A mythic story about truth, memory, and the moment a life splits in two..
I wrote this piece for a contest exploring the theme of “the unseen.” It didn’t place, but it stayed with me — the voice, the threshold, the ache beneath it. I’ve revised it lightly for clarity and cadence. I’m sharing it here because it belongs in the world, not in a folder
This story asks what happens when the truth you’ve avoided finally finds you. If you stay with it, I think you’ll feel the shift.
“You sent me down there with nothing,” I said, heat rising in my throat. “Save humanity, Malak — save them while their eyes are sewn shut to the rot around them. While their hearts open only to those who mirror their skin, their faith, their comforts. Save the humans, you said.”
The goddess’s silence cracked — a deliberate break in the air between us. When she spoke, her voice burned where comfort should have been.
“That is not true,” she said. “I told you to save the human. One. The one who would matter. The one who would change the rest. But you—” her gaze flicked to the ruined world below — “you tried to save humanity. And humanity was never yours to save.”
What was she talking about? My pulse hammered.
“I don’t know why you insist on speaking in riddles,” I snapped. “One human. One humanity. You built the rules. You and the rest of your—” I gestured toward her, toward the impossible stillness of her body. “Your ascended kin. You made it this way. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Yes and no.”
“What the ever-loving— Lestari, why can’t you ever speak in plain truth?”
I needed out. Out of this room, out of her riddles, out of the weight of a world I apparently misunderstood. I moved toward the door that separated our worlds — the thin boundary I still pretended was mine.
“I’m out.”
My hand hovered over the handle. A breath away from silence. A breath away from pretending I hadn’t failed the entire species.
I picked humanity. Not a human.
Didn’t humanity deserve saving?
The metal beneath my fingers pulsed — faint, warm, like a heartbeat I didn’t recognize. The house always did that when I tried to leave. As if it knew something I didn’t. As if the wall between us wasn’t a wall at all, but a warning.
And beneath all of it, the truth I never let myself name:
Saving everyone was easier than remembering I’d once been the one left behind.
Behind me, Lestari exhaled — soft, but carrying centuries.
“You chose what you were taught to choose,” she said. “Not what you were meant to choose.”
I squeezed the handle harder.
“You, Malak, have always chosen to run from the truth.”
Her words hit harder than I wanted to admit. My hand fell to my side. My shoulders slumped.
“What will you choose this time?” she asked.
“All of you play games with mortals,” I said, raw and shaking. “This — these people — are just some mythic reality game show for the Evolved.”
“We are not the ones who painted the picture, Malak.”
Her voice had shifted — softer, but sharper. A blade wrapped in silk.
I turned, and there she was, standing before the painting from when we were children. A plush field of green. A single olive tree in full bloom. Two small figures beneath it, hand in hand.
Except now the edges were fraying.
Like fabric unraveling.
Like time losing its grip.
A thin thread of green curled upward, dissolving into nothing.
My breath caught. The house felt smaller. The wall between the rooms pulsed, reacting to the painting’s decay.
“What—what’s happening to it?” I whispered.
Lestari didn’t look at me. “The truth always shows itself first in the places we refuse to look.”
She lifted a hand toward the canvas. The painting wasn’t just fraying now — it was fading, the colors thinning like breath on glass. The olive tree dimmed at the edges as if memory itself were losing its grip.
“Are you willing to face your truth, Malak?” Lestari asked, her voice low, steady, unbearably patient. “Or will you once again run from it?”
The house seemed to hold its breath.
The wall pulsed once — a slow, deliberate thrum.
I couldn’t speak.
I couldn’t move.
All I could do was watch the last thread of green lift from the canvas and dissolve into the air, leaving behind a widening patch of white.
A blankness waiting to swallow everything I thought I knew.
Will I run?
Every part of me screamed yes. Leave Lestari, leave the Evolved, leave the ruins of a world that never wanted saving. Let them figure out humanity without me.
Run.
The word pulsed in my skull as the last thread of green — then yellow, then blue — lifted from the canvas and drifted into the ether. The painting wasn’t just unraveling; it was emptying itself of me.
I wasn’t one of the Elevated.
I wasn’t built for this.
And Lestari had made it painfully clear: I had failed the one task they trusted me with.
I chose humanity.
I forgot the human.
And the truth I never let myself name:
It was simpler to rescue the world than to face the moment I was left behind.
The house groaned, a low, aching sound vibrating through the floorboards — as if it had been waiting for this moment, the moment the past let go of its colors and left me standing in the blankness I’d avoided.
“I’m done running.”
There was nowhere left to run. Not with the canvas staring back — too bright, too white, stripped of every color it once held.
“What do I do now?”
I reached toward it, then flinched back, terrified I’d dissolve the way the colors had.
If I broke here, I wasn’t sure I’d make it back to the duplex at all.
“You’re grounded in fear and shame, Malak.”
Lestari’s hand found mine — cool, steady, unbearably gentle — guiding my fingers toward the canvas.
“No. No, I’ll ruin it.”
But she pressed my palm to the surface.
This is where everything Malak has avoided finally rises.
The world fell away.
The rooms vanished.
The pulse of the duplex went silent.
And I was standing in the field.
Sunlight hit me — warm, too real to be memory. Grass brushed my ankles. The olive tree towered above me, whole again, its leaves shimmering like gold.
Beside me, Lestari walked as if she’d always belonged here.
In the distance, laughter rang out — high, bright. Two young girls splashed in the ocean, silhouettes dancing in the waves. Their joy was so pure it hurt to look at. A breeze lifted, carrying the scent of salt and childhood — and beneath it, something metallic, bracing.
My throat tightened.
“I know this place,” I whispered.
“You should,” Lestari said. “You painted it with your choices.”
The girls laughed again — a sound so familiar it split something open inside me.
Because I knew that laugh.
I knew both of them.
And I knew what was coming.
My chest seized. I wasn’t ready to see us — not like this.
Lestari was karma in motion — not punishment, not vengeance, but truth arriving when every escape route had collapsed.
“Let’s go a little closer,” she said, her voice slipping into that soft sing‑song cadence that made obedience feel inevitable.
My feet moved before my mind caught up.
The closer we got, the more the air thickened.
Memory.
Salt.
Fear.
And beneath it — the old ache of abandonment, rising like a tide.
Something inside me twisted.
“I know this place,” I murmured again, the words a confession.
“Of course you do,” Lestari said, tone sharpening. “You painted this a thousand times with the choices you made.”
Then why am I reliving it?
The question pulsed through me as the grass gave way to sand so white it looked innocent.
My toes hit the surface.
“Ouch.” The sand burned — alive, searing, the way it had that day.
“I see you’ve forgotten the fire already.”
The heat licked up my ankles. The sunlight shimmered off the water — too bright, too perfect, beauty seconds from breaking.
Ahead, the girls splashed in the shallows, laughter ringing like bells. They had no idea. No instinct for the shift in the air.
I swallowed hard.
The younger one — tangled hair, sunburn blooming across her cheeks — kicked a spray of water at the older girl. The older shrieked with laughter, chasing her deeper.
My chest tightened.
I knew that laugh.
I knew that sunburn.
I knew the exact moment the sky would change.
Lestari stepped beside me, steady, unmovable.
“You asked why you’re reliving it,” she said softly. “You’re not.”
I turned to her.
“You’re remembering it.”
The horizon flickered.
The air dropped.
The world snapped into focus — too sharp, too bright — the way truth looks when it stops hiding.
And the world began to tilt.
I remembered.
The memory rose all at once — not gentle, but like a stormfront swallowing the sky. Gray bled together overhead as I stepped onto the burning sand.
“Lestari, someone is coming,” a small voice cried.
My small voice.
I turned — and there she was. The younger me, frozen at the shoreline, terror widening her forest‑green eyes. Eyes untouched by centuries. Eyes that still believed the world could be kind.
“I’m frightened,” she whispered.
We said it together.
Her gaze locked with mine, and something inside me cracked. In her face, I saw everything I had lost — innocence, softness, the belief that humanity deserved saving simply because it existed.
She didn’t know this was the day everything would change.
The day I would never be the same.
The day I would leave her behind.
A wind rose off the water, sharp and cold, carrying the scent of something inevitable. The horizon flickered, a thin line of darkness threading through the blue.
Lestari stepped beside me, ancient and steady.
“I am not here to change the past, Malak,” she said. “I am here to show you the truth you buried beneath it.”
My younger self took a step back, hands trembling.
“Please,” she whispered, “don’t let it happen again.”
Her plea hit me like a blow.
Because I knew what was coming.
I knew who was coming.
And I knew I had failed her once already.
And this time, the moment would demand something of me — something I had never been brave enough to give.
Lestari’s voice brushed my ear — soft as a blade. “You can’t save everyone,” she whispered, just as my younger self braced to run.
“No.”
The word tore out of me before I could think. It stopped her — that small, sun‑burned face turning toward mine, eyes wide with the same terror I’d carried for centuries.
Lestari’s voice echoed through the air, through the sand, through my bones.
“What will you choose?”
The sky darkened.
My younger self trembled, caught between flight and fate.
I stared at her — the girl I had spent lifetimes avoiding. Every time I reached this moment, I looked away. I painted over it. Layer after layer, I buried the truth beneath safer colors.
For centuries, I stood outside the frame.
For centuries, I refused to step inside.
For centuries, I chose cowardice disguised as righteousness.
And beneath it all:
It was easier to save humanity than to face the child I abandoned.
“Who will you choose?” Lestari asked again, her voice a quiet, devastating invitation.
My younger self wasn’t running — not this time. She was waiting. Waiting for me to finally turn toward her instead of away.
The storm rolled in with terrible inevitability. The moment folded in on itself, demanding an answer.
I stepped toward her.
Her forest‑green eyes widened — terrified, hopeful. The same eyes I had refused to meet for lifetimes.
“Malak,” Lestari murmured, “this is the truth you’ve run from. The truth that unmade you. The truth that can remake you.”
The wind whipped around us, carrying salt, fear, and something like possibility.
I reached out my hand.
My younger self hesitated, breath trembling.
“I choose—”
The storm roared.
The world held its breath.
I stumbled.
The words strangled me.
What if choosing her meant losing everything else?
“That is not your purpose, Malak.”
Lestari’s voice cut through the rising wind.
The ocean floor lurched.
My younger self slipped as a wave slammed into her small body. She gasped, scrambling backward, eyes wide with the terror I remembered too well.
I’d been here before.
The crashing waves.
The sky going dark.
The silence swallowing everything.
This was the moment that split my life into before and after. The moment that built the duplex. The moment that sentenced me to the endless cycle of choosing wrong.
The air vibrated with the weight of the choice I had refused to make.
Lestari stepped closer, steady against the chaos.
“This is the fracture,” she said. “The one you painted over. The one that will keep repeating until you choose the truth.”
My younger self looked up, soaked, trembling.
“Please,” she whispered. “You didn’t come back last time.”
Her words hit me harder than the waves.
Waiting for me to do what I hadn’t done then.
Waiting for me to choose her.
Waiting for me to choose the human.
The storm roared.
The world trembled.
And I felt it — the old structure cracking, the purgatory loosening its grip.
This time, I wasn’t looking away.
Something inside me steadied — not with courage, but with recognition. The kind that rises from the marrow, ancient and undeniable. The storm raged around us, but for the first time, it didn’t feel like it was trying to tear me apart. It felt like it was trying to return me to myself.
My younger self watched me with a trembling hope that made my chest ache. She wasn’t just afraid of what was coming — she was afraid of me. Afraid I would turn away again. Afraid I would choose the world over the one person who had ever needed me.
“I see you,” I whispered, the words shaking loose from a place I had buried for centuries. “I see you now.”
Her breath hitched. A small, startled sound — like she’d been waiting lifetimes to hear it.
The wind howled, but beneath it, I heard something softer. A heartbeat. Mine. Hers. Ours. The rhythm aligning for the first time since the day everything split.
“You were never the burden,” I said. “You were the beginning.”
Her eyes widened, shimmering with something fragile and fierce.
“Then don’t leave me,” she whispered.
“I won’t,” I said. “Not this time.”
All the old pain rose — the self‑doubt, the longing for something that had always felt out of reach.
“Those things were always within your grasp, Malak,” Lestari said. “What is meant for you will never pass you.”
My eyes burned. I let the tears come. I let myself feel the wound I had carried like a second spine.
“I remember.”
The words broke out of me as I ran, feet pounding across the sand. “I remember.” Again and again, until the icy water shattered around my ankles and I reached her — the girl I had abandoned to time.
I dropped to my knees in the ocean. Waves crashed into us, cold and relentless, but we didn’t bend.
I cupped her chin, lifting her face toward mine. Her forest‑green eyes met mine — wide, hopeful, unbroken.
“I remember us,” I whispered. “And all our vibrant colors — blues, yellows, and greens.”
She smiled, bright as the sun before the storm.
“And purples, and pinks, and oranges,” she said, repeating the old litany like a spell.
I huffed a soft laugh. “Did we really like the oranges, though?”
She giggled — that bubbling sound I had carried through centuries.
“Not really,” she admitted. “But sometimes we need the orange hues to find the colors we really like, right?”
Her innocence hit me like a wave.
Not fragile — luminous.
The storm rumbled behind us, but for the first time, it didn’t feel like a threat.
It felt like a witness.
Because this was the moment I had run from in every lifetime.
And this time, I wasn’t running.
I reached out my hand, and her tiny fingers slipped perfectly into mine.
“Wherever we go, we go together.”
I squeezed her hand gently.
“Can I pick this time?” she asked, shy and hopeful. “I don’t want to go back to that place anymore.”
“What place?” I asked, though I already knew.
“The one where you live… and I live on the other side. Where all the color lives.”
Ah.
The duplex.
The divide.
I brushed a strand of wet hair from her cheek.
“No,” I said softly. “We aren’t going to live separately ever again.”
Her smile bloomed — small, bright, whole.
“Good.”
The storm quieted.
The horizon steadied.
And for the first time in lifetimes, we stood together — one self, one soul, one story — hand in hand.
“Come, Malak.”
Lestari’s touch was soft against my shoulder, grounding me as my eyes opened to the room where everything had begun — the room I once believed was a prison, a purgatory, a punishment.
I shot to my feet.
The air felt different. Lighter. Whole.
Even the silence felt new — like it had been waiting for me to finally hear it.
I moved through the rooms, the familiar walls blurring past. No pulse. No warning. No resistance. The house didn’t fight me anymore.
I burst through the door into open air, breath catching as I turned back to the structure that had held me for centuries.
The house once split down the middle like a wound now stood as one.
No fracture. No seam. No boundary between past and present, between the self I was and the self I became.
Just a single, unified home.
And for the first time, I understood: the house had never been the prison. I had been.
“Where did she go?”
Lestari descended the steps, smiling as she joined me before the healed house.
“Hmm. I thought you were smarter than that, Malak.” Her smirk was teasing. “Where do you think she is?”
I lifted my fist to my heart, then opened my hand over my chest.
“Here,” I breathed.
The old ache — the centuries‑old hollow — was gone.
“Exactly.” A twinkle lit the ancient goddess’s eye. “Come with me.”
Her voice had changed — still ancient, still steady, but gentler now. Less guide. More witness.
I followed her.
We stopped before a stark white canvas, void of all color. Blank. Waiting. Not threatening — inviting.
“Here.”
Lestari placed a new brush in my hand — fine, soft bristles almost too delicate for fingers that had known only survival. It wasn’t a weapon. It wasn’t a duty. It was a beginning.
“Malak,” she said, warm as dawn, “you can paint your choices in gentler strokes and brighter colors this time.”
I looked at the canvas. At the brush. At my own steady hand — steady because I was no longer split in two.
And for the first time in lifetimes, I wasn’t afraid of the blankness. Blankness wasn’t loss anymore. It was possibility.
I lifted the brush.
And began.
Closing Reflection
This story sits close to the emotional architecture of Severed Mercy — the way a person becomes someone else after crossing a line they can’t uncross.
If this story resonated, it’s because we all have a moment we’ve avoided — and a self we’ve left behind. Thank you for walking with Malak through hers.
© 2026 C.M. Seybolt. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without prior written permission from the author.
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