Chapter 51 – Hollow Eyes

Silence.

The kind that did not lament the silence of space—it grieved within Yusuf.

He dropped to his knees before his father, trembling form, seared lungs from residual effects of the battle. The glow of the shard waned in his grasp, its feeble light mirrored in the man's vacant eyes.

"Father…" The name shattered, too small, too little to contain the weight of everything Yusuf had carried to this moment.

The man blinked. His lips opened and shut, as if every thought he tried to summon vanished before it could make it to the air. Finally, he spoke.

"I don't know you."

Those words hurt more than any blow the faceless child had ever given.

Yusuf's throat closed up. "It's me. Yusuf. Your son." He extended his hand, trembling, grasping for the man's arm. The skin was warm, real. Alive. That should have been enough.

But the man just regarded him with courteous confusion, as if a stranger stopped on the street.

"I never had a son."

The words cut into Yusuf's heart.

He laughed—harsh, broken, desperate. "That isn't true. That can't be true. You—you taught me about history. You said memory was everything. You made me the person I am!"

His father's brow furrowed, pained by words he could not understand. "I… I once was a historian, I think. I am certain of that. But the rest…" His eyes drifted, empty. "Lost. The threads are lost."

Yusuf's fists balled up. "Then fight for them! You're stronger than this—you always were! Do not let the void consume you!"

His father cringed at Yusuf's violence, then lowered his eyes. "The hollowness didn't take them, Yusuf. I let them go. The weight was… too great."

Yusuf's breath froze. He wished to scream, to rail, to strike. But what he did instead was strangle out the words: "You left me."

The man looked at him then—actually looked. For the span of one heartbeat, a flicker crossed his face. Recognition? Remorse? Or just a shadow Yusuf would give anything to see?

"I… always wanted…"

His father's words trembled, thin as paper on the edge of breaking. ".to have a son. One like you."

Sobs ripped down Yusuf's face. His frame shuddered with them. "You do," he rasped. "You do. I'm here."

But the man only offered a shaking hand, stroking Yusuf's cheek with a tenderness that was more piercing than cruelty. Not because it was acknowledgment. Because it wasn't.

"Then you are a wish granted," he whispered, sunken eyes.

Yusuf's scream broke before he could stifle it. He clenched the shard hard enough to bleed on the palm of his hand. Red dripped, polluting its brightness.

The faceless child was gone. But this—this was worse.

This was what it left behind.

Aftermath

The void churned about them, restless, whispering. The Codex in the faceless child's absence weighed upon him, the pages fluttering with accounts Yusuf could not muster the strength to peruse.

He dragged himself upright, though each inch of his being yearned to stay kneeling, broken at his father's feet.

If he remained, he would drown in grief.

If he departed, he would carry that grief into eternity.

He glanced back once more. His father's eyes followed him, warm, but empty.

"Yusuf…"

The feel of his father's voice on his lips froze him.

Hope sparked—then exploded.

Because when the man repeated it again, his voice was bewildered. "Yusuf… is that your name?"

Yusuf's knees nearly gave way. He forced himself to turn away before his father saw him crumple in two.

The hollowness stretched out before him. Cold. Quiet. Motionless.

He leaned in close, whispering to himself, to Rae, to his father, to the kid—

"I'll get this done. Even if I have to disappear with it."

And he stepped forward.