Ella wasn't sure of anything yet.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ4zoHEn8Hr
She gathered the scraps, the strange words that didn't resemble any of the Circle of Five pens, and rearranged them as if trying to hear a song the wind had written on old windows.
"Athan."14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSjMru8KRtE
The name didn't sound real.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUnsKJoa638
Not a name spoken, just hinted at.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMmuubmYrZw
Like a shadow between pages, or the sound before a snowfall.
She was standing in front of an old red-brick building in Brooklyn.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ90k6iCdgbM
The snow was slowly melting on the doorstep, and the sound of the city was faint as if coming from behind thick glass.
She knocked.
A man in his late sixties opened the door.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCdmZKyPxCh
He was thin, his eyes held the look of someone who had lived a long life in silence.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3TKTBa5pya
His name was Edgar Miller—a veteran editor whose name had once appeared in the footnotes of a literary magazine, signed "A."
Ella said to him directly:
"Are you Athan?"
He smiled. Not happily, but bitterly.
"Athan wasn't a person. He was a voice... we took turns using."
Ella froze for a moment.
"You're saying it's a pseudonym?"
He shook his head slowly.
"Sometimes I wrote it. Sometimes Leonard. Sometimes even James. But whenever one of us wrote something unacceptable under our own name, we signed it Athan."
"Why?"
"Because the truth has no name."
They sat at a weathered table, which smelled of old paper.
Edgar opened a small wooden box and pulled out a bundle of yellowing letters.
"There was a sixth of us, yes. But his death wasn't physical. It was a name. We buried him when we started stealing from him."
He was silent.
Then he added:
"But Athan wrote his last story... and published it secretly, before he died."
He handed her a single sheet of paper.
“Death in Cold Water”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9ben2vuRWd
By Athan
Ella felt her heart stop.
She read the first line:
“Those who bear my name will die, for they do not possess my silence.”
At night, Ella sat in her apartment, reading the text.
Each sentence was like confessing to an unspeakable crime, a silent murder of something that was not a body.
Then she reached the last line:
“I was not killed… I was consumed.”
She closed the page.
She looked toward the window.
And she saw her reflection… but not alone.
In the shadows, behind her… was something resembling a man, holding a book, his face featureless.
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