
he grabbed the faceless man by the neck:
"Why did you lie to me? Why? She was beneath us… But you said she was at the summit!"
The man—named something unclear—was trapped in his grip, his voice strained:
"Wait… I didn't know either, not until… until I received an alert from the… ge…"
But the word was garbled—as if the air itself refused to carry it clearly.
Their voices began to fade,as though the memory was retreating from his mind—slipping back into the shadows it came from.
Leaving him standing there, in warmth he didn't understand, with a heart just beginning to remember… things that weren't his.
He asked himself, with a confused voice that trembled from his breath:
"Who is that person?"
He touched his face… nothing. Just emptiness.
"Wait… where am I? And is this really… my body?"
He passed his trembling hands over his chest and arms—as if feeling his existence for the first time. Everything felt familiar… and strange.
"What was his name?... L... can? Lucan? I think…"
He couldn't see, but he felt the name echo in his mind like a dead heartbeat,
carrying a shadow of sor .
"Why do I feel his sadness? This weight… this void…"
Then, like a lightning bolt of memory pierced his chest, he gasped and roared in a deep voice:
"Sorrow?! Does it remind me of my past?! Of that place?!"
His body shuddered, and his fingers stretched to feel the walls—warm, suffocating, silent.
"My prison?! I hate it! I hate it!!"
He screamed, unable to cry, unable to see.
But everything inside him was collapsing…
A faint voice emerged behind him, like a cold breeze slipping into his soul:
"You haven't left yet."
He spun around violently—his eyes nonexistent, but terror filled their absence.
He screamed madly:
"Who's there?! Don't play with me… I warn you, I will… I will…"
Then he collapsed to the ground, curling into a corner like a terrified child, repeating his trembling words unconsciously.
In that moment, his memory began to stir from its slumber. The prison… that suffocating, dark, cold place.
That thing he never saw, but always heard… moving. Then once more, it whispered the same sentence—again and again:
"You haven't left yet."
And it laughed at him—a long, slack laugh that peeled away what remained of his soul.
Suddenly, as if madness exploded within him, he jumped to his feet and began smashing the walls, the furniture—everything his hands could touch—screaming:
"Stay away from me! Leave!! Shut up!!"
Every strike he made felt like he was striking it—that voice, that past.
And in a moment of absolute silence,
he found himself standing amidst the rubble—not just of his house, but the surrounding homes too had collapsed.
And when the dust cleared, and the smoke lifted from the scene…
He stood there, alone—in a hollow, dead city, haunted only by ghosts.
Alone... again.