He walked halls where only dust served as companions, each step a lonely echo ricocheting off walls forgotten by time. The past seemed alive here, a fleeting whisper, a faint glimpse of a phantom that was never there. Shadows clung to his shoulders, partners in his solitary journey, as if begging him to pause and acknowledge their mute pleas.
In the periphery of his vision, reality sludged like a rickety dream, each image disfigured and corrupted by the somber hues of longing and nostalgia. Each corridor opened into rooms caked with memories, some belonging to him, others to strangers long dead and buried beneath ancient stones, beneath stories left untold.
Standing before an ornate mirror, cracked and veiled in dust, he spoke only to hear himself speak back: this echo was colder, it carried the weight of every secret he dared not share. “What truth lies beneath the surface?” he questioned the reflection that was not quite his own. The answer slurred and dripped like a molten shadow, pooling at the ideas of “perhaps” and “maybe” before bleeding into silence once more.
And as the echoes faded, the shadows whispered of paths untaken. Perhaps next he would find himself wandering falsified identities or the ghosts of the new.