Between Light and Shadow

Tomáš Dubský

"Memory is not linear. It's a door someone once left ajar... and forgot to close."

Between Light and Shadow

is a literary mosaic of dream and reality, where characters become their own shadows, and a house breathes with a history that no one ever wrote.

Klára arrives at an old house, but instead of answers, she finds a girl who knows her dreams. Diaries open by themselves, mirrors remember differently, and footsteps sound before they fall.

The story unfolds on the border of time, reality, and the subconscious — between the light that reveals and the shadow that protects.

Chapter One

or: About How I Got Out of Bed and Walked into the Unknown

The voice of the city woke me. The wheezing breath of trams, the first arguments in the windows across the street, the rhythmic footsteps on the stairs that sounded like the metronome of life. I opened my eyes and knew today would be different.

On the windowsill lay crumbs from last night’s dinner. Enough to sweep up. I didn’t.

I got up, mechanically put on my coat and shoes—the ones I should’ve thrown out long ago. I didn’t look for keys, my wallet, or a reason. I just opened the door and left.

SCENE: THE STREET

It was one of those mornings where everything glimmers without sunlight. Where the asphalt shines as if after rain, though no drops ever fell. I felt like I was in a film—but without a director, without a script, just silence in my head.

Somewhere between the square and the bus stop, I saw her.

She was walking toward me. Really her. Her hair was tied back, the way she wore it when she wanted to go unnoticed. A canvas bag over her shoulder. And in her eyes—that expression, a kind of absent presence only she could pull off.

I wanted to say something. Call out to her. Stop time. But somehow, we just passed each other. Closely. Within reach. Without a word. Without a touch. Just the draft that lingers when someone walks by and takes something from you.

I stood there for a long time. I felt like she had seen me but didn’t recognize me. Or recognized me—and kept walking anyway.

Then I turned and walked back. This time on the other side of the street.

Chapter Two

Finally!

I woke in the middle of the day with a feeling that something inside me had ripened. In the morning, I looked like I’d lost my teeth and my nerves. Now, I was flooded with inner calm and the realization that today was the day.

In front of the mirror, I put on my hat and dreamily took it off and put it back on several times. Yes, that’s it. I’m going to her. Today. Now. No more delays. No more excuses. No more “maybe tomorrow.” Maybe it’s because I dared to face my dreams. Maybe it’s because I really talked to my father last night. Maybe it’s because the rest of the apartment feels like a hospital waiting room.

In short: I have to go out.

THE STREET

I stepped out shortly past noon. The sun burned, the street smelled of sweat and sand from the playground. I passed a newsstand where a man in a windbreaker fumbled for change. I passed a fruit stand where pears rolled in a crate like forgotten balls. I even passed a phone booth where someone was yelling into the receiver: “Write it down! Two crates. Not three, two!”

I stopped at the crosswalk. I waited for the green light like a soldier awaiting the order to attack. And then I saw her.

She stood on the other side of the street. She wore the red coat I remembered from last autumn. Her hair tied in a knot. She was looking in my direction, but her eyes gazed through me, as if searching for something far beyond. It was her. And it wasn’t. The woman I knew—and the one I’d never known.

The light turned green.

She took a step forward. So did I. We met in the middle of the crosswalk.

“Hi,” she said softly.

“Hi,” I replied, feeling like my mouth moved on its own.

For a moment, we walked side by side, each heading in opposite directions. I couldn’t turn around. Maybe she did. Maybe not.

Chapter Three

or: How We Went to the Market and Met a Cat That Spoke French

When I woke up, Olga was already sitting at the table, eating. Sunlight painted pale golden rectangles on the floor, and the air smelled of fresh pastries and sleep that hadn’t yet dissolved.

"You’re up late," she said without reproach.

"I fell asleep on your couch," I mumbled.

"You fell asleep with your shoes on."

"I wanted to be ready to run."

"Where to?"

"Anywhere."

Olga laughed. It was a different laugh than before. Not forced, but not entirely genuine either. As if it were trying to sound normal but didn’t quite believe itself.

THE MARKET

We went outside. The city was already bustling. Stalls overflowed with vegetables, flowers, cheese, and noise—everyone selling some kind of story.

At the apple stand, a cat latched onto us. Black, with a white chest, and—according to Olga—it spoke French. Well, that’s what she claimed, anyway.

"She said je suis fatiguée,"  Olga insisted gravely, "then turned her head away like a lady."

"That could’ve just been a meow," I said.

"You lack imagination."

"I have too much reality."

The cat followed us across the entire market. Sometimes it paused, scrutinized us like an inspector from a novel, then strode off with dignity, as if checking whether we were doing what we were supposed to.

We bought bread, coffee, and cheese. The cat got a piece of salty pastry and accepted it with a nod.

"This isn’t an ordinary cat,"  Olga declared.

"That’s what everyone says when they get a cat."

We sat on a bench by the fountain and ate. People streamed past like a river that never stops, only occasionally slowing, eddying, then flowing on.

"Remember how we once wanted to go to Lyon?"

"I remember."

"And we never went."

"Never."

We fell silent for a moment. The cat curled up beside me and purred softly.

"Maybe we should go now," Olga said quietly.

"Now?"

"Now might be the only time we really have."

I looked at her. At her old sweater, her slightly tousled hair, the crumb of cheese at the corner of her mouth.

And for a moment, I believed we actually could.

Chapter Four

or: About the Journey That Never Began, Yet Still Changed Direction

Evening arrived like an uninvited guest everyone knew would show up anyway.

We sat at the kitchen table. A map of France was spread across half the tablecloth, beneath it crumbs, and beneath those—our entire relationship.

"Lyon is here," Olga pointed.

"I know."

"And here are the Alps. If we wanted to disappear into the mountains."

"You want to disappear?"

"No. But I like knowing I could."

We sat there for a while. Tea cooled, and the lamplight traced the outlines of hands on the wall—hands that had already given up but still clung on.

THE PHONE CALL

The phone rang just as we’d finally agreed to go.

Olga answered. She listened for a long time. Just nodded, her face shifting colors like April weather.

"I have to go to my father," she said afterward. "It’s serious."

"What happened?"

"They didn’t tell me everything. But it probably won’t be long now."

The map stayed on the table. Its edges curled like waves. I folded it slowly, the way you cover someone who’s fallen asleep mid-sentence.

THE TRAIN STATION

I walked her to the train. She had a small suitcase, wide eyes, and silence where words should’ve been.

"Not coming with me?" she asked on the platform.

"Probably not."

"Why?"

"If I went, it would change something."

"And you don’t want that to change?"

"I don’t know what I want."

The train arrived like a sentence that means more than it says. She boarded. Closed the door behind her without drama.

I stood there. The market cat perched on a pole beside me. It meowed and turned toward the tracks.

"Je suis seul," I said aloud.

The cat looked at me. Maybe approvingly.

I sat on the station bench long after the train vanished.

The map of France stuck out of my coat pocket.

And I thought: maybe the journey never began.

But the direction had already changed.

Chapter Five

Where the Night Does Not Fade

It was strange—walking down the empty hallway, I had the distinct impression the lamplight wasn't following behind me, but that I was perpetually walking toward its uncertain glow. The corridor sloped slightly downward, the floor's chill seeping through my soles, and though I wore my coat, a shiver traced my spine like a manuscript writing itself.

The door at the end stood open. The room beyond should have been ordinary—like all the others here—yet something about it felt different. The air hung heavier, as if saturated with thoughts.

I entered.

A woman sat on the bed. No, not the woman from the window, yet... her hands, the way she tilted her head, how she examined her palms...

"You should have come sooner," she said.

"I... didn't know I was supposed to."

"There's much you don't know," she nodded. "But that's not criticism. Just observation. Like noting it rained yesterday."

I felt confused yet calm. The girl—woman—didn't seem to expect an answer. She simply sat, quiet as wind through leaves, her finger slowly tracing circles on the bedspread.

"What is this place?" I asked.

She raised eyes the color of dark water—not black, not blue, simply deep.

"This is the space between."

"Between what?"

"Between you and yourself."

I sat across from her.

"Then... who are you?"

She smiled, but not as people smile.

"Me? I'm just the one handing you the lamp."

And indeed—when I looked again, the room was dissolving, walls melting away, and in her hand stood an old-fashioned lamp with wick and flame, its light not blinding but revealing.

She took my hand, placed the lamp in my palm, and vanished without a word.

I stood in darkness. But now I held light. And for the first time, I knew which way to go.

Chapter Six

The Lightbearer

I did not walk quickly. Not out of fear, but because I knew time here flowed differently than in the world outside. The silence did not hinder my steps—it accompanied me like a voice humming softly in the dark. I cradled the lamp with both hands; its light neither flickered nor wavered, only breathed.

The path beneath me remained invisible, yet I knew exactly where to step. Each footfall answered a question I had not yet thought to ask.

Then—without warning—a man stood before me.

His face was at once familiar and foreign. Hair fell across his forehead, a long coat draped his shoulders, and in his hand he held an ordinary feather duster—the kind found in any school cupboard.

"That it?" He nodded at the lamp.

"Yes," I said.

"Good. Then all that's left is to sweep away the shadows."

I didn't expect him to smile—but he did. Then, with strange grace, he began moving around me. His duster circled the light, my shoulders, my head. Where it touched darkness, the dark shuddered. Not vanished. But faltered.

"Leave them be, they'll turn to dust. Just don't look back."

I couldn't tell if he was mad or prophetic. Still, I held the lamp steady. The light grew stronger.

"Things here aren't said aloud," the man remarked. "But this much you should know: you're no accident here."

"Then why am I?"

"Because you finally looked down. And up at the same time."

He vanished. Without a sound.

Where he'd stood, a trace remained—a faint, glowing line winding deeper into the dark.

I exhaled. And stepped forward.

Chapter Seven

Footprints in the Ashes

The path held no stones or branches—only soft, gray ash. As if someone had dusted the entire place with silence. Each step I took left a temporary mark before slowly smoothing over, disappearing.

I followed the faint trail left by the Lightbringer. Barely visible, yet always there. Like breath on a winter morning.

Nothing moved around me. Not the trees, not the air. Only the light from the lamp burning stronger within me now flickered occasionally against something unseen—as if memories orbited around me.

Then I saw the first house.

Low and wooden, it stood in the middle of nothingness. No one at the door, the windows dark. Yet I knew I had to enter.

The door didn't open to a knob, but to silence. Just bringing the lamp near made the hinges yield on their own.

Inside, it was warm. Not physically—more like the warmth of memory. On the walls hung portraits of people I'd once known but never met. They sat around a table. Silent. Only their eyes turned toward me.

One of them, a man with hands like roots, raised a finger. "You should have come sooner,"  he said.

"I didn't know how,"  I replied.

"But now you do. So listen."

And he began to speak. His voice was like wind through an old chimney. The words didn't fade but settled around me—on my shoulders, in my hair, under my nails. They spoke of time, of childhood, of nights when the world still whispered. Of what we lost when we learned to question.

When he finished, everyone at the table slowly stood. One by one, they each placed a hand on my shoulder. Then they vanished—not gone, but somewhere beyond the mirror standing in the corner.

Only the lamp remained. And the door, opening again on its own.

Chapter Eight

The Mirror Behind the Smoke

Outside was neither light nor dark. Only shadow—elongated, delicate, pulsing like sleeping breath. I walked on, even as the path crumbled beneath my feet and reassembled itself, as if uncertain whether to let me pass.

The lamp I carried had changed. Its flame was no longer orange but pale blue, and its light no longer illuminated space—but thoughts.

Suddenly, smoke appeared before me. Not rising, but descending. It fell from above like slow rain from burnt-out stars. And at its center stood a mirror.

Tall, slender, frameless. As if someone had cut a fragment of night and left it standing there.

When I looked into it, I didn’t see myself. Not immediately. Not as a body.

I saw the shadow that lived inside me. Silent, twisted, weary. But alive. Breathing. And waiting to be acknowledged.

I pressed my hand to the glass. It was warm, like another person’s palm. And then, in the reflection, I saw the world I’d left behind—a room with a table, voices speaking backward, shutters rattling in a wind that didn’t exist.

Something crackled behind me. I turned—and there, on the ground, sat a child.

Barefoot, in a gray shirt, with a face I knew but couldn’t place. The child stared at me, then pointed to the mirror.

"You still haven’t asked," it said.

"Asked what?" I replied.

"What you never dared to."

At that moment, I remembered—the question I’d carried under my tongue my whole life but never spoken. Just as I finally meant to voice it, the child smiled, stood, and stepped into the mirror.

It left nothing behind. Only a quiet resonance.

And me.

With a lamp that had gone dark in its blue glow.

Chapter Nine

Dream Coordinates

I woke while walking.

It wasn’t a room, a bed, or a familiar ceiling. Just a path—narrow, paved with uneven stones that breathed beneath my feet. The air smelled of ink and damp chalk. Above me floated a map. Not on paper, but etched into the air itself: lines of light, constellations like knots, interrupted coordinates in a language I didn’t perceive as words but as taste.

Each step sounded different. Once like a whisper, then like a soft crack. And then, a voice:

"Late, yet still in time."

It came from both outside and within. From the crossroads between two directions, where a bench stood. On it—a man. His face was drawn in lines. Delicate, precise. As if sketched in a notebook by someone who left the work unfinished.

"Who are you?"  I asked.

"A cartographer drawing what can’t be mapped."

He smiled. "I’m drawing you."

I didn’t understand, yet I felt paths shifting beneath my skin.

"Where now?"  I asked.

"Where questions change their meaning. Don’t ask ‘where’—ask ‘when.’"

Above us, the map curled. The lines collapsed into a single point. A flash, then silence. The cartographer dissolved like fog with words written on it.

All that remained was a scrap of paper in my palm. Damp but legible. On it, a coordinate that belonged to no place.

It was meant for a dream.

Chapter Ten

Codes Beneath the Eyelids

The silence wasn't empty. It clung to my body like heavy fabric. I stood in a space that resembled a library, but instead of books, the shelves held eyes. Some closed, others open and staring without fear. Each eye a key.

A message hung in the air, written in a foreign language I somehow understood immediately:

"Memory doesn't see—memory watches."

Suddenly, one eye lit up before me—green, flickering. Its gaze pierced through me like light through paper. Then everything shattered into fragments:

A girl with a head composed of sentences

A bus that never stops

A boy counting stars on his own skin

A gaze that drowns out memory

These weren't images—they were recordings.

And I understood: this was an archive of what we'd seen when we thought we were sleeping. Each eye—one dream. And me, an accidental visitor, without a key, but knowing the key was the question, not the answer.

I touched one eye. It was cold but alive.

And the world flipped like a film reel running backward.

Chapter Eleven

Awakening in the In-Between

I opened my eyes, but the world remained still. I didn’t know if I was awake or just dreaming of being awake. Everything was soft, slowed down. Time tasted like cotton, and sounds resembled singing underwater.

I stood in a room with a low ceiling and translucent walls—as if I’d stepped inside my own skull. The walls pulsed with faint light, as though synced to my heartbeat. And there, at the center, sat her .

A woman, but her face kept shifting—as if choosing which mask to wear today. Only her eyes stayed the same: deep, dark, silent.

"Welcome to the in-between,"  she said. Her voice sounded like a forest reflected on a pond’s surface.

"What is this?"  I asked.

"The place between dream and memory. You can only stay a moment—any longer, and you’ll be lost. You ask questions, but here, they take shape. You must mold them right."

Suddenly, I held a polyhedron in my hand. Twelve faces, each bearing a different word:

Who. Where. When. Why. Who. What. How. When. Who. Why. How. Who.

"Choose one,"  she urged.

I hesitated. Then pressed the face marked: Why.

The floor split open instantly, and I fell deeper—not into a void, but into an answer . It was damp, restless, and smelled of rain that hadn’t yet begun.

Chapter Twelve

Rule Twelve: Silence May Be the Only True Language

Morning came without light. The air in the apartment was thick, every word and thought hanging between the walls like a heavy veil. And I remained silent. Again. As I had so many times before.

No one called anymore. The phone sat mute, a witness to my decision: to withhold speech, to stop explaining, to cease repairing the shattered frame of a life I’d once hung on my walls.

That evening, I pulled out a box of photographs. Black-and-white fragments of a world where things still seemed solid. My mother on a beach, my father holding a newspaper, the child I used to be. Pictures that lied while telling the whole truth. They preserved smiles, froze gestures—yet failed to reveal what had happened just beyond the lens.

I sat on the floor for a long time, photos scattered around me like tarot cards. One showed a face I didn’t recognize. Maybe a school friend. Maybe me. Maybe no one at all.

Silence filled the room. And I understood it held reconciliation. Not surrender, not resignation—but acceptance that some questions aren’t meant to be spoken, and some answers arrive only when we no longer need to hear them.

I brushed my fingers across one photograph’s face. Smiled. Not at the past, not at memory—but at having finally found my own voice within the silence.

Chapter Thirteen

Rule Thirteen: Whoever Loses Their Shadow Also Loses Silence

I noticed it only later—how shadows began behaving differently. In the room where I spent my days, they grew restless. Slid along walls at odd angles, trapped light in impossible bends, as if obeying new commands.

For a long time, I ignored it. Then I realized it wasn’t just the apartment’s shadows.

People outside had changed too. They either spoke too much or not at all—as if afraid silence might reveal something they didn’t want to know. Their eyes held tension, a nervous anticipation. When I overheard a man say “She knows,”  I couldn’t tell if he meant me or someone else. But I felt the words belonged to me.

That night, my reflection’s shadow lagged behind in the mirror. Moved out of sync. Breathed at a different rhythm. In that moment, I knew the rules I’d created in my mind had expired. This wasn’t about escape or return anymore. It was about the rupture of the very space between light and shadow. Between inner and outer.

And that space was closing.

At dawn, I packed a bag. Just a notebook, an old key without a lock, and one yellowed photograph. I looked at the shadow waiting by the door. I didn’t run. Just stepped across the threshold.

And left the apartment—with all its shadows—behind.

Chapter Fourteen

Rule Fourteen: Not All Places Exist for the Sake of Return

The street greeted me with silence thicker than usual—as if everything were meant to happen in whispers, yet somehow more audible than ever before. I turned up my coat collar and stepped forward. Where to? I didn’t know exactly. But I knew I couldn’t go back.

The first few blocks, I walked almost breathless. Everything was familiar yet slightly shifted—just enough to make me unsure whether I was awake or still dreaming.

At the corner of Vrbová and Křídlová, by the noticeboard of an abandoned carpet store, stood a man with a suitcase. His coat was too thin for the season, and he stared into the shop window where only an empty platform and dust remained. I stopped. He looked at me.

"Do you feel it too?"  he asked.

"Feel what?"

"That the world is moving without you. And yet only because of you."

I nodded.

He didn’t wait for a reply. Just gave a slight bow and disappeared into the shadows between buildings. The suitcase stayed.

When I opened it, I found only a small mirror. And on its back, a pencil sketch—a map. Of escape? Or return?

I walked on.

Outside the town lay the forest. The one from childhood rumors, where trees grew according to their moods. I entered without hesitation. And when it swallowed me, I noticed the branches arched differently when I thought of the past—and differently when I thought of him .

Him , who stood in my shadow even when he no longer belonged there.

I took a deep breath and stepped among the trees. I wasn’t looking for a path. I was looking for silence. And hoping it would let itself be found.

Chapter Fifteen

On the Edge of Breath

The silence after the night rain was heavier than ever before. Mist clung low to the ground, as if earth and sky had merged into a single gray timelessness. Klára sat on a stone by the creek, her back to the slope she’d just descended on trembling legs. Water dripped from her hair, but she didn’t notice.

In her hands, she clutched a rock. Smooth, black, and cold—as if spat onto the shore by the night itself. A pale vein ran across it, a line dividing two worlds: light and shadow, past and future, death and what comes after.

Footsteps sounded behind her. She turned slowly.

"We found her,"  Jáchym said quietly. "The girl from the paintings. She’s alive."

Klára’s stomach tightened. "Where?"

"In the house under the pines. Old Viktor knew about her. Said she was waiting."

"Waiting?"  Klára repeated. "For whom?"

Jáchym didn’t answer immediately. His gaze drifted past her, into the forest’s depths. "Maybe for you."

The rock in her palm seemed to grow heavier. The air thickened and stilled. Klára stood.

Without another word, they walked back through the forest, among trees whose trunks vanished in the mist like shadows of an ancient memory. They were tired, drenched, yet each step felt crucial. Each step brought them closer to something that couldn’t be undone.

The house under the pines smelled of pine needles and dust. The girl lay on a bed, her face pale, hair fanned across the pillow. Her eyes were closed, but when Klára entered, she trembled.

"You came,"  the girl whispered.

Klára froze. She didn’t know her. And yet she did. Mirror. Doppelgänger. Voice from a dream. Everything connected in that moment.

"Who are you?"  she breathed.

"Your beginning,"  the girl answered. "And perhaps your end."

Chapter Sixteen

Imprint in the Dust

The house held its breath. Only the wood creaked under the weight of memories. Klára stood motionless by the bed as the girl—her near mirror image—breathed shallowly, almost soundlessly. Jáchym parted the curtains to let in light, but the sun kept its distance. Beyond the window lingered only grayness, as if the outside world refused to intrude.

"She speaks in riddles,"  Jáchym murmured, sitting at the writing desk to open an old journal.

Klára nodded. The girl's glassy, restless eyes darted to her again, seeing through layers of time. "I'm not the first to come,"  she whispered. "But I am the last."

"The last?"  Klára echoed.

"The last who gets to choose."  The girl clutched the blanket. Her fingers were thin, brittle as twigs. "Do you remember the house with red doors?"

Klára flinched. That house—lost among trees, where she’d once hidden as a child. She’d thought it a dream. It wasn’t.

"You were there with me,"  the girl said. "Then you left."

A wind stirred the room. The curtain fluttered; the journal’s pages turned themselves, settling on an illustration: two near-identical figures holding hands yet standing back-to-back.

"You have my name,"  Klára said slowly.

The girl nodded. "But we’re not the same. Just mirrors in different times."

Cold washed over Klára—not from the air, but from understanding. Her whole life had led here. To a choice. To the edge between two possibilities. Should she step forward or stay?

"What should I do?"  she whispered.

"Open the door,"  the girl replied. "But not this one."

Chapter Seventeen

The Boundary of Silence

A strange, almost sacred quiet filled the house. As if the walls were listening. As if the house had drawn breath and waited. Klára sat on the study floor, leaning against the bookshelf, clutching a stiffened letter that had once pulsed with her uncertainty. It was from someone who knew. Too much.

"Don’t ask about the house. Don’t ask about yourself. Don’t ask about the silence."

—just those three stark, ominous lines.

Outside, rain fell. Klára tracked drops shattering on the windowsill, their rhythm deceptively steady. Like a heartbeat that had long since stilled. She stared at the message, trying to decipher who could know so much. Why it felt familiar.

She rose and opened the silent typewriter. Planted the first sentence, taut as a wire:

"The house hears me."

Then stopped. Glanced back. In the gap between door and darkness, something shifted. Not movement—just presence. A shadow cast not by absent light, but by memory. By something circling closer.

She decided to leave—briefly. But the house spoke again. The phone rang. The unplugged one. When she lifted it, a cold exhale gusted into her. Then her own voice, faint, distant, undeniably hers:

"Klára… do you remember now?"

In the window’s dark glass, her reflection didn’t mimic her.

Just watched.

And waited.

Chapter Eighteen

Faces in the Dust

The morning was unnaturally silent. The sun couldn't penetrate the thick cloud cover, leaving everything submerged in a grayish twilight that dulled colors and blurred edges. Klára stepped into the hallway. The air smelled of old paper, dust, and something else—something she couldn't name but that had settled behind her breastbone.

The house was quiet. But no longer empty.

Footprints marked the stairs. Not from shoes. Bare feet, imprinted in dust that had materialized overnight into a fine film coating every surface. Klára followed their path upward to the old attic she'd never visited.

Pushing aside the heavy drape covering the attic entrance, she felt a sudden chill. Then she saw it: a mural hidden behind furniture and dust. Faces. Not portraits or drawings—but impressions. As if someone had captured memory itself in plaster. Silent screams, petrified pleas, eyes belonging to no living soul.

At the attic's center lay a notebook. Old, leather-bound, with yellowed pages. She opened it. The first page bore a name: Elena Vachová . The second page read:

"Nothing remains in the house that wasn't brought inside. And nothing awakened will sleep again."

Klára pulled her coat tighter. For a moment, she thought the faces in the wall shifted. That they were watching her now.

The house was beginning to speak—not in words, but in images, touches, shadows. And she knew she couldn't turn back. She had to remember. Not for herself. For those whose faces remained carved in dust.

Chapter Nineteen

The Voice Beneath the Floor

Night came early. Clouds pressed low in the heavy, silent sky as Klára sat in the attic wrapped in a blanket, Elena Vachová's notebook on her lap. Each page was like a layer of soil—old, crumbling, yet alive beneath. The handwriting wasn't elegant. It was urgent. Words broke unevenly, as if written by a trembling hand.

"I stayed here,"  one page said, "because there was nowhere left to go outside. The house called me. And the house remembers."

Elena's signature reappeared on every entry, as if she needed constant proof she existed. That her name still belonged to her.

When the wind rattled the windows, the floorboards beneath Klára creaked. Not just wood and age—something more. She held her breath.

Again. A crack. A whisper.

She lifted the lantern, tapping the floor gently. Silence.

Then: Tap... tap... tap...

A reply.

Her hands shook. Flipping through the notebook, she found it: "The house isn't empty. Sometimes at night, when all falls quiet, it answers. Through those who remained."

Klára grabbed a screwdriver. Slowly, breath held, she pried up a floorboard. Beneath lay not just empty space—but a cavity. And inside, tucked away: a narrow metal box engraved with a sun and shadow, blackened with age.

Within lay bundled letters. Some opened, others sealed with wax. All addressed to: Jakub .

The first letter began: "If you're reading this, the house has spoken to you too."

The house didn't forget. It stored memories like treasures within itself. And Klára had just opened one of the oldest.

Chapter Twenty

Wax Seals

Klára sat on the cold floor, letters smelling of wax and lost time in her hands. Each was addressed to a man never mentioned in the house—Jakub. The name echoed in her thoughts like a sound that wouldn’t fade.

She broke the first seal. The aged paper trembled as she unfolded it. The handwriting was precise, narrow, as if written in haste yet with intent.

"Jakub,

This is the last day the house breathes quietly. I feel the walls tightening, the floor no longer just wood—but a boundary. If you don’t return, I’ll hide what remains. The records. The voices. The waiting.

Elena."

Klára moved to the next letter. Each revealed a different shade of Elena’s voice—sometimes calm, sometimes furious, often desperate. Between the lines, words suggested the house was both sanctuary and prison.

One letter mentioned a name: Tereza . And a "small library" Jakub had left in a hidden room. Klára stiffened. A library. A secret room. In a house seemingly explored, something still lay concealed.

She remembered a shelf in the nursery once coming loose when she’d bumped it as a child. She’d thought it an accident. Now she saw differently.

Closing the box of letters, she descended the stairs. Silence ruled, broken only by her footsteps and the distant ticking of a clock slicing through time like a knife.

The nursery smelled of dust and wood. Klára pressed the shelf. Nothing. She tried another corner. Then a third.

A creak.

The shelf shifted slightly, as if inhaling. Then—it slid backward, revealing a narrow passage. Darkness waited beyond. A cold not just from stone.

Klára grabbed the lantern.

One step.

Two.

Three.

Then she saw it. A room no larger than a wardrobe, walls lined with shelves of books bearing embossed symbols—branches, eyes, trees, animals, the moon. In the corner, a small table with a mirror and beneath it, a neat stack of parchment notes.

Again—Elena’s handwriting.

"Not every voice is heard. Some you must first recognize within yourself. Then the house will open."

Klára sensed this was the next layer of the story, perhaps the darkest. But she also knew she couldn’t stop. Not now, when the house had begun to speak.

Chapter Twenty-One

The Voice in the Mirror

In the narrow room where even silence had weight, Klára bent over the parchments. Their edges were singed, some symbols illegible at first. But as her eyes adjusted to the lantern’s glow, words emerged—brief notes, some dated, others cryptic:

"The path: backward."

"The Lightbringer doesn’t come from outside."

"The house changes its face with memory."

"The mirror doesn’t lie. But it doesn’t speak truth."

Klára focused on the mirror. Frameless, old, and tarnished, it lay slightly tilted on the table. When she looked into it, she saw her face—and something more. A figure behind her shoulders. She whirled around. No one. Her heart pounded. Closing her eyes, she breathed as Viktor had taught her: Don’t flee fear. Trace its roots.

She looked again.

This time, the girl was there—younger than Klára, with thick dark hair and eyes that seemed to carry centuries of weariness. The figure didn’t move, only watched. Then her lips parted.

No sound came, but the words etched themselves into Klára’s mind:

"Don’t ask for truth. Ask for memory."

The mirror darkened. The girl vanished.

Klára stood, her breath quickening. This room, hidden like a language behind the house’s teeth, was a key—but not to answers. To deeper uncertainty.

Returning to the hallway, she found the house altered. The cracked wallpaper now seemed pristine. Missing stairs on the landing had become smooth, whole wood. Stranger still—the old coat closet was now a reading nook, exactly as Elena had described in a letter.

"The house changes its face with memory…"  Klára repeated aloud.

Then she remembered—not a personal memory, but her grandmother’s story about a girl who found a room showing only what had been forgotten. The longer she stayed, the more her known world faded.

Klára turned back to the hidden room. It was gone. The wall stood bare, smooth, no trace of movement. The lantern trembled in her hand.

The house had begun to remember. But whose memories was it reflecting?

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Names That Must Not Be Spoken

Klára walked among shadows that were not her own. The house breathed quietly, its wood neither creaking nor groaning. Everything stood unnaturally still, as if time itself had retreated to a corner, waiting to see what she would do.

She wrote in her notebook the words the mirror-girl had given her: "Don’t ask for truth. Ask for memory."  It sounded like a paradox, but in this house, paradoxes were law. Every ghostly encounter she’d had since arriving was gaining structure—not physical, but conceptual. The house was a map. Not of space. Of memory.

In the library, she found a new volume. Propped against the window frame, covered in a layer of fine, oddly fresh dust. She opened it. The book had no title. But every page bore a name.

The names were strange—some reminiscent of family stories she’d heard long ago, others entirely foreign yet chillingly familiar. Then she found one that stole her breath:

Elena V.

No doubt. The initial matched. The handwriting resembled the inked letters she’d discovered in the attic months ago. Beside the name, a note:

"Remained in the gap. Lost the key on purpose."

Klára remembered Elena’s writings about a "gap in time"—an invisible rift between events where things could vanish forever. Elena believed the house contained not just physical walls, but fractures in memory itself.

A page later: Viktor R.

"Keeper of the threshold. Knows the names but does not speak."

She looked up. The room shuddered. Outside the library door, a faint footstep. The door eased open on its own.

Viktor.

Or what the house remembered as him.

He entered as quietly as a shadow. His eyes were still but bright, like oil burning in a forgotten lamp.

"You’ve read it,"  he said softly.

Klára nodded.

"Then we can’t delay it any longer."

He stepped closer, extending a hand. Between his fingers, a scrap of parchment. A single word:

"Ingrávida."

"What is this?"  she whispered.

"A name. But not one used to call someone. This is spoken only once."

"And what happens then?"

"Then the house writes you into itself."

His voice was emotionless, but his eyes—his eyes held pity.

Klára realized she was no longer a visitor. The house had accepted her.

Or swallowed her.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ingrávida

The word from the parchment hung in the air like ozone before a storm. Klára repeated it silently but dared not speak it aloud. She felt that if she did, something would break irreparably—in the house, in time, in herself.

Viktor sat in an armchair that hadn’t been there before. He looked weary, like someone who’d long awaited an inevitable moment while wishing it would never come.

"Ingrávida isn’t just a name,"  he said quietly. "It’s an entrance."

Klára glanced around. The room was changing. Walls blurred, colors faded, yet something was being revealed—like lifting a veil to find that what you thought was real had only ever been a reflection.

"Where does it lead?"  she asked.

"Into the gap,"  Viktor replied. "Where those whose names are no longer spoken reside. Not because they were forgotten. Because they were erased."

Klára tightened her grip on the parchment. The paper was warm. Almost alive.

"Why should I go there?"

Viktor met her gaze. "Because you’re the last one who remembers."

Was it a lie? Or a warning?

She felt the floor tilt beneath her, as if the house were shifting its own memories. And somewhere deep within, beyond walls and beneath floors, something responded. It had a shape. Perhaps even a face.

Then the wind rose—not from outside, but from within the house’s hollows. Pages in the library turned on their own. Objects on shelves trembled.

Klára pressed her lips together. And spoke it aloud:

"Ingrávida."

Everything stilled.

Then began to unravel.

Not into chaos. Into order. Walls folded like the pages of a closing book. Light fractured like rays through a glass sphere. And at the center stood Klára, held in place by a force not her own—yet one she didn’t resist.

Viktor vanished.

In his place stood herself. Or her other self. A deeper shadow, a fuller version. The girl from her dreams—the one who never spoke but always watched. Now her lips parted:

"If you’re ready, follow the name."

A door that had never been visible eased open.

Beyond it wasn’t darkness.

It was memory.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The House That Remembers

When Klára stepped through the door that had appeared in the disintegrating room, she didn’t land on a floor—but into a feeling , thick and dense like smoke without scent, only texture.

The house beyond the threshold wasn’t the one she’d left.

Its walls were made of memories—some hers, others unrecognizable yet surrounding her with oppressive intimacy. Wallpaper breathed to the rhythm of old sobs. Windows fogged with gazes no one sought anymore.

She entered a hallway where every step echoed fragments of conversations:

"Klára, stop—"

"This isn’t your business."

"I’m the one who remembers."

Words belonging to no specific voice, yet true in the way truth sometimes hurts.

A girl emerged from a room.

Her—or who she’d once been. Hair pinned differently, eyes wide with an innocence Klára had long lost.

"You shouldn’t be here,"  the girl said, staring intently. "But since you came, you must know: the house won’t release you until you’ve walked through all of it."

Klára didn’t answer. Her body moved forward despite reason. Staircases rippled underfoot. Paintings changed frames depending on who looked. She glimpsed herself as a child, an adult, an old woman—all versions watching her with the same question:

"Which of us is real?"

She stopped before a mirror. No reflection—just space where one should be. Reached through it. Behind the glass wasn’t the world, but another room.

She entered.

A woman stood there. A face Klára knew only from photographs.

Mother.

"You came back,"  she said.

"I never really left,"  Klára replied.

"Yet you forgot everything."

They stood silent. Then her mother pointed to a shelf.

An old cassette tape lay there, labeled in tiny script: Last Voices .

Klára picked it up. Knew she’d have to play it—but not yet.

Not yet.

Footsteps sounded in the hall. Not people. Shadows. And shadows remember better than light.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Last Voices

The cassette was heavier than expected—as if holding more than magnetic tape. Klára gripped it while something inside her resonated like memories not her own yet knowing her better than she knew herself.

In the corner stood an old tape recorder—a bulky machine that would click softly before playback. Her footsteps echoed like drops in a deep well. Though no light shone, the shadows were clearer than ever.

She inserted the tape. Held her breath.

Click.

At first, just static as the tape unspooled. Then a voice:

A woman’s. Weary. Familiar.

"If anyone hears this… it means the house has let memory reopen. And that pain is no longer a trap, but a key."

Another voice, deeper, trembling: "We never meant to stay. But when someone forgets, the house becomes a body. And a body that remembers can’t heal until someone speaks the truth."

Dizziness.

Klára sank to the floor. Listened as voices alternated—past conversations, fragments, cries, whispers. Father. Mother. Someone who’d once waited outside, hoping to recognize her again.

Then the tape stopped.

The room had changed. No longer a space with a cassette—but a living room. The one from her childhood. A sofa where her sick mother once lay. A carpet where she’d learned to draw circles and suns. And by the window—

A figure.

Not her mother. Herself.

Grown. Another version.

"You won’t admit it,"  the other Klára said. "But when you unbury what you’ve hidden, you begin to change. The house knows this. That’s why it let you come this far."

"What should I do?"  Klára asked.

"Play the other side."

The cassette had no label. But she knew. Flipped it. Reinserted.

Another click .

Then—just breathing.

Soft. Calm. Steady.

Like someone finally asleep. Or at peace.

The sound ended.

The room vanished.

She stood in emptiness. Dust swirled around her. And between light and shadow, a thin line appeared.

A door.

Not emerging. Just waiting.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Footprints in the Clay

When Klára turned one last time to look behind her, the landscape outside the bus window had nearly dissolved into the morning mist. Trees blurred into indistinct shadows, and the road leading her away stretched like a thin gray line in a mirror between days. The silence around her felt unsettled—as if waiting for something to fill it.

She sat on the back seat, fingers clenched around her backpack strap. Inside were only three things—an old letter, a key, and a piece of broken ceramic. All three were heavy, not with weight, but with years, silence, and a pain she had never dared to voice aloud.

The village looked different this time. The road seemed narrower, the houses lower, the trees more restless. Yet nothing had changed except her. She had shifted since her last visit, without even realizing it.

At the square stood a dilapidated cottage with peeling plaster and red doors. Klára paused, breathing deeply—as if willing the place to accept her. Then she reached into her pocket for the key. The one that had once been lost among stacks of papers and silent misunderstandings.

She stepped inside.

The air smelled of clay, aged wood, and time itself. And there—beneath the window where a bench once stood—she found imprints. Someone had been here. Someone who knew she would return. Maybe not today, maybe weeks ago. But they had left traces. And in those ordinary marks pressed into the dust lay more than just the past.

She stopped. Sat on the floor. Closed her eyes.

Inhale. Exhale. The silence finally began to fill.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Voices in the Dust

Klára woke before dawn touched the house. The window was slightly open, and the cold morning air carried the scent of dew, damp earth, and something still unnamed. Wrapped in a blanket, she watched as furniture shapes emerged slowly from the dark—each piece solid yet mutable, like memory itself.

Her gaze drifted to the table where the letter lay. The same one she had carried for years without opening. This time, she pulled it closer. Tore the envelope. The paper was yellowed, the handwriting shaky, but the words pierced her chest like fine needles:

"I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me. But you must know the truth. About what happened at the old mill. About why we stayed silent. And what you were never meant to carry alone."

Klára didn’t cry. Instead, she felt a tension spreading inside her like black ink on wet paper. The mill… A word she’d heard so often as a child, always in whispers. Now it rang aloud for the first time—an echo of something buried too long in the earth.

She laced her boots and stepped outside. The path to the mill was overgrown, nearly invisible, as if nature itself wanted it forgotten. Yet each step carved its own route. When she finally stood before the crumbling structure, sunlight had just begun to graze the roof. Klára inhaled. Then entered.

Inside, it was silent.

And yet—a faint rustling, as if someone were whispering. Just the creak of wood, or memories lingering in the dust? She turned and saw a mark sketched in charcoal on the wall. A symbol. The same one she’d once seen in her father’s notes.

Beneath it, a single word: "Remember."

And in that word, she found the start of another path.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Beneath the Floorboards

Klára stood in the center of the mill, fingers still tracing the peeling wall where she’d found the symbol and the word: Remember.  It reverberated through her like an ancient cathedral’s silence. She knelt, running her fingers along the floorboard cracks, searching for the place where words end and memories begin.

Then—movement.

One plank shifted slightly under her touch. She tapped it. Hollow. Her eyes found a rusted nail. Carefully, she pried it loose with the knife from her coat pocket and lifted the board. Stiff, but when she created an opening, stale air rushed out—carrying the scent of oil, wood, and something that might have been fear.

Inside lay a chest. Small, metal, heavily corroded. Klára lifted it onto her lap as if it contained something living. Finally, she opened it.

Bundles of old photographs. Yellowed letters. A notebook. She pulled the notebook out immediately. The handwriting was familiar—her father’s. But beneath his notes, another script: neater, more delicate. Her mother’s.

"We both saw it, Klára,"  read the first lines. "Light came from the mill—light that didn’t illuminate. And in that light, something stood. Not a person. Not a shadow. Something in between."

Klára stopped reading. The floor trembled faintly beneath her.

Outside, wind flung the mill door open. Sunlight fell exactly where the symbol had been on the wall. But it was gone—as if the light had consumed it.

Then, from the mill’s depths: a muffled sound. Not a voice, but a tension—deep and heavy. Something waking. Or perhaps never having slept.

Klára clutched the notebook and ran for the door. She knew she’d have to return. But not yet. Not before understanding what her parents had truly meant to warn her about.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The House with Three Windows

Klára sat on the floor of an abandoned cottage at the forest’s edge. The notebook lay open before her. What she’d once thought were her parents’ diary entries now seemed something more. A dream journal? Prophecy? A map to doors no one wanted to find?

One page was marked with a black cross. Beside it:

"Three windows. One gaze. Don’t look beneath the third floorboard—unless you wish to see."

Below, an addendum:

"Not everything that seeks to be found wants to be seen."

Her mother’s words. Klára recognized the way her mother feared things—calmly. With a gentle resistance to truths too vast for reason.

The house with three windows wasn’t far. She knew it from stories—an old gamekeeper’s lodge beneath a crooked beech, long abandoned by people but never by animals. It drew those who’d left words in the notebook.

She arrived at twilight. The cottage stood silent, sagging, its plaster peeling like an old animal’s skin. Two windows were shut. The third—near the ground—was slightly ajar.

She breathed against the glass. It fogged. Or did it? When she reached out, cold met her fingertips. Touching the frame, she felt a faint buzz—electricity? Or memory?

She stepped inside.

The floor creaked. Everything was still, but not dead. As if someone had just risen and left. The third window was partially boarded. And beneath it—different floorboards. Not newer. Older, but more worn.

Klára took a deep breath. Then knelt, just as she had in the mill.

This time, no chest. Just a hollow space. And inside—something wrapped in coarse cloth. She reached for it. Heavier than expected.

Unwrapping it revealed an old crystal object. Not a mirror. Not a lens. Something in between. Staring into it, she saw herself—but different. A Klára standing by a ruined bridge, holding the same object, with a shadow stretching behind her that wasn’t hers.

She closed her eyes.

The image remained.

Chapter Thirty

The Mirror That Doesn’t Reflect

Klára sat on the bench by the stone table that had once been an altar. She placed the crystal object in front of her—she didn’t want to hold it any longer. She could still feel the unnatural chill it had left in her. And that gaze… her own, yet alien.

It was her. But different. Changed, stripped of hesitation, perhaps even stripped of humanity?

Meanwhile, darkness had fallen over the cottage she had left behind. The mist, which had clung close to the ground before dusk, was now rising. As if the world was trying to obscure itself.

She opened the notebook again. This time, she was looking for something specific—an explanation for the object she had found. She felt like she knew it, like she had seen it before. But where?

On one of the pages she had overlooked, there was a sketch. A circle divided into sections, runes like words from an unknown language, and in the center, an image of that "mirror." Beside it was a single note:

"It’s not what you see. It’s what you choose not to see."

She stared at the words as if they could help her decide what to do. But sentences without context are like smoke—you can breathe them in, but they change nothing.

A sound came from behind the wall. A short scratch. Klára froze.

It wasn’t the wind. And it wasn’t an animal.

She took the crystal into her palm and squeezed it—as if it could give her courage. Then she slowly stood and walked to the window. Nothing. Just gray darkness and the faint outlines of trees.

But the longer she looked, the more those outlines began to shift.

From the branches emerged shapes resembling human figures—too tall, too slender, their heads tilted downward as if listening.

Or lying in wait.

Klára stepped back. The crystal trembled in her hand again.

And then she understood.

What she had seen in the reflection wasn’t a warning. It was a choice. A possibility. Or a promise. Something that would happen… if.

She placed the object back on the table. Then she turned sharply to the notebook and flipped to the last page. It was blank. Only at the bottom, in tiny, nearly invisible letters, it read:

"When you no longer want it, it will come."

All that remained was to wait.

Chapter Thirty-One

Between Light and Shadow

By the time Klára left the cottage, night had fully fallen. The mist had risen like a veil, revealing the truth beneath the surface. She left the crystal where it belonged—its place wasn’t in her pocket, but between worlds.

She walked silently through the forest, where the trees bowed low and the leaves smelled of ancient earth. She didn’t need light. She knew the way now—not just with her feet, but with something deeper, something left in her from those days between dreaming and waking.

Everything she had encountered—objects, people, words from the notebook—had been just an echo. A resonance of something old brushing against her time again. But the decision was hers. It always had been.

At the edge of the forest, Silvie was waiting. Silent. As if she already knew.

"You’ve decided," she said softly.

Klára only nodded. And Silvie, for the first time, smiled.

Together, they walked to the clearing. To the place where, long ago, a stone had once stood—one no one sought anymore. Except now it was there again, jutting from the earth like a reminder.

Klára approached it. She reached out and placed her palm on its rough surface. The air trembled.

The shadows at the forest’s edge stopped.

And then they began to retreat.

Not running, not vanishing—just withdrawing. As if accepting they were no longer needed.

When Klára pulled her hand away, she was different. The awareness of what had been, what was, and what could be, left her not with fear, but with calm.

She turned back to Silvie, who nodded. "It’s done."

Klára took one last look at the forest.

And walked away.

Epilogue

The notebook remained on the table. The crystal rested quietly beside it. No one else entered that room. But the wind, seeping through the cracks in the walls, occasionally flipped its pages—as if asking what would happen next.

And when all was silent, a single sentence could be heard. Not in a voice, but as an echo:

"It’s not the end. It’s only balance."

Table of Contents

Between Light and Shadow

Between Light and Shadow

Chapter One or: About How I Got Out of Bed and Walked into the Unknown

Chapter Two Finally!

Chapter Three or: How We Went to the Market and Met a Cat That Spoke French

Chapter Four or: About the Journey That Never Began, Yet Still Changed Direction

Chapter Five Where the Night Does Not Fade

Chapter Six The Lightbearer

Chapter Seven Footprints in the Ashes

Chapter Eight The Mirror Behind the Smoke

Chapter Nine Dream Coordinates

Chapter Ten Codes Beneath the Eyelids

Chapter Eleven Awakening in the In-Between

Chapter Twelve Rule Twelve: Silence May Be the Only True Language

Chapter Thirteen Rule Thirteen: Whoever Loses Their Shadow Also Loses Silence

Chapter Fourteen Rule Fourteen: Not All Places Exist for the Sake of Return

Chapter Fifteen On the Edge of Breath

Chapter Sixteen Imprint in the Dust

Chapter Seventeen The Boundary of Silence

Chapter Eighteen Faces in the Dust

Chapter Nineteen The Voice Beneath the Floor

Chapter Twenty Wax Seals

Chapter Twenty-One The Voice in the Mirror

Chapter Twenty-Two The Names That Must Not Be Spoken

Chapter Twenty-Three Ingrávida

Chapter Twenty-Four The House That Remembers

Chapter Twenty-Five The Last Voices

Chapter Twenty-Six Footprints in the Clay

Chapter Twenty-Seven Voices in the Dust

Chapter Twenty-Eight Beneath the Floorboards

Chapter Twenty-Nine The House with Three Windows

Chapter Thirty The Mirror That Doesn’t Reflect

Chapter Thirty-One Between Light and Shadow

Epilogue