Chapter Fourteen: The Unforgettable Name
He woke before dawn.
It wasn't real sleep—just a still body on a cold bed, and eyes open from within.
With quiet steps, he left the room.
Passed by Eileen's closed door, then William's room. Made no sound.
Left the house... without anyone seeing him.
He needed distance, to test the silence outside the walls, away from eyes that pretended reassurance.
The forest was unusually still.
The branches didn't move.
The air itself seemed to breathe slowly, cautiously... as if something was about to appear.
Luin stood near a leaning trunk, between trees that resembled dead fingers closing around his heart.
He closed his eyes.
But instead of darkness... he saw a faint light.
Not the seal's light.
But a thread of warmth, passing through his chest, flowing quietly and taking him to that corner of memory he hadn't dared open from the start.
An alley.
A faint voice.
"Don't look at me like that."
"I'm not a story worth pitying."
He opened his eyes to a sound behind him.
Footsteps.
Then stillness.
He turned.
And there... she was.
Standing between two leaning trunks, as if the light chose to craft her from itself.
Her white hair falling from beneath a sky-blue hood, light as a breeze.
And her eyes—blue, not shining like noble eyes... but looking as one who feels you, not their pride.
He looked at her—no, remembered her.
The part he didn't know he'd lost... returned.
Her.
The one he'd seen once, amid blood and cold.
The one whose image remained embedded between the cracks made by torture, the seal, and emptiness.
"Celine..."
The name left his mouth like a whisper.
She didn't move, but something in the air changed when he spoke her name.
"You recognized me." She said in a low voice, but it wasn't a question.
"I saw you... long ago." He said.
"I saw you too."
Then added, approaching him:
"But we weren't ready... back then."
Luin felt his heart slow, as if each beat took permission from her before completing.
"Who are you?" He asked, though he knew the name wasn't enough.
"I... don't follow the Church." She said first.
"And I don't belong to a village with fangs.
Nor to a city that lost its shadow.
I... search. Have been searching. For you."
Luin tensed, stepped back:
"Why?"
She looked at him long, then said:
"Because there's something in you that isn't yours.
And because I heard the call... that you didn't make."
She approached closer, until only steps remained between them.
Then raised her hand slowly, as if afraid of breaking him, and touched his chest—directly over where the seal lay.
Luin gasped.
It wasn't pain.
But a feeling... as if someone opened a window inside him that had been closed since childhood.
"The darkness in you knows me." She said.
Then looked at him, with a sad, warm smile.
"And that's enough... as a beginning."
⸻
In the evening, he told no one about her.
He sat by the fire, feigning calm, while that strange warmth still clung to his chest.
All he knew... was that what lay inside the seal hadn't fallen silent that night.
Rather... it was watching.
⸻
The night was still.
But inside him, something wasn't.
Luin tried to sleep—but every time he closed his eyes, he saw the circle.
The same circle.
An eye in the center, blinking slowly, as if waiting for him to return the greeting.
Around it, symbols writhing, transforming, muttering in a language unlike any sound he'd heard before.
And above it all... she was there.
Celine.
Not haunting him.
But appearing... at the edge. Always there, not interfering, not touching, not explaining.
As if a shadow of a memory he knew remained incomplete.
⸻
He woke suddenly, didn't know if he'd been asleep at all.
The room empty. The window open to gray light like moon remnants.
Then he heard it.
A voice that wasn't external. But inside him, broken, familiar in a disturbing way:
"We don't dream, Luin...
We remember what was erased."
He stood quickly, his body cold, hands trembling, but he wasn't afraid—rather, as if something in him had been waiting for this moment.
He left the room.
Crept through the wooden corridor, then outside.
Found William sitting on the wooden step's threshold, looking at the dark sky.
"Can't sleep?" He asked without turning.
Luin sat beside him, in silence.
A moment passed.
Then he said:
"Have you seen anyone... remember things they never lived?"
William breathed slowly.
"Those whose names were taken from them... yes. Sometimes."
"I feel like I've lived hundreds of lives, all without names... without faces. And all of them screaming inside me."
"Do they talk to you?" William asked.
Luin didn't answer.
But he looked at the sky.
And saw a face... between the clouds.
Not a human face.
Nor a monster.
But something resembling his own image in a broken mirror.
⸻
He returned to his bed, shortly before dawn.
But before drifting off, he glimpsed something at the window's edge.
A paper.
A precisely folded paper, with symbols in pale blue.
He opened it.
Not many words inside.
Just one line:
"When you remember the true name... it will already be too late."
⸻
The next day, the world woke as if nothing had happened.
But Luin knew...
That his silence wasn't calm.
But rather...
The calm that precedes a collapse without sound.
⸻
Night hadn't fallen yet, but the shadows arrived before it.
In the back corner of the old market, Luin stood at the broken edge of a buried well, watching his reflection in stagnant water. His features weren't as he was used to. Something in his eyes... didn't entirely belong to him.
Footsteps, slow, deliberate.
Then the sound stopped before its owner appeared.
"Luin Meer?"
The question's tone wasn't inquiry, but statement.
He turned. Saw a man wearing a long black coat with faded tattoos the color of burnt ink. Behind him, four men, their faces covered with smooth marble masks, no opening for eye or mouth.
The man said:
"In the name of the Lower Committee for Psychological Surveillance... your presence is requested for ritual review, charged with exceeding psychological ranks without registration or guardianship."
Luin didn't respond.
Then in a calm voice, as if addressing himself:
"I knew they'd come... but not this ugly."
The air changed.
Something moved beneath his skin, as if the first seal was pulsing in an unfamiliar way.
"I refuse."
He said it calmly, without raising his voice.
The man before him didn't change expression. Pulled from his coat a small pen-like tool, and tapped it on his chest three times.
Suddenly...
The light around them collapsed. Nothing remained but air heavy as dust, and a sharp screech, heard only by those whose sight had been opened.
⸻
The four men lunged forward in suspicious silence, their movements like dolls pulled by sacred strings.
One jumped, a short sword of ecclesiastical bone in his hand, and attacked directly toward Luin's neck.
But Luin didn't retreat.
He raised his arm...
And the voice inside him, that whisper he'd learned to ignore, suddenly screamed:
"They don't think you're alive enough to fight."
His arm burned from within, blue veins appeared clearly, and his eyes glowed for a moment, as if something inside the skull was staring outward.
He slapped the air.
Just a slap, but it released a tremor that echoed between the walls, made one of the attackers crash into the wall and break his spine.
The rest surrounded him.
Silent rituals began, and symbolic halos rose from their bodies as if they were stitching reality with poisoned prayer threads.
Luin choked for a moment.
Felt his body being pulled from within.
But he didn't call for help.
All he did was close his eyes... and allow the void to approach.
⸻
When everything ended, no one remained standing but him.
One of the attackers was trembling, blood flowing from his nose, begging with garbled words:
"You're not... common... the seal doesn't open like this... impossible..."
Luin approached, bent before him, and said calmly:
"I haven't opened anything yet."
Then silence.
He looked at the sky.
In that moment, the noble appeared.
From the corner of the road, standing calmly, clapping slowly, with a small smile at the edge of his lips.
"Well done, Luin Meer. Seems you're no longer just a suspicion."
⸻
End of Chapter Fourteen