Chapter IV — What Remains When We Hide

  Anon leaves the asylum without truly deciding to.

  There is no door crossed. No clear moment. A corridor that stretches on too long. A light that shifts angle. And suddenly, the air is no longer the same.

  Wider. Colder. More unstable.

  The ground beneath his feet is no longer tiled, but it is not earth either. A composite material, cracked, that seems to hesitate between several forms. Each step creates a slight delay, as if the world reacts a moment too late.

  He stops. Looks behind him.

  The asylum is still there.

  Or rather: a version of the asylum. Its walls dissolve in places, replaced by fragments of street, impossible fa?ades, staircases that lead nowhere. The architecture no longer follows any human logic. It folds in on itself, stretches, collapses without a sound.

  Anon inhales.

  The Ichoréon does not welcome him. It tolerates him.

  — “You look strange,” murmurs the voice in his thoughts.

  It is not loud, almost a whisper.

  Anon clenches his teeth.

  — “Be quiet.”

  A dry laugh. Without joy.

  — “That’s your grand exit?” it says sarcastically.

  — “What did you think you’d find? A city? Streets? A horizon?” the voice fires back.

  Anon moves forward despite himself. With each step, the scenery reorganizes. A street appears… then folds back onto itself. A lamppost grows from the ground like a poorly set bone.

  Doors. Everywhere.

  Some are set into walls that support nothing. Others float, half-open, opening onto darkness… or onto fragments of places that do not exist.

  Anon feels a dull tension in his chest.

  This world does not seek to be understood. It tests.

  — “Are you looking for a name?” the voice slips in.

  Anon stops abruptly.

  — “What?”

  — “From the beginning… For yourself. For this place. For what you’re becoming.”

  The man clenches his fists.

  — “I’m trying to understand where I am.”

  A silence. Then the voice returns, sharper:

  — “You’d do better to figure out how to stay on your feet.”

  The ground shifts slightly beneath him. Not a fall. A threat. Anon staggers, barely regains his balance. And then he understands something fundamental—without being able to put it into words:

  Here, the Ichoréon does not punish. It observes weaknesses. The rules of this universe are not those of the world of the living… gravity and geometry are not either.

  Anon moves on. Slowly. Each door he passes gives him a different sensation:

  some pull at his memory, others at his fear, and still others at something more diffuse… a possibility.

  He does not know which one he should open. He does not even know if he should open any at all.

  — “You see?” the voice murmurs, almost amused. “You’ve left. And yet… you’re still inside.”

  Anon keeps walking. He understands nothing.

  And for the first time in a long while, he feels that this is exactly what the Ichoréon expects of him.

  He stops in front of a door larger than the others. It is not centered. It is not highlighted. It is simply there, as if it had always been there, set into a wall that has not decided whether it is still a wall. Dark wood. A handle of tarnished metal.

  No symbol. No mark.

  The other doors around it vibrate faintly. Whisper. Call. This one does not.

  It promises nothing.

  Anon approaches. Places his hand on the handle.

  Nothing.

  He pulls. The door does not move.

  — “You’re forcing it,” the voice exhales, weary. “That never works here.”

  Anon clenches his teeth.

  — “Then how?”

  A silence. Longer than the others.

  — “By stopping hoping,” the voice finally answers. “By ceasing to want to understand where you’re going. By accepting not to know what you’re leaving behind.”

  He withdraws his hand, looks around him.

  The shining doors. The unstable openings. The ones that tremble when he stares at them too long. All of them promise something. Answers. Truths. Shortcuts.

  He looks away, returns to the dull door. This time, he does not think of the outside.

  He does not think of Montreal, nor even of its dark double Moerial… He does not even think of leaving.

  He thinks of the asylum. Of what he leaves behind. Bolton. Elisabeth. The certainty of being watched. The false sense of safety.

  He accepts the simple and brutal idea: if he walks through this door, no one will come looking for him.

  Only then does he place his hand on the handle.

  The door opens. Without a sound. Without resistance.

  A dry wind strikes his face. Not the enclosed air of the asylum. Not the heavy dampness of the inner Ichoréon. An open air. Harsh. Laden with dust and ash.

  Anon takes one step. Then another. And the world tilts.

  He is outside.

  Or rather: outside of what he knew. Moerial stretches before him.

  A city in ruins, but not dead. Buildings ripped open, leaning like carcasses. Streets fractured, swallowed by fissures of frozen Ichor. Subway rails bursting into open air, twisted, suspended in the void.

  The sky hangs low. Neither day nor night. A ceiling of heavy clouds, streaked with slow glimmers, like luminous scars.

  Anon walks forward a few steps.

  His shoes crush debris that was never entirely material. Each sound echoes too far. Each silence weighs too heavily.

  He turns around.

  The door is still there. Planted in the middle of nothing. Bricked up on the other side.

  He understands.

  Doors are not passages. They are materialized abandonments.

  — “Welcome to Moerial,” the voice murmurs. “The city of what should have remained buried.”

  Anon closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, there is no immediate return. Only ruins. Doors scattered among the ruins. And a world that explains nothing to him. He has stepped out. And for the first time, the Ichoréon no longer imprisons him. It lets him wander.

  Anon walks for a long time.

  The ruins are not frozen. They barely breathe, as if the city were holding its breath. The gutted buildings cast shadows that do not always match their shape. Shattered storefronts sometimes reflect something other than his own body.

  He is not alone. He feels it before he sees it. Silhouettes. At a distance.

  Presences crouched in collapsed floors, behind the carcasses of cars, inside the gaping mouths of subway entrances.

  They do not openly watch him. They assess him.

  Anon slows down. Raises a hand, palm open. A useless gesture, but a human one.

  — “Hey…”

  His voice is swallowed by the vastness. It seems absorbed by the dust. A shape moves to his right. A thin body, distorted, half-melted into a wall. When Anon takes a step toward it, the thing immediately folds in on itself, slipping into a crack like a startled animal.

  Farther ahead, another silhouette. Sitting in the middle of the street. Back hunched. Arms wrapped tight around its chest.

  Anon approaches slowly.

  — “I don’t want anything from you.”

  The silhouette lifts its head. A hollowed face. Eyes too large, too bright. A naked, primitive fear. It recoils at once.

  — “No… no…” it whispers. “Don’t look at me… They can feel it when we speak…”

  — “Who?” Anon asks.

  The shape trembles. Its body is already beginning to dissolve, as if simple proximity were a mistake.

  — “Hide…” it breathes. “Hide right now.”

  Anon is about to answer. He doesn’t have the time. Something changes.

  At first, it is not a sound. It is pressure. A heavy sensation descending upon the street like an invisible hand.

  Then the sounds come. Footsteps. Slow. Steady. Too heavy for a living body. Too deliberate for a wanderer.

  The silhouette in front of him lets out a muffled cry and vanishes completely, sucked into a corner of the wall as if it had never existed.

  Anon remains frozen for a fraction of a second. And his body reacts before his mind does.

  His heart surges. His skin prickles. The Ichor within him contracts, folds inward, screams to hide. Not to flee. Not to fight. To conceal.

  Anon throws himself behind an overturned bus, presses his body against the cold metal. He holds his breath without even realizing it. The footsteps draw closer.

  They echo between the gutted fa?ades. Each impact seems to make the ruins themselves vibrate. Something moves slowly down the street, just outside his field of vision.

  He does not dare move and understands, without being told:

  In Moerial, there are not only those who hide. There are also those from whom one hides.

  The footsteps stop.

  A heavy silence settles. Then the steps resume, slowly fading, as if they were never in a hurry. Anon waits. A long time.

  When he finally dares to breathe again, the street is empty.

  But he now knows one essential thing:

  Stepping out was a trial. Wandering is a trap.

  And being noticed… may be a sentence.

  Anon does not move.

  The silence has returned, but it is not a safe silence. It is an occupied one, saturated with motionless things that wait. He remains pressed against the carcass of the bus, his back against warped metal, his face a few centimeters from a shattered window that poorly reflects his features. He barely breathes.

  Then he sees him.

  Twenty meters away. In the shadow of a collapsed building.

  A human shape, motionless, almost blending into the rubble. If Anon did not now know how to look, he would have missed it. But something is off: a line too regular, a posture too deliberate to be debris.

  A man. Or what remains of one.

  He is crouched behind a pile of concrete, back hunched, shoulders raised as if trying to make himself smaller. His skin is grayish, streaked with dark veins of frozen Ichor. His face is thin, carved down to the bone, but his eyes are alive. Too alive. Wide with constant, unhealthy fear.

  He has a patchy beard, dirty, clinging in uneven clumps to his cheeks. His hair is short, hacked unevenly, as if he had torn it out himself. His clothes—a coat too large, torn, once a winter coat—hang on him like on a hanger.

  He is looking elsewhere. Not at Anon. At the street.

  Anon hesitates. Then, despite everything he has just learned, he takes a step.

  A step too human. Too na?ve.

  — “Hey…” he murmurs.

  The man startles violently. His eyes meet Anon’s. And in that gaze, there is no relief. Only pure panic.

  — “No…” he breathes. “No no no no…”

  He rises too fast. Steps out of his hiding place.

  And the world reacts immediately.

  The footsteps return. Several. Rapid. Coordinated.

  Anon feels the street contract, like a muscle tightening. The man instantly understands his mistake. He begins to run.

  The pursuit is brief. Brutal.Three silhouettes emerge from the ruins.

  The Trackers.

  They are tall. Too tall. Their posture leans slightly forward, as if permanently in pursuit. Their skin is pale, almost translucent, cracked in places like overfired porcelain. Through the fissures, Ichor shows beneath—black, dense, unmoving. Their faces are human, but emptied of warmth.

  The first has a shaved skull, covered in old scars. His eyes are sunken, the sclera yellowed, the pupils nearly erased. His mouth hangs slightly open, frozen in a neutral, functional expression.

  The second still wears scraps of a uniform—impossible to tell whether it once belonged to a guard, a police officer, or something else. His face is thinner, almost gaunt, with a crooked broken nose and a jaw too long. He does not blink.

  The third brings up the rear. Larger. Slower. His face is the most damaged: one cheek collapsed as if melted, the other carved with deep cracks. Parts of his lips are missing, revealing dulled teeth beneath.

  They do not truly run. They descend.

  The man stumbles.

  A bramble bursts forth. Not from the ground. Not from a wall. From them.

  A chain of black Ichor, thick as a wrist and studded with hooked thorns, lashes out at impossible speed and coils around the prey’s ankle. The thorns immediately pierce the substance of his body, impaling his Ichor.

  He screams. A sharp, strangled, animal sound.

  He crashes heavily onto the broken asphalt. More brambles surge out, wrapping around his arms, his torso, his throat. They do not merely bind him: they anchor into him. Each thorn pulses faintly, as if drinking.

  The man struggles for a second. Then nothing.

  His body is pinned against the fractured pavement, immobilized, offered. His eyes roll in their sockets, filled with black tears.

  The Trackers approach. One of them places a foot on his chest. A simple gesture. Without hatred. Without triumph. Work.

  Anon is frozen.

  Curled behind his shelter, hands clamped over his mouth to stifle his breathing. His heart pounds so violently he is certain they will hear it.

  He understands.

  The brambles are not only meant to capture. They drain, slowly. They pierce down to the core of what a soul is.

  He does not see the end. He does not dare.

  When at last the footsteps recede again, the street is empty. Nothing of the man remains. Not even a trace.

  Anon stays hidden for a long time. A very long time.

  And a certainty brands itself into him, colder than fear:

  In Moerial, survival does not depend on strength.

  But on invisibility.

  Anon does not move away right away.

  He remains crouched in the shadows, his body still shaken by what he has just witnessed. The Trackers are gone, but the street retains their imprint. The air is thicker, as if something had been torn away too violently for the place to forget.

  He should leave. He knows it.

  But another impulse rises. More dangerous than fear. Curiosity.

  Who are they? Who do they serve? And above all… what could possibly command monsters like that?

  Anon begins to move.

  Not like a living man. Not yet like a seasoned ghost. He imitates what he has seen the other souls do: blend, fracture, become irregular. He hugs the walls, nearly crawls in places, uses Moerial’s distortions like a cloak. Each time he feels the Ichor within him stir, he stops, lowers himself, disappears.

  The Trackers are farther ahead. He follows at a distance.

  They move without speaking, yet perfectly synchronized. Their brambles drag behind them like additional limbs, sometimes leaving dark marks on the ruins… immediately absorbed.

  At last, they stop. At the heart of a shattered crossroads, where several dead streets converge.

  Someone is waiting for them.

  Anon presses himself behind a collapsed wall, breath shallow.

  The silhouette is immense. It stands upright in the middle of the wreckage, motionless, as if Moerial had been built around it. Dark armor covers its body—not black, but an ancient, tarnished gold, devoured by veins of frozen Ichor. The plates are engraved with symbols Anon does not understand, but which make his head ache just to look at them.

  The cape is heavy, rigid, as if woven from petrified fabric. Anon sees only its back.

  The Trackers kneel.

  One of them extends something—not a body, but a remnant. A condensation of Ichor, dark, vibrating, still warm from what it once was.

  The silhouette does not move. And yet, Anon feels something.

  A tremor. Not a sound. Not a vision.

  A bodily signal. The hairs on his neck rise.

  His forearms tingle violently. A brutal pressure crushes his chest, as if the air itself has suddenly grown too heavy.

  The Ichor within him contracts. Danger. Instinctive. Imperative.

  He shifts back a single centimeter.

  A stone rolls. It is enough. The silhouette turns.

  There is no helmet. Its face is bare, offered to the gaze like a provocation.

  A shaved head, deathly pale, skin like ancient ivory, cracked with fine dark fissures, like a statue left too long in damp air. Red lines mark the face—painted or embedded into the flesh—vertical streaks running from the eye sockets down to the jaw. And above all, that scarlet cross, rigid and perfectly centered on the forehead, a symbol engraved as much as it is scarred.

  Its eyes are red. Not bloodshot. Not aflame. Red like dead embers forced back into glow. They do not blink. They do not search. They know.

  The mouth is thin, almost nonexistent, frozen in an expression of absolute severity. No anger. No pleasure. Only an icy certainty.

  That face does not express hatred.

  It expresses judgment.

  His broad shoulders are encased in massive, dark armor, edged with tarnished gold. The plates are engraved with ancient motifs—circles, chains, figures of men kneeling—and joined by thick seams where Ichor has hardened into black sinews. Nothing is decorative. Everything is functional. Everything is meant to endure.

  He does not emanate immediate violence. He emanates something worse.

  Authority.

  The certainty of an executioner who has never doubted the legitimacy of his work.

  And when his dead eyes meet Anon’s, Anon understands something essential, instinctive, undeniable: This being does not hunt. It administers.

  The world seems to freeze for a fraction of a second—not because it stops, but because Anon can no longer look away. He feels examined. Weighed.

  A voice rises. Deep. Calm. Stripped of all human emotion.

  — “A soul that does not know how to hide.”

  The Trackers rise in a single motion.

  Anon runs. He turns and sprints.

  The ruins become a brutal labyrinth. He slips on unstable debris, barely catches himself on a slab of wall. He turns blindly, nearly plunges into a gaping fissure that splits the street in two—a chasm of frozen Ichor, impossible to cross.

  He changes direction. Too late.

  The Trackers do not run. They glide. They pass through obstacles as if they were mere suggestions. Where Anon collides, stumbles, bleeds, they flow. The brambles crack against walls, lash the air behind him.

  — “HELP ME!” he screams inside his mind. “DO SOMETHING!”

  A laugh echoes within him. Dry. Cruel.

  — “You run as if you still had a body. Pathetic.”

  Anon nearly smashes into a vertical wall, too smooth to climb. He veers sharply, plunges into a narrow street that ends in a dead end.

  Footsteps echo behind him. Too close.

  — “Please!” he spits. “I’m going to die!”

  The voice sighs.

  — “Stop whining. You are already dead. When you were looking for a way out of the asylum, you didn’t beg the walls. You forced them.”

  A shock. The brambles whistle behind him.

  — “Ichor, like everything in this world, does not obey because you ask. It yields when you impose.”

  Anon stops abruptly. He is cornered.

  The Trackers surge into view at the end of the street, distorted silhouettes, brambles already stretched forward.

  He closes his eyes. Not to flee. To command.

  — “Open.”

  His voice is no longer a plea. It is an injunction.

  The Ichor answers.

  The rubble in front of him trembles. The wall cracks, reorganizes, folds like living matter being compelled. A door appears.

  Ancient wood. Massive. Topped by a carved arch.

  It reminds him of the entrance to a religious building—like a church.

  Anon throws himself at it without thinking.

  Behind him, the Trackers howl—a warped sound, frustrated, almost furious.

  The door slams. The world tilts.

  And for the first time since his arrival in Moérial, Anon has survived not by hiding… but by imposing his will upon the Ichoréon.

  The cracked walls slowly retract. Dust gathers, covering the wooden door within seconds until not a trace of it remains.

  Anon lets his gaze wander around him in what resembles a chapel.

  It is not a sanctuary as he remembers it—or as he imagines it. The walls are too high, too far apart. The stones have not collapsed; they have been pushed outward, as if space itself had been stretched. Side corridors open where there should be only secondary chapels. Staircases rise… but seem to lead nowhere.

  Anon moves forward slowly. His footsteps barely echo. The floor absorbs the sound, like a damp tongue.

  There are pews, yes—but warped, partially melted into the stone, as if poured directly into the ground. Some religious sculptures have lost their faces. Others have too many.

  He feels the Ichor everywhere.

  Not violent. Not aggressive. Present. Structural.

  — “Tell me what those were…” he finally murmurs. “Those hunters… those trackers. The… templar…”

  A long silence. Then the voice returns, weary, rasping.

  — “You’re already asking the wrong questions?”

  Anon passes beneath an arch that seems to stretch on endlessly. The vault above is lined with fine, regular cracks. Too regular.

  — “I almost died.”

  — “Here, that is rarely a sufficient reason. I told you: you are already dead anyway.”

  He clenches his teeth.

  — “Who runs this place? Who runs Moérial?”

  A breath. Almost a snicker.

  — “…The Marquise.”

  The word falls like ancient dust.

  — “The Marquise?”

  — “Yes. What were you expecting? A city council?”

  Anon stops in front of a shattered stained-glass window. In place of the glass, a dark, translucent membrane trembles faintly.

  — “She rules the city?”

  — “She is the city, in a way.”

  The voice pauses. When it resumes, it is lower.

  — “Moérial is not a refuge. It’s a pantry. A territory. A court. And she reigns as all who reign here do: through hunger.”

  Anon resumes walking.

  — “The black templars?”

  — “Lieutenants. Executors. Statues that walk and think just enough to obey.”

  He turns into a side corridor. The ceiling vanishes into shadow. Doors line the walls, one after another, all closed, all different.

  — “And the Trackers?”

  — “Dogs. Or rather… the starving ones who were promised they would eat better tomorrow.”

  Anon shudders.

  — “What do they do with the souls they catch?”

  A silence heavier than the others.

  — “It depends.”

  The voice seems to hesitate. As if weighing each word against its will.

  — “The best ones… those full of attachments, regrets, fear… They are consumed.”

  Anon stops abruptly.

  — “By her?”

  A dry laugh.

  — “You catch on quickly.”

  He passes an alcove where a statue has been replaced by an amorphous shape, frozen in a gesture of supplication.

  — “The others are… divided. Torn apart. Reduced to crumbs of Ichor. The Marquise’s close circle eats their fill. The rest lick the floor.”

  A dull anger rises in Anon.

  — “And those who are useless?”

  — “Nothing is useless here.”

  The voice turns sharper.

  — “The weakest end up melted. Dissolved. Recycled: palaces. Fortifications. Armor…”

  Anon thinks of the templar’s face. The cracked skin. The tarnished gold embedded in the armor.

  — “You might be walking on someone right now,” the voice adds. “Don’t look too closely at the floor.”

  He lifts his gaze.

  The chapel stretches wider still. Ever larger. Ever older.

  — “And you find that normal?”

  — “No.”

  A pause.

  — “I find it… banal.”

  A joyless laugh.

  — “In your world too, the powerful eat, the others serve. Here, at least, we’re honest. The weak end up as furniture.”

  Anon arrives before an immense door. It is open. Beyond it, the nave.

  The space is disproportionate. The pillars vanish into darkness. At the center, something moves.

  — “You see?” murmurs the voice. “The Ichoréon is not cruel. It is simply coherent.”

  Anon takes a step.

  And the conversation stops abruptly.

  In the nave, a silhouette waits for him. A man alone.

  He does not move immediately.

  He stands a few paces from Anon, at the center of the nave, where the light still falls—a dirty light, filtered through what remains of the stained glass. His posture is straight, but not rigid. Arms at his sides. Shoulders relaxed.

  He watches Anon. Not with suspicion. Not with curiosity either.

  He measures him. As one measures someone entering a place already claimed.

  When he finally speaks, his voice is steady. Deep. Calm. Measured.

  — “You can stay here… for a while.”

  Anon does not answer right away.

  He studies the man.

  Elias—that is how he introduces himself—has the appearance of a man in his prime. Neither young nor old. A face marked without being worn. A short beard, neatly kept but without vanity. Regular features. Too regular, perhaps. Nothing stands out. Nothing betrays him.

  His clothes are simple. Functional. A dark coat, worn but clean. No visible symbol. No ornament. Nothing that declares allegiance.

  — “The chapel is occupied,” Elias continues calmly. “Not by many. But it is.”

  He makes a vague gesture with his hand, as if to indicate the space around them. Not possessive. Casual.

  — “You’re not being followed?”

  The question falls without tension. Like a formality. Anon shakes his head.

  — “Good… Avoid the center of the nave.”

  He tilts his chin toward the exact spot where Anon stands.

  — “It echoes too much here.”

  Anon instinctively steps back a few paces. Elias nods, satisfied.

  — “You can sit there.”

  He points to a half-intact pew along the side.

  — “Or stay standing. As you prefer.”

  There is nothing strange in his voice. Nothing fractured. Nothing spectral. Elias does not float. He does not distort. He casts a coherent shadow across the stone slabs.

  He breathes. He blinks.

  He looks like someone who inhabits the place. Not someone trapped within it.

  — “You came from outside,” he says.

  It is not a question.

  Anon feels a tension ease within him despite himself.

  — “Yes.”

  — “Then stay a while.”

  A faint smile.

  — “The chapel is… more stable than the rest.”

  Stable. The word resonates strangely here. But Elias does not seem to notice.

  They remain silent for a moment. Then Elias resumes, as if commenting on the weather.

  — “Outside, it shifted again.”

  Anon nods.

  — “The streets?”

  — “Yes. Some are still holding. Others… not really.”

  He thinks for a second.

  — “The wide arteries are the worst. Too open. Too visible.”

  — “And the alleyways?”

  — “Better.”

  A slight shrug.

  — “You run into fewer people there. And when you do, you have more time to disappear.”

  Anon grimaces.

  — “Disappear how?”

  Elias looks at him, surprised by the question. Not worried. Just… puzzled.

  — “Like everyone here.”

  A silence.

  — “Where did you come from?” Elias asks.

  — “The asylum.”

  — “Ah.”

  He nods slowly.

  — “Then you must still believe that places have logic.”

  Anon does not answer.

  — “It will pass,” Elias adds. “Or not. Some cling to it for a long time.”

  — “And you?”

  Elias gives a discreet smile.

  — “I stay here.”

  — “All the time?”

  — “Almost.”

  He gestures toward the pews, the pillars, the flaking walls.

  — “The chapel is… tolerant. It leaves things in place. As long as you don’t disturb too much.”

  — “Disturb what?”

  Elias thinks.

  — “The center.”

  He pauses.

  — “And what passes when you speak too loudly.”

  Anon instinctively lowers his voice.

  — “Are there many passages?”

  — “Enough.”

  Elias looks away.

  — “Not all of them visible.”

  They fall silent again.

  Everything is simple. Almost reassuring. And yet, something rings false.

  Anon begins a sentence:

  — “I ran into some…”

  Elias has already shifted aside, one step, before Anon finishes.

  — “Yes. Avoid that side.”

  Anon blinks.

  — “…Trackers.”

  Elias nods, as if the sentence had been complete from the start.

  — “They pass near here sometimes. Not often. But often enough to be careful.”

  We. Anon frowns slightly. The seconds of silence stretch, heavy.

  Suddenly, Elias speaks again, softly:

  — “No. You didn’t see it like that.”

  — “Excuse me?”

  — “The door.”

  He gestures toward the arch through which Anon entered.

  — “You didn’t hesitate. You slowed down.”

  Anon is certain he never mentioned that.

  — “I… I didn’t say anything.”

  Elias looks at him. A flicker. Then he smiles.

  — “You’re right. Sorry.”

  The smile is sincere. Almost embarrassed.

  — “I get them mixed up sometimes.”

  They resume talking. But something has shifted. Subtly displaced.

  Elias speaks of a collapsed corridor “behind the altar,” though Anon knows there is nothing behind the altar. Not here. Not now.

  He uses the present tense.

  — “The statue is cracked… The steps are still slippery… The bell rings sometimes…”

  Anon looks around, confused. The statue is gone. The steps are dry. The bell… there is no bell anymore.

  — “Do you hear it?” Elias asks softly.

  Anon listens. Nothing.

  — “No.”

  Elias nods.

  — “Then it’s fine.”

  As if the absence of sound were good news.

  A diffuse unease settles in Anon. Not fear. Not yet. Something more insidious. A sense of temporal misalignment, as if Elias were speaking from a slightly different angle of reality.

  The familiar rasping voice slips into his mind. Very low. Almost distracted.

  — “That one… isn’t entirely here.”

  Anon does not react. He watches Elias.

  Elias watches the nave.

  And for a fraction of a second—just one—Anon has the impression that their gazes do not cross within the same world.

  Then everything returns to normal.

  Elias smiles at him again.

  — “You look tired.”

  Nothing abnormal.

  Nothing certain either.

  Elias freezes.

  Not abruptly. Not like someone startled. Like someone who stops being there.

  His gaze drifts slightly to the side. It no longer rests on Anon. It no longer rests on anything visible. His shoulders remain straight, but something loosens behind his eyes, as if a tension has been shifted elsewhere.

  Anon opens his mouth.

  — “Elias?”

  No response.

  The silence of the chapel distorts. Not an added sound. The opposite. A hollow. A vacuum. As if the air had just been drawn out of the nave.

  Then Anon sees.

  It is not an image. Not a blurred vision. Not a memory. It is an elsewhere forcing itself in.

  Anon is torn from the nave. There is no door. No passage. No fall.

  One instant he stands between the pillars. The next, he is in a narrow room.

  An ordinary place. Too ordinary.

  Pale walls. Artificial light. A low, continuous hum, almost imperceptible. The smell of cleaning product and cold sweat. A space with nothing symbolic. Nothing dreamlike.

  The world of the living.

  Someone is there. Lying down. A man. In his fifties, perhaps. His face flushed, slick with sweat. His eyes wide, bloodshot with fear. His chest rises too fast. Too wrong. Each breath seems to collide with something that refuses to yield.

  He is dying.

  Anon knows it immediately. Not because he understands it. But because he feels it.

  Panic — brutal, animal. Pain — diffuse, crushing. The absurd urgency — that certainty that something must be done, now, without knowing how.

  The man opens his mouth. A sound comes out. Not a word. A rasp. His fingers claw at the sheet. His legs twitch faintly.

  Anon steps back.

  — “I…”

  His voice exists. But no one hears it. He is not there. And yet, he is inside it.

  He feels the suffocation as if it were his own. The air coming in too little. The chest burning. The heart pounding, frantic, useless.

  — “What is this…?”

  He doesn’t know how he sees. Or why. Or what he is supposed to do. The scene continues without him.

  And then Elias speaks.

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  His voice is there. But it comes from nowhere.

  Flatter. More distant. As if stripped of all intention.

  — “Respiratory arrest imminent.”

  Anon turns. Elias is not in the room. And yet, he is present.

  — “The body is still fighting,” the voice continues. “But the outcome is already fixed.”

  The man on the bed convulses. His head rolls slightly to the side. Saliva foams at his lips.

  Anon screams.

  — “Help him! Do something!”

  No immediate reply. Then, simply:

  — “That is not my role.”

  Panic rises in Anon like a wave.

  — “Then why am I seeing this?!”

  Silence. Then Elias’s voice, still just as neutral:

  — “Because you are there.”

  The man takes one last breath. A long, whistling exhale. Then nothing.

  The humming continues. The room is still there. The body too. But something has just broken.

  Anon feels a violent pull in his chest. And the world tears again.

  The vision shifts. Still without transition.

  The narrow room vanishes as if it had never existed, swallowed by a blink that is not his own.

  Anon is outside. Moérial.

  The ruined streets stretch out before him. Gutted buildings. Concrete carcasses. Shattered storefronts.

  But this time, something is different.

  Everything is still. No whisper. No footsteps. No flight.

  The entire city seems to be holding its breath.

  Then he sees them. The Trackers.

  They are scattered through the streets, across collapsed rooftops, at the mouths of gaping tunnels. Some stand motionless, frozen like statues. Others barely move — a slight shift, an adjustment of posture, a bramble slowly retracting like a muscle at rest.

  They are not hunting. They are not searching. They are waiting.

  Their faces are turned in different directions. None look at the sky. None fix their gaze on a precise point.

  And yet, Anon feels a dull tension in the air. Like a rope pulled too tight, ready to snap.

  Something is approaching. Not here. Not yet. But it is certain.

  The Ichor around them trembles slightly. Not a visible wave. A collective premonition. The brambles tighten. The silhouettes straighten almost imperceptibly.

  Anon understands. Not because someone explains it. Because his entire body knows.

  They know a dead man is coming. They do not know where. But they will be there.

  The city is not empty. It is on alert.

  Brutal return.

  The narrow room. The body on the bed. The final breath.

  A long rattle escapes, trembling, then fades into a silence too clean. The eyes remain open. The chest no longer rises.

  At the same instant… Moérial reacts.

  The Trackers rise all at once, as if moved by a shared impulse. The brambles unfurl, vibrating. The air of the Ichoréon tightens, begins to hum with a hungry energy.

  The hunt begins. They move. Fast. Coordinated. Starving.

  They glide, leap, cross the ruins without hesitation. Where Anon would stumble, they pass. Where a choice would be needed, they already know.

  The newly dead is not even “there” yet. But he is already claimed.

  Anon feels the pull in his chest. That force that tears, that draws, that prepares the crossing.

  He finally understands. In the Ichoréon, death is not an event. It is a signal.

  And the entire city answers.

  The world tears one last time.

  The vision collapses.

  No transition. No gradual return. Anon is back in the nave.

  The cold of the stone. The ancient smell. The space too vast.

  He staggers. His legs nearly give out. He has to brace himself against a pillar to keep from falling. His heart is racing, as if he had been running, though he never moved.

  The chapel is silent. Too silent.

  Elias is still there.

  But he is not standing quite the same way. His shoulders sag. His breathing is short, whistling, uneven. His features are drawn, hollowed by a sudden, brutal exhaustion. He runs a hand over his face, as if checking that he is still intact.

  He says nothing. Seconds pass.

  When he lifts his eyes to Anon, something has changed. Not in the gaze itself — but in what holds it up. As if he had been carrying something too heavy. For too long.

  A distant sound crosses the chapel.

  Not a clear noise. An echo. Something that resembles the hunt. But muffled. Distant. Like a rumble fading deep within the city. Not for them. Not this time.

  Elias closes his eyes. He murmurs, almost to himself:

  — “It was just in time.”

  Anon shivers. He doesn’t need an explanation. He understands.

  If they had watched longer, if they had kept looking, if the vision had lasted even a second more… the hunt might have sensed something else. An attention. A gaze. A presence.

  Perhaps them.

  Elias inhales slowly. Too slowly.

  — “You mustn’t… linger.”

  He opens his eyes.

  — “Looking draws attention.”

  There is no threat in his voice. No advice. Just a statement.

  The chapel seems to tighten slightly around them, as if its walls had heard.

  Anon remains still.

  Elias draws in a long breath, as though searching for air where there is none.

  — “It’s not… me.”

  His voice is low. Measured. Almost careful.

  — “Not exactly.”

  He turns slightly away from Anon, as if speaking at an angle. As if pointing to someone standing just beside him, unseen.

  — “He… looks. He doesn’t always choose to. He sees what passes too close. What screams. What slips between layers.”

  Anon frowns.

  — “Who is he?”

  Elias hesitates. His jaw tightens.

  — “It’s not someone I can call. It’s more like… when I don’t hold properly. When I get tired.”

  He shakes his head, irritated with himself.

  — “It isn’t supposed to last. Normally.”

  Anon takes a step closer.

  — “What I saw—the dying man, the Traqueurs… that was through you?”

  Elias parts his lips to answer. He doesn’t have the time.

  A violent breath tears through the chapel. Not wind. Pressure.

  Something is arriving.

  A figure bursts from the lateral shadows, where a vaulted recess had seemed sealed only a second before. Tall. Taut. Feminine.

  Carved from constant tension.

  Dark hair pulled back carelessly, loose strands stuck against her face. Her skin is marked with fine luminous fractures, like veins of dark glass beneath the surface, pulsing slowly. Eyes too clear for this place—eyes made to survive, not to contemplate. A face too young for such iron determination.

  She does not look at Anon. Not once. Her gaze is locked on Elias.

  — “I told you to keep him on a leash.”

  Her voice is dry. Cutting. Not shouted—barely restrained.

  — “You look too much. At everything.”

  She steps toward him.

  — “You open windows you can’t close.”

  She speaks as if he isn’t alone. As if she’s addressing someone else through him.

  A chill runs down Anon’s spine.

  Elias lowers his eyes. He doesn’t answer.

  She moves closer. Too close.

  Her voice drops.

  — “One day, they won’t run toward the right dead.”

  Silence.

  Then Elias murmurs, almost against his will:

  — “…Nyx… I’m sorry…”

  The words fall like an admission of guilt.

  The young woman freezes for a fraction of a second.

  Then she turns away abruptly.

  Her silhouette disappears into the chapel’s shadows, swallowed by a side aisle that hadn’t truly existed. The pressure falls away.

  Elias remains still for a few seconds. Then he turns toward Anon. He looks drained. Literally.

  — “If you stay here…”

  He searches for breath.

  — “…you’ll see things you were never meant to see.”

  Not a threat. A tired statement.

  And then, inside Anon’s head, the voice returns. Lower than usual. Less mocking.

  — “Now you know.”

  A pause.

  — “Not enough to understand. Just enough to stay.”

  The chapel does not move. But something in its foundations is listening.

  Anon remains near Elias. He looks around him.

  The building has regained its apparent calm. The pillars still stand. The shadows have settled back into place. But something remains taut, like a cord pulled too tight.

  — “Can you explain?” Anon asks.

  Elias doesn’t answer at once. He has sat down on an overturned bench, elbows on his knees. He stares at the floor, as if counting the cracks.

  — “Explain what.”

  It isn’t a question.

  — “Her. The one who came just now.”

  Elias closes his eyes.

  — “Don’t bring her back by naming her.”

  — “You said her name.”

  Silence.

  — “Yes.”

  He draws in a long breath.

  — “And I shouldn’t have.”

  Anon hesitates, then presses on.

  — “Who is she?”

  Elias lifts his head. His gaze is clear, but already tired—too tired for such a short exchange.

  — “She’s one of those who are still standing here. The ones who didn’t run. Didn’t break. Didn’t… melt.”

  — “Like you?”

  A brief smile. Bitter.

  — “No. I’m a problem she tolerates.”

  He runs a hand over his face.

  — “Let’s say there are three ways to survive in Moérial without being devoured. Hide. Hunt. Or watch.”

  Anon feels something slip beneath the surface of the words.

  — “And her?”

  — “She builds. She repairs. She cuts when something needs cutting.”

  He pauses.

  — “She hates it when I look for too long.”

  Anon frowns.

  — “Look at what?”

  Elias opens his mouth to answer. Then his words shift.

  — “He’s still inside.”

  His voice changes. Barely. But enough.

  — “He’s scratching. He’s panicking. He doesn’t understand why it won’t give.”

  Anon blinks.

  — “Elias?”

  No answer.

  Elias slowly straightens. His gaze no longer settles on Anon. It passes through the nave. The walls. The space itself.

  — “He’s going to run out of air. Not really air. Something else. Certainty.”

  Anon takes a step toward him.

  — “What are you talking about?”

  — “He’s hitting too hard. He’s making the membrane vibrate.”

  His voice has gone flat. Detached.

  — “If he tears it… they’ll feel it. If he doesn’t tear it… they’ll feel it too.”

  A chill runs down Anon’s spine.

  — “Elias, look at me.”

  No reaction.

  — “They’re getting closer.”

  The words fall without emotion.

  — “Not yet. But they’re patient.”

  Anon understands slowly. Too slowly.

  — “You’re seeing someone.”

  Elias doesn’t answer.

  — “You’re… watching.”

  The earlier sentence returns to him, cold as a blade: You open windows you can’t close.

  The voice in his head murmurs, almost wearily:

  — “I warned you.”

  Anon grabs Elias by the shoulders.

  — “Stop. Come back.”

  He shakes him. Nothing.

  Around them, the chapel shifts. The walls grow pale. Thin. As if the stone were turning to mist. Between the pillars, Anon begins to see something else.

  Streets. Ruins. Moérial outside, bleeding through in transparency.

  And out there… movement. Low silhouettes. Supple. Elongated.

  The Trackers.

  They glide between the rubble. Unhurried. Certain. One of them lifts its head.

  Anon feels a sickening certainty that it is looking straight at them.

  — “Shit…”

  He pulls at Elias.

  — “We have to move. Now.”

  Elias is heavy. Too heavy. As if he is anchored somewhere else.

  The silhouettes draw nearer.

  Anon locks eyes with one of them. Too long.

  It stops. Its head tilts slightly. He feels something tighten around his chest. Not hands. Not ronces. Attention. Suddenly, a hand grabs his wrist. He jolts. A young man is there. He hadn’t seen him arrive. Thin face. Drawn features. Deep shadows beneath sharp, restless eyes. Short, pale hair, cut unevenly as if done without care. His gaze is alive—frightened, yes—but focused. Calculating.

  He presses a finger to his lips.

  Silence.

  Then, very softly, without moving his lips:

  — “Don’t look at them.”

  Anon feels his heart hammering against his ribs.

  The young man flicks a glance toward Elias, still frozen.

  — “He slipped, didn’t he?”

  Anon nods, unable to speak.

  — “Then we don’t have much time.”

  He pulls Anon toward the shadow of a pillar—slowly, carefully, never making a sudden movement.

  — “My name’s Jonah. And if you want to live a little longer… do exactly what I do.”

  Outside, in the translucent ruins bleeding through the chapel walls, something whistles.

  The hunt has sensed something else.

  And this time, it may not be the right dead.

  Jonah barely speaks.

  He’s already crouched, dragging Anon down with him behind a collapsed pillar. His fingers are cold. His grip steady. A breath, barely audible:

  — Never look for more than two seconds.”

  Anon obeys without understanding.

  — “Breathe when I breathe. Not before. Not after.”

  Jonah inhales. Slowly. Anon matches him, though his heart is racing too fast.

  — “And above all… don’t decide anything.”

  A sound. Not footsteps. A scrape—like metal dragged across damp stone.

  Jonah freezes.

  — “It’s entering.”

  The temperature drops.

  Something crosses the chapel’s invisible threshold. Not fully. A partial presence—like a limb dipped into water while the body remains beyond.

  Anon risks a glance.

  A low, distorted shape glides between the broken pews. The Tracker has no face in any human sense. Where features should be, there’s only a dark mass veined with Ichor, twitching with constant micro-movements. Its back is hunched, too long. Its arms hang… then lengthen. In its hands: brambles. Black. Living. They coil and uncoil with a wet clatter, like chains wrapped in thorns.

  Jonah pulls Anon down flat.

  — “Now.”

  They crawl. Rubble scrapes Anon’s palms. His body reacts as if it were still alive—pain, fear, shallow breath. Jonah moves without hesitation, pausing a fraction of a second before each shift of the Tracker.

  Every time, just before the creature turns its head.

  — “Left.”

  They roll beneath a collapsed pew. The brambles lash through the air where they had been a second earlier.

  — “Stop.”

  They press themselves against a mound of stone. The Tracker passes. Less than a meter away. Anon sees the brambles brush the rubble. One grazes a stone… and the Ichor inside the rock tightens, as if afraid.

  Anon trembles.

  — “Elias…” he whispers without meaning to.

  Jonah goes rigid.

  — “Shh.”

  Anon dares a glance back. Where Elias had stood… there is no one.

  Only a perfectly ordinary heap of stones. As if the chapel had swallowed the man to close a wound. The Tracker moves past the spot without slowing.

  Jonah pulls again.

  — “Come on. Last move.”

  They slide toward the far end of the nave.

  A cracked statue rises there—massive—depicting a woman in armor, a broken sword held tight against her chest. The face is stern, worn by time. The stone is split from the crown of the skull down to the breastbone.

  A dead end. Anon panics.

  — “Jonah...”

  A finger presses against his lips. Jonah flattens himself to the wall. Back straight. Eyes open.

  — “Don’t move.”

  The Tracker knows. It vaults over a pew with a sharp crack. Lands heavily. This time, it sees them. The brambles unfurl, lengthen, clatter against the floor. They stretch between its hands like leashes ready to bite.

  It advances slowly. Savoring it.

  Anon feels instinct scream: Run. Now.

  He takes a step.

  Jonah grabs him, slams him back against the wall with him.

  — “No.”

  They are motionless. Exposed.

  Jonah stares straight into whatever serves as the Tracker’s gaze. A cold determination. Almost suicidal.

  The brambles rise.

  And at that exact moment... A crack. Ancient. Deep. Like a mountain waking.

  The statue behind them moves. The fissure splits wider. Stone shifts. Reorganizes. The sword recomposes itself with a grinding, mineral groan.

  In a single movement — clean, without fury — The statue brings the blade down.

  The Tracker’s head is severed. Not torn off. Cut.

  The brambles fall to the ground, inert. The body collapses, already being absorbed into the chapel floor. Silence returns.

  Anon slowly lifts his eyes.

  The statue now stands whole. And its face is no longer abstract. Hard features. Clear gaze. Cold. The same eyes that judged him earlier. The stone cracks one final time… then goes still.

  Nyx.

  Jonah finally releases his grip. In a low voice, almost reverent:

  — “…She watches.”

  Anon says nothing. He has just understood something essential:

  Here, even the stones choose a side.

  The silence falls too quickly. Not a reassuring silence. A hollowed one—like after a cost that cannot be reclaimed. Jonah is the first to let go.

  He takes a step… then another, unsteady. His hands tremble—slightly at first, then more visibly, as if his fingers no longer quite agree on staying together.

  He presses a hand to his temple. When he pulls it away, his fingers are black.

  A thin thread of Ichor runs down both sides of his face, slowly, like thick sweat.

  His eyes never stop moving—scanning shadows, heights, recesses—too fast, too often.

  — “…I’m fine,” he mutters.

  But his voice doesn’t believe it.

  Anon notices something else. Jonah’s shadow, cast across the nave floor, is not perfectly in sync. It lags. A fraction of a beat. As if it hesitates to obey him.

  — “You pulled too hard,” Anon says without thinking.

  Jonah gives a brief smile. Tired.

  — “Always too hard. Otherwise we die… a second time. And that one’s permanent.”

  Behind them, the sound of shifting stone.

  Elias has returned.

  He is no longer frozen. He stands with his shoulders drawn in, gaze evasive. He watches the Tracker’s remains being absorbed into the floor, then the statue returned to stillness.

  — “It’s my fault.”

  His voice is fully his again. Human. Heavy.

  — “I shouldn’t have looked that far. I shouldn’t have held the vision.”

  He runs a hand through his hair, barely trembling.

  — “The Seer…”

  He stops himself.

  — “The other one… he doesn’t know how to stop when he senses something.”

  Anon finally understands. Not intellectually. Instinctively.

  — “You’re not alone in there,” he says flatly, pointing at Elias’s head with his index finger.

  Elias doesn’t answer.

  A step echoes behind them. Nyx.

  She has moved away from the place where she stood as a statue—but something is immediately wrong. Her gait is slower. Less certain. And above all… her face. When Anon looks at her head-on, she seems exhausted. Marked. Almost aged. New lines carve across her skin. But when he sees her in profile, the expression shifts. A different fatigue. A different hardness. For a fraction of a second, two expressions overlap. Then it’s gone. The young woman clenches her jaw.

  — “I shouldn’t have intervened myself.”

  Her voice is still firm—but her body no longer quite follows. Her silhouette blurs slightly at the edges, as if losing definition.

  — “You did what was necessary,” Elias says.

  She shakes her head.

  — “I took too much Ichor.”

  A breath.

  — “And I don’t have that luxury anymore.”

  Jonah straightens immediately, despite the tremor in his hands.

  — “You need to get back to your anchor. Now.”

  Nyx closes her eyes for a second.

  — “Not without him.”

  She gestures toward Elias.

  — “Not without the Seer.”

  Elias steps back.

  — “No. Not yet. I just… ”

  He searches for the word.

  — “...got myself back.”

  Jonah moves closer, swaying slightly.

  — “Listen to me.”

  His voice is low. Urgent.

  — “You know what it means if she keeps going like this.”

  The young woman says nothing. But her reflection—caught in a polished slab of stone—is not the same as her real face. It is fainter. Older. As if already beginning to fade. A version halfway to leaving. Anon feels a chill run down his spine.

  — “What’s an anchor?” Anon asks.

  Jonah turns toward him.

  — “It’s what explains why we’re here. What holds us. What ties us to the world of the living. What makes us ghosts… but also what keeps a soul from dissolving.”

  He swallows with difficulty.

  — “For some, it’s a memory. Someone they loved. An emotion. A place…”

  His voice tightens.

  — “Something in the living world we didn’t resolve. An act we never managed to carry out before we died. A message we never managed to deliver… an eternal regret where the Ichor learned to stay—and that can still feed us.”

  Nyx opens her eyes.

  — “Mine is still there.”

  — “For how long?” Jonah shoots back.

  Silence. Elias clenches his fists.

  — “Where?”

  Nyx hesitates. Then answers.

  — “An archive room. An old, dusty storage depot. Shelves up to the ceiling. Thousands of records.”

  Her voice barely trembles.

  — “My name is in there. Not the one you know. The one from before.”

  Anon understands.

  — “If you drift too far from it…”

  — “I dilute,” Nyx cuts in. “Not all at once. Not cleanly. I become… part of the scenery.”

  Jonah places a trembling hand on Elias’s shoulder.

  — “You have to let him come back.”

  — “No.”

  — “Just long enough,” Jonah insists. “To see. To locate. To guide.”

  Elias closes his eyes. His breathing quickens.

  — “Every time, I lose a little more control.”

  — “And every time you refuse,” Jonah says quietly, “someone disappears for good.”

  The silence weighs heavy.

  Anon looks at Nyx. She is still standing. But not for long.

  He finally understands the cost: Ichor is not a resource. It’s a rope. And the harder you pull, the closer you get to the void.

  Elias does not speak at once. He looks at Nyx. Then at Anon. Then at the shifting darkness of the chapel.

  — “If he comes back…” he says at last, “…they’ll feel the window.”

  Jonah nods, already pale.

  — “I’ll stay here. I’ll hold the entrance as long as I can.”

  Nyx opens her mouth to protest. Jonah raises a hand.

  — “No debate.”

  A tired smile.

  — “You won’t hold without your anchor. And he won’t without you.”

  He turns to Anon.

  — “If there’s noise… hide. Even from them.”

  Then he limps away toward the shadowed nave, already listening to a future that has not yet arrived.

  Elias draws a deep breath.

  — “Give me your hand.”

  The young woman hesitates for a fraction of a second.

  Then she obeys.

  — “Think of the place,” Elias says. “Not the name. Not the papers. The smell. The dust. The feeling.”

  His fingers close around hers.

  And Elias stops being here. His back straightens too sharply. His breathing shifts. Slower. Distant.

  When he opens his eyes again, they are no longer looking at the chapel.

  They are looking elsewhere.

  _________________________________________________

  The world tilts without warning. Images cascade—too fast to choose.

  Dormitories too large. Rows of metal beds. Name tags stitched inside coats. Nyx is small. Too small for the weight she already carries. Orphanage corridors. Names mispronounced. Suitcases never fully unpacked. Foster families. Averted eyes.

  Then the years pass. The little girl grows.

  She does not lower her gaze. She clenches her fists. She answers too quickly. Too loudly.

  She runs away. She comes back. She runs again. The staff speak of anger. Oppositional disorder. Risk behavior. They miss the essential thing.

  Nyx refuses to be a number. Refuses to be a file. Refuses to be the one who is placed.

  She wants a name that is hers. A face that does not depend on a form.

  An origin that does not begin with unknown.

  She searches. She insists. She harasses administrations. She learns to read silences, blanks, non-answers.

  And every refusal carves the same burning certainty into her: If the world will not give her an identity, she will take it. That obsession becomes an axis. A constant tension between what she is and what she is denied. When the Ichoréon received her, that quest did not disappear.

  It changed shape.

  _________________________________________________

  They are there. The archive room.

  Low ceiling. Yellowish light. Dust suspended in the air. Metal shelves bending under the weight of registers. Boxes labeled by hand. Drawers jammed shut.

  The smell of old paper and administrative oblivion.

  Nyx staggers immediately.

  — “It’s here…” she whispers. “I can feel it.”

  She moves forward. Reaches toward an overfilled cabinet. Her fingers pass through the metal of a drawer.

  Once. Twice. She blinks. Tries differently. Slower. Harder.

  Still nothing. Her breathing quickens.

  — “No… No, no, no…”

  She strikes the cabinet. Her fist goes straight through, without sound, without resistance.

  Something cracks inside her.Her silhouette blurs. Fragments of her seem to tear loose, drawn upward into the air. But she does not stop.

  She screams. She overturns boxes that do not fall. She opens her mouth to bite: her teeth pass through emptiness.

  — “IT’S THERE! I KNOW IT’S THERE!”

  Her voice turns shrill. Distorted. Her anger surges—raw, uncontrolled.

  Anon takes a step back. And then he understands. In the world of the living, the dead do not exist. They can see. They can feel. They can remember. But they cannot act.

  Nyx tries everything she can. She scratches. She strikes. She pulls.

  Her movements grow erratic. Almost delirious. Her frustration is no longer just that of a woman denied answers. It is that of a soul trapped in absolute helplessness. Her mind begins to tilt.

  — “I am not nothing… I am not nothing…”

  She repeats the words like an incantation.

  And Anon realizes with horror: if she continues, she will not merely fade: she will shatter.

  He looks at Nyx differently. And he sees.

  Not the woman. The weave.

  The Ichor holding her together. Fragile. Stretched thin. Ready to snap.

  — “Wait,” he says.

  His voice trembles.

  — “Don’t force it.”

  She doesn’t hear him. So he closes his eyes.

  Searches for the weave. Like with the wall in the asylum. Like with the crack. He places his hand—not on matter, but on what makes Nyx whole.

  He guides.

  — “There… Hold on to that.”

  Nyx stops abruptly. She feels resistance. Real resistance.

  Her fingers touch the cold metal of a drawer. She bursts into tears.

  — “I… I can…”

  She pulls. The drawer groans. Opens.

  Anon grunts. His legs tremble. His breath falters. Holding that consistency tears something deep out of him.

  — “Hurry…” he gasps.

  Nyx searches. Frantically. Files. Dates. Names crossed out. Her hands shake as much as her soul.

  Behind them, the Seer groans. An involuntary sound. Painful. His lips move.

  — “Claire… I had to tell her… Julien… I didn’t…”

  His words blur. No longer about Nyx. About himself.

  Anon doesn’t listen. Neither does Nyx.

  Something pulses behind a cardboard folder. A light. Faint. Golden.

  — “There !”

  The young woman lunges for it. The file cabinet vibrates beneath her fingers. When she opens it, the Ichor surges. Not violently. Like a warm tide returning home.

  Nyx screams — but in relief. Her silhouette stabilizes. Her features harden back into place.

  Her cracks seal. She flips through the pages. Feverish. Desperate.

  — “It’s here… it has to be here…”

  Behind her, the Seer chokes.

  — “I have to tell her… I should have stayed… I didn’t protect…”

  His voice breaks. The vision shudders.

  — “Nyx !” Anon shouts. “Hurry !”

  She is about to read. To understand. To know. And then... Everything goes dark.

  No transition. No return. The archive room vanishes. The file. The shelves. The light.

  They fall. Into absolute black.

  A black without ground. Without time. Without voices.

  The vision has broken.

  And somewhere, something has paid the price.

  _________________________________________________

  The black splits open.

  A gray, natural light. A low sky. A cold wind. They are standing on a construction site.

  Metal structures. Scaffolding. Concrete still wet. The roar of machines. Urgent voices.

  A living world. Ordinary. Dangerous.

  Nyx looks around, disoriented. Anon immediately senses this is no ordinary memory.

  Something here weighs heavy.

  They see Elias. Or rather… the Eliases.

  The living man first. Hard hat tucked under his arm. Orange safety jacket. Clipboard clutched tight. He talks fast. Checks. Marks things off.

  Then—set back—the other one. Elias’s ghost. Transparent. Present without being so. Already divided.

  A detail catches the living man’s eye. A poorly secured guardrail. A missing fastener. An area that should be blocked off. He hesitates. Checks the time. Thinks about pressure. Deadlines. Accumulated fatigue. He knows. But he lets it pass.

  Nyx murmurs, cold:

  — “He knew.”

  It is not an accusation. It is an irrevocable fact.

  The scream comes before the image. A metallic snap. A sharp impact. A body falling too fast to be caught.

  Julien.

  They do not see him fall. They see him afterward.

  His body broken on the concrete. Limbs bent at a grotesque angle amid dark streams. Voices rushing in.

  And one voice, louder than the rest.

  — “JULIEN!”

  Claire.

  She runs across the site. Eyes wide. Breath torn from her chest.

  Nyx understands. Julien is not a colleague. Julien is not an anonymous worker. Julien is Claire’s brother.

  And Claire… Claire is Elias’s wife.

  Elias’s ghost is already there. On his knees beside the body. His hands trembling—but touching nothing.

  — “It’s my fault…”

  The word fractures before it can fully form. Something breaks inside him. Not symbolically.

  Literally.

  The scene shudders. They are elsewhere. An apartment. Elias and Claire’s. Boxes still unopened. A wedding photo on a shelf.

  Claire sits at the table. In front of her: papers. A report. An official version.

  A living Elias speaks. He explains. He chooses his words. He withholds the essential part.

  He does not quite lie. He omits. Claire listens.

  She nods. She clenches her fists.

  She feels it.

  — “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Elias looks away. And in that precise instant, something inside him fractures permanently.

  Nyx sees it. Anon feels it.

  The guilt finds no release. So it divides.

  One part of Elias keeps silent. Another observes. Another calculates. Another waits for the right moment. And one last part—the most painful one—keeps watching.

  The Seer is born there. Not as a gift. As a wound.

  They watch the years pass. Claire lives. Works. Breathes. But she waits.

  She knows something was hidden from her. She knows it without proof. And Elias… Elias is everywhere. He follows her. He whispers. He repeats the same sentences, over and over.

  — I have to tell her… Not now… When she’s ready… When it won’t be so cruel.

  Nyx understands.

  Elias’s anchor is not the construction site. It is not Julien. It is not even death.

  His anchor is Claire waiting.

  As long as she waits, Elias holds. As long as he holds, she will never know. And the Ichor feeds him as much as it tortures him.

  — “As long as she waits…” Elias murmurs, his voice finally audible, split. “I hold. And as long as I hold… she won’t know.”

  Anon understands something else. Elias’s fragmentation did not stop at death. They followed him. The other personalities are there, diffuse, silent. They share the weight. But only one still looks through the veil.

  — “The Seer…” Nyx murmurs. “He’s the only one who can see.”

  Because he is the one who never stopped watching Julien fall. Again. And again.

  Anon feels what he could do. He could help Elias. The way he helped Nyx. The way he gave her Ichor consistency. He could allow Elias to whisper into Claire’s ear. A word. A truth.

  But he sees the price. If Claire knows, the waiting dies. If the waiting dies, the anchor breaks. And Elias might not survive that release.

  Elias knows it too. He looks away.

  — “Don’t do it.”

  It is not an order. It is an escape.

  — “I was a coward alive… I don’t want to be brave in death.”

  The vision shudders.

  The Seer groans.

  His words blur Julien. Claire. What he failed to do.

  Elias violently reasserts control.

  — “Enough.”

  And he shatters the vision.

  _________________________________________________

  They are back in the chapel. Cold stone. Saturated air.

  Nyx staggers—but remains standing. Her Ichor is denser now. Her silhouette sharper. She breathes—if that can still be called breathing.

  She steps toward Anon. Not too close.

  He feels her gaze on him. A mix of gratitude. And admiration she does not try to hide.

  Seconds pass—long, silent, unbearable.

  At last, she looks away and fixes her eyes on Elias. For a long time. He does not hold her gaze.

  Anon senses something heavy between them. A silent judgment. Not moral. Existential.

  The discomfort thickens. Sticky. Dense. Elias avoids their eyes.

  — “You know now,” he says to Anon without looking at him, “what I am.”

  The silence stretches. Anon opens his mouth to finally speak. And at that moment—

  — “They’re coming.”

  Jonah bursts from the shadow of the nave. Ichor streams from his eyes. His breath is shattered. His body trembles.

  — “I held them… but not for long.”

  He lifts his head toward them.

  — “We have to go. Now.”

  And outside, Moérial had already begun to move.

  Author’s Note:

  The hunt has begun.

  Chapter V will move beyond survival — into decision.

  It helps more than you think — and it tells me Ichor should continue.