It happened after I laughed.
After I danced with a creature that wasn’t meant to know joy.
The halls echoed it, carried it, liked it.
The castle itself seemed to breathe around me —
walls curving subtly, shadows blinking slower.
But then... the floor shivered.
Just once.
Like a heartbeat buried under stone.
---
I didn’t tell anyone.
Not the creatures that now followed me like pets.
Not even him — though his silence that day was louder than usual.
Instead, I followed it.
The tremor.
The feeling.
The pulse.
Down.
Past stairwells no one had ever shown me.
Past arches twisted with black ivy and locked doors that unlatched when I neared.
I didn’t run.
But I didn’t walk slowly either.
I don’t know what pushed me.
Only that something pulled.
The corridor was wrong.
It was too quiet.
Too flat.
Like it had forgotten how to echo.
No flickering lanterns.
No curious eyes.
Just a long stretch of dustless stone
and the weight of something watching from below.
And at the end of it—
a door. It was old. Made of wood that breathed.
Carved with symbols that pulsed faintly in time with something deep beneath my feet.
I just… touched it...The door didn’t open.
It exhaled. And I staggered back.
It showed me…
A world before the dark.
Before him.
Before anything bore names.
A being — massive, coiled, still.
Not alive.
Not dead.
Not sleeping.
Waiting.
And then I heard it.
A sound that came from inside me but was not mine.
“Lu.”
Just once.
Soft.
Familiar.
But too old to belong to any tongue.
---
I ran away, not far but enough to feel the castle blink.
The door closed behind me,
And when I looked up at the hall I’d returned to…
he was there.
“You found it,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Something I never meant you to touch.”
“I...Didn’t.”
He looked at me, then at my hands —
as if expecting them to glow or crack or bleed...They didn’t.
He stepped closer, slower than usual.
“Did it speak to you?”
I hesitated.
“It said… my name.”
That made him still. So still, the realm itself seemed to stop breathing.
“What did it say?” he asked.
“Just...my name”
And then —
just for a second —
he looked...surprised? .
---
He was already waiting when I climbed the last stair.
“Why were you down there?” he asked.
Not harsh.
But not soft, either.
Like a string pulled too tight.
I swallowed.
ESTÁS LEYENDO
THE REALM WITHOUT A NAME
FantasíaI was ten when I stepped into the world that shouldn't exist. I wasn't asleep. Not really. I had gotten up in the middle of the night to drink some water. The moonlight outside was... wrong. Too silver, too heavy, like it was weighing down the earth...
