In the dimly lit room, silence was quite deafening like a constant melody, providing both a sense of serenity and despair. Until, a sharp scribbling sound resonated through the air from a pen, moving urgently across the roughness of the paper. 

Hunched over a weathered desk, a man, in a black velvet coat with the hood around his neck, was sitting with his legs folded beneath him as he was writing the final pages of a thick book. His expression was a disturbing mix of fear and determination. Shadows of his mid-length ash(colored) hair danced over his pale face, as the only source of light was a faint white glow from a lantern in the corner of the table—resembling a lone star in a midnight sky.

However, the man, his eyes seemingly steeped in sorrow, breathed in quick, shallow gasps only when he wrote down a peculiar flaw in himself—the letter W was missing in his life—and then, he continued to write the last paragraphs of the book, almost as though he was addressing to someone already on the next page.

“You kno(w)?” He wrote. “They say a boy vith the vildest dreams never dies before his dreams do. Throughout my journey, I have not yet discerned my ambitions, but I found myself alive, indeed forever. 

Apart from achieving nothing in my life but self-doubts and disappointments that brought negativities like those guests ve never liked, the only hope that kept me alive since my childhood to this very brink of adulthood, is an advice from a kid that said,”

He dipped the nib of his pen into the ink pot. As the black liquid enveloped it in a shimmering embrace, he rotated the paper to the next blank one and continued to write…

‘The only thing that either hides you in the shado(w) of this vorld, OR casts you as a shado(w) upon this vorld, is a decision!’

It had me thinking for years and I reached the conclusion that, ‘a choice of vell is not about making a decision, but its fulfilling’. Among this darkness, fears, and hunger that is left along me… I am scared of fulfilling vhat I have decided. 

Sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorr…

Apparently, the man began crying his heart out in frustration. His tears spilled upon the paper that blended some of the text. And his body trembled uncontrollably as he wrote ‘Sorry’ twelve times in a row, by recalling twelve fleeting moments from his past. 

Along with low hiccups overwhelming his determination to write, abruptly a strange energy was sparked within him. His eyes widened, and he drew his face closer to the book, willing to write just a little more.

“I am sorry! But it vas necessary.” 

His hair framed the book as they hung downward. 

“I kno you vill, you are reading this.” 

His face, a testament to his crumbling soul, reflected the depth of his unease thoughts. 

“Everyone must kno the value of it. Let them kno about the shado(w) they had been ignoring… until it expanded menacingly like the nightfall salloing (swallowing) their candles of hopes.”

Eventually, with a surge of anxiety coursing through his veins, the man wrote the last words so fast and forcefully that he broke the nib of his pen. 

In a rush, he gasped heavily and stood up!

“It is time,” he whispered to himself, his voice devoid of emotions. 

Breathing heavily, the man firmly clutched the book in his right hand, its very weight pressed against his chest as he held it closer. Then, with a swift yet determined motion, he walked out of that one-roomed, old wooden house which had wooden boundaries after the veranda-like space (outside). The door closed behind him with a sharp, creaking sound, reverberating through the silent surroundings.

Standing tall, the man sighed, regaining his composure as he glanced to the horizon ahead, witnessing the sky stretched wide before him, painted with a beautiful pink and golden shade. The sun was rising majestically from behind the earth, as if peeking from behind those giant mountains that were standing as far as an eye could see. 

Certainly, he was standing atop one of the mountain’s summit, some steps away from his small house, not blinking as he was momentarily lost in awe.

There wasn’t a clue of the existence of life in sight, but only colossal mountains. Their rugged peaks were bathed in warm, radiant sunlight. Albeit, it was a scenery of tranquility, yet the man wasn’t soothed at all. Instead, he looked profoundly astounded. 

Brows furrowing, he glanced around himself, a hint of disbelief etched across his face. 

He murmured, “Just ho(w) long did I stay isolated in my house?” Noticing the mountain’s summit had changed. 

The once-familiar surroundings felt so foreign that he couldn’t contain his confusion any longer. For a moment, he casted a glance over his shoulder, as if catching the sight of his small house in the vast landscape behind. His house stood behind like a forgotten relic on the edge of the world, or like a lone bird’s nest, dear to him, yet destined to abandon. 

However, as a gentle breeze passed by, tousling his hair, the man flinched and gazed down at the book in his hands. Mouth slightly agape, he was fueled—remembered his motive, that he began walking toward the mountain’s cliff in the distance. 

With each step, silent tears began to fill his eyes. So, he covered his face with a hand while speaking softly to the empty air, narrating to no one in sight.

“It has been years,” The man said, his voice deep yet barely more than a whisper. “Ho(w) many?” His gaze drifted into the endless sky, searching for something to measure time. He added, “I cannot even guess,” a depressed chuckle escaped him, and for a brief moment, his eyes seemed to blur his focus as though he was stranded between two worlds or more. 

“Honestly,” He continued. “I do not remember because I found my reality merged with my imaginations,” His parched lips trembled as he exhaled a faint smoke into the whistling winds.

“I do not kno have I been (w)riting or being (w)ritten, but I kno that…” 

He paused his steps abruptly!

“I am being read.” 

The man breaks the fourth wall, addressing you, my dear the readers, with a profound serious look on his face. And then again, he resumed his determined march towards the mountain’s cliff he had initially left the house to reach for. 

“Read by them (w)ho are probably vondering, (w)ho am I speaking to?” He said aloud. His voice carried a constant weight of melancholy. “Or, vhat am I even muttering for?” He blew out a deep sigh. “But I still have nothing to tell.” He glanced at the rising sun. “All my characters (characteristics), relations, emotions and fears… I lost in the vay. All that is left is just me and my loneliness.”

As he reached the cliff’s edge, he paused, extending one foot out into the air, leaving it hovering over the vast emptiness below. From this immense height of the mountain he was standing upon, he gazed down at the sea of clouds—dense yet light— spreading out beneath him like a misty ocean, floating softly just around the mountains, and filling the air with an ethereal haze against the sunrise. 

The man’s expressions shifted, a hint of enthusiasm was visible on his face. A faint grin tugged at the corners of his lips, and his tear-filled eyes widened with childlike awe as he marveled at the clouds beneath his feet. Though he seemed holding in his joy, yet it wasn’t unnoticeable! He felt that innocent thrill of a boy enchanted by witnessing the clouds for the first time, or perhaps the quiet delight of standing over the top of an endless sky.

Meanwhile, in a voice still laced with a sense of sorrow, he began to speak, his words came out in disjoint pieces. “I used to say,” he said with a thoughtful look, as if searching through his memories for the right words, “‘alvays keep your laughter high… because you never kno vhen you vill mourn forever.’” He closed his eyes, his coat flapping in the rushing winds. “But as of no(w) I realize,” he sighed deeply, a heavy exhale through his nostrils. “It is impossible to feel an ounce of joy, vhen I am standing at the destination I feared the most.” 

And the man jumped off the cliff!

So fast, the clouds rushed, passing him by upwardly as he fell, hurtling downward with an incredible speed. The winds howled fiercely all around him, whipping the strands of his hair into wild like unease spears.

Unexpectedly, he was overtaken by hysteria. A loud, uncontrollable laughter erupted from him while he was falling through the storm of winds, his body spinning in the cloudy ocean like a lost comet, a mole in the bright sky.

With his head angled toward the distant earth and feet to the heavens, undoubtedly, the man could feel himself drawing closer to the ground with each heartbeat. Yet, even as he sensed his end approaching, his laughter remained ringing out, reflecting his strange, joyous acceptance to embrace his descent.

Though, amidst the expanse of air with no soul to address and no anchor to hold onto, the man yet continued to speak aloud.

“Destinations?” His voice filled with enthusiasm. He chuckled,

“Ha! I just cannot figure out this concept. Vhat destinations are they talking about? Journey is enough for us travellers. Though they say!” His tone shifted with each word, growing heavy with foreboding. “They say if a system reaches its limits… it needs a reboot. But I am tired of vandering around the vorld in search of vhat are my limits? Vhen…” He suddenly paused speaking, and added a confession, dramatically.

“Vhen I, Kayne Vali, am the curse upon mankind.”

The narration was done by the man after he revealed his name. Chuckles remained escaping him effortlessly, echoing like a menacing cacophony.

Suddenly, Vali’s body seemed to glitch, and he began fading as though unseen forces were erasing him piece by piece. His arms and legs dissolved, swept away by the clouds, stolen by the winds of fate itself as he was rapidly descending to the ground. 

The clouds parted, and the earth now came into sight, drawing closer to him with every passing second, yet his expression remained peaceful. With a serene smile on his lips, he closed his eyes when two teardrops slipped free, carried above by the wind until they, too, vanished into the clouds like his limbs.

His face faded next, leaving behind a haunting blankness where his skin had been. And he seemed nothing more than a ghost in the form of human. A little more than a shadow in a heavy, black cloak, standing out against the sun peeking from behind the mountains. 

In that arcane moment, a chorus erupted from him—a cacophony of multiple voices. Each one carried a distinct tone as if many souls were bound all together just to proclaim the final declaration of Kayne Vali.

 “I… am the ‘Cursed Era of Valkaniz’!”

(Additional commencing ends)