There are accounts—fragmentary, contradictory—of a man by that name. A minor poet in the salons of Paris, a soldier lost in the Napoleonic wars, a condemned prisoner who vanished from his cell before the executioner arrived. In each case, the same detail: he was last seen at dusk.

A manuscript surfaced once, bearing his name in an elegant, spidery hand, though scholars dispute its provenance. It contained a single phrase, written again and again, as if the author had been attempting to anchor himself in time: The night does not begin; the night does not end. The script grew more erratic toward the final page, as though the hand that wrote it had begun to tremble—or dissolve. The manuscript was last recorded in the archives of a provincial library, but when a researcher sought it out years later, he found only an empty space where it had been. The librarian, an old man with failing sight, insisted it had never been catalogued at all.

Other traces exist. A lithograph from the early 19th century depicts a cloaked figure on the threshold of an unnamed city, his back turned to the viewer. An unsigned sonata, found in a forgotten drawer in an antiquarian shop, bears the notation à Gaspard, qui veille toujours—“To Gaspard, who always watches.” A traveler in the Levant, writing in his private journal, describes a man who spoke in flawless Arabic yet had the diction of a Frenchman from another century. The traveler pressed him for his origins, but the man only smiled and said, I have always belonged to the night.

Of course, there are those who claim that Gaspard is not a man at all, but a cipher, a reflection of the one who seeks him. Some have suggested that his name is a corruption of an older, forgotten word, a term once used for a particular kind of dream—one that occurs in the space between waking and sleeping, a dream that is not remembered but nonetheless alters the dreamer.

It is unclear whether Gaspard is dreaming, or whether he himself is the dream. The accounts of those who have glimpsed him do not agree on the matter. But they do agree on one thing: wherever he is seen, the night follows.

It’s not clear if he is dreaming, hallucinating, or caught in a liminal state, but the suite suggests a progression deeper into the subconscious. At first, the images arrive gently, like whispers from another world.

Gaspard does not remember lying down, but he feels the slow descent of sleep, as if sinking into dark water. He senses the outlines of a room that is no longer quite his, its dimensions altered, its corners vanishing into shadow. The objects around him exist in a state of uncertainty—at times familiar, at times estranged, their surfaces flickering between the known and the unknowable. The window remains where it should be, but the night beyond it is vast, endless, waiting.

There is no transition, no moment of realization, only the sudden knowledge that he is no longer inside. He is standing at the edge of something fluid and luminous, a world shifting between waking and dreaming. The air hums with a music he cannot name, a melody without source or end. It is not being played; it simply is. The night itself listens.

From the water, a voice calls to him.

Tonight, Gaspard lies in a room that is his and is not. The familiar shapes of his belongings are uncertain, flickering at their edges. The window looks out onto the city, but the city is vast, impossible, more like the memory of a place than the thing itself. He cannot remember undressing, yet he is in bed. He cannot remember lying down, yet he is sinking.

A thought occurs to him with unsettling clarity: This is how it happens.

There is no threshold, no moment of departure. The room recedes without moving. The world is no longer the world.

He stands on the shore of a water that is not water. It moves, but without waves. It reflects, but not the things above it. The air hums—not a sound, but the presence of one, waiting to be heard.

Then, the voice:

A woman’s, or something like a woman’s. Calling him from the water.

She calls him by name, though he does not remember telling it to her. The voice is laughter and longing, the melody of a secret never spoken aloud.

Gaspard looks upon her, and she is neither there nor not there. Her body is the water itself, shifting in ripples that become hair, arms, a face that vanishes the moment he understands it. Eyes like reflections on a lake.

“I have sung for you,” she whispers, “in the waves you never saw, in the fountains that never reached your lips.”

Her fingers—if they are fingers—trace the air before him. A gesture of invitation, or a spell. She speaks of the kingdoms beneath the surface, the cities without light, the halls paved with pearls. She asks him to follow.

Somewhere beyond this moment, in a world where time still holds meaning, Gaspard knows that he has dreamed this before. A childhood fever, a forgotten book, the shape of a story he once heard and then discarded. He knows what comes next.

But knowledge is not refusal.

The surface of the water—if it is water—breaks. She rises to him. The laughter remains, but it has changed. It is deeper now, less a song than the echo of something vast and old.

He steps forward.

<>

His foot touches the surface, and the water does not resist him. It accepts. It yields without breaking, as if it had always been waiting for this moment. The reflection beneath him is not his own.

Ondine encircles him, her laughter curling through the air like ripples through a still pond. “You have always belonged to the water,” she says, though he does not remember making such a promise. Her arms, or the idea of arms, coil around him. He feels their cool weight, but when he looks down, there is nothing.

The world above the waves dims. The city, the room, the memory of walls and windows—they are distant now, dissolving like mist in the morning. There is only her voice and the soft, insistent pull downward.

The surface trembles, blurring the boundary between one world and another. He sees glimpses of what she offers: towers woven from coral, cathedrals with ceilings lost to the depths, streets paved in mother-of-pearl. Shapes flicker in the water—figures moving in slow procession, their eyes luminous, their mouths singing a song older than time. He cannot tell if they are welcoming him or mourning him.

He knows now that there will be no return. The air above is thin, fragile. The world of stone and firelight has receded beyond reach. Even if he turned back, even if he willed himself to awaken, he would find nothing but echoes.

A final thought, as the last breath leaves him: This is how it happens.

Ondine laughs once more, and the water closes above him.

<>

But the water does not drown him. It does not fill his lungs, nor does it bear him down into darkness. Instead, it holds him in a weightless suspension, neither floating nor sinking, as if waiting for something unseen to decide his fate.

Ondine is everywhere now—her voice in the current, her touch in the cool pressure against his skin. The visions around him sharpen: the pearl-paved streets are real, the coral towers impossibly high. Through the shifting light, he sees figures moving, their bodies slow and sinuous. They are neither alive nor dead, neither flesh nor specter.

“You feared drowning,” Ondine murmurs. “But drowning is only the first step.”

He tries to speak, but the water steals the words from his lips before they are formed. A new sound emerges in their place—something less than speech, more than silence. A song, or the beginning of one.

The figures turn toward him. Their eyes are vast, luminous. They are waiting.

For a moment, he resists. He does not know what they expect of him, but something within him—some thin remnant of the world above—recoils. He reaches for a memory of himself: the room, the window, the name Gaspard.

Ondine sighs, amused. “You were never meant for that world.”

Her arms—he is certain now that she has arms—draw him closer. Her lips, colder than the deepest currents, brush his ear.

“Sing.”

The figures watch. The city of the drowned waits.

And Gaspard, treasurer of the night, opens his mouth—

And sings.

<>

At first, the sound is unfamiliar, foreign to his own ears. It is neither breath nor voice but something fluid, something that bends and twists like a current through the deep. It does not belong to him, and yet it is his.

The figures in the pearl-lit city begin to stir. They do not speak, but their bodies move in slow, deliberate response. Some bow their heads in recognition, others raise their hands as if in benediction. The song—his song—threads through them like an unseen tide.

Gaspard feels it, too. A pull, not downward but inward, as if something long buried is being called forth. His limbs are light, drifting as if they no longer belong to him. The memory of air, of weight, of a world above water, thins like mist in morning light.

“You are one of us now,” Ondine whispers. Her face, beautiful and inconstant, shimmers before him. “You have always been one of us.”

The thought does not frighten him. What was he before? A name, a shadow in an uncertain room, a fleeting self in a world that no longer exists. The moment stretches. There is no past, no future, only this music, this movement, this endless, shimmering now.

The figures begin to turn away, drifting back into the luminous avenues of their silent city. They have heard what they needed to hear. The song is complete.

Ondine watches him, her eyes dark and endless. “Come,” she says. “There is more to see.”

And so Gaspard follows, singing as he goes, his voice indistinguishable from the tides.

<>

Gaspard hesitates.

The song still lingers in the water, woven through the streets of the drowned city. He feels it moving within him, threading itself into his very being, dissolving the last fragile barriers between himself and this world beneath the waves.

But something resists. A thread of self, thin as a whisper, pulls taut inside him. He does not belong here. Not yet.

Ondine’s expression shifts—curiosity, then amusement, then something darker. “You do not wish to stay?”

The city around them shimmers, becoming less a place and more an idea of a place, its edges blurring into the water. The figures—no longer distinct—watch without watching. The song that once carried him now presses in, insistent. It does not want to let him go.

“I cannot,” he tries to say, though the words are swallowed before they reach the water’s surface.

Ondine tilts her head. “You already have.”

For a moment, Gaspard believes her. The memory of the world above seems distant, an illusion, something imagined rather than real. The thought of returning to it—its weight, its silence—feels impossible. He has stepped too far. He has passed through the veil.

But then, as if from nowhere, a sound. Distant, rhythmic, steady. A bell. A single chime ringing out, thin but undeniable.

The gallows.

The weight of death, waiting just beyond the water’s edge.

It is enough. The memory crashes over him, cutting through the song, through Ondine’s laughter, through the dream that has tried to claim him. The figures of the drowned flicker, their luminous eyes dimming. The water darkens, losing its shimmer.

Ondine’s face—so close to his—becomes uncertain. Her hands reach for him, but he is already rising, already breaking away. The current fights him, clinging, dragging, but the tolling bell grows louder, pulling him back, back—

And then, silence.

Gaspard opens his eyes.

He is in his room, or something like it. The walls are not quite steady. The window stares into a night that feels vast, too vast. The city beyond is there but not. His limbs are heavy, his breath thick in his chest. The bed beneath him is familiar, but he does not remember lying down.

Outside, somewhere far away, a bell chimes again.

He does not know if he is awake.

<>

The bell fades, leaving only the hush of midnight. Gaspard sits up, unsure if his body is his own. The weight of the dream—if it was a dream—clings to him, damp as river mist. His hands tremble, though not from cold. The song still lingers at the edges of his mind, not a melody but the memory of one. He resists the urge to hum it.

The room is dim, but not dark. The window glows faintly, though there is no moon. The city beyond should be familiar—rooftops, chimneys, the flicker of gaslight—but something is wrong. The streets are too still. The sky is too deep. He cannot tell where the horizon ends.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed. The floor is solid, yet he feels unsteady, as if the world beneath him is shifting in unseen currents. He forces himself to stand, to step forward. The boards creak beneath his feet, grounding him, anchoring him. He clings to the sound.

At the window, he hesitates before looking out. The city is there, but it is waiting. That is the only way he can describe it. He has returned, but something is not finished.

His reflection stares back at him in the glass—his face, his eyes. But for a moment, just a flicker, there is something else. A shimmer. A ripple. A presence just behind him.

He does not turn.

Instead, he raises a hand to the glass. His own fingers meet his own reflection, solid, real. And yet, beneath them, faint and distant, he swears he hears it—

Laughter.

Soft, lingering, and just below the surface.

<>

Gaspard pulls his hand away from the glass. The laughter fades, or perhaps it only sinks deeper, retreating where he cannot follow. He tells himself it is only his imagination. That it is only the lingering shadow of a dream.

He turns from the window. The room remains uncertain—its angles slightly wrong, its corners deeper than they should be. His belongings are where they always were, but they feel like props, set pieces in a world hastily reconstructed around him.

He crosses to the small desk in the corner. There, scattered pages of his own handwriting—poems half-written, lines abandoned. He searches for something familiar, something to fix himself to the waking world. His fingers brush the ink-stained paper, but even his own words feel distant, written by a hand not quite his own.

The bell has stopped. The silence presses against him.

He glances toward the mirror above the washbasin.

For a long moment, he does not move. He does not want to look.

But he must.

Slowly, he raises his eyes. His own reflection stares back—pale, wide-eyed, the face of a man unsure if he has awakened at all. And yet, behind him—

Nothing.

No shimmer, no ripple, no trace of the world beneath the water. The room is empty. He is alone.

Still, he does not trust it.

Gaspard exhales, unsteady, and reaches for the pitcher of water beside the basin. The act is simple, ordinary—filling the bowl, splashing his face. Cool drops run down his skin, grounding him in the weight of his own body.

But as he lifts his head, droplets fall back into the basin, disturbing the water’s surface—

And for the briefest moment, the reflection that stares up at him is not his own.

A woman’s face, laughing, vanishing.

Gaspard stumbles back, the bowl tipping, water spilling onto the floor. He presses himself against the desk, heart hammering in his chest. The basin is still. The mirror shows only his own frightened eyes.

He does not move for a long time.

Then, carefully, he steps over the spilled water and moves to the chair by the window. He sits. Waits. Watches the city.

He will not sleep again tonight.

LE GIBET

The night outside Gaspard’s window deepens, and with it, the sense of dread that has been following him since he awoke—or perhaps since he never truly awoke. The room feels heavier now, the air thick with an unspoken presence, pressing in from all sides. He cannot escape it; the quiet hum of inevitability hums through the walls, as persistent as the bell he heard earlier.

The clock on the wall ticks, and in its rhythm, he hears something else—an echo of the bell from the dream, a tolling that repeats in his bones. His mind flickers back to the memory of the gallows, the sound of that bell tolling steadily, endlessly, as if time had been reduced to that single note.

Gaspard shudders. The sun should have set by now, but instead, the light outside the window seems to linger in strange, muted tones, casting long shadows across the room. He cannot remember the last time he saw the sun set, or whether the night ever fully came.

A cold sweat beads on his forehead. His hands tighten around the arms of the chair, and he feels as if he might be pulled into something far darker than sleep, pulled into the very structure of fate itself.

The tolling bell rings again.

Gaspard is no longer sure whether it is real, or whether it has become part of the static noise in his mind, a fixed point around which everything else revolves. He can almost feel the weight of it—the sound pressing on him, suffocating the air, filling every corner of the room. He tries to close his eyes, but the image forms nonetheless.

The gallows. The rope hanging taut. A silhouette swaying in the distance, framed by the dying light of the setting sun. There is no movement, only the stillness of inevitability. The body hangs motionless, waiting for something that will never come. And the bell—endlessly tolling, marking the passing of time that will never return.

It is not just an image—it is an experience. Gaspard feels it as he feels his own pulse. The weight of death, the inevitability of it, the way it looms in every moment. He cannot escape it, cannot pull away from it. It is as much a part of him as his breath, as his heart, as his mind itself.

The room seems to close in on him.

The tolling bell continues. The presence of the gallows is here, in the room, in his mind, at the edges of his consciousness, impossible to shake. Gaspard looks out the window again, but the city has not changed—it is still there, waiting, frozen in its strange, muted twilight. The air is still thick with the sense of inevitability, as if the whole world is hanging, suspended in that one moment, that one constant note.

And then, as if through the bell’s very tolling, he hears it again—the sound of laughter.

Soft. Lingering.

Gaspard’s heart races. It is Ondine, of course—it must be. She is always there, just behind him, just out of sight, like the shadows that stretch across the walls. The water that should have drowned him now seems to seep through the cracks of the room, cold and inevitable, wrapping him in its grasp.

He reaches for the window again, as if to escape. But this time, his reflection does not stare back. Instead, the window shows only the gallows, hanging there in the distance, its shadow growing longer as the sun continues to sink. The bell tolls, and the world tilts.

Gaspard closes his eyes, clenching his fists. He is trapped here, suspended between death and waking, between dreams and the world that he knows. The bell tolls once more, louder now, like a hammer falling against the earth. And with it comes a realization: he is the one who hangs in the distance.

The tolling bell, the shadow of the gallows, the suffocating inevitability of it all—this is the truth he has been avoiding, the truth that has been waiting for him all along.

The final note rings out, and Gaspard falls silent.

<>

The silence that follows is deafening. The bell’s toll has ceased, yet its echo lingers in Gaspard’s chest, like the final beat of a heart that knows its end is near. He sits motionless, caught in the moment where time has stretched beyond its natural limits, suspended in a vast emptiness. The weight of the inevitability presses down on him, as though the world itself is holding its breath.

The image of the gallows hangs before him, a cruel mirror of his own fate. His mind fights against it, seeks any escape, any diversion from the knowledge that has clawed its way into his consciousness. But the more he struggles, the more the truth becomes clear, a shuddering certainty: the gallows are not just a symbol, not just a vision—they are real, as real as the room he sits in, as real as his own body.

He stands, trembling. His legs feel strange beneath him, as though they are no longer entirely his own. The room spins, a carousel of distorted reflections, shifting in the dim light. The walls breathe, the corners stretch away, and for a moment, he is caught between two worlds—one where the gallows await him, and another where he is merely a man who has awoken to something too vast to comprehend.

He stumbles toward the door, unsure of his direction. The weight of the bell tolls in the air, the sound too solid now, pressing against his temples, vibrating through his bones. The laughter he once thought distant returns, faint but unmistakable, curling around the edges of his thoughts.

“No…” he whispers, his voice trembling in the cold air of the room. “I won’t go back.”

The door opens before he touches it, and the world outside is waiting. It is the same city, the same streets, but the sky is darker now, deeper, as though it knows something he does not. The air carries the scent of rain, though the clouds are still far away. A quiet, oppressive stillness hovers, suffocating the once-familiar sounds of the world.

Gaspard steps out into the night, his footfall light and uncertain, as though the ground itself could give way beneath him. The tolling bell echoes behind him, growing fainter with each step he takes. Yet it is not truly fading—it is merely shifting, becoming part of the rhythm of the world around him, a constant presence in the background, waiting for him to accept it.

He walks on, unsure where he is going, unsure if it even matters. The city unfurls before him like a labyrinth, streets stretching into impossible distances. He sees the shadows of others, people who move like ghosts, their faces indistinguishable in the dark. But they do not see him. They do not see anyone, lost in their own paths, drawn forward by the same, unspoken force.

The streetlights flicker, casting brief moments of light across the pavement, then fading again into the dark. Gaspard’s heart races. He feels the pull of the gallows once more, not as a place, but as an inevitability. He knows the bell will toll again, knows that the shadow will fall upon him. But he cannot turn back. He cannot let the vision consume him again.

The city begins to dissolve. The streets twist, the buildings lean, and the air grows thick with the scent of something ancient, something old and decayed. Gaspard stumbles, but the ground beneath him gives way—not as dirt, not as stone—but as the deep, dark waters of the city’s past, pulling him down once more.

And then, before him, there is the shadow of the gallows again. Larger now, inevitable, impossible to ignore. The B-flat ostinato, steady and relentless, rises once more in his mind.

But this time, he does not allow himself to be drawn in. This time, he rejects it. The vision blurs. The bell rings once more—louder, harsher—but Gaspard wills it silent. He wills the silence, the void, the nothingness that will free him from the shadow of the inevitable.

And for the first time, the bell stops.

There is only the silence now.

Gaspard stands alone in the dark, breathing deeply, the weight of the world suddenly gone. The city, the gallows, the bell—all of it fades, retreating into the shadows from which it came.

And Gaspard, though lost, though forever changed, is free.

For now.

<>

Gaspard stands motionless in the void, the silence stretching out around him like a vast, endless sea. The weight that once pressed on him has lifted, but in its absence, he is confronted with something equally unsettling—an emptiness, profound and absolute, a place where even the memory of the tolling bell cannot reach.

He takes a step forward, unsure of where to go, unsure of what to expect. The ground beneath him is not solid; it shimmers, like a reflection on water, and for a moment, he wonders if he is still within the dream, or if the dream has swallowed him whole, transforming reality into something unrecognizable.

The city is gone now. There are no streets, no lights, no distant sounds of life. The world has dissolved into a blur of shadow and fog, swirling together in a slow dance of eternal twilight. The air is thick with the scent of something unfamiliar, something ancient—a dampness, a decay, the smell of forgotten things.

Gaspard feels a shiver run down his spine. The laughter that once seemed so far away now returns, distant but unmistakable, like an echo from some hidden corner of the world. It beckons to him, a reminder of the things that lie just out of sight, just beyond the reach of his understanding.

He moves forward again, his steps unsteady, his mind spinning with the fragments of images that have haunted him since he first awoke—or perhaps since he never truly awoke. The shadows twist and bend around him, taking on strange, familiar shapes: the outline of a figure, half-formed, flickering in and out of existence; a hand reaching for him, its fingers long and delicate, like the tendrils of some forgotten plant.

He raises his own hand to reach out, but the figure vanishes before he can touch it. The fog thickens, and for a moment, Gaspard is surrounded by nothing but darkness. The laughter rings louder now, its source unclear, as if it comes from every direction at once.

“Who are you?” Gaspard calls out, his voice shaking in the stillness.

The laughter fades for a moment, replaced by a new sound: a low, rhythmic thudding, like the beating of some immense heart. Gaspard’s pulse quickens, matching the rhythm, as if the very air around him is alive with a force beyond his understanding. He feels it in his chest, in his throat, in his very bones—the beat, the thud, the inexorable pull of something ancient, something that has been waiting for him.

He begins to walk again, drawn toward the sound, toward the heart of the darkness. With each step, the thudding grows louder, clearer, and though he knows it is a sound he should fear, he cannot resist. The rhythm seems to call to him, to guide him through the fog, deeper into the unknown.

The fog lifts just enough for him to see something in the distance—a shape, a figure, standing alone in the blackness. It is tall, thin, its edges blurred as if it exists somewhere between worlds. Gaspard’s heart beats faster, his breath quickening. The laughter is gone now, replaced by a profound stillness that makes the thudding in his chest seem all the more ominous.

He moves closer, his footsteps muted on the shifting ground. The figure stands there, unmoving, waiting. Gaspard feels an overwhelming sense of recognition, though he cannot place it. The figure is familiar, but it is also alien, like something half-remembered from a forgotten dream.

As he reaches out, his fingers brushing the air before him, the figure turns, its face still shrouded in shadow. There is a moment of stillness, an infinite pause, before the figure speaks.

“Do you remember?” it asks, its voice a soft, unsettling whisper, like the wind through dead leaves.

Gaspard’s heart races. He opens his mouth to speak, but no words come. The figure takes a step closer, its presence somehow both comforting and terrifying, and in that step, Gaspard feels something ancient stir within him—a memory, a feeling, a truth that he cannot yet understand.

“I was waiting,” the figure continues, its voice growing softer, yet somehow more insistent. “I have always been waiting.”

The darkness presses in again, and the thudding grows louder, until it is all that Gaspard can hear, until it fills every corner of his mind. The figure steps forward once more, and Gaspard feels the pull, the inexorable tug of fate drawing him closer, drawing him into the heart of the silence.

And just as his fingers brush against the figure’s arm, the world begins to tremble. The darkness undulates around him, as if it were alive, breathing, shifting. Gaspard feels himself falling, plummeting into the void, pulled deeper into the unknown.

He opens his eyes, but there is no light, no sound. There is only the pulse of the dark, the thudding that echoes in his chest, in his mind, in his very soul.

And then, the silence returns.

But this time, it is not an absence. It is a presence—vast, eternal, and complete. Gaspard knows, then, that he is no longer alone in the darkness.

He is the darkness now.

And somewhere, far in the distance, a bell tolls.

<>

Gaspard stands at the edge of the abyss, his mind teetering on the edge of clarity and madness. The silence, now a palpable force, stretches in every direction. The thudding pulse that had once filled the air continues to reverberate in his chest, but now it is his own heartbeat, as if his body has become one with the rhythm of the dark. His fingers twitch with a phantom energy, remembering the touch of the figure that vanished as soon as he reached out to it. He feels its presence still, lurking just beyond the threshold of his understanding.

The fog that swirls around him thickens again, coiling like smoke, and from within it, the faintest whisper calls his name. It is the same voice, soft and insistent, like the rustle of dry leaves, like the murmur of forgotten secrets.

“Gaspard,” it says, “you are not yet free.”

His breath catches in his throat. The words settle into his bones, heavy and inescapable. He tries to move, to retreat, but the ground beneath him is no longer firm. It shifts with every step, as though the very earth is rebelling against him, pulling him deeper into its grasp. The air is thick now, saturated with something ancient and primal, as if the dark itself is alive, aware, and watching him.

He takes another step, but this time, the thudding is joined by a new sound—a low, creaking noise, like the groan of an old door opening in the darkness. The air stirs, heavy with a presence that is not the figure, but something larger, something older. The fog parts slightly, and Gaspard glimpses a shadow—a shape too vast to comprehend, a form that seems to ripple in and out of existence.

It is the Scarbo. Not in any physical shape he can understand, but in the deepest recesses of his mind, where the laws of reality break down. The dwarf-like creature that haunts the world of dreams and nightmares, the creature who moves between spaces, slipping through time as though it were water. He feels its fingers brushing against his thoughts, flicking through his memories like pages of a book, searching, always searching, for something he cannot name.

He closes his eyes, trying to block it out, but the creature is inside him now. It is everywhere. The shadows twist around him, forming into monstrous shapes that disappear as quickly as they emerge. The rhythmic pulse quickens, faster, more insistent, until it is no longer a heartbeat—it is the sound of something else, something that has no beginning and no end.

The figure from before—the one who spoke of waiting—returns, now standing just in front of him. Its face is still obscured by shadow, but Gaspard can feel its gaze, burning into him from all sides. “You think you can escape,” the voice murmurs, cold and mocking. “But the Scarbo is not a thing you can escape. It is what you are.”

Gaspard shudders, his body trembling under the weight of the words. He knows now that the creature is not just a nightmare; it is a part of him, a manifestation of his deepest fears, his own dark impulses made flesh. It is the thing he has been running from, the thing that has haunted him through the endless corridors of his subconscious.

“No,” Gaspard whispers, though his voice feels weak, distant. “I’m not like it.”

The figure steps forward, its presence overwhelming, filling the space with a chill that cuts through him like a knife. “You are,” it repeats, its voice now a cacophony of whispers, all speaking at once, all urging him toward something he does not understand.

The thudding is deafening now, reverberating through every fiber of his being. It is the sound of something breaking, something unraveling. The world around him begins to tremble, the fog splitting open like a wound, and the Scarbo, no longer a figure in the mist but a force, a presence, surges forward.

Gaspard’s vision blurs, the shapes shifting in ways that defy logic. The city is gone now, replaced by the shapeless, formless expanse of the void. He can no longer feel his body, no longer feel the ground beneath his feet. There is only the Scarbo, and the endless echo of its laughter, like a thousand voices crying out in the dark.

For a moment, he feels as though he is no longer Gaspard at all, but something else—something nameless, something endless, caught in the ever-turning wheel of this nightmare, this dream. The boundaries between self and other dissolve, and he is both the pursuer and the pursued, both the dreamer and the dreamed.

But then, as if by some miracle, a sudden calm washes over him. The thudding fades, and with it, the sense of overwhelming dread. The figure steps back, its presence receding like a fading star, its whispers dying into silence.

Gaspard stands alone once more, but the silence is no longer oppressive. It is a peace, a stillness that holds no fear, no anger. The laughter is gone, and the Scarbo has retreated into the recesses of his mind, where it will wait—perhaps forever, perhaps just until the next time Gaspard dares to close his eyes.

In the distance, there is the faintest glimmer of light, like the first crack of dawn. Gaspard steps toward it, feeling the ground solidify beneath him, his senses slowly returning to their normal state. He does not know where he is going, or whether he will ever truly escape this place, but for now, there is only the light ahead and the silence that envelops him like a cloak.

He walks on, one step at a time, toward the uncertain future. The Scarbo may still be there, lurking in the shadows, but for now, he has won a small, quiet victory.

And in the distance, the faintest bell tolls, its sound soft and distant, as if calling him back. But he does not turn. Not yet.

<>

Gaspard continues his walk through the void, the faint light ahead gradually brightening, though it is not the kind of light that promises salvation. It is the eerie, spectral glow of a place in-between—a world of transition, where endings and beginnings blur into one indistinguishable mass. As he moves forward, the familiar pulse in his chest begins to return, slower now, like a distant echo, but still there. He can feel the weight of the thudding, not as a threat, but as a reminder—a rhythm that binds him to this place, a pulse that is both his own and something far older, far deeper.

The light ahead flickers again, then steadies into a pale illumination, and Gaspard’s mind, still clouded by the shadows of his journey, begins to piece things together. The laughter has faded, but its remnants remain, a distant hum beneath everything. The Scarbo is gone, but its presence lingers in the corners of his thoughts like a forgotten nightmare, never truly banished.

It is then that the first inklings dawn—an awareness, a realization. He is not outside the dream, not beyond it. He is inside it, wrapped in its folds. He has always been inside it.

The path before him stretches on, winding toward an indistinct horizon, but it is not the end of his journey that he fears now.

A new sound pierces the stillness—a bell. Not distant this time, but clear and near, its tone resonating deep within his chest. It is not a tolling bell, marking the passage of time, but something else: a summons, an invitation to confront what he has fled for so long.

Gaspard stands still, listening to the toll. It is not an ominous sound but a beckoning, soft yet insistent. The truth calls to him, a soft whisper in the void, and for the first time, he is not afraid. The bell is a promise, not of an end, but of a beginning.

He takes a step forward.

The ground beneath him shifts again, but this time, it is not unsteady. The light ahead grows warmer, gentler, no longer a stark, unnatural glow but a soft, inviting illumination. It is as though the world is turning toward him, not in judgment, but in acceptance. He feels his heartbeat synchronize with the rhythm of the bell, the sound growing louder, richer, as though the very universe is breathing with him.

And then, he understands.

Gaspard steps forward again, this time without hesitation. The light beckons him, but it is not the light of a place that he must leave behind. It is the light of a place that he must enter, fully and without fear, a place where the boundaries between self and other blur into nothingness. He moves through the soft glow, no longer uncertain, no longer unsure. The bell tolls once more, and he is not afraid.

For the first time in what feels like eternity, Gaspard smiles.

He is no longer running.

And as the last notes of the bell fade into the silence, he knows that this is not the end of his journey. It is the beginning of a new one.

The light fades into a soft, warm glow, and Gaspard moves forward, knowing that whatever waits for him in the next moment, he will face it as he is—whole, complete, and no longer afraid.

The bell tolls one last time.

And then, there is silence.