The cycle

Kael

I had lost track of time. All I knew was that the being I had encountered was wrapped in mystery, its words clear in my mind like a sharp blade. "You will find the answers, Kael," it had said with a voice that belonged to no human, something deep and ancient. "But for that, you must cross the veil of time."

I didn’t understand what it meant. Not at that moment.

The being, which seemed to be a mixture of light and shadows, looked at me with an intensity that made my body shudder. "What you seek is not here, not now. To find what you lost, you must travel to the moment when it all began."

And then, like a whirlwind, a surge of energy flooded my body, pulling me from where I stood. There was no pain, but a disorientation so strong it almost made me lose consciousness. I tried to resist, to make sense of what was happening, but space and time seemed to distort around me, as if they were unraveling and rebuilding with each beat of my heart.

When I finally managed to open my eyes, I was no longer where I had been. The scene before me was completely different. The sky, darker than any night I had seen, seemed to be marked by scars from stars that had died millennia ago. The air was thick with tension, as if it was waiting for something — or someone — to happen.

I was in another place. In another time.

I looked around and couldn’t shake the strange feeling of déjà vu. The land was desolate, filled with ruins, but something about it felt familiar. As if I had seen it before. Not here, but somewhere, at some point that was not now.

Suddenly, a sharp vision appeared before me: a city, but not just any city. This one was ancient, with structures rising like monuments along a timeline that seemed lost. I walked toward it without knowing why, as though something was guiding me, pulling my steps toward what I was meant to see.

Then, I saw it.

A figure approached — a version of me, but younger, more radiant. He was holding hands with a woman, and his face was marked by a smile I didn’t recognize. It was the woman I had always known was connected to me, even without understanding why. Lena. But not the Lena I knew, not the one I shared all those moments of pain and love with. No. She was different here, something purer, more untarnished.

She looked at me, as if she knew I was there, but her eyes were filled with a sadness that pierced my chest. She was so distant, so... unreachable. The man beside her, that younger Kael, looked at her with a devotion I couldn’t understand, and somehow, that gaze made me uncomfortable.

It was as if that vision was taking something from me — forcing me to relive a past I still couldn’t comprehend. I had been there. I had been with her.

“No...” I whispered to myself, my words echoing through the vast emptiness around me. My mind was in turmoil. I felt that this scene was the key, the origin point of everything. A familiar pain enveloped me, something that seemed to come from the depths of my being. A feeling of loss. Of regret. I had lost this woman — Lena — but somehow, in that moment, I understood that it hadn’t been the first time.

The younger Kael turned to her and embraced her tightly, and I saw their future, or what could have been, like a shadow projected on the wall of time. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. But what I couldn’t understand was why my soul screamed with pain. Why was that consuming me? I knew something was about to happen, something that would change everything, but I still couldn’t see the whole picture.

And then, everything was erased.

The vision disappeared, and an overwhelming sense of emptiness took hold of me. I was once again standing amidst those ruins, my heart racing uncontrollably, my mind in tatters. What had I just seen? What did it all mean?

I had traveled back in time. I had seen a moment from the past that no longer belonged to me, but somehow, it was still connected to my destiny. I had seen Kael, a man from the past, with a woman I knew to be Lena. The pain of loss was still present, but now there was something else. A sense that the cycle wasn’t complete. And that, somehow, she and I were bound to that cycle.

My mind was on the verge of exploding with unanswered questions. And in that moment, one thing became clear to me: I needed to keep going, follow the trail of time, discover more about this past that still haunted me, and understand what had happened between me and Lena. What had united us and, in the end, separated us.

What happened, or what would happen, was not something I could change. But I had to know. I had to understand, or I would never find the peace I had sought.

And perhaps, in the end, that would be what led me back to Lena.