The child who never was

"I don't have a name."

A simple statement, yet it echoed in the silent forest like someone had just strangled themselves, and still managed an incomprehensible smile. I opened my mouth, intending to ask something—perhaps, "Why are you here?" or "Do you live alone?"

But the child looked at me. Without blinking. Without moving. Just staring—as if debating whether to tear me in two, or consider me a part of this very forest.

No, not that look. I'd seen those about to kill—their eyes blazing with hatred, or cold with the will to destroy. This child's eyes were not like that. They were… astonishingly empty, yet devoid of hatred or hostility. As if she had never been taught emotions, and thus didn't know what to show, or perhaps felt nothing at all. A boundless void, yet I could sense a dreadful loneliness hidden deep within.

I asked, softly as a passing breeze, afraid that a louder sound would shatter the fragile connection between us:

> "Do you live alone?"

She nodded slightly, a slow, almost imperceptible movement. Then she looked at her hands. Her fingernails were caked with dirt, her fingertips stained with dried blood, as though she had just dug something from deep within the earth. She looked up, her deep black eyes returning to me:

> "Not always alone. But… when there's no one, it's easier to breathe."

I didn't fully grasp the profound meaning of her words, but my chest suddenly ached. Because I realized… she didn't belong here. But neither did she belong anywhere else in this world. She was a lost existence, a piece that could never quite fit.

A strange wind swept through the forest. Cold as morning dew, but it carried a pungent smell… the smell of burning flesh. That horrifying scent permeated every cell, raising goosebumps on my skin. I looked around, seeing no signs of fire or living creatures. The child stood motionless, expressionless, as if she smelled nothing at all. I felt time both slow to infinity and rush by strangely fast, like a prolonged nightmare.

I took half a step back, unable to endure this feeling any longer. My voice trembled, barely able to form words:

> "I… I have to go now."

The child didn't react. Her face remained impassive. I turned my back, not daring to linger another second. After a few heavy steps, I suddenly heard her voice—this time not from her throat, but echoing directly from my heart, a whisper piercing all barriers:

> "Next time you come back… can I have a name?"

I didn't turn around. I couldn't. If I turned back, if I looked into those eyes one more time, I would never be able to lift the knife again. I ran. Ran from the forest, ran from the curse, ran from the name I was destined to destroy.

>>>

No one had ever called me by a name. I used to think it didn't matter. Why would anyone need to call something that wasn't human, a being not born, not accepted, and without a Sentence?

Father—no, Father—always said:

> "You are born of silence. When others know your name, calamity will begin."

Yet today, for the first time, I learned a name. A name uttered from the lips of the light-bearer.

> "Isha."

I repeated it in my mind, like a forbidden incantation. Isha. Isha. Isha. I didn't understand why it lingered in my chest, a faint burn, an indescribable haunting I couldn't shake.

When she turned and walked away, I didn't try to stop her. I didn't know what "stopping" was, or how to do it. But I stood rooted to that spot for a very long time, for hours, like a dead tree in the forest. The wind didn't blow. Leaves didn't fall. No frantic heartbeat pounded in my chest. Yet I still felt as though I had just lost something, an invisible thread had been severed.

That night, I returned to my stone chamber. A dark, windowless crypt, with no bed, just a cold dirt floor and damp, moldy stone walls. On the four walls, thousands of marks were etched by fingernails—scrawled, intertwined, overlapping symbols. I didn't know who had carved them. Perhaps me, in unconscious sleeps I couldn't recall. Perhaps the ghosts of dreams I'd never known. Each mark was different, but all carried a common feeling, a chilling curse:

> "Do not exist."

I leaned my head against the cold wall, feeling the dampness seep through my hair. A question echoed in my mind, clearer than any of Father's:

> "I don't have a name."

> ...Because no one ever gave me one?

> Or because I'm not allowed to have one? Because my very existence is a forbidden thing?

I tried to whisper a word, a sound that had never escaped my throat, a name never known.

> "Lilith."

No one reacted. Father didn't appear, no village was destroyed, no blood was shed. Only a slight tremor in the air, an invisible ripple spreading outwards. As if the world itself hesitated… upon hearing me call myself by name, an unprecedented act.

I remembered Isha's eyes. Those eyes were different. Not fearful like the villagers'. Not disdainful like their whispers. Just a little trembling, a touch of unease. But there was something I had never seen in anyone else in this world, a faint but hopeful glimmer:

> She looked at me as if… I was human, too.

I closed my eyes, trying to hold onto that feeling. I don't dream. I never dream. My mind is always an empty space without images, without sounds, only eternal silence.

But this time…

An image flashed. I saw a faded, light blue handkerchief, old. It smelled of damp earth and dry grass. There was a small, dried bloodstain. And I heard someone laugh, a clear, untainted sound, not distorted or horrifying. Not Father.

> "Sister, if I disappear, will the trees bloom?"

I jolted upright, my breath ragged. My eyes weren't fully open, but my hand was clutching something. A real handkerchief. Blue. Old. With a dried bloodstain. I had never seen this object before. It didn't belong to me, nor to this hut. And I didn't know who had laughed, or whose voice that was. But that question… it haunted me.

Father once said:

> "When you begin to remember, that is when the world destroys itself."

I looked at the handkerchief in my hand. I didn't know if I was remembering… or beginning to live. A life Father called a calamity.

I left the stone chamber. Not to find Isha. No. I didn't need anyone. I was accustomed to solitude. I just… wanted to stand under the sky for a moment. Wanted to feel something different.

Tonight, there was no moon. But the sky wasn't dark as usual. Instead, it glittered with tiny, faint silver specks, continuously twinkling, like a thousand eyes opening and looking down at me.