Chapter 474
No footsteps approached the door.
No sound of a chair scraping across the floor.
No flush of a toilet or water running from the tap.
There was not a single indication that inside that narrow yet not truly cramped room, there existed a living being who should respond to the passage of time in the same way other living beings do.
What remained was nothing but perfect silence.
A silence that was never disturbed by anything.
A silence that, as time passed, began to feel like a wall impenetrable by any sound from the outside.
A silence that made Theo wonder, yet again, whether behind that door there was still life waiting to continue, or merely a shell abandoned by a soul too weary to endure.
And when Theo focused his vision to pierce through the wall separating him from what was happening inside Ilux's room, when he used an ability no ordinary being possessed to see what should not be visible to the naked eye, the sight he encountered made something in his chest feel heavier than before.
Ilux was still there.
Still on the same bed.
Still in nearly the same position as when morning first arrived.
But his condition had changed into something that made even Theo—who had witnessed thousands of destructions throughout his long journey—momentarily lose his breath.
His eyes, which once still held a faint glimmer, had now completely dulled.
Dulled in a way that could not be described by words, because words would never be enough to capture the emptiness radiating from two eyes that should have been windows to a living soul.
His jet-black hair, which once appeared smooth despite never being properly cared for, now looked as though it had not been touched by a comb for a century.
Messy.
Dry.
Dull.
Hanging along the sides of his face like leaves that had died before their time.
And worst of all—what made Theo realize just how deep the wound behind that never-opened door truly was—was his clothing.
Still the same as it had been since the beginning of the morning.
A shirt with stubborn stains that never truly disappeared despite his efforts to clean them.
Long pants still bearing traces of food clinging to the fabric.
The same clothes he wore when he passed through the gates of the Star Academy with heavy steps and a hunched back.
The same clothes meant Ilux had not bathed.
Not in the morning, when a waking body should be refreshed by flowing water.
Not in the evening, when sweat and dust gathered throughout the day should be washed away before nightfall.
He had not performed a single act of cleanliness—something that, for most people, was the most basic expression of existence as someone who still cared about themselves.
"Not much can be recorded."
There was little Theo could summarize about Ilux's activities inside his room.
Not because he had lost focus, nor because his observation was distracted by something more interesting, but because what occurred behind that never-opened door never changed from one hour to the next.
From the morning still veiled in thin mist, to the afternoon bleeding slowly into fading orange hues.
Ilux simply lay on the bed.
In a position that never strayed far from the one Theo first saw when he peeked from the shadows.
His eyes remained closed for long periods—long enough to make any observer think he had finally surrendered to the exhaustion that had been piling up since previous days.
But then his eyelids would open again.
Slowly.
With a movement that no longer carried even the faintest trace of the spirit that once remained, even if only for the act of opening and closing his eyes.
And once open, after staring at the ceiling whose cracked patterns had never changed since he first occupied the room, he would roll over.
Turning his body to the other side with slow, heavy movement.
Like someone who no longer had any reason to move quickly, because there was nothing waiting and nothing to chase.
Then his eyes would close again.
Shut tightly with eyelids no longer strong enough to hold anything behind them.
After some time, they would open again.
And he would roll again.
And close again.
And open again.
In a cycle that never changed.
Never evolved.
Never showed any sign that within the consciousness trapped in that unmoving body, there was still something struggling to break free.
And that situation—that monotonous, tedious, and painful cycle to witness for anyone who still possessed even a fragment of empathy—continued.
From morning, when roosters crowed and shattered the silence.
To noon, when the call to Dhuhr echoed, unanswered by anyone behind that never-opened door.
To afternoon, when the Asr call arrived with a slightly different tone yet carried the same message of time passing without ever looking back.
Until Maghrib approached and night began to fall.
The orange light that once dared to slip through the curtain gaps slowly retreated.
Leaving behind a room that grew darker.
Narrower.
More suffocating.
More like a coffin not yet fully sealed.
In every cycle that occurred.
In every closing and opening and turning that repeated with the same rhythm.
Theo never looked away.
Never blinked, even though nothing forced him to keep watching.
Never stopped recording, even though what he wrote never changed from the first line to the last filling his increasingly crowded pages.
The small yellow notebook lay open in his hand.
The pen, never running out of ink, moved with steady rhythm.
Recording every detail that might be useful for the narrative he was building.
Recording every change—even when the only change was from lying on the left side to the right.
From eyes closed for five minutes to eyes closed for seven, before finally opening again with an even deeper emptiness each time those lids lifted.
Yet amidst that act of recording, between the lines he continued to write with a pen that never stopped moving, Theo did not forget to do something just as important as merely observing Ilux rolling endlessly on the bed with eyes that never truly saw anything.
He murmured.
Not a murmur that escaped parted lips and could be heard by any nearby ear.
But one that occurred in the most private space of his consciousness.
A murmur directed both to himself and to something else connected to him through invisible threads stretching across immeasurable distance.
That the communication between him and Aldraya was not completely severed.
That even though their bodies were now separated by vast distance, even though Aldraya was carrying out a mission that placed her somewhere unreachable by ordinary steps, even though distance lay between two existences that had essentially become one since synchronization began—
The thin thread of RWIA that bound Resolve, Will, Intention, and Ambition beneath their consciousness remained intact with unshakable strength.
To be continued…