Chapter 144: The White Fracture
I jumped back, brutal, almost animal, my fangs bared by a fear that had no name. A fear of ancient origin, reptilian, which obeyed not logic but instinct. And my voice — that voice I thought extinguished — burst into the silence, unfiltered, unrestrained, a dry, rough cry, without detour.
— NO.
A word. A blow. A detonation. A bullet fired into a world without walls, a shot without a target, without recoil, but which vibrated through everything, as if all had tensed inside to absorb it.
The cradle wavered. Barely shivered under the impact. As if my voice had struck something invisible, sacred, but fragile. And the baby... that embryonic reflection, that part of me so gentle it became unbearable...
Disappeared.
And I understood.
It had never been there. It was not born of this world. Not born of the real. It was a projection. A trap. A trembling mirror. A twisted memory, deformed, vomited up by my sick conscience. An illusion wrapped in tenderness. A poisoned lure.
I suffocated.
My breath cut off abruptly, as if swallowed by an inner abyss. My hands pressed against my temples in a reflex gesture, pathetic, as if I could stop what was rumbling, what was pounding, what was crawling inside. But already, my skull was pounding. From within. A monstrous rhythm. A beast’s cadence.
Something was scratching my bones.
As if an entity had slid its claws into my skull, and was slowly scraping, with regularity, with precision. Not to tear. To inscribe. To carve. A song, maybe. A voice. A silhouette. A fucking lullaby hammered into my thoughts, branded red-hot into my memories.