Chapter 28:
Memory
The story begins where the past ended, with Gabriel and Ivelio, who finally met. What a meaningless meeting it was...
The fog was thick, surrounding the place, making the vision blurry as if they were trapped inside a strange dream. The air was as cold as death itself, creeping along the skin like a hidden hand slowly feeling the nerves. The whole place exuded an uncomfortable feeling, as if something was watching from between the shadows.
Bruno: "Gabriel, I'm your brother." He said it with a steady voice, but there was something in it, a mixture of anticipation and caution, as if the words themselves were a weapon that could explode at any moment.
Gabriel: "What? I have no brother, nor do I need one." Gabriel's tone was entirely empty, as if this confession hadn't even stirred the slightest feeling inside him. His tired eyes didn't blink, as though they were staring directly into nothingness.
Bruno: "Gabriel, don't worry... I think I've solved the riddle. We're suffering from hyper-awareness."
Bruno's voice carried a strange certainty, as if this truth had been haunting his mind for a long time, but it had found its way out only now.
Gabriel: "I don't know what you're suffering from, stranger, but I'm sure you're different from me. Even if you're better than me, I'm different from everyone. Not because I'm special, but because I can see everything as it truly is." He looked around, as if seeing something else, a hidden layer of truth that no one else could comprehend. His voice dripped with a strange certainty, a certainty of a man who has seen things that shouldn't be seen, and knows things he wasn't meant to know.
Gabriel: "Anyway, what the hell brought you to this frozen hell?"
His voice was that of a man weary of everything, a man who no longer saw a difference between life and death, between dream and reality. The winds howled around them, carrying the smell of decay and stagnant water, as if the island itself was breathing its last breaths.
Bruno: "I came to see if my brother was alive or dead, but unfortunately... you breathe, you speak, and you move, but in truth, you're dead."
He said it with a voice drenched in sadness, but Gabriel showed no sign of being affected. A light laugh escaped him, but it wasn't a laugh of joy; it was a laugh of someone who knew an ugly truth, yet found some dark amusement in denying it.
Gabriel: "Hahaha... Looks like you're sharp-sighted! I'm aware of this, then... I have no brothers. Flee this island, I'll go wait for the hallucination beasts and Zulish the Litch to come and turn my fears into nightmares. Goodbye."
His words carried a deeper meaning, as if the island itself wasn't just a place, but a prison with no escape. Gabriel turned away and disappeared, his footsteps swallowed by the wet snow, as if the ground itself was devouring him.
Bruno: "Where are you going?! What's happening on this island?!"
But no response came, except the whispers of the wind, as if they carried the voices of people who no longer existed.
Gabriel: "You'll know on your own... I'm going to sleep in the witches' house."
He said it without turning, as if the entire matter was of no significance. The air grew colder, as though the night itself was breathing from the depths of this land.
Bruno: "Wait, brother! Stop this madness, we need to get out of here!"
His words carried more plea than command, but he already knew that Gabriel wasn't listening.
Gabriel: "There's nothing to understand, sir. In fact, there's nothing you can understand. Because... everything is nothing. You are nothing. This place is nothing. And everything bears a name that has no value. What are you afraid of? Death? Here, you'll die, and dogs will piss on your grave anyway."
His voice faded with the wind, his words dripping with utter futility, as if they were the chants of the dead who had lost the will to resist.
Bruno: "Listen, do you remember that memory? The day our father was killed?"
Gabriel's footsteps paused for a moment, as if the words struck him deeply.
Gabriel: "What are you talking about? My father was with the army his whole life, and I don't think he's dead."
Bruno: "That's one of the reasons for your mental disturbances. When you were a child, our father wasn't in the army as you thought. He was a member of intelligence, investigating a satanic cult run by a Russian family."
The storm froze in Gabriel's mind. For a moment, he didn't hear anything, except the rapid beating of his own heart.
Gabriel (panicked, opening his mouth in shock, and his old stillness falling away): "What the hell are you talking about...? What is he talking about...? These are lies!!"
His eyes were filled with astonishment and denial. A momentary hysteria overtook him, as if the very walls of reality were cracking around him.
Bruno: "Our father loved you, and back then when we went out with him, the three of us—me, you, and him—to buy the horror game you always wanted, he was assassinated. A nearby car shot him, and you developed PTSD after that incident. As for me... I traveled across many European countries to find out who killed our father and seek revenge. I went to Russia first, searched for the satanic cult I thought was responsible, but I found nothing, so I moved from country to country, until I decided to give up. I went to Italy, and I fell into a depression for years. I lived in an isolated apartment in Rossavikeno... until I received a message."
Gabriel: "What did it say?"
Bruno: "It's a long story... Anyway, after the end of my long journey in Italy, during my work with the mafia, I discovered that there was a family called 'Vago' who were connected to the cult..."
Gabriel (laughing maniacally): "Don't continue... Hahaha! The 'Shadow Devil' cult, right?"
Bruno: "Yes... how did you know about that?"
The atmosphere grew even darker, the fog thickened unnaturally, as if the place itself was suffocating from the truth that had just been revealed.
Before Bruno could get an answer, Gabriel began shedding tears. They were silent tears, but they carried something deeper than pain itself. Then suddenly, he turned around and ran away, plunging deeper into the fog, until he disappeared completely.
Bruno had no idea where he went... or what Gabriel was thinking at that moment.
But he felt something strange.
Something that hadn't been there moments ago.
Something that had been watching them the entire time...
It was time itself that had been watching them.
As I asked him, Gabriel began shedding tears, then ran away and disappeared into the fog, and I didn't know where he went. He had disappeared. What a lunatic. I have to search for him again now, and I didn't believe it had come time to escape from here. I looked at my watch, and my suspicions grew. The time was now 1 AM, even though I had entered this island at 8 PM. Time was moving faster here on this island. The timing was different from any clock on Earth. It was in a parallel dimension.
The fog was thick... thicker than normal. It wasn't just ordinary fog gently sliding over the earth, but something more alive... as if it had an evil spirit moving within the shadows, wrapping itself slowly around the body, trying to sneak inside, to enter the lungs, to strangle the very mind.
Bruno stood still for a moment, his eyes searching for Gabriel through the undulating fog. The silence was suffocating; the only sounds were his frantic breaths and the irregular beating of his heart, as if he was sensing something his eyes couldn't yet perceive.
"Gabriel?"
He called out, but his voice vanished into the fog as if it had no existence. The place around him felt unfamiliar, as though reality itself was starting to lose its coherence. The ground beneath his feet was soft and damp, as if it were nothing more than a piece of a living nightmare.
Then... something appeared before him.
In the heart of the fog, a mysterious shape began to form... It wasn't Gabriel's shape, but something else entirely. It was a cave.
It hadn't been there moments ago, but now it stood before him, its mouth wide open like that of a legendary beast waiting for its prey. The rocks around it were black as night, strangely smooth, as though they weren't natural stones, but something else, something that shouldn't exist in this world.
Bruno felt something strange running through his veins, a sensation that this place wasn't just a cave, but a gateway... a gateway to something older than time itself.
But he didn't turn back.
"There's no other way..."
He whispered to himself, then began walking.
Each step he took felt heavier than the last, as if gravity itself was changing here. The fog didn't completely dissipate, but rather seemed to pull into the cave, as if inviting him in.
As he crossed the threshold, he suddenly felt something cold touch his skin. It wasn't air, but something deeper, as if the whole place was watching him, studying him, consuming his existence, moment by moment.
The darkness was thick, but it wasn't ordinary darkness. It was alive, pulsing in the walls, moving with his breath.
Bruno lifted his eyes and froze in place.
The walls... were filled with carvings.
But they weren't ordinary carvings; they were strange, inhuman symbols. Impossible geometric shapes, intertwined circles, eyes open in every direction, and unnatural creatures wrapped around each other, as if they had lived inside these rocks since time immemorial.
He moved forward slowly, staring at those symbols. Some of the lines seemed to move, twisting before his eyes, although he was sure it was just an illusion... right?
Then he saw the words.
They weren't written in a language he knew, but were a series of strange letters, etched into the wall with a trembling hand, as though the one who carved them was suffering from an unspeakable terror. He tried to understand, to find some meaning in them, but the more he stared, the more his head pounded, as if his eyes weren't made to see this kind of language.
A shiver ran down his spine, but even so, he continued moving forward.
Then... he saw it.
At the end of the cave, in the heart of the darkness, there was something larger than anything he had seen before.
A massive tomb, carved into the stone, reaching up to the cave's ceiling. It looked older than imaginable, older than cities, older than civilizations, older than humanity itself. It was sealed, but it wasn't just an ordinary tomb... it was a prison.
And on its surface, there was something carved.
It wasn't just a carving, but an image. The image of a creature's head that couldn't belong to this world.
The head of a black sea demon.
Its empty eyes stared into the void, its mouth open as if screaming, its skin covered in twisted scales unlike anything Bruno had ever seen. Its features exuded something primordial, something that froze the blood in one's veins, something that shouldn't exist, yet it did.
Beneath the image, there was a single sentence carved in a
It was carved in a strange language.
But he understood it.
He understood it even though he shouldn't have understood it.
"Here lies the Sea God in his deep slumber, waiting for the moment of his awakening, when he will drown the universe in darkness. We are mere alien beings, submissive. We couldn't carve his name, for it exceeds our comprehension, but it begins with the letter D."
Bruno felt as though he had lost the ability to breathe. The air in the cave had grown heavier, the walls seemed to pulse, as though they were breathing with him, or perhaps against him.
His eyes and mouth opened wide from the shock. He spoke in a trembling voice, filled with shock, doubt, hesitation, intense sorrow, fear, indifference, loss of passion, and psychological death, with no meaning left. He said: "Degon."
End of chapter