Chapter 30
Fingers
Chapter 30
Fingers
"Maybe… maybe…" he repeated, as if saying it aloud could convince him.
A twisted grimace escaped him at that same moment. There was something strange in the water. The surface, always smooth and perfect, began to deform. Small circles opened, expanding into ripples moving away in all directions.
Kaep looked down, confused. He hadn't taken a step. He hadn't even moved an arm. He had done nothing to provoke that.
His heart accelerated.
It's not me…
The ripples grew, crashing into each other, breaking the absolute calm that until a moment ago seemed eternal. It was as if something, somewhere, had broken the liquid surface and now that invisible presence was betraying itself with vibrations.
Kaep took a step back without thinking, muscles tense, gaze fixed on that point where the first ripples had been born.
The calm had shattered, and with it, the certainty that he was alone.
But he soon understood: those ripples weren't being born in front of him. They came from behind.
His stomach clenched. He felt his throat dry and swallowed with difficulty.
Is it… behind me?
The thought was a blade that left him paralyzed.
He wanted to turn, but the muscles in his neck didn't respond. The simple act of turning seemed like a condemnation: what if he saw it face to face? What if it was too close?
"Think, think, think…" he whispered, his voice trembling, while fixing his gaze on his own fingers. Two of them moved slightly, convulsively, as if his body sought an escape his mind didn't yet have.
He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to inhale slowly, a long, silent breath that expanded his chest.
He tried to concentrate on that: on the air entering and leaving, on the beat pounding inside his ears. Anything but the certainty of the presence stalking him from behind.
He slowly opened his eyes. The starry darkness enveloped him as before, but now every point of light seemed to rotate slightly, as if observing too.
"Bad idea… no doubt," he murmured, his own voice so low it was barely audible. "But if it's behind me… then I'll die anyway if it's a monster. Or something worse."
He swallowed, feeling the knot in his throat scraping inside. His heart pounded so hard he felt it in his temples. Even so, he forced his lungs to obey. He inhaled slowly, with forced control, as if that measured breath could delay the inevitable.
One, two, three times.
He tried to calm his rhythm, cool his blood, order his thoughts before moving. Each inhalation was a count. Each exhalation, a preparation.
His fingers trembled slightly. The water's reflection vibrated with the ripples still forming behind his back. And, in the midst of that impossible silence, Kaep understood he couldn't stay motionless forever.
Then he exploded.
In a brusque movement, Kaep spun with his whole body. It wasn't a simple turn: he let himself fall, throwing himself toward the liquid surface in front of him.
The liquid surface received him with a dull, cold impact. The surface sank under his weight as if it were gelatin and then held him, vibrating with concentric ripples that expanded around him.
Now lying down, his back against the starry water, he aimed two tense fingers toward the darkness, as if they were an improvised weapon.
His breathing was frantic. His eyes wide open, ready to meet whatever was behind him.
The water still trembled beneath his body. The ripples from his own movement mixed with the others, those that had alerted him from the start.
And now, before him, was the figure from last time.
This time it wasn't as distant or blurry: its silhouette was clearly outlined against the star-filled sky.
At first, Kaep thought it was a man, a human like any other. The shape was the same: the height, the shoulders, the upright posture.
It seemed… but it wasn't.
Its whole body was wrapped in a kind of dark veil, as if it wore a cloth that devoured the starlight. No fold fell naturally; it was more like a living mantle, clinging to it and keeping it in gloom.
From within that darkness, something glowed. A golden light filtered through the fissures in the veil, as if beneath the cloth there was a hidden fire.
The glow concentrated in the upper part, illuminating from the shoulders upward with a growing radiance.
Kaep narrowed his eyes. That clarity was like a lantern lit in the blackness.
The young man didn't know if he was facing a disguised human, or something that only imitated the form of one.
The figure had its hand extended toward him. The fingers, long and dark under the veil, advanced slowly toward his face, as if wanting to grip his chin, as if the gesture were inevitable.
Kaep kept his two fingers tense, aimed directly at the silhouette's chest. His breathing grew ragged. This was the moment: shoot, release the lightning, force it back.
-…-
But nothing happened.
Not a spark. Not a glimmer. Nothing.
The emptiness in his fingers hit him like a bucket of ice water. He opened his eyes in panic. His plan had been simple: one shot to gain distance. Instead, the only thing he had achieved was to surrender himself, lying on the liquid surface while the other advanced without haste.
No… no, no… he immediately understood the disadvantage of his situation.
The alarm exploded in his chest. He had given himself away completely. No lightning, no weapon, no escape. Now the hand kept descending, ever closer to his face, and he was trapped in the worst possible position.
The shadow's palm was already so close he could feel it, though it didn't touch him yet: a cold pressure, a weight in the air, as if it were about to crush his face at any moment.
Kaep's heart raced wildly. The phrase he had heard before, that cold order, pierced his mind like a flash: 'Reason… a method.'
In the midst of his fear, he let out a dry laugh, short, almost a gasp. The idea had appeared suddenly, irrational and desperate, but it was all he had.
"Of course… of course…" he murmured to himself, not taking his eyes off the figure.
With a quick movement, he pivoted his firm fingers 180 degrees. They went from pointing directly at the figure's chest to pointing at himself.
The gesture was so unnatural that for an instant time seemed to stop. The figure's hand remained suspended a hand's breadth from his face. Kaep felt the liquid surface tremble beneath his back.
It was an insane plan, but it was a plan. And, in that instant, it was his only method.
Kaep contracted his right arm with all his strength. His elbows closed like springs, bringing the fingers toward himself.
From his perspective, everything became a tunnel: the fingers advancing ever closer, the figure's golden light behind them, the enormous palm like a shadow opening to capture him. Every centimeter he gained with his movement seemed to stretch time.
More… more… ever closer.
Until, from one moment to the next, the palm that occupied almost his entire view was eclipsed by his own fingers. An inverted, desperate gesture that covered everything.
Then came the sound.
A wet snap, dry and sharp at the same time. An impossible-to-confuse noise: flesh piercing flesh. The echo of something being driven where it shouldn't be.
The starry world seemed to shudder at the same time as his body. Pain exploded in his skull like thunder, a white light crossing his senses.
***
[In a room, on an unknown floor]
"Hah…" The sound came out haltingly, more a gasp than a word.
Kaep opened his eyes abruptly. The starry sky had disappeared. Above him, a wooden ceiling with dark grain.
He was breathing fast, almost uncontrollably, trying to fill his lungs as if he had been holding his breath for hours.
He remained like that, immobile, looking at the planks above his head, not yet daring to move. He felt his heart hammering against his chest with an irregular force, his skin sticky with cold sweat.
Bewildered, he tried to order what had happened.
Had he returned?
Had it worked?
Or was he just dreaming…?
He blinked a couple of times. The sensation of moisture on his face made him slowly bring a hand upward…
He sat up with a start, almost without thinking. His body responded clumsily, trembling, but he managed to sit up.
With both hands, he grabbed his face, feeling urgently: his forehead, cheeks, cheekbones. His fingers moved quickly, seeking any hole, any sign of damage.
Everything seemed to be in place.
He inhaled deeply, trying to calm the tremor in his hands. Then he closed one eye and moved a hand in front of it, following the movement with the other. He repeated it with the other eye, changing hands.
"I see…" he murmured, incredulous.
He did it a third time, just to be sure.
"I see…" he repeated, almost laughing, between relief and confusion.
His heart kept hammering, but gradually his breathing stabilized. The pain he expected didn't arrive.
No blindness, no open wound, nothing to justify the memory of the sound still resonating in his head.
And yet, the sensation that something had happened remained there.
Once convinced everything was in order, he released the pent-up air and let his arms fall onto his legs. The weight overcame him little by little until he ended up reclining completely on what he finally recognized as a bed.
The mattress was uneven, with the rough texture of an old blanket, but after what he'd lived through, it seemed the most comfortable place in the world.
His pulse, once frantic, began to stabilize. Each breath became slower, deeper. The tension dissolved, drop by drop, until only the echo of fatigue remained.
What a scare… he thought, closing his eyes and turning slightly onto his side.
For a moment, he allowed himself to simply feel the contact of the fabric against his skin, the human warmth of the real world.
But his mind gave him no respite.
Could it be… that every time I sleep or lose consciousness… I'll return to that place?
The idea weighed on him. It didn't sound like a dream. Not after what he felt there. And if it was something more… something waiting for him with every loss of consciousness, then sleep was no longer rest. It was returning.
He was thinking about that while letting his gaze wander around the room.
The silence held, broken only by the slight crackle of candles on the walls. The light was scarce, orange, casting long shadows that moved with every flicker of the flame.
Around him, the panorama was a mix of forced calm and exhaustion. There were several other people, distributed among improvised cots and old beds. Some rested with heavy breaths, in acceptable but still fragile states.
Further away, against the walls, others sat or lay on the floor, wrapped in blankets or covered with parts of their uniforms. None were fully asleep. Some kept their eyes open, lost in the ceiling or in nothingness; others simply curled up, trembling with their bodies in a ball.
The sheets covering them didn't seem to belong to the place. They were pieces of half-clean cloth, "decent" only by comparison. Remnants of what they must have found in their haste to give shelter to the wounded.
The air smelled of damp wood, dried blood, and smells he didn't recognize.
Kaep observed in silence. The place seemed to have calmed down… but the stillness held something tense.
Amid all that silence, one figure stood out.
The man with blue hair stood motionless in front of the room's single circular window. The candlelight barely brushed his profile, leaving half his face sunk in shadow.
Kaep watched him without saying anything. It took him a moment to notice what had bewildered him: the pounding of the rain was no longer audible.
The storm had ceased.
No thunder, no wind, no roar of water against the window. Only the muffled murmur of the interior, the distant sound of breathing, and the occasional crackle of melting wax.
For a few seconds, Kaep stayed attentive, as if expecting the noise to return. It didn't.
He sighed.
He lay back again, letting his body sink into the bed. The floorboards creaked with the movement, but no one seemed to notice.
"Enough for today…" he thought, letting the weight of his eyelids fall.
Fatigue enveloped him before he could finish the next phrase in his head.
The room's silence, warm and strange, accompanied him as sleep closed his eyelids once more.