The darkness wasn't cold like the hospital's. It was warm, dense, and smelled of smoke and wet earth. There was no sound of medical equipment, nor the funeral silence of death. There was only the rhythmic pulse of something that sounded like a heart, but not mine.
I opened my eyes, or thought I did. I was no longer in the mansion's courtyard. I was in a place without a horizon, where the floor seemed made of dark glass that reflected the stars of a sky I had never seen. In the center of this void, a young man sat, observing his own hands.
He was my reflection, but without the scars of the recent fight. His eyes were identical to mine, but there was something in them—or a lack of something.
"So, you finally decided to fight for it," he said, without lifting his head. His voice was identical to mine, but it carried a weight of centuries of solitude.
"Aether?" I asked, my voice echoing in the void.
I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing; I was seeing myself, or rather, I saw Aether standing before me. He rose slowly. The true Aether, the prince everyone hated, the man whose body I now inhabited. He walked toward me, and with every step, the glass floor cracked beneath his feet, releasing sparks of dark fire.
He stopped a few paces from me. The reflection on the glass floor showed two identical men, but while I showed the exhaustion of one who had just fought, he exhaled a static coldness. I looked deep into his eyes and realized what bothered me: there was no glow. They were like golden wells, but empty of any will to live.
"You look at me as if I were a ghost," he said, with a half-smile that didn't reach his eyes. "But you are the one walking with the dead, Elias."
When he said my name, I felt as if a vortex had violently pulled me, and suddenly I left that place. Now, I was in a hospital.
The sterile smell hit my nose; the irritating beep sound was in the air again. Aether appeared by my side again, observing the machines with cold curiosity.
"Look," he said, pointing forward. I followed his gaze. There was a bed; a white sheet prevented me from seeing who it was.
"Approach," he said, walking ahead of me.
My feet felt heavy, as if the linoleum floor were trying to hold me back. With every step, the sound of the heart monitor seemed to accelerate inside my own head. I knew that room. I knew the pale light of the fluorescent lamps and the feeling of helplessness that floated in the air like dust.
I stood by the bed. Aether was on the other side, his princely figure completely out of place in that modern, lifeless setting. He seemed like a silent observer of a tragedy I had tried to forget.
"Pull the sheet," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on me.
I took a deep breath, my heart pounding as if trying to stop me.
"PULL IT!" he ordered loudly. "The sheet, Elias," he repeated, now lower, almost like a dangerous whisper.
I gathered the courage I had left and pulled the fabric at once. What I saw revealed my greatest fear: it was me. Or rather, what was left of me in my previous life. Thin legs, tired arms, and the pale skin of someone near the end.
"Interesting, isn't it?" Aether commented, pulling me out of the small trance I had entered.
I looked at him, but his face was a mask of ice, without any reaction or pity. I turned my gaze back to the "me" on the bed and, suddenly, he opened his eyes. He looked directly at me; it wasn't an ordinary look, it was as if he saw beyond my skin, piercing through time and space to the bottom of my soul.
Like a snap, reality fragmented. In the blink of an eye, we were somewhere else.
The sterile hospital light vanished, and now I was fallen on the ground, on soft grass. I stood up quickly, looking around with my senses on alert. In the distance, I saw a child running toward me. By instinct, I tried to move, but he passed through me as if I were just a passing breeze.
I looked back and there she was: a woman with open arms, waiting for the small figure. She wore simple clothes, worn fabrics that contrasted with the child's fine garments. She hugged him with desperate strength, as if she knew she could lose him at any moment. Her black hair billowed in the wind, an image of peace that seemed impossible just seconds ago.
"Aether, slowly... you might fall," she said with a sweet voice that echoed in my mind.
Aether? So that was it. A memory of the original body. Suddenly, Aether's voice rose beside me, cutting through the sweetness of the moment like a blade.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" he said, observing the scene with a hollow gaze. "Too bad it won't last long."
He reached out his hand and, with a sharp gesture, the scene disintegrated. The sun gave way to a torrential rain that lashed against the face. Now, we stood before a shallow grave, open in the muddy earth. There was a body in it. The body of that same woman.
Dirt began to be thrown by faceless men, covering the little peace that remained. A sharp, desperate cry rose beside me. It was little Aether, screaming at the top of his lungs, his hands dirty with mud trying to reach his mother.
"Mommy! MAMA!"
Little Aether's cry was heartbreaking, but the man beside me only watched, the dark flames at his feet boiling with the rainwater. Again, I felt the violent pull. I was sucked to another place and, in the blink of an eye, I appeared in a massive corridor, adorned with luxurious paintings. It was the royal castle.
Something flew past me like a projectile and landed on the other side of the hallway, hitting the floor with a dull thud.
"You're a bastard!" screamed a girl. Her brown hair and piercing green eyes were fixed on the fallen boy.
I looked at the boy; it was Aether again. His nose was bleeding and his eyes were flooded with tears, but they weren't tears of sadness—it was the pain of betrayal.
"You said we were going to practice... that none of it was real," the boy said, his voice failing as he tried to prop himself up on his elbows.
"And I am practicing," the girl retorted with a cruel smile. She began to concentrate energy, creating a fireball in her hands and launching it toward him with the intent to harm.
In little Aether's eyes, I could see absolute terror, but just beneath the fear, a spark of fury emerged. It was a different flame, something that seemed to come from the depths of his rejected lineage. He stood up as the fireball advanced. He whispered something, words so low that even I, standing inches from him, couldn't hear.
In an instant, the world seemed to distort. He passed through me like a blur and appeared in front of the girl, landing a solid punch right in her face.
The impact echoed through the marble corridor. The silence that followed was heavier than the previous scream. The adult Aether beside me took a step forward, a dark glint of satisfaction appearing on his pale face.
"That was my first mistake," he said, and again we were transported to another place.
Once more, a figure passed me. It was Aether, but now his wounds were even deeper and fresher. He was down, cornered against a cold stone wall under the gaze of a woman overflowing with venom.
"You hurt your sister!" screamed the female voice, loaded with pure, aristocratic hatred.
I looked at the source of the voice. It was the woman who stood beside the King in the castle's painting; the Queen. Her eyes burned with murderous rage, and her posture was that of someone about to crush an insect.
"She... she hurt me first," the boy replied, his voice weak and trembling, while he tried uselessly to stop the blood dripping from a cut on his arm.
"I will kill you. I will erase this filthy blood from the face of the earth," the woman sentenced, reaching out her hand toward him with a frigid gesture.
The boy began to cough violently. His hands went to his throat, fighting an invisible grip. She was using the threads of the Web to choke the boy, compressing his lungs without even touching him. Aether was turning pale; he desperately tried to draw breath, but nothing reached his lungs. The panic in his eyes was absolute.
I tried to step forward to intervene, but my spectral body couldn't touch that past reality. At the moment life seemed to be leaving little Aether's eyes, a voice echoed through the hall, making the marble walls vibrate.
"What do you think you are doing?"
It was a voice full of authority, so deep and powerful that even the Queen hesitated, losing control over the Web for a second. The boy began to breathe with difficulty again, his chest heaving in desperate spasms as oxygen finally returned.
"He attacked our daughter," the woman said, regaining her aristocratic posture, but still casting looks of pure venom at the King.
"Is that true, Aether?" the voice questioned, now directed at the boy.
With a jolt, little Aether was pulled. It seemed as if the very air obeyed the King, turning into an invisible force that dragged the boy across the marble floor until he stood right in front of his father. Something held him there, a constant pressure that prevented him from falling, despite his legs trembling violently.
"Is it true?" he questioned again, the King's voice coming out like a muffled thunder.
I looked at the King. He didn't look like a worried father, nor even a just judge. His eyes were cold, devoid of any human warmth, observing his bastard son as if he were a broken tool or a calculation error that needed correcting.
Little Aether lifted his head. Blood still ran from his nose, but he didn't look away, sustaining the invisible pressure that kept him standing before his father's sovereignty.
"She attacked me first," the boy replied, his voice hoarse from the recent choking, but carried by a stubbornness that refused to be broken. "I only did what you taught me. I didn't let them erase me."
I looked at the King and saw the exact moment his expression changed. He didn't get angry, nor relieved. Instead, the King let out a cold smile—a gesture so devoid of affection that even I, in my spectral form, felt my nerves scream in alert.