"Remember the boy in the alley?" the voice of the reflection said, tearing a page straight out of his soul. "The one who was just walking home?"
A skinny boy appeared, wearing a blue cap and a small backpack.
Wide-eyed, face split open.
The iron bar still dripped blood.
Rodrigo took a step back.
The smell of hot blood invaded his nostrils.
"Remember the woman with the baby in her arms?" the reflection went on, quieter now. More intimate.
"The one you thought was working for Lucius?"
The woman appeared. Eyes open, frozen.
The baby in her arms… pale. Motionless.
A horrible silence hung over them.
Rodrigo staggered.
The air grew heavier.
Each scene was a blade turned inward.
Each memory, a new cut.
"And the family," the reflection whispered. "The last one. Do you remember?"
The house appeared.
The old couch.
The dim light.
The man tied up, stabbed in the groin.
The woman with her throat slit, still bound to the chair.
And the boy…
Eleven years old.
Himself, wearing another skin. A shattered mirror.
Rodrigo saw— saw himself dragging him, throwing him into the blood, smiling.
A guttural sound escaped his throat.
"ENOUGH!" he roared, his voice rougher than ever.
But the reflection stepped forward.
"IT WASN'T FOR HER!" it bellowed, its eyes burning with rage.
"IT WAS FOR YOU! For that hole in your chest you tried to plug with flesh and viscera!"
Rodrigo fell.
The impact wasn't only physical. It was existential.
The guilt struck against his essence like a hammer— an incalculable weight crushing him from the inside out.
But he didn't stay down.
He rose.
On trembling knees.
With hands flayed raw.
With his chest torn open from within.
He rose.
The reflection charged.
Rodrigo dodged— even though his body was no longer a body— and ran.
Ran straight toward himself.
Not with hate.
But with truth.
And when he collided with the reflection, it wasn't with a punch.
It was with an embrace.
Tight. Cruel. Necessary.
The reflection screamed, thrashed, clawed, wept.
But Rodrigo held on.
Squeezed him with all his strength.
With compassion.
As one might hold a child driven mad by trauma.
"I know what you became," he said, his voice firm but shaking. "I know what we did."
The reflection cried.
Howled.
Tried to break free like a caged animal, its twisted hands clawing at the void around them.
"I hate you too," Rodrigo murmured, staring into his own eyes— the eyes that had pretended not to see so many times.
"But it's time to stop running."
"She died…" the reflection whispered, weakening, like a child exhausted from crying.
"And so did you," Rodrigo answered, in a whisper that sealed the end.
The reflection went still.
The body trembled… and unraveled— like glass shattering in silence.
But then, something happened.
Before the fragments could hit the ground, they froze in the air— suspended like shards of memory.
And between them… an image appeared.
Luciana.
Not the child in the yard.
Not the corpse in the room.
But the teenage girl he'd known before the tragedy. Hair tied back haphazardly, wearing one of his old T-shirts.
Light brown eyes alight with life, teeth slightly crooked in a teasing grin.
The way she crossed her arms and said:
"You're an idiot, Rodrigo… but you're my brother."
The image was brief. Almost a visual whisper in the aftermath of the chaos.
And even though it was only a flicker, it made Rodrigo falter.
His pitch-black eyes widened.
The heart that hadn't beaten in years seemed to remember how.
Because that memory was true.
Not an accusation.
Not a scene of guilt.
But a remnant of love.
Luciana looked at him for a second that felt eternal.
Without judgment.
Without pain.
Only with the gaze of someone who sees the soul of another— no matter how filthy it is— and loves it still.
Rodrigo fell to his knees.
Not from pain.
But from release.
The shadows scattered.
The blood evaporated.
The voices went silent.
And there, in the emptiness stripped of all horror, only one thing remained.
Silence.
But this time, not the silence of condemnation.
It was the silence of forgiveness.
And for the first time, Rodrigo wept without hatred.
Without a mask.
Without the reflection.
He wept like a brother.
He wept like Elian.
And when he rose, he saw child-Luciana in the distance, sitting on a swing, watching.
She wasn't smiling.
But for the first time… she waved.
And then, with a heart still wounded— but beating— he moved on.
The next door awaited…
★★★
Rodrigo stepped through the second door on hesitant feet.
The smell of blood reached him before the sight.
He recognized the place the moment the corridor's light died behind him.
It was the room where he was born as Elian.
But something was wrong.
Time felt suspended.
The colors were faded, as though the reality here was drowning in a diseased memory.
The straw bed creaked beneath the weight of labor.
The air was stifling, saturated with sweat, blood, and filth.
The scene before him was his birth— but reenacted with details too cruel to be just recollection.
Maria lay on the bed, her face pale and drenched.
The midwife shouted for more strength.
Arthur gripped his wife's hand with desperate eyes, trying to keep her alive with nothing but words.
And the baby cried.
Rodrigo knew it was him.
But now he was no longer bound to an infant's body. He was here as an observer— and a judge.
This was not merely a memory.
It was a tribunal.
And he was the accused.
He tried to approach the bed, but the floor clung to his feet.
The boards were damp, coated with a dark slime that moved as if it breathed.
From the other side of the room, a figure appeared, sitting in a corner.
It was himself. Younger.
Eyes downcast.
Shoulders slumped.
Hands stained with what looked like remnants of black magic.
Rodrigo drew closer, recognizing this version— the one who had come from Maria's womb certain he should never have returned to the world.
The kneeling version spoke without lifting his head:
"You saw the blood. You saw her nearly die. And still you breathed. You were born, knowing what it would cost."
Rodrigo didn't answer.
He looked at Maria, gasping on the bed.
Blood spilled beneath her, soaking the sheets, staining the floor.
The midwife tried to staunch the bleeding with spells, but the magic's glow flickered, unstable, as though the very world rejected the healing.
Arthur shouted.
Cried.
Begged.
Maria, already without strength, turned her head to the side.
And then, Rodrigo heard the words.
Weak.
Sincere.
"If I die… take care of him. Please. Don't blame him."
Those words hit him in the gut.
"But it was my fault," he murmured.
The kneeling Rodrigo raised his face.
His eyes were sunken, black.
No life in them— only a silent judgment.
"She almost died because of you. If you hadn't been reborn, she would still be alive."
The room darkened.
The walls trembled.
The lamplight went out completely, drowning the space in a red-stained darkness.
The blood on the floor began to move, sliding toward Rodrigo's feet, wrapping around his ankles like serpents.
A new voice cut through the silence.
"That's not true."
Rodrigo turned.
Luciana stood by the bed.
She wore white.
The same figure he had seen in the previous trial, but now with a different expression: firmer, more resolute.
She walked toward him without touching the blood.
"You think you were born to destroy, but you're wrong. You didn't ask to come back. And even so… you fought for her to live."
"I begged them to take me instead," Rodrigo said, his voice raw.
"And she lived," Luciana replied.
"You gave what you had, even without understanding what it was. That's not guilt. That's sacrifice."
Rodrigo dropped to his knees.
The blood was up to his waist now.
The room was drowning in that living, liquid guilt.
"I'm their curse. Maria almost died. I saw it happen. I felt it. I wished I had never been born. But I kept existing," Rodrigo said all at once, as if purging venom from his lungs.
Luciana knelt in front of him.
She reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder.
"You keep existing because she lived. Because she wanted you. Because she named you. And now, you have to accept that."
Rodrigo closed his eyes.
The room began to collapse.
The blood dissolved into smoke.
Maria breathed steadily.
Arthur held her close.
Elise stepped back, panting, her hands stained but relieved.
The newborn— Elian— slept on his mother's chest, and the world outside began to turn again.
When Rodrigo opened his eyes, he was alone in a corridor of black stone.
The door behind him was fading.
Ahead, another appeared.
Above it, carved deep in iron-burned letters:
Third Trial — The Uncle with the Judas Smile
Rodrigo took a deep breath.
The guilt still weighed on him.
But for the first time, he carried it on his own feet.
And he moved forward.