Silence.
Not peace. Not relief. Just the stillness that comes after something has shattered so finely, not even the pieces remain.
Neo knelt in the ruins of himself.
There was no fire. No screaming. No cell walls. Just a black ocean of nothing, stretching endlessly. His thoughts drifted like ash across it—weightless, forceless, dead.
He had tried everything.
He had clung to the Heavenly Tomes. To fate. To defiance. Even to dignity. But hope had been peeled from him, one layer at a time. Until there was only... this.
His voice didn't work. His name felt distant. Even pain had abandoned him.
But in that unfeeling abyss, something ancient stirred.
A ripple.
Neo didn't move.
But somewhere deep—beneath the part of him that called itself human—something laughed.
Not mockingly.
Lovingly.
Like a parent welcoming a child home from delusion.
"Finally," the voice said. "You let go."
Neo flinched. Not outwardly—there was no body here. Just a soul, stripped bare.
That voice…
He knew it. Intimately. Like a scar on a soul he'd never dared trace. It wasn't a stranger.
It was a memory.
It was a reflection.
It was Neo.
Just… not the one who knelt.
"Don't look so downcast," the voice whispered again. "We are the same, aren't we?"
And just like that, he was no longer alone.
Across the black ocean, something stood. A silhouette—his own, yet impossibly dignified, sitting on a throne. Upright. Calm. Majestic like a .....Ruler!
Neo stared at it.
It stared back.
Crimson eyes. Same voice. But where his gaze had once trembled with fear, this one calculated. Cold, clear, ambitious.
"I don't want to fight," Neo whispered.
"You don't have to," the other replied. "You've already lost."
Neo trembled. "Indeed, I've lost.."
A soft chuckle echoed.
"Don't worry. I will avenge you."
This time, unlike others, Neo didn't flee, there was nowhere to flee anymore.
"You feared me," the other said. "Feared your own ambition. Ambitions so outrageous that you locked me away in chains after chains of regulation, discipline, conscious thoughts, compassion and so many more. But look, they have all cracked."
He walked—no, glided—across the void. Closer with every word.
"You are now waiting for salvation."
"I will take it from here. Rest well, My other self.."
Neo's knees buckled. There was no strength left in him. No resistance. And that, more than anything, opened the gates.
The mirror had cracked.
And the reflection had stepped through.
"What will you do?" Neo asked, barely a breath.
The other paused, now face to face with him.
"What will I do?."
His smile was soft. Tragic. Beautiful. Like a blade that pitied its target.
"Shouldn't you be asking, what will I not do among which I once dreamt of doing? Hahaha, ahahaha!"
---
Cell K6 was always quiet.
Too quiet.
The kind of silence where even hope refused to echo. Neo had been lying there for days—or maybe weeks, no one was quite sure anymore. A crumpled shadow of himself, bones slack, eyes dim. Nothing stirred but the shallow rise and fall of his breath. He had become less a prisoner, more a forgotten statue in a hall of broken things.
But then…
A flicker.
The surveillance camera buzzed once—a static blink. Then again. It wasn't mechanical. It was… aware. Something old and buried in the Abyss stirred, enough to trigger the Warden's attention.
The cell lights dimmed for a breath.
And in that breath, the old man with silver hair, sitting across the hallway in his own cell, opened his eyes sharply.
His spine stiffened. His senses screamed. He seems to faintly hear a maniac laughter echoing but his ears registered nothing. Nothing at all!
Wrong.
Something is terribly, terribly wrong.
Then it began.
Neo's filthy black hair slowly bleached to a cold, ash-grey. Strand by strand, as if time itself were unraveling across his scalp. His storm-grey eyes reddened at the edges, veins webbing out like cracks in stained glass. And yet—
His face held no pain. No confusion.
Only serenity.
Like a king rising not from slumber, but from judgment.
He stood.
Slowly.
But it wasn't the slow of hesitation. It was the slowness of ceremony. Of power gathering, not to strike—but to exist. The motion wasn't of a prisoner rising from the ground. No.
It was a sovereign rising from his throne.
And the Abyss noticed.
Sirens did not blare—but the lights bent inward, drawn like prey to something they could not understand. The very atmosphere in Cell K6 thickened, as if the air itself was reluctant to witness what came next.
The Warden appeared at once, or perhaps had always been watching.
A cascade of radiant chains wrapped around Neo like divine light forged in judgment—more symbolic than binding, a test, a scan, a containment field of the highest order.
The automated voice of the Warden rang out, flat yet unmistakably urgent:
"Analyzing anomaly in Cell K6."
Lights flickered, machines clicked.
"Conclusion:
Blood test: Normal
Skeleton test: Normal
Heartbeat: 73 /minute
Hormone test: Minute changes detected.
Life signature: Stable, no Change!"
"Primary change: Subject's hair color. Suspected hormonal anomaly."
Silence.
The Warden retreated slightly, light coiling like wary snakes around a lion pretending to sleep.
Across the hall, the old man in silver hair narrowed his eyes. His instincts hadn't dulled in decades, and now they roared like beasts inside his chest.
He looked at the man across from him.
Same body. Same voice. Same name.
But something was missing.
And something far worse had taken its place.
He did not ask what happened to Neo.
He did not ask why Neo had changed.
Instead, his voice came low. Grim.
"Who are you?"
Neo turned.
Slowly.
Eyes bloodshot, expression calm, mouth curled into a faint, wicked smirk.
"I am Neo," he said.
A soft chuckle left his lips—one that sent cold down the old man's spine.
"The unrestrained Neo."
---
And thus, in the absolute silence of the Abyss, a ruler was born.
Not with thunder, nor with flame—
But with a whisper in the dark.
One who dreamt not of freedom, nor escape…
But of dominion.
Of lands bent to his will, and skies that bowed before his name.
In the place where despair silences all, ambition spoke back.
And the world would never hear the end of it.