Inside a dark cave,
a bitter cold lashed against its silent walls, and shadows writhed like restless spirits.
In the heart of this darkness, Tharos lay motionless on the stone floor, frozen in a posture unchanged since the moment he appeared there.
His body refused to obey him, stiff as though centuries of ice had passed through him without granting him the right to move...
Except for his hands.
His hands moved slowly, searching for something lost—something intangible.
He stared, trembling yet steady, toward the mouth of the cave, where the wind howled and scattered snow, his eyes wide, filled with a mix of fear and wonder… uncertain of what would come.
Not long ago, he had been whispering broken questions to Vilmer—the being that once lived in his eye, that had long accompanied him in the darkness, guiding him through corridors whose end no soul could see. But Vilmer did not answer. Minutes passed—or perhaps hours—and still no reply.
No whisper. No sign. No omen. Perhaps—Tharos thought—he had left. Perhaps his presence was bound to the darkness itself. And when Tharos emerged from it, Vilmer remained behind… and vanished.
The void inside him widened, not because of absence, but because of possibility:
the possibility of being truly alone after all that time.
Tharos gazed at the walls of the cave, those damp stones that reflected nothing but a darkness deeper than shadow. He tried, in vain, to grasp the new reality… to convince himself he had truly escaped that eternal night. But the silence was heavy, cold—as if the cave itself refused to offer certainty.
He turned his head slowly toward the cave's entrance. And there… he saw the light.
A pale glow, tinged with white, seeping through the opening. It wasn't a warm light, but the light of winter—harsh, still, yet distinct from the dark.
His hands moved. And then, with the last fragments of will left in him, he began to crawl toward that light.
He had only his arms, dragging his frozen body like a man digging his way to salvation with his bare nails. Each inch felt like a mile, and every breath he took carried a tremble of frost.
The cold struck his face with growing cruelty
as though the storm itself rejected his passage. Yet he crawled. Eyes half-open, his face sliced by the wind like blades, his body groaning under the weight of merciless cold. The light was ahead… and he crawled with all that remained in him—every tremor, every ache, every flicker of hope. To reach that light. To see it, touch it, believe it was real. The wind whipped like lashes, pushing him back, punishing the attempt, but his will was older than the frost, deeper than fear.
He neared it. With every inch, the gap between him and the world narrowed, as though life itself cast a single thread for him to follow out of the dark.
And then, as he reached the mouth of the cave, and raised his head into the open air for the first time in…
How long?
He did not know. But time had been heavy enough to feel like centuries passed in forgotten stillness.He slowly lifted his gaze, his eyes trembling under a new brilliance. Before him… a white expanse. Snow without end, and a steep drop that hinted at a mountaintop with no name.
He reached out with a trembling hand, his fingers brushing the snow, sinking into it, as if seeking roots—something to confirm he was here, that he was real. And then he wept. Not from pain, nor fear, nor joy… But from the return of feeling. The cry of a man who had found his skin again, his breath, his cold, his solitude. He wept long. And the snow was silent, receiving his tears like mountains receive the whispers of wind—without reply, but never forgetting.
Tharos lay on his stomach, weeping a tangled sorrow… scattered joy, and an ancient grief returning in the form of breath.
And as his tears melted into the snow, a long shadow fell before him—a shadow with no sound before it, as though it had emerged from nowhere.
He lifted his head slowly, his eyes tearful beneath the winter sun, but the light was too bright… he saw only a vague shape standing before him, still, tall, as if carved from the silence of the mountains.
Then he heard a voice. A voice unlike any other. A rough, deep tone, as though it had risen from the depths of an empty ocean, from a place untouched by warmth or light:
"What are you doing here?"
The voice awaited a reply. But Tharos said nothing. He stared, his face aghast, as if something had shattered in his memory, or risen from the ashes of fear.
The voice returned—closer now, with an edge it lacked the first time:
"What's wrong? Answer me."
Still, Tharos did not move. He didn't utter a word. Frozen in place once more, trembling, as though his body had returned to the cave of darkness, and fear was now the only garment he owned.
For a moment, silence reigned.
Then the figure approached—slowly, without menace—and looked down at him with a long, searching gaze, as if what it saw in Tharos' eyes wasn't fear of cold, but something deeper, something unspoken.
It reached out, and from its side produced a thick woolen coat. Then it knelt, and placed it gently over Tharos' frozen body with a strange touch… cold on the outside, warm in its meaning.
As if—for once—the unknown was not the enemy.
Tharos felt warmth trickle over his body—
a real warmth. Not the kind he had grown used to in the dark, that deceptive warmth that numbs the senses but never touches the soul.
But this—this was different. It was simple, yet honest, as if, for the first time, someone had placed a hand on him not to lead, but to protect.
He closed his eyes.
His breathing softened, as if the weight of his body had lightened, as if the fear that had gnawed at him for years... had paused, even if just for a moment.
He wasn't safe.
He knew that.
But the feeling—the feeling that someone had noticed his trembling, that someone had cared—was enough to break something inside him... something that had held firm for so long, he had forgotten how to fall.
And so he fell. Fell into a deep, quiet sleep—a sleep he'd never known before, a sleep born of the fleeting certainty that someone had seen him… and meant him no harm.
On the other side of the cave entrance, the mysterious figure stood, his eyes following Tharos as he drifted off again, like a child exhausted by waiting in an unfamiliar embrace.
He watched in silence.
Then sighed—a long, drawn breath, as if from a chest that had buried too many winters and too many souls.
He whispered, his voice tinged with confusion and quiet resignation:
"Where do we take you now?"
He didn't wait for an answer. Gently, and with strength void of arrogance, he knelt, and lifted Tharos over his shoulders like one carries a lost soldier returning from a war he no longer remembers.
And then, he began the descent.
The slope was merciless, the storm howled from all sides, snow and wind like knives, yet his steps did not falter.
As if the wind saw no reason to strike him, or perhaps his body had become stone—carved by this very wilderness.
He walked as though he'd done this before:
carried the broken, faced the cold alone, ascended and descended in a world that offered no answers.
And Tharos…
he slept.
Unaware of it all. But his chest rose and fell gently, and for the first time in ages, someone slept—while the world outside still fought to the bone.
The fog began to descend from the mountain's heights—heavy, still, like a gray curtain falling over a stage
where only two figures remained:
one asleep, the other silent.
The creature walked on, its steps sinking deeper into the snow, as the mist slowly wrapped itself around their bodies, not to conceal them, but to bid them farewell.
As if the fog knew Tharos—knew that this mountain had been his prison, and that leaving it was not merely a passage, but an exile from a past
no longer fit to be inhabited.
No sound filled the scene
but the whisper of wind, and footsteps carving a path through the frost.
Then, little by little, the fog swallowed the shapes, and they vanished—as though the mountain had, at last, allowed one of its children to leave.
Nothing remained, save for footprints fading beneath the wind, and a silent memory, waiting… to be told.