Twenty-two years after his birth, Azriel had become a cursed being, searching for the truth about his parents—who, through their silence, had led him toward a misery he either did not understand or pretended not to understand.
That silence drove him into a world of horrors, where he was in turn tortured, humiliated, and manipulated by the demon. Infused within his mind, the demon twisted his thoughts, forcing him to fear brutal death in repeated and extreme visions. Anxiety paralyzed him.
The demon made him understand that it could see, hear, and know his thoughts through his very senses. For instance, it would whisper into his ear every word Azriel read in a book—and sometimes it seemed even to read faster than he could, making him believe that the mere sight of the page allowed the demon to perceive and know more than he himself could. This terrified him.
Night after night he lay awake, hearing the deranged mutterings of humans in the demon's service echoing in his ears, though no one was truly there—despite his countless attempts to control or at least push these voices away.
His days fell into a rhythm of despair, solitude, the loss of reason, and the exhausting struggle to recover his sanity. He sank into a deep contempt for himself, though it was in truth only another manipulation from which he could not free himself. His nightmares showed him the orgies in which his mother had taken part—a torment so vivid that it would wake him in anguish and drive him toward drink.
On the rare occasions when he ventured outside, the demon seemed to enter the mouths of passersby, making them speak horrors and insults about him: "son of a whore," or "I hope you die," and other cruelties of the same kind. His neighbors, great worshippers of the demon, never left him in peace—talking, shouting, and invoking every possible obscenity day and night.
Yet even so, he remained aware that a future battle awaited him. And so he trained without rest, striving always to become stronger. Gradually he also became conscious of the growing conspiracy of evil, observing the causes at work and the effects they produced upon the world. With every new action he took, he tried to restore what was truly happening—to bring truth back into a reality that had become twisted and obscured.
YOU ARE READING
Azriel or the silence complex
Short StoryIn an ancient kingdom, a mother remained silent, tormented by the guilt of her acts of lust and betrayal, while a father, consumed by jealousy and pride, shared this oppressive silence. One day, an oracle prophesied to the Queen:
