Night fell like a heavy cloak, and with it, a thick silence settled in my room.
I sat on the floor near the window, letting the cold breeze brush my face. I closed my eyes.
And then the visions came.
They were not dreams, nor clear memories, but fragments—like flashes in the darkness.
I saw a woman with long dark hair, wrapped in a mantle of ashes. She walked among the dead, who greeted and respected her. Her face was covered by a veil that barely revealed eyes filled with ancient pain and unwavering strength.
I saw a small boy playing among the graves, his hands touching shadows no one else could see. He laughed, but his eyes reflected knowledge beyond his years.
I saw a ritual. Fire and earth mixing, a crack opening beneath the feet of that woman. Her fingers touched the air, calling forgotten voices, and the ground trembled as if the world itself split in two.
I heard whispers, words I couldn't understand but that echoed inside me like a distant memory begging to be remembered.
And then I saw her.
The woman who appeared at the grave.
The one with a thousand veils.
But this time, she was not a ghost.
She was alive. Young. Walking beside me in a fog-covered village. She held my hand and taught me how to light candles with my mind.
She was not a vision.
She was my teacher.
"Every nameless dead was a name you touched," she told me.
"You did not forget them… you marked them so they wouldn't fully die."
She took me to the cemetery.
But not as it is now.
The graves were older, made of pure stone. The oldest tree was still young. There was no crack.
And there he was.
The gravedigger without hands.
But then, he had his hands. Complete. Holding fresh flowers. He looked at me tenderly, as if he had known me forever.
"You came back?" he asked in the vision.
"I thought you never would."
I recognized him—not as an enemy.
But as someone who once loved me.
I opened my eyes. The room was dark, but in my hand, I held a small smooth stone I didn't remember taking. It had ancient engravings, symbols I had already seen in the codex.
I realized then these lives were not just memories.
They were parts of me.
The story was repeating itself.
The cemetery was not just a place of death.
It was a scar I had left open.
And those who waited for me there…
were not ghosts.
They were fragments of what I was.
And what I still am.