Chapter 38
reflection
Kaep looked down at the dark reflection of the inkwell.
For an instant, he thought he saw a violet flash there, a shadow that came not from the flame nor from anything physical.
His breath caught.
His mind, however, kept moving, fitting loose fragments together with a cruel precision.
Thinking of his own eyes, he remembered the image of the child.
The child with the same eyes.
He didn't remember it as a distant scene, but as something that was still happening behind his eyelid.
Every time he closed it, he saw the blurred crowd, the stone columns, the light falling sideways, and amidst it all, that small, still figure, looking up at someone he too had looked at.
The child had his name.
The same one he had heard when he woke up hanging from that window, not understanding who was calling him.
The same voice, the same sound, as if the world hadn't made the slightest effort to invent a new meaning.
But he was not that child.
He was not the one receiving the embrace.
He was not the one laughing in his parents' arms, nor the one looking towards the gate with the intact innocence of one who still belongs to a place.
Kaep knew it.
He knew it with the certainty with which one feels an old pain.
He remembered.
When he saw him, he saw him among the passersby, just one more.
Invisible.
The memory unfolded on its own: the moving crowd, the voices, the warm air, the weight of dusk on people's shoulders.
And him, standing, watching the child in the distance, separated by a distance that could not be measured in steps.
There was no noise.
Only the repeated gesture of the child looking back, searching for something among the people —perhaps him, or perhaps no one—.
And then the scene would dissolve.
Always the same.
Always before reaching the point where he was supposed to understand what he was seeing.
Kaep rested his elbows on the table, burying his face in his hands.
The skin of his fingers smelled of ink and wax.
It didn't matter.
His mind was no longer there.
It was in front of the gate.
Among the passersby.
Watching as the child passed through it, not noticing him.
Watching as everything that should have weight turned to air.
He tried to move.
At first, he only turned his head, as if looking in another direction was enough to escape the memory.
But his surroundings didn't change.
The table, the chair, the light… everything remained motionless, too sharp, like an image held up by a force he didn't understand.
Then he stood up.
His body responded with a clumsiness that didn't seem his own; his knees bent with a strange delay, and when he took the first step, the wooden floor made no sound.
He kept walking, slowly, waiting to hear the echo of his own footsteps, but there was none.
The room slid around him, losing its outline.
The edge of the table faded first, then the back wall, and soon the door too dissolved into an opaque haze.
Kaep advanced a little further.
There was no direction.
Each step felt the same as the last, and yet, the air changed —colder, lighter—.
When he tried to turn, he found no point of origin.
There was nothing behind him.
Only a white space, without shadow, without depth, where his own figure seemed suspended.
He kept walking.
The white stretched out without offering resistance, as if he were walking on an invisible surface.
At times he thought he saw ripples, slight distortions on the ground, and he looked down: the texture had become liquid.
A mirrored surface, vibrant, reflecting an impossible image.
The sky.
Not just any sky: a motionless firmament, full of stars, so close they seemed pasted to the skin of the water.
The line between above and below disappeared.
Kaep took an involuntary step, and the reflection shattered into circles, as if he had stepped on the boundary of his own world.
The air grew heavy, almost viscous.
His feet sank slightly into the surface, and he stopped immediately.
He stood still.
His body, his breath, the trembling of his fingers.
A certainty flooded him – "the figure from before" – his body reacted before his mind.
He spun sharply on his heel and broke into a run.
The reflection of the sky shattered under his feet, leaving ripples that stretched into the void.
The sound of movement was different: not footsteps, but hollow, muffled thuds, as if the floor were neither completely solid nor liquid.
The air around him vibrated, and for a moment he felt space itself pushing him back, resisting letting him go.
He kept running.
He didn't know where to; he only wanted to get away from the only place where he had encountered that figure twice.
The white around him deformed with each stride, stretching as if trying to keep him inside that space.
His heart beat with an irregular force, a dry thump, then an emptiness, then another thump.
His breath caught at intervals, between gasps that produced no vapor.
For a few seconds he thought he was advancing: the glow under his feet distorted, changed intensity, and the ripples seemed to expand in a new direction.
But when he looked back, the void was identical.
There was no starting point, no shadow, no footprint.
Nothing to tell him how far he had gone.
He clenched his teeth and kept running.
The white turned gray, then silver, then white again, as if the space were recycling its own colors to deceive him.
And then he understood.
The horizon never moved away.
It only folded in on itself.
When he tried to stop, he stumbled, fell to his knees, and the liquid surface rippled again, projecting the same reflection: his hunched figure, the violet eyes looking up at him from below with an unbearable calm.
But…
"¡¡!!" Kaep scrambled backward in a leap. The reflection imitated him precisely.
The movement was simultaneous, without delay, as if both shared the same impulse.
He got to his feet, breathing fast, looking around.
The space hadn't changed.
Every direction was the same.
Every attempt led him to the same point.
He tried again —two, three times—, running in different directions, without stopping, until fatigue ceased to have meaning.
And each time he moved away, the white folded, the horizon closed in, and the result was identical: he ended up in front of the same liquid mirror, under the same starry sky.
Kaep looked down.
His breath was still agitated, cut into dry gasps.
His chest rose and fell as if he were still running, although the space around him remained still.
He looked at his right hand.
The open, wet fingers seemed alien to him.
The tremor was slight, but constant.
—Will I have to do it again? —he thought as he calmed his breathing.
The question wasn't a logical thought, but a jolt.
The memory came immediately: the figure with its hand open over his face, inches from grabbing him, the pressure, the dread, his own fingers coming up to meet the hand before everything went dark.
His body remembered it before his mind.
His stomach contracted, his throat tightened.
A line of cold sweat ran down his back, though there was no temperature to explain it.
Kaep inhaled slowly, trying to regain control.
His hand was shaking more strongly now, a mixture of fear and decision.
He knew it worked…
He knew it would…
He knew it wouldn't hurt after leaving this space…
He sighed.
The air entered roughly, burning his chest.
…
…
From one instant to the next…
He moved.
He shifted his posture, lowering his center of gravity.
His feet planted themselves on the liquid surface, which vibrated under the pressure.
The reflection trembled with him.
His right arm flexed first, as if his body hesitated before the blow.
But in the next instant, everything coordinated: shoulders, elbow, wrist.
The movement was clean, instinctive, like that of someone who has repeated that act many times.
Two fingers extended, the intention clear.
They rose straight towards his face, crossing the distance between doubt and action.
The reflection imitated the gesture with a minimal delay.
…
But before reaching the point of contact, something stopped him…
Something closed around his wrist.
It wasn't a rough grip, but a firm, precise pressure that completely immobilized his arm.
His arm tensed, veins standing out under the skin.
He tried to free himself, but before he could have a chance to pull his arm back, whatever was holding him pulled him downward, knocking him down with a force that escaped any scale he could recognize.
Kneeling and supported on both arms on the surface… no, now his legs up to the knees and his wrists were sunk in the water.
His eyes widened further.
The reflection, on the other side of the surface, was no longer imitating him.
The fingers of his reflection were extended, but the gesture wasn't his.
it wasn't his reflection…
Kaep pulled himself up hard but before he could stand.
The reflection tilted its head slightly, as if observing his attempt with indifference, the violet eyes fixed on his.
The trembling returned, deeper, running through his whole body.
He didn't know if it was from fear or something else.
But he didn't have the slightest chance to process what he was seeing.
The reflection began to warp, as if a current were passing beneath the surface.
First the outlines —the face dissolving, the eyes losing focus—, and then the complete figure rearranged itself in a tremor of light.
It was him.
Younger.
Short hair, an open gaze, skin without marks.
Kaep remained motionless, not daring to blink.
The reflection looked at him with an innocence so clean it hurt.
The water vibrated again.
The figure changed again.
Now it was a teenager, taller, expression hardened, lips pressed tight as if holding back something he had never said.
Kaep felt a tug in his chest, a familiar pang he couldn't place.
The reflection tilted its head, almost curious.
Another tremor.
His current self.
Soaked clothes, ragged breath, the same fatigue, the same tremor in his jaw.
For an instant, their movements synchronized —they breathed at the same rhythm— and Kaep believed for a moment that the reflection was normal and that he was just hallucinating.
But… it wasn't like that and he knew it.
The surface broke once more.
The face that emerged now was covered in wounds, with the dull gaze of someone who had already survived too many things.
A Kaep hardened by battle.
There was a hardness in his eyes, a calm that was not peace but resignation.
When he smiled, the smile was just an empty way of showing he was still alive.
Kaep tried to move away.
The reflection followed him, but this time with a slight delay.
As if it were imitating him.
And then the last one appeared.
The water darkened.
The face was outlined slowly, almost tenderly.
It was an older Kaep, with pale skin, a serene gaze, a kind smile… but behind that calm there was a hollow.
A void so deep it was frightening to hold his gaze.
There was no rage, no sadness, no guilt.
Only a clean silence, as if there was no one left inside him.
Kaep swallowed, his body tense, every muscle about to move without permission.
The surface remained still.
The reflection was still smiling.
And that smile —calm, almost human— was more terrifying than any monster.
A moment.
It was only a moment that Kaep stayed staring, his eyes too wide, his chest trembling with an involuntary breath.
Sweat ran down his forehead and mixed with the gleam of the liquid before him.
Each drop that fell broke the mirror into small ripples.
First one.
Then another.
And another.
Until they were no longer drops, but a continuous tremor distorting the reflection.
The face of the other Kaep became disfigured.
The smile twisted slightly, and something dark began to slide from the edges of the figure.
It wasn't shadow, not quite; it was a substance thicker than darkness itself, a tide covering him from the shoulders up, erasing the expression.
For a second, Kaep thought it was devouring him.
But then, from within that darkness, a broken radiance burst forth.
Cut, irregular light, as if someone were filtering it through a crack.
Each flash made the water vibrate more.
Kaep was frozen in shock and an inevitable curiosity, his heart pounding against his chest.
The silence broke.
A brief, dry sound, like glass cracking.
The water arched.
And before Kaep could even inhale, something emerged from the surface.
The impact of the water breaking was so dull it was barely audible, but the wave reached him anyway, soaking his face.
The figure that emerged had no defined shape at first: just arms, or something like arms, stretching towards him with an unnatural movement, as if there were no joints.
The air became dense, vibrant, every suspended particle swirling towards the point where the liquid rose.
Kaep could barely see them well because of the water in his eyes, but he recognized them instantly.
The skin was opaque, without texture, like solidified smoke, identical to the arms of the figure from the other two occasions.
And that single image was enough for his body to react before his mind.
He tried to get up.
His muscles tensed, his arms sought leverage, but the dark limbs interlaced behind him and held him with precision, pinning him to the liquid floor.
The impact wasn't violent, but it was absolute: the pressure left him breathless, as if space itself were closing over his back.
Still, he fought.
He moved his legs, twisted his torso, pushed with his elbows.
Each movement displaced waves under his body, and those waves deformed as if an opposing force were absorbing them.
The entire infinite liquid surface trembled, reflecting him amidst the night sky full of stars.
He tried to escape sideways, dragging himself to one side.
His hands sank a little deeper into the surface, as if resistance sank him further.
He turned his head, searching for a fixed point.
Nothing.
Until he lowered his gaze.
The reflection… was gone.
In its place, something was emerging.
Not a complete figure, but a face formed of pure light rising from the exact point where his own reflected face had been.
The luminosity was intense, but not blinding; it was a kind of clarity that seemed to have weight, as if the light itself wanted to touch him.
The face rose slowly, approaching him.
Kaep remained motionless, not knowing if fear paralyzed him or if the arms were still holding him.
Centimeters from his face, the light began to vibrate.
The air between them trembled as if the world were holding its breath.
And then, for the first time, something began to overshadow the fear.
A different sensation, impossible to name: not calm, nor relief, nor hope.
It was something that felt familiar to him.
Something that didn't come from him.
It was from that thing.
That figure was… him.
An adult him.
And in the instant their gazes met, something ignited in his head, so fast he couldn't even protect himself.
A flash.
Then, a torrent.
Images, voices, places he didn't know and yet recognized with an unbearable certainty.
A room bathed in gray light.
Hands —his, older— signing a name he hadn't yet learned to pronounce.
The sound of someone else's laughter, and a promise he had never made.
Everything overlapped: present, past, what did not yet exist.
Kaep tried to pull away, but there was no "away" anymore.
The entire space seemed to fold in on itself, twist with a creak that didn't come from the air, but from within.
He felt his body folding like the surroundings —as if taken in the middle and twisted inward— a sensation without direction, weight, or time.
The liquid floor curved, dragging him.
His vision split in two and everything spun.
The memories kept falling inside him, like fragments with no place to fit.
A voice —his, but different— whispered something he couldn't understand.
And just when he thought he was losing the form of thought, everything flipped.
A dry impact, without sound.
A complete inversion.
The world folded and, in a single blink, Kaep was thrown to the other side of himself.
When his consciousness snapped back into his body, the first thing he felt was vertigo.
The floor was no longer the floor.
The air weighed differently, and the night sky seemed to lean towards him.
He blinked several times, trying to focus, and then he saw it.
His own face.
Not the adult, not the empty one, but his current face.
Looking down at him from above, with the same expression he had so often seen in a mirror.
Kaep tried to sit up, but his hands hit something liquid.
The impact was soft, with a vibration that ran through the entire space —an invisible membrane between him and the world.
The reflection came closer, tilting its head with a calm that chilled him.
The young Kaep smiled.
A brief, twisted smirk, laden with something that seemed like more than just joy.
His voice sounded muffled, as if speaking through water:
—I'm sorry… but I will save them… now that I have the chance.
The words hit him harder than the impact.
There was no time to understand them fully, only the echo of his own timbre in a foreign mouth.
Then he understood.
The reflection —his younger self— was rising out of the water, taking his place, breathing with his mouth… his body.
Kaep tried to scream, but no sound came out.
He struck the surface with force; the liquid deformed, but did not break.
The other turned for an instant before disappearing completely, leaving only the tremor of the water under the light of a night sky that remained fixed, motionless, eternal.
And in that final silence, Kaep understood.
He wasn't looking at a reflection.
He was now the reflection.
Trapped on the other side.