He stepped through the door.
The first thing that greeted him was darkness — thick, damp, suffocating. Yet sowhere in that abyss, faint lights flickered. Small torches clung to the walls like desperate stars, their flas breathing slow, golden light into the black. Shadows crawled along the stones, alive in their own quiet way.
Avin squinted. "They’re lit?" he murmured. "That ans... soone’s here."
The words echoed softly, bouncing off unseen corners. His boots tapped against the cold stone floor — tap... tap... tap — the sound oddly lonely in the cavernous silence.
Then, faintly, ca another noise.
CLANG.
tal striking tal.
He froze. The sound rang through the hall like a heartbeat. Steady. Unhurried.
He turned toward it, as slowly as he could.
As he walked, the noise grew louder — clang, clang, clang — each strike sending tremors through the narrow space. The closer he ca, the more the darkness began to peel away, as though pulled back by invisible hands.
After what felt like minutes of walking, another door appeared before him.
This one was nothing like the last. Its surface was carved with intricate sculptures — figures holding different weapons, frozen mid-battle, their faces half-worn by age but still carrying an intensity that made the air feel heavier.
Avin hesitated. Every instinct told him to stop. This entire place reeked of on. But curiosity — that damned, magnetic pull — whispered louder.
He reached for the handle.
The door opened on its own, slow and creaking, as if it had been waiting for him.
The next room was bathed in flickering orange light. Sparks leapt into the air like fireflies, rising and dying in seconds. The sll of burning tal and ash filled his lungs.
Clang.
There it was again.
He moved closer, eyes narrowing against the light.
Clang.
And then, between the flashes of sparks, he saw a figure.
Small.
Bent low over an anvil, hamr raised high, striking tal again and again with deliberate rhythm.
Clang.Clang.Clang.
Avin stopped several feet away. His voice caught in his throat. "Is that... a child?" he whispered.
The figure’s silhouette was scrawny, barely reaching Avin’s chest in height. Each movent seed both frail and impossibly precise — the hamr rose in thin hands, then fell with power that no child should have possessed. Every strike sent waves of heat through the room, the light flaring in ti with the impact.
The tallic song filled the chamber, drowning out every other sound.
Avin swallowed. His throat was dry. He wanted to speak, to call out, but his voice cracked uselessly. "H-Hey—"
The hamr froze mid-swing.
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then the figure turned.
The face that t him was young — no more than fourteen, maybe even less. Skin pale like untouched paper, hair white as snow that had never lted. His eyes... were the strangest of all. Grey — so light they seed silver, yet glassy, almost blind.
The boy’s lips curved faintly. "I was waiting for you."
Avin blinked, startled. "?"
"Yes."
The boy gestured with his chin to his right. "Take a seat."
Avin turned — and nearly stumbled.
A stool had appeared beside him. It hadn’t been there before.
He hesitated. The logical part of him scread not to move, not to trust this eerie child who spoke like he had been expecting him. But deep inside, sothing else whispered — a strange warmth, a quiet familiarity that made him feel safe.
It was like eting an old friend whose na you couldn’t recall.
So he stepped forward and sat down, exhaling shakily.
The boy said nothing more. He simply turned back to his work.
Clang.
The hamr struck again, sparks bursting in rhythm.
The sound filled the silence between them — not uncomfortable, but heavy with sothing unspoken.
Avin couldn’t take it anymore. "So..." he began softly, "who are you?"
The hamr stopped mid-air.
The boy chuckled quietly. "This is not about , Clive. It’s about you... and who you’ve beco."
Avin froze. The na hit him like a blade through the chest. "You—"
"Know your na?" the boy finished smoothly, still not looking at him. "Yes."
He resud hamring, each strike echoing the pounding of Avin’s pulse.
Avin’s mouth went dry. "But... how? How do you know that na?"
"I’ve known you for quite a while," the boy said casually. "Why would I not know your na?"
Avin’s brows knitted. "You’ve known ? That’s not possible. I just—"
"—entered this world?"
The boy finished his sentence for him again, not even looking up.
Avin’s breath hitched. "Stop doing that."
The boy chuckled again, the sound disturbingly kind. "I know a lot of things, Clive. It’s sad that you don’t rember."
The word hit harder than any hamr strike.
Rember.
It echoed in his head.
Then again.
Rember.
And again.
Rember.
Voices began whispering from every corner of the room — familiar voices, layered over one another, chanting that sa word. The tone shifted between pleading and commanding. They weren’t coming from outside. They were coming from inside his head.
"Stop—" Avin gritted his teeth, pressing both hands against his ears. The noise only grew louder. His skull felt like it was splitting open. "Stop it—stop it—!"
Then — a touch.
A small, cool hand pressed gently to his forehead.
The sound died.
Silence rushed in like water filling a void.
Avin gasped. His eyes t the boy’s again — those clouded grey eyes that seed to look straight through him.
The boy smiled faintly. "It seems... He has invoked—" His voice distorted, twisting into static. The next word ca out mangled, a sound Avin’s mind couldn’t hold — like language and aning had both shattered.
The boy blinked, his mouth tightening as if catching himself. "Hm. I suppose he’s not powerful enough to do that yet."
He tilted his head upward, staring at the ceiling — or maybe beyond it. His eyes seed to focus on sothing Avin couldn’t see.
Avin followed his gaze, but saw only black stone.
The boy’s voice grew softer, almost pitying. "You’re not the sa, Clive."
Avin turned to him, brow furrowing. "What do you an?"
The hamr rose again.
Clang.
"You’re not you."
The words sank deep, like cold water creeping into bone.
The boy kept striking the tal, his voice rhythmic with each blow.
"Your transfer was weak," clang, "and so was the body you took." Clang. "It was already infested — filled with emotions that weren’t yours. So much that even when he left the body, he couldn’t take them with him." Clang. "Now they’re inside you." Clang. "Clouding your judgnt."
Avin’s grip on his knees tightened. The boy’s words crawled under his skin.
He looked down at his hands. They trembled faintly — not from fear, but from sothing else. Recognition.
Ever since he’d arrived in this world, he hadn’t been himself. He’d been softer. Sentintal. Weak in ways he never allowed himself to be before.
Maybe... maybe it wasn’t just him.
Maybe it was Avin — the original — still haunting this flesh, still whispering through the cracks.
"Those," the boy said, voice hardening, "are shackles."
He lifted the sword he’d been forging. The tal shimred with heat, glowing faintly red-orange like living fire. "And shackles must be broken if you are to grow."
Avin swallowed. "How... how can you break them?"
The boy stopped.
For the first ti, he looked directly at Avin.
His grey eyes glead like molten silver, their cloudy film gone for an instant. The light of the forge danced across his face, half-angelic, half-demonic.
Then he smiled — gently, but it chilled Avin’s spine.
"Like this."
The sword moved before Avin could blink.
A flash. A hiss.
He barely had ti to see the blur of red-hot steel arcing through the air toward him.
Instinct scread. He raised his arm — too slow.
The blade’s edge sliced through air, and in that instant, sothing inside him shattered. Not his skin, not bone — sothing deeper.
It wasn’t pain that filled him. It was release.
A shock rippled through his body, searing heat giving way to cold clarity. His lungs spasd, his vision flared white. Every thought, every emotion, every chain of guilt and tenderness and hesitation — all of it cracked apart like glass under a hamr.
The world tilted.
He fell.
His hand hit the cold floor, the sound echoing like a heartbeat fading into distance.
Above him, the boy stood motionless, the sword’s tip resting against the anvil again.
The flas dimd.
"You’ll thank later," the boy said quietly.
His voice was fading now, like wind disappearing into fog.
"Rember, Clive... the self you carry is not the self you are."
Avin tried to speak — to ask what that ant — but his voice ca out as a whisper.
Then the room began to fold in on itself. The torches snuffed out, one by one. The air thinned.
The boy’s figure blurred, dissolving into pale smoke.
And in the final flicker of light, Avin saw sothing etched into the anvil — a sigil, burning faintly, shaped like an hourglass bound in chains.
Then everything went dark.
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