The blue box part 5: Kym's warning

 The blue box part 5: Kym's warning. VIDEO

The tooth touches Obsidius's fingertip and the world tears apart. It is not a memory that enters it. It is an entire life—Lila Mûryer's life—compressed into a single instant of white light. Obsidius falls to his knees in the childhood hallway, but it is no longer a hallway. It's an open field under a purple sky, with two suns sinking into the horizon like closing eyes. He is not seeing this through his own eyes. It's inside Lila. 

Feel his fear, his determination, the weight of a name that is not his but that he wears like a second skin. "Don't be scared," says a voice. It is not the voice of the photograph nor that of Sarah. It's Lila's voice, but younger, more broken. A girl. "Don't be scared, brother. "This hurts less if you don't get scared." Obsidius tries to speak, but his seven-year-old throat emits only a moan. The membrane in his left eye pulsates with each beat of that heart that is not his and, yet, beats in his chest as if it had always been there. 

The purple field dissolves. Now he is in a dark room. There are broken mirrors everywhere, shards reflecting fragments of a face he doesn't recognize but knows is his—Lila's face. In each fragment, she is different: girl, teenager, old woman, and then girl again. Time does not flow linearly for her. He never did. “The blue box is not a key,” Lila says from somewhere behind the mirrors. "It's a lock. And you are the key, Obsidius. 

You always were. That's why the membrane grew on you. That's why she found you. "Sarah?" he manages to articulate. Lila laughs, but it's not a happy laugh. "Sarah doesn't exist. Sarah is me. Sarah is the mask I put over you so you could forget. So you could survive without knowing what you really are. The tooth in his hand becomes hot. Obsidius opens it and sees that it is no longer a tooth. It's an eye. 

A human eye, small and dry, with an iris the same purple color as the sky of that world he has never visited. “Save it,” Lila whispers. "When the time comes, you will have to look through it. And what you see will change you forever. The mirror room is shattered. Obsidius is back in the childhood hallway, alone, with the tooth in the palm of his hand and a cold certainty in his chest: he has never been alone. Someone has been inside him from the beginning. And that someone just woke up. Obsidius's eyes bulge as he feels a familiar presence within himself, the purple eye pulsating within his grasp. The air grows cold and thickened around him, each step quieter than before. 

Lila's voice whispers from within, her words sharp like shards of glass. "The blue box... part four: Lila's awakening." Obsidius' face contorts with a mix of dread and realization—Sarah never existed; she was always inside him all along. His hands tremble as he stares into the purple eye, seeing his reflection for what it truly is—an abomination, a monster born from lies and deceit. The air is thick and cold as Obsidius's vision narrows into a memory. Lila's hand trails over his chest, her fingers lingering on the blue box he wears beneath his shirt. It pulses with a faint purple glow, each beat resonating through him like music to an old wound. 

The room around them feels charged, as if electric currents course through every particle of air. Obsidius's eyes are hollow mirrors reflecting back memories too painful for words, fragments that cling stubbornly to the edges of his consciousness. Obsidius's chest swells with an almost palpable energy as Lila's fingers glide over the pulsing blue box. Her touch is not gentle but tender, as if she recognizes some hidden truth behind its shimmering surface. 

As his vision deepens into a clear memory of Sarah, he feels her presence beside him, her spectral form appearing more vividly in their shared recollection. Lila's eyes, normally so distant and detached, seem to light up with a spark of recognition or connection when she touches the blue box, as if her magic is somehow tied to her own destiny. The blue box's pulsating light envelopes Lila in a cocoon of unexplained warmth. Obsidius's chest swells with an almost palpable energy as Lila's fingers glide over the pulsing object, her touch tender yet strangely possessive, as if she can feel its secret truths leaking into her very skin. 

Her eyes flutter closed and her breath quickens in a manner neither of them have seen before. In this moment, Obsidius knows he has stumbled upon something beyond his wildest dreams – or nightmares. He watches Lila with a mixture of awe and fear, wondering what dark, hidden purpose might lie within the cryptic blue box’s obsidian surface. Obsidius watches Lila from a hidden vantage point. Her fingers trace the intricate patterns of the blue box as if caressing a soft phantom. His heart roots, but he maintains his composure, absorbing her every gesture through the box's light. In the corner of his eye, he spots Kym approaching the threshold. 

The tension in the room grows palpable, each heartbeat aligning with the rhythmic pulse of Lila's movements. The blue box hums softly in Lila's hands, a melancholic symphony of its own. Obsidius sees his fingers close around it, as if seeking solace from memories he can barely grasp. Her eyes, usually haunted and distant, now hold a flicker of something unexplained — hope? Fear? He cannot tell. The blue box remains an enigma to him, a vessel of unknown power that seems to whisper secrets of the past. Lila's reflection in the glass shows her staring back with a strange intensity, like she has eyes beyond what meets the eye. Obsidius watches from behind a wall door, his heart thumping against his ribs, unable to resist this mystery any longer.

Obsidius comes out from behind the door. The creak of wood under his foot is thunder in the silence. Lila is not startled. It doesn't turn. He just stops the movement of his fingers on the blue box and waits.

“I knew you were there,” she says without turning around. His voice is flat, tired. "You always know. Since you have my eye, you always know where I am.

Obsidius looks at the purple eye in his palm. Feel the weight of their accusations. "Yours?"

She turns around. For the first time, Obsidius sees her whole: not as a ghost, not as a memory, but as a woman of flesh and blood. His right eye is brown, normal. His left eye is an empty socket, covered by a black silk patch.

"Yours," Obsidius repeats.

"Mine." Lila takes a step towards him. "When I crossed from my world to yours, the bridge did not support my full weight. Something had to be left behind. My eye crossed the void before I did. It fell into your timeline, into your childhood, into your little blue box. And you found it."

The blue box vibrates on the table. The eye in Obsidius's hand pulses in the same rhythm. "And the membrane?" he asks. His voice trembles.

"It is the conduit. While my eye was missing, the membrane grew on you to keep the connection open. So that I could see you. So I could talk to you without you knowing it was me.

“Sarah?”

Lila closes her right eye. "Sarah was the name I gave that voice so you wouldn't be scared. So you would believe he was a real person, not an entity hanging on the other side of a hole in the universe.

The purple eye warms. Obsidius feels something pulling at him from within, as if the eye wanted to return to its owner.

"What if I give it back to you?"

Lila opens her eyes. The void under the patch seems to stare at him. "Then the membrane will close. And you will remember who you really are, without my voice in your head. Without Sarah. Without Lila. Only you."

The door bursts open. Kym Mûryer stands in the doorway, with a gun in her hand and an expression that Obsidius has never seen on her: fear.

"Don't give him anything back," Kym says. "If that eye returns to its socket, she will cease to be human. And you will cease to exist.

Obsidius's voice trembles as he stares at Lila, his eyes wide and filled with fear. The air crackles with an unseen tension, each moment stretching until it feels like a lifetime. In the silence, Kym's finger is barely resting on the trigger of his gun, poised to move in the blink of an eye. Lila remains silent, her gaze fixed on the purple eye within Obsidius's sleeve, the only hint of a physical connection between them. Obsidius takes another breath before continuing. "Don't give him anything back," he repeats with a deeper tone. "If that eye returns to its socket, she will cease to be human. And you will cease to exist." His eyes lock onto Lila's, and she seems to weigh each word carefully as she registers the full weight of what Kym is offering. The moment hangs suspended between threat and ultimatum, an eerie silence pressing against the edges of their reality.