3- THE LIGHT OF TREMBLING SHADOWS

Where red and pink bled into each other, beside the sulfur-scented pyroclastic rocks, amidst the gray-white ashes flung skyward and scattered by the volcano, Meyer's exhausted body lay surrendered to the harsh blows of the wind. His eyelids twitched slowly. This wasn't his first dance with death.

His body, evolved to endure high temperatures, had witnessed countless mountains awakened by violent eruptions. The overflowing magma always reminded Meyer of a human rage—erratic and destructive. Especially the fury of his father, who kept appearing in his mind: the man who smashed everything and then sank into a deep silence.

When the violent force that triggered volcanic activity boiled beneath the surface and longed to reach the top with all its might, only a god could stop it.

As Meyer felt utterly powerless, a faint image of Emma's face passed before his eyes. It was as if something invisible embraced him from within those pink irises. He wanted to move his hand, to say something. Would this place he woke up in not be Earth?

The smell of sulfur burned his lungs—lungs that had grown used to it again. It was only through that sharp scent he could tell: this was Earth. The gas that could kill a human with ease eight thousand years ago had become, for Meyer, ordinary. One could even say it made him feel 'at home'.

Year: 10,250.

"Where am I?" he muttered, his hand rising involuntarily toward his glasses. When his fingers couldn't feel the crystals of the obsidian lenses, he tensed. All his energy—like a cut cable—vanished in an instant, and his arm dropped limply to his side.

"Steve!" called a voice. It was soft and warm.

Without lifting his head from the ground, Meyer moved his eyes to the left and saw a pink sky that resembled cotton candy. He didn't want to believe the voice emerging from that silhouette could belong to Emma. He knew her too well to forget. He could write entire volumes about each of her traits. Emma had once expanded his tiny world, embraced it—and like his father, left it behind.

He tried to frown, but his lips ached. He felt like crying, but his eyes stung. Finally, he looked down at his own body. Was it really his? If it was, it was intact. He jolted with surprise—though the reason for it slipped his mind soon after. His blood had once surged like this before. One night, it felt like it had fled his veins completely. And it had, he remembered.

Images passed before his eyes like the reflections of spiders in the fire.

"I didn't die," he whispered. "That's not good. I should have taken the chance to die." His words were more like delirium.

"Don't say that," Emma replied with a delicate voice. Her trembling hand entered his line of sight, caressing the burned skin of his left wrist. "Never say such things."

Both Meyer and Emma knew there would be no follow-up to that sentence.

Yes… Emma wasn't a ghost. Not a rustling leaf or an echo of a dream. She was Emma. A woman who talked, laughed, cried. The only one he ever loved—and the one who betrayed him.

From beneath his half-open eyelids, Meyer felt warmth sweating from his skin. The sounds around him were like lava waves crashing ashore. Above, a bat glided—its wings heavy and majestic like an old eagle's.

Emma's shimmering face flickered with every flap of the bat's wings, as if her breaths were woven into them. A mix of stillness and regret lingered on her feminine, beautiful face—breathing like a plant.

"Where am I?" Huyger asked, but the light seeping through his eyelids didn't help him recognize his surroundings.

Emma's face finally stabilized; it no longer wavered. Meyer realized this was due to his own dizziness.

Emma whispered, "It's been forty years," her tears suddenly falling.

Meyer furrowed his brows. He didn't see her face aging, nor did he feel sluggish in his body. And Emma hadn't aged either. Her face was as clear as the day they first met.

"This must be a bad joke," was all he could say. His chest rose and fell slowly. "A terrible joke. Can you tell me how bad of a joke this is?"

Emma's lips trembled. She silently pulled out a heat-resistant metal phone from her pocket and raised it in the air.

Year: 10,290

At that moment, Meyer felt less heat from the earth beneath his back. His heartbeat slowed. "Why?" he asked. "Why would this be true?"

He pushed himself up with his hands, the ground feeling cold. The sulfur that filled his nose moments ago—was 10,250 just a dream? If all of this was a dream, then what was real? The world stretched before him endlessly, as if it had reached its end. The sun shimmered like a burning bowl. As Emma's hand still caressed his cheek, Meyer's mind replayed a single night—the night this hand had once belonged to the woman who cheated on him with his closest friend.

The thirst for revenge from years ago burned his throat like a spicy broth. "Is Magnus dead?" he asked. That seemed to be the only thing that mattered.

Emma said, "I don't know," in a trembling voice. Her past deeds slipped before her eyes like a curtain. Though her knees were grounded, she trembled. Her eyelids twitched. When she pressed her hands to the earth, her knuckles ached. She began sobbing deeply. Meyer felt the warmth of Emma's hand leaving his cheek. The world, despite all that happened, had grown cold when distant from her warmth.

Though forty years had passed, according to Emma, the world had truly gone cold when she was twenty-two—when she was betrayed.

"I thought I would die. What kind of sleep is this? I didn't even dream," Meyer murmured. He felt guilty for not hearing the ticking of time. His last memory was of a spider wounding him—using his own obsidian blades. As their blood painted the ground like watercolor, he recalled Emma's frantic footsteps. Someone had called him "Steve," and he had felt cold.

"Why haven't you aged?" he asked Emma.

Emma, halting her sobs for a moment, wiped her purple-ringed eyes with a finger. She trapped her hiccups in her grief-stricken chest and placed her hand gently over her heart. "This place aged," she said. "While I waited for you, wondering every day if you'd wake up."

"How did I survive, despite all the wounds?" Meyer muttered, as if survival wasn't a miracle—but a curse.

"Because…" Emma started, then pursed her lips and looked down. Just then, a spider with massive legs walked behind them. Its yellow round body and head glowed with flames from its thick golden metal legs. Its lumbering gait made Meyer long for his glasses. "Where are my glasses?"

"Broken," Emma replied.

Meyer felt the words hit his chest like a brick. He thought the spider would attack, pierce him just like that day. When he blinked, the image became a bit clearer. The spider, with swaying antennae, approached. Its legs were sticky despite their metallic look. Like syrup.

"Why is it coming toward us?" Meyer asked. His tone held less fear and more recognition. He pushed himself upright, elbow against the gradient ground of orange to pale pink, and pulled his knees in.

His words made Emma cry again.

A loud voice echoed, strange in tone. "Emma, come and see my new man!"

Meyer raised his head, scanning around. Emma's gaze fixed on the spider, and the rhythmic steps confirmed the voice had come from it.

He hadn't planned to leap up, but he did. With rage, he lunged and punched the spider square in its face. The creature staggered on its legs. "Stop!" Emma shouted. Meyer turned back, breathing hard, feeling a warning in his chest. Emma's lips parted. Under Meyer's piercing gaze, she spoke with a trembling voice. "I serve them."

As Emma broke into sobs again, Meyer felt a tingling in his right hand. The blood in his blue veins began to glow red. His foamy, bubbling lava-like anger rose to the heavens. His love for Emma, buried deep in his heart, started crystallizing. All the minerals in his blood surged. The sound echoed through his limbs like a broken cage.

Meyer looked down at the unconscious spider with sharp attention. "What?"

He looked at Emma—she was still trembling.

"You wretched woman!" Meyer yelled, remembering the massacre caused by the spiders. "So that's why—you used a spider robot that day! You let muggers kill people for money! Just to impress a guy like Magnus, hungry for power!"

"No," Emma screamed. "No!"

"Then what? Tell me!" Meyer roared. He wanted to shake her until the words choking her throat spilled out.

Emma raised her shaking eyes from the ground and clasped her hands. "To save you," she said. "Just to save you…"

Meyer, his eyes drenched in blood, stared at Emma without losing a shred of anger. The clouds in his gaze billowed like a storm over the sea. His brow furrowed, his blood reversed. Looking at the spider with disgust, he said, "It was your choice. But don't take a single step unless you're ready for the consequences." He raised a finger to the sky and, with a faint smile, gazed toward the ashen horizon.

"I am the new man!"