Antem approached the core. Its light no longer blinded him but had turned almost warm and alive. It seemed to watch him, waiting for his actions. He felt his heart racing, and each step brought him closer to a threshold beyond which there would be no way back.
Voices began to echo in his mind. They were quiet, whispering, as if thousands of souls were speaking to him at once.
“What do you see?” asked a voice behind him. It was the same man in the cloak, whose presence now seemed less threatening and more filled with calm strength.
“The core. The light. Is this… the truth?” Antem replied, without turning his head.
“It is not just the truth,” the man answered. “It is you. It is each of us. The core reflects what we have always feared to understand: time does not exist; there is only us, those who created this illusion to avoid losing ourselves.”
Antem pondered this.
“But if I destroy it, we will lose the illusion. We will lose… everything.”
“The illusion is a prison,” the man said.
“But the truth is infinity. Eternity has no shape, no limits. It does not grant comfort. It simply is.”
Antem realized he was faced with a choice: to leave the core intact and preserve the world as it was, or to shatter it and release eternity, even if it meant erasing everything that existed.
He pulled the sphere from his pocket. It pulsed again, reflecting his emotions. The lines on its surface glowed brighter with each thought, as if it were connected to his consciousness.
“I don’t have the right to decide for everyone,” Antem said, but his voice lacked conviction.
“You have the right because you chose this path,” the man replied. “You are not here by accident. You are the one who managed to see beyond time.”
Antem took his final step toward the core. He lifted the sphere, and in that moment, it began to shine so brightly he could barely hold onto it.
The Decision
“If I do this, I want to know that at least someone will rebuild the world,” Antem said. “That we will be able to create something better than this illusion.”
The man in the cloak nodded.
“There will always be illusions. But what you create will no longer be a lie; it will be a choice.”
Antem took a deep breath, raised the sphere higher, and dropped it into the core. At that instant, the light became unbearably bright. The space around him exploded in a wave of energy that surged through Antem, erasing everything he knew.
The End and the Beginning
When the light faded, Antem found himself in emptiness. There was nothing—no sounds, no movement, not even his own self. But he sensed that this was not the end. It was a point from which everything would begin anew.
And within this point, he heard a voice, but no longer from outside; it was from within himself.
“You are now the one who guards eternity.”
Antem opened his eyes. Before him, the world lay once more, but it looked different. People, buildings, the sky—everything seemed more real than ever before. But he knew this was no longer an illusion. It was a choice he had created.
He stood in the midst of this new world, and a faint smile appeared on his face.
He had not destroyed everything, but nor had he left behind the old lie.
His path was just beginning.