Juson drove through the deserted streets without turning on the radio. The engine maintained a steady rhythm beneath him, yet it did nothing to quiet the turmoil inside his mind. Every few moments his thoughts circled back to the same place before branching into another unanswered question. Herik lay unconscious in the hospital, surrounded by machines that offered explanations without certainty. The lights inside his house had behaved as though they were responding to something invisible. Hakiten had vanished without warning, only for Yokina to insist that something was wrong with him. None of these events felt isolated anymore. They no longer resembled unfortunate coincidences scattered across different days. Instead, they seemed like links in a chain that had begun tightening around everyone close to him. The deeper he thought about it, the stronger that invisible connection became, and although he could not yet identify its beginning or its purpose, he felt certain that it was drawing all of them toward something far larger than any of them understood.
The roads were almost empty by the time he entered the neighbourhood where Wanna lived. Houses rested beneath the growing darkness with only a handful of windows still illuminated, while the occasional streetlamp cast pale circles of light across the pavement before disappearing behind the next stretch of shadow. Juson instinctively eased his foot from the accelerator as Wanna's house appeared ahead of him. The car rolled forward until it came to a gentle stop several feet from the entrance. At first nothing seemed unusual. Then his eyes settled upon the front door. It stood slightly open, moving almost imperceptibly with the evening breeze. He remained seated for several seconds, unable to convince himself that what he was seeing could be ordinary. Wanna was careful by nature. She locked every window before sunset, checked the gate twice before sleeping, and never left the front door unattended, especially when she was alone with her daughter. The sight before him refused to fit the woman he knew. A quiet uneasiness settled deep inside his chest, warning him that whatever waited beyond that doorway had already changed the atmosphere around the house long before he arrived.
He finally stepped out of the car, closing the door as softly as possible behind him. The night air felt unusually cold against his skin, carrying none of the warmth that still lingered elsewhere in the city. He crossed the short distance toward the entrance cautiously, every footstep slower than the one before it. Before his hand could reach the handle, the partially open door shifted inward by itself. The movement was slow, deliberate, almost as though someone inside had been waiting for the precise moment of his arrival. Juson instinctively stopped where he stood. A heartbeat later, Wanna appeared in the doorway. Her face looked calm, yet there was something rigid beneath that calmness, something restrained that her expression could no longer hide.
"Took you long enough," she said.
Her voice was perfectly steady.
Too steady.
Juson stepped across the threshold, and the instant he entered, he felt the difference. The air inside the house carried a strange stillness that refused to resemble peace. Nothing moved. Even the silence felt fixed in place, as though the walls themselves were holding their breath. He looked around briefly before turning back toward Wanna.
"Where's Hakiten?" he asked, the question escaping more sharply than he had intended.
For the first time since opening the door, Wanna hesitated. The pause lasted only a second, but it was enough.
"He left last night."
Juson's brows drew together immediately.
"What?"
"I tried calling him," she continued quietly. "No signal. I've been looking for him all day."
Her explanation only deepened the confusion already building inside him. Hakiten was many things, but disappearing without informing his family had never been one of them. He would never abandon Wanna and his daughter without leaving some kind of message. Unless... he had known something. Unless leaving had been unavoidable. That single possibility refused to leave Juson's thoughts.
Without another word, Wanna walked toward the dining table and picked up several torn sheets of paper that had been gathered into a small pile. She handed them to him silently. Juson accepted them and immediately recognised the uneven handwriting scattered across the fragments. His heartbeat slowed. It was the same distorted style he had already encountered before, the same fractured arrangement of words that looked less like ordinary writing and more like pieces of a message deliberately broken apart.
"It's the same..." he whispered almost unconsciously.
The papers trembled faintly between his fingers as he examined them more carefully. Why would Hakiten write something like this only to throw it away? The idea made no sense unless he had changed his mind after writing it... or realised too late that someone else might find it.
"I need to see his room," Juson said.
Wanna nodded without argument and reached for the key hanging beside the wall. Before she could unlock the room, however, the soft cry of her daughter drifted from another part of the house. Instinct immediately overtook everything else. She looked toward the sound.
"My daughter..."
"Go," Juson replied quietly. "I'll check."
She disappeared toward the child's room while Juson unlocked Hakiten's door and stepped inside alone.
The room greeted him with an atmosphere that felt impossible to describe. Nothing appeared disturbed. The bed remained neatly arranged. A table stood beneath the window. Books rested exactly where they belonged. Yet the room felt... displaced. As though something invisible occupied the empty spaces between ordinary objects. Juson allowed his eyes to travel slowly from one corner to another until they settled upon two large sealed boxes positioned against the wall. They immediately drew his attention. Walking toward them, he bent slightly and knocked against the nearest lid with his knuckles. Instead of the hollow sound he expected, the box answered with a dense, muffled thud. Whatever filled it possessed considerable weight. Storage boxes usually carried clothes, books or tools. This felt different. The second box produced the same heavy response. A quiet suspicion settled deeper inside him. Hakiten had been hiding something here, and judging by the care with which these boxes had been sealed, whatever rested inside them was never meant to be discovered.
Stepping back from the boxes, Juson continued searching the room with greater patience. It was then that a single sheet of paper caught his attention beneath the table, half concealed within the shadows. He crouched slowly and retrieved it. Unlike the torn fragments outside, this page remained perfectly intact. The handwriting was neat, deliberate and unmistakably intentional. Only one word appeared upon it.
Stable.
Juson stared at it for several seconds. The simplicity of the word made it far more disturbing than the broken messages. Hakiten had written it for a reason. The question was... what exactly had become stable? His gaze lifted once more toward the room. There had to be something else. Moving toward the desk, he opened its upper drawer. At first it seemed completely empty except for a single pen resting near the corner. He almost closed it again before a faint crimson glow caught the edge of his vision. Leaning closer, he discovered a small cube resting at the very back. It resembled unfinished glass, its edges uneven and imperfect, as though it had cooled before its shape had been completed. Inside the transparent shell, red grains shifted continuously. They did not fall like ordinary sand. They drifted slowly in different directions, circling each other with deliberate movement that resembled thought far more than gravity.
Juson found himself unable to look away. His breathing slowed without him realising it. Every instinct told him that what he was seeing could not exist, yet the evidence rested only inches from his face. The tiny crimson particles moved as though they were alive. An unsettling thought entered his mind almost immediately.
Is this what Hakiten was hiding?
Is this connected to Herik?
For one impossible moment, the faint glow inside the cube appeared to brighten ever so slightly, almost as though it had acknowledged his presence. A chill travelled down his spine. Acting purely on instinct, Juson shut the drawer far more quickly than he intended. The sharp sound echoed across the silent room before fading away. He remained motionless, his heartbeat noticeably faster now. Whatever rested inside that drawer did not merely feel unusual. It felt dangerous in a way he could neither define nor explain.
The sudden ringing of the doorbell shattered the silence.
Juson turned immediately and left the room. By the time he reached the hallway, Wanna was already standing at the entrance. She opened the door without hesitation.
A man stood outside.
"You're here, Juson."
The familiar voice reached him instantly.
His body froze.
The tone belonged to someone he knew.
Yet his face remained hidden. The bright light behind the visitor wrapped around his outline so completely that his features disappeared into darkness, leaving behind only a tall silhouette standing perfectly still within the doorway. Juson narrowed his eyes, trying desperately to recognise him, but the more he looked, the less distinct the figure seemed to become. Something about the man's posture unsettled him far more than the concealed face itself. He possessed the unmistakable presence of someone standing directly before him... and yet, at the same time, there remained an overwhelming sensation that part of him wasn't truly there at all.