Ienzo and Elaeus went into the darkness hours ago. It may have been an entire day, perhaps more; the sky has begun playing tricks on me by the time I reach the inescapable conclusion. Frustrated, I walk the perimeter of the computer laboratory. There’s no one here, no materials left, no hearts for me to study. My research is stuck. I’m the only one left, I tell myself as I pace. The last one, the last being of flesh and blood…
You are not, a shadow whispers. Braig’s, I think, a small and cute thing that seems strange to have come from such a tall and loud man.
It’s a relief to think that I’m not the last, though I’m not sure who might remain. I hurry through the castle, looking for someone forgotten and overlooked, a cook, a chimney-sweep, anything. Finding no one, I rush through the garden. The town itself is crawling with shadows.
“Lead me to a heart,” I yell at them. “Show me who’s left here!”
No one.
There’s no one here.
Nothing is here.
Here is not.
They swarm around me, warm and velvet and not at all alive, their shadow-shapes coalescing into and out of forms I recognize. I shake my head. “You said– one of you said I was not the last one.”
You are not.
Not the last one.
Not one.
Not one.
Not.
Naught.
You are not.
And then it comes into focus, the answer I was so close to and so far away from. My heart was consumed just as theirs were. This — I balled my fists, feeling muscles and skin and the memory of a pulse — all this was an illusion. Humanity was an illusion. Flesh was an illusion.
To reach enlightenment, one must abandon illusion.
I close eyes that did not exist, and see the darkness that truly surrounded me. My mind clears and quiets in a way it hasn’t done in weeks. Yes. This is it. I let go.
