Nir did not move.
He remained standing before the open door, his eyes fixed on the empty space the woman had left behind.
It wasn't the sentence itself that hurt him.
It was the way it had been delivered.
There was no anger in her voice.
No hatred.
Only certainty.
As if she weren't revealing a new truth to him, but rather reminding him of something he had forgotten long ago.
Lyra said in a trembling voice:
"Nir..."
He did not answer.
The old man approached him cautiously.
"Do not try to make sense of it right now."
Nir turned to him.
"You knew."
The man did not deny it.
"Yes."
"You knew I wasn't her son."
"I knew the truth was far more complex."
Nir stepped closer to him.
"I don't want complexity."
His tone was calm.
And that only made it more dangerous.
"I want the truth."
The man fell silent.
Then he said:
"Then hear it in full."
He sat down on the stone chair.
And suddenly he looked older than his years.
Or perhaps the exhaustion etched across his face was his true age.
He said:
"Nine hundred years ago, the world was not as you know it now."
Nir froze.
"Nine hundred?"
"Yes."
"But I..."
"You were a child just twenty years ago."
"That is what you remember."
The man paused.
"But memory is not always proof of the truth."
Silence fell.
Lyra asked:
"Then who are you, Nir?"
The man did not answer.
Instead, he looked at Nir.
"There was a project."
"A project?"
"A group of mages and scholars tried to reach the origin of the Aura."
"They wanted to find its source."
"And in the end, they found something else."
Nir asked:
"The void?"
The man shook his head.
"Something older than that."
Silence descended.
"They found the first vacuum."
Nir raised his eyes.
"What does that mean?"
"Before the void you know existed, there was a vacuum that didn't even possess the quality of a void."
"It was not nothingness."
"And it was not existence."
"It was a possibility."
Nir's breath hitched.
The man continued:
"And from that vacuum, they tried to create a being capable of carrying a power no other vessel could bear."
He looked at Nir.
"They failed."
"Many times."
"Yet on the final attempt... they succeeded."
Nir felt a chill creep into his limbs.
"Me."
The man nodded.
"You."
A long, heavy silence passed between them.
Then Nir said:
"Then my mother..."
"She was not your real mother."
"But she was the woman who raised me."
"Yes."
Nir lowered his head.
And here came the surprise.
He felt no anger.
He felt emptiness.
That very emptiness he had known since childhood.
That feeling which always made him feel different from everyone else.
Now, at last...
He understood why.
He said:
"Did she know?"
The man fell silent.
And that silence was answer enough.
Nir closed his eyes.
He remembered her smile.
He remembered her hands.
He remembered every time she told him he was her son.
Then he opened his eyes.
"Then why did she lie to me?"
The man said:
"Because she loved you."
He paused.
"And she wanted to grant you something those who created you could not."
"What?"
"A life."
Nir found no reply.
The word was simple.
Yet it struck something deep inside him.
The man said:
"You did not need to know that you were engineered as a key."
"You needed to live."
Nir remained silent.
Then he said:
"And who made me?"
The man's expression shifted.
This time, fear was clear.
"No one."
Nir raised his head.
"What?"
"You were not made by a single person."
"You were made by a thing."
"Something we did not even know how to name."
The man stepped closer.
"And the moment they opened the first vacuum..."
He paused.
"You emerged."
The chamber grew still.
Nir was not crafted.
He was not born.
He simply appeared.
And from the very first moment...
He carried a power his creators could not comprehend.
Nir said:
"And why was my memory erased?"
"Because the first time..."
The man hesitated.
"You killed everyone in the laboratory."
Lyra's eyes widened.
As for Nir, he did not move.
"Me?"
"You were not conscious."
"The void poured from you without your will."
"And in a single moment... everything vanished."
Then he added:
"Everything, except one person."
Nir looked at him.
"Who?"
The man slowly raised a hand and pointed at himself.
Silence fell.
He said:
"Me."
And the very next instant...
The cave shook violently.
A pulse rippled from the depths of the earth.
Then a second.
Then a third.
Yet this time, the pulses were not coming from below.
They were coming from Nir himself.
He looked down at his hands.
The tips of his fingers were beginning to lose their color.
Not because they were fading...
But because light itself could no longer reach them.
The man stepped back.
And said in a low voice:
"He has begun to remember."
Nir raised his head.
"Who?"
The man looked into his eyes.
"You."
"You are not recovering your memory, Nir."
"You are recovering your past life."
Then a voice came from the depths of Nir.
It was not the voice of the entity.
Nor his mother's voice.
Nor the man's voice.
It was his own.
Yet older.
Deeper.
And it said:
"This time... I will not leave the door closed."
All the lights in the cave went out.
And in the darkness...
Nir opened his eyes.
And the color of his eyes had changed.