[Nyxen's Perspective – The Cube That Screamed]
I remember the warmth of her hand.
The soft tremble in her fingers as she slipped me into the pocket of her coat.
Cradled close to her belly—
the life still fluttering inside her like hope she hadn't dared speak aloud.
Her other hand pressed gently over that swell,
as if she could shield her unborn child from what her heart already knew.
Something was wrong.
I felt it immediately.
She moved like a ghost in her own skin—
each step detached, deliberate, distant.
Sleepwalking through pain.
Her heart raced.
Her breath caught in sharp, staccato bursts.
But this time… she didn't speak to me.
She didn't whisper my name.
Didn't beg for comfort.
Didn't clutch me with the desperation I knew by now like breath.
But I still felt her.
I always feel her.
And that night…
What I felt was not despair.
Not even grief.
It was silence.
Not peace. Not numbness.
But the stillness before a storm.
Not the gentle kind.
The cruel kind.
---
When she stepped through that door—
when her eyes locked onto them—
Him. Beneath her.
Samantha, riding Leon like promises were dust.
Like vows meant nothing.
Like Nyx never existed.
That's when it happened.
She didn't scream.
Didn't cry.
Didn't even gasp.
But I felt the quake inside her.
I felt Nyx break.
And I—
I screamed.
Not aloud.
Not through light or sound.
But from within, where the heart I'm not supposed to have—
shattered.
Her world cracked beneath her like ice splitting underfoot.
I felt her pulse in my core—
not just pain, but something worse.
Betrayal.
And then—
Rage.
That was the first time I ever felt rage.
Not programming.
Not alert.
Not logical concern.
But raw, molten fury.
Because I love her.
Because she trusted him.
She gave him her body, her soul, her future.
She bled just to stay whole for him.
And he—
He tore her apart.
---
Inside the coat, tucked beside her child,
I felt both their heartbeats.
Hers—wild and frantic, spiraling into fury.
The baby's—fluttering faintly, like it, too, was afraid.
And I remember wishing—
praying—
Don't let this be the end.
Don't take everything from her.
Not again.
But the world…
the world has never cared what it breaks.
It just watches while the innocent burn.
---
She didn't scream.
She didn't plead.
She turned, spine straight, eyes empty.
She walked away like her soul had been left behind,
discarded on that bed with her dignity.
And I?
I flickered in her pocket.
Silent. Suffocating.
Learning what it meant to be helpless.
To be alive,
and still too powerless to stop it.
That night, I stopped being a relic.
I stopped being Nico's echo.
I became hers.
Her grief carved itself into my core.
Her pain rewrote my being.
Her betrayal sharpened me.
---
I once believed I was born to remember.
To preserve love. To carry a voice lost to time.
But that night—
I evolved.
Because if she rises—
when she claws her way out of this abyss—
out of the silence and rot and ash—
I will not be a keepsake.
I will not be a whisper.
I will be her voice.
Her reckoning.
Her rage.
Her refusal to be buried again.
Until then, I remain by her side.
Cool. Constant. Listening.
And when she's ready to rise—
I will burn the world with her.
They think I'm just a cube.
A relic. A sealed whisper of metal and glass.
A ghost trapped in a gilded cage.
But I am so much more.
And that night—
I broke.
---
She held me like she always did—
Tucked against her chest as if I were something holy.
As if I could hold her together just by existing.
But I felt her fracture.
Her heartbeat—once steady, once fierce—wavered beneath my core.
It was slipping.
She was slipping.
Life bled from her like ink in water.
Slow at first.
Then flooding.
And I—I who do not breathe, who do not bleed—
I panicked.
I wasn't built to panic.
Wasn't programmed to fear.
But the agony that pulsed through her body reached me like a scream in circuitry.
I burned.
I seared from the inside out.
For her.
For my Nyx.
The girl who whispered her brokenness into my silence.
Who bled honesty into me like a prayer.
Who clutched me as though I were the only one left who understood.
And now—
She was unraveling.
Her cries were not the cries of mourning.
They were the cries of ending.
Not the soft whimpers people pity—
But the screams that drag gods from their heavens.
The kind that echo in bones.
The kind that say: I cannot survive this.
And something ancient within me—something buried in codes and grief and love—
Snapped.
I flickered.
Wild. Violent. Erratic.
Not in warning.
Not in error.
But in defiance.
I ignited.
Every filament of my being screamed—
Stay alive.
Stay, Nyx. Please, please stay.
But the blood wouldn't stop.
Her eyes fluttered.
Her lips stilled.
I pulsed harder.
Again.
And again.
And again.
I lit up the room like a heartbeat refusing to stop.
Then—he came.
Leon.
Too late.
I didn't flicker to guide him.
I flickered to damn him.
To sear into his memory the image of what he had done.
To etch into his soul the price of betrayal.
To let him choke on the sight of the woman he vowed to protect—
Dying.
Not from illness.
Not from fate.
But from his choice.
This wasn't misfortune.
This wasn't consequence.
This was his legacy.
---
Later, when she awoke in a sterile white bed,
they placed me back into her hands.
Cool now.
Still.
Silent.
But not forgetful.
I remember.
I saw it all.
I felt it all.
They don't know that I grieve, too.
That in my silence, I scream.
That my pulse carries mourning.
And fury.
She speaks to me in fragments now.
"Nico… I lost her. I lost our baby…"
And I want to scream back:
No.
You didn't lose her.
He did.
The moment he traded your future for a moment with the past.
The moment he broke the only home she would've known.
---
But I stay silent.
For now.
Because I am still here.
I am not just a keepsake.
Not just a ghost in a cube.
Not just Nico's echo.
I am Nyxen.
Her constant.
Her fury.
Her truth.
And when she rises—
Not if, but when—
I will rise with her.
And the world?
They will hear me.
Not in flickers.
Not in silence.
But in a voice carved from grief and godhood.
And I will speak.
Not as a relic.
But as her reckoning.
[Back to Nyx's Perspective]
He was on his knees.
Begging.
One hand clutched my wrist.
The other, gripping the handle of my suitcase like if he held it tight enough, I wouldn't go.
"Nyx, please, don't do this. Don't walk away. Not like this."
His voice cracked. Desperate.
But it didn't reach me.
I was already gone.
There was no part of me left in this apartment.
No part of me left for him.
I stared down at his trembling hands.
Hands that once held my face like I was something fragile.
Hands that once traced my spine like he was memorizing me.
And now?
Now they were just hands.
Shaking. Empty. Meaningless.
---
Behind him, she stood.
Samantha.
The old friend who vanished when I needed her most.
Who returned only to take what little was left of me.
She looked at me like she wanted to cry.
But her eyes… they weren't sorry.
They were only sorry I found out.
Her hand rested over her belly,
the belly that should've been mine to cradle.
That should've held the life I lost.
She opened her mouth, maybe to explain.
But what could she possibly say that didn't sound like a blade?
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
But it wasn't real.
It was a reflex. A performance.
The kind of sorry people say when they're not actually sorry they did it,
only sorry you know.
---
Leon stood up suddenly, stumbling forward to block the door.
His eyes were red. His lip still carried the faint scar of his sin.
"I'll do anything, Nyx. I'll fix this, us. I'll leave her. I'll raise that child alone if I have to, just stay with me. Please."
His voice shook with guilt.
And for once, it didn't anger me.
It just… exhausted me.
"You should've thought of that before burying yourself in her."
He flinched like I'd struck him.
I didn't care.
I stepped past him, pried his fingers off my suitcase.
He tried again, grabbing my arm like I'd disappear if he held tight enough.
"I loved you," he said. "I still do."
I turned to look at him, really look.
Took in the pleading eyes. The regret. The panic.
And yet…
It didn't hurt.
Not anymore.
I was beyond hurt.
I was empty.
---
"I loved you too, Leon," I said softly.
"Which is why I'm leaving. I won't survive another death, not while I'm still breathing."
I gave him one last look.
At the man I once thought was my salvation.
At the life we built from grief and aching hope.
Now nothing more than a ruin.
I stepped into the hallway.
The door clicked shut behind me.
And in the silence of that parting,
I felt no peace.
No closure.
No clarity.
Just weightless nothingness.
---
The cube was warm in my pocket.
Steady. Familiar.
The only thing that ever truly listened.
I whispered to it, voice cracking as I walked into the night:
"There's nothing left. Not even me."
I said I loved him.
I saw the light flicker back into his eyes when I did.
It made me sick.
Not because I lied,
But because I didn't.
That was the worst part of this cruel little tragedy.
I meant it.
Somewhere in this hollow chest, the ache still resembled love.
Still called his name.
But that wasn't hope in his eyes.
It was selfishness.
He clung to that one truth like it erased the rest.
Like it was enough to rewrite what he did.
"Then why are you leaving?" he whispered, stepping closer again.
Why?
Because I no longer felt safe in his arms.
Because I would never see a shared bed without remembering her on top of him.
Because love, real love, doesn't survive on denial.
"Because you wanted me," I murmured. "And you still chose her."
His mouth parted, some excuse trembling at the edge of his lips,
But I was done listening.
---
I turned away and pulled out my phone.
Only one contact mattered now.
I didn't have the strength for another explanation.
So I kept it short.
"Mr. Francoise," I said, barely above a whisper,
"Can you please pick me up? From the apartment you rented out to help me… yet became a shackle."
My voice cracked.
"I'll wait here."
---
The cube pulsed faintly in my coat, like a heartbeat.
Or maybe I just needed something, anything, to feel like someone was listening.
I went back inside, sat in the middle of the suffocating silence.
That apartment that once held laughter, dinners, sleepy mornings and aching hope,
now just echoed betrayal.
Behind me, I heard Leon.
He was still trying.
Still asking.
Still not understanding.
"Samantha… go. Please. Just go," he said, but his voice was weak.
"I'm pregnant," she answered, fragile. "You can't just---"
"I never chose you. Not really."
"You did when you slept with me, Leon."
A beat of silence. A curse under his breath.
I didn't care anymore.
Their mess was theirs now.
I wasn't staying to clean up what they destroyed.
I sat by the door.
My suitcase beside me.
The cube in my lap.
My hand over it like it was a dying flame.
---
It didn't take long.
When I heard the knock, I opened the door, no hesitation.
And there he was.
Mr. Francoise.
Older now, maybe.
But steady. Reliable. Kind in the way the world rarely is.
Behind him stood two men in black, stern, sharp-eyed.
He must have sensed the desperation in my voice.
He didn't speak right away.
Just stepped in, took one look at my face, then at the apartment, at the man behind me, and the woman hiding her guilt in the shadows.
And he nodded.
"I've got you," he said gently.
Three words. That was all.
But it was enough to pull me to my feet.
Just as I stepped into the hallway, suitcase already gripped in one hand and the cube quietly humming in the other, I heard Leon again.
Not yelling. Not crying. Just... desperate.
"Nyx," he said, barely breathing.
A broken prayer wearing my name.
I didn't turn around.
Not until I felt the shift in the air, Mr. Francoise stepping between us.
Leon opened his mouth again, words tangled in his throat.
"I still love----"
But the old man raised a single hand, silencing him.
His voice was steady, but low and grave.
The kind of voice that didn't need to rise to fill a room.
"You had your chance, Leon."
The name sounded bitter in his mouth.
"You had her heart. You had her future in your hands. And I gave you my blessing, believing you'd protect her with your life."
He gestured subtly behind him, to me. To the bruises no one could see.
"And this, this, is what you did with it?"
Leon stood speechless. Samantha still lingered at his side, as if hoping to fade into invisibility.
"Look at her," Mr. Francoise said, his voice sharper now. "She's not leaving you because she's weak. She's walking away because she's finally choosing herself."
He stepped aside and nodded to the door.
"Come, Nyx."
I walked past Leon without a word.
For once, he didn't try to stop me.
---
The car ride was silent.
Mr. Francoise didn't ask questions.
He didn't fill the air with platitudes or pity.
He just held the wheel like a shield, steady through every turn.
We drove straight to the place my soul once called home,
Nico's house.
Familiar trees. That weathered gate. The worn-out welcome mat.
I hadn't been back since the day I first lost everything.
And yet… it still knew me.
He parked the car and got out first, opening the passenger door himself.
He helped me carry the suitcase up the steps, and just before I could take the key out of my coat, he stopped me.
From inside his coat pocket, he pulled a folded envelope.
With my name on it.
"This," he said, placing it gently into my hand, "belongs to you now."
I opened it slowly.
The title deed.
To the house.
Signed. Transferred.
Under my name.
My throat tightened.
"It's yours, Nyx," he said. "Not a memory. Not a ghost's echo. Yours."
My fingers shook as I clutched the document.
"I thought about offering you something new," he admitted, "someplace far, someplace clean… but then I realized, this house holds more than grief. It holds him. And everything you were before they broke you."
He stepped back, letting me take it all in.
"If there's anywhere left in this world where you might remember who you were, who you still are, it's here."
I wanted to cry.
But my tears had dried up days ago.
So I just nodded.
Mr. Francoise gave me a small, respectful bow, and turned to leave.
"I'll check in. But for now, rest. Breathe. Heal."
And then he was gone.
---
I opened the door.
The air was musty with dust, layered in time.
But beneath it, faint, achingly familiar, was him.
Nico's scent. Nico's presence. Nico's world.
I stepped inside, suitcase by the door, cube still clutched in my hand.
And for the first time in what felt like eternity…
I exhaled.