**                                                                  "The Night I Forgot to Breathe"

***"The moment I died, the world exhaled,

and silence kissed my skin.

No bells. No tears. Just falling snow,

and the breathless hush within.*

I thought the end would burn or break-

Instead, it gently came.

with stars above and a sleeping sky

that forgot to call my name."

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I died with my eyes open.

There was no scream, no hand reaching out, no farewell echoing into the night.

Just snow.. endless, white, and wild.. spiraling through the air, like torn paper in a forgotten letter.

I don't remember falling. Only floating.

And then.. silence.

They don't really tell you what happens after the heartbeat ends....Not really... Not how the world holds its breath, waiting to see if you'll fight it ...... or follow.

I followed.

When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't in a hospital bed or bathed in light. I was... alone, barefoot, standing on top of an icy mountain... under a sky cracked open with stars.There was no sound—not the wind, not my thoughts—only a strange pressing stillness, as if even time had paused to watch what I had become.

And then... came a storm.

Not loud. Not violent. But slow, crawling, almost curious.

Snow felt like ash.. Wind like a whisper..

And in the cold breath of hush I saw it...a silver of something unreal cleaving through the sky. The moon, caught mid-surrender, split in two by shadow and silver.

a perfect eclipse.

Light and Dark holding hands like enemies that had learned how to dance.

That was the night I forgot to breathe.

Because breath belonged to the living. 

And I... was no longer one of them.

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**

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"I asked for stars and was given mirrors-

one of shadow and one of gold.

I chose the light- how cliché,

But the truth had never been told.

One laughed like winter's teeth,

one smiled like summer rain.

I walked into, knowing blindly,

and found wisdom wrapped in pain."

She had come for the stars– or maybe to forget.

A solo trip — dusted roads, deserted winds, and a yearning no camera could capture. The kind of night you chase when the world gets too loud and your bones beg for silence.

Her tent was pitched on nothing but sand and hope, a flickering lantern.... her only witness.

The sky was velvet ink.

The stars — like breath punctuating the dark.

Somewhere behind the dunes, time fell asleep.

So did she.

She didn't know when the wind changed.

Not the way storms usually do — this one didn't roar. It whispered. It curled around her like an old story being retold. She stood in the middle of it, awake but not. Her ears rang. The stars blinked out one by one until only two lights had remained.

One white.

One dark.

They floated above the sand, too close to be real.

A voice, ancient and echoing, whispered:

"Choose."

The white light gleamed like purity itself — obvious, gentle.

The dark one pulsed like midnight stillness — quiet, unreadable.

She hesitated.

The light hummed like promises. The dark waited like truth.

And though her soul trembled, she lifted her arm– and chose the light.

It laughed.

A wicked, metallic laughter that curved across the wind. Not comforting. Not right. Just... wrong.

And the dark — the one she had left behind — smiled. A soft, warm smile, like daylight hiding behind a horizon.

The sand opened beneath her feet.

She fell — or rose — into a darkness that shimmered with strange light. A temple, or maybe a dream. Water pooled black and still beneath her. And there, above it, sat a figure — colossal, cross-legged, cloaked in silence. Eyes closed. Meditating.

When it spoke, the world trembled.

"You asked to know light."

"I didn't," she whispered. "I never—"

"Curiosity is confession. Questions are the soul's hunger."

The figure smiled faintly, gazing into the unseen distance.

"You seek to be light. So now... may you walk through the shadows."

The waters below rippled once, and the world changed again.

Now she stood before a mirror, though no reflection stared back — only a shifting form: her soul, in shades of black. Wandering. Flickering. Real.

|"How would you know light\," the wind asked\,

"if you do not understand the dark?"|

She didn't answer. She didn't know how to.

And then, the world changed again.

A new land was visible to her pale blue eyes. Daylight everywhere. Waters clear and blue. Warmth surrounded her, her reflection— white, glowing — too bright to hold. Around her, everything shimmered with peace.

Everything but one figure. The only dark thing in that world.

|"How would you know dark\," the wind asked\,

"if you believe you are only light?"|

The winds lifted. A path split open.

No directions. No promises.

Only journey.

Only choice.

And as the wind brushed through her mane, her name slipped away — leaving only silence where it once lived.

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"How would you know the dark, if you believe you are only light?"

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—"The light she chose was only the beginning.

After all, every dawn begins in darkness."

"They said light was mercy,

But it left me blind.

I followed brightness like a prayer —

And lost what made me mine.

The snow sang softly as I fell,

Into a white that knew my sin.

And in the hush beneath its hymn,

A shadow did let me in."

She walked without footprints.

The snow beneath her feet never gave way, as if the mountain hadn’t decided whether she belonged to it. Around her, the world was breathless — a white silence too pure to be peace.

She should have been cold.

She wasn’t.

“Come,” a voice called.

“Light leaves trails too. You’ll need to learn how to follow shadows… before they follow you.”

She turned. A black cat stood a few paces away, its fur glinting faintly like obsidian dusted in frost.

He blinked, unimpressed. “Well? Standing there won’t make sense find you any faster.”

Something in his tone — dry, patient in the way exhaustion can be — made her obey before she understood why. She followed.

The snow sang softly beneath her as she walked, a sound halfway between music and memory. Ahead, the land unfolded into a hollow of frozen mist, where a lone tree hung suspended above the ground — rootless, skeletal, impossibly still.

A silver bell swayed from one branch. It didn’t move, but it sang.

That was when she saw him — Kael.

He lounged in the shadow of the floating tree, tail curled neatly, eyes two shards of winter ocean.

“You’re late,” he said.

Her mouth parted. “I—what?”

“You were expected yesterday,” he muttered, stretching. “Time doesn’t exactly flow here, but it still manages to be inconvenient.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Clearly.” His tail flicked. “Most don’t. That’s why I’m here. Unfortunately.”

He started walking toward the cliff’s edge, snow bending soundlessly beneath his paws.

“Wait!” she called. “Where am I?”

Kael didn’t even look back. “Where the snow sings and the light lies.”

She stared at him, lost. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting until you earn another,” he said, glancing over his shoulder, eyes gleaming with faint amusement. “I’m not your oracle, little spark. I’m just the cat who didn’t die.”

The bell chimed once — soft, mournful.

And for the first time, she realized she could see her breath.

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The snow had stopped singing. The silence felt heavier now — as if it was listening.

She glanced at Kael.

He was watching the horizon, where a sliver of shadow cut through the sky like a wound.

“What happens if I follow the wrong trail?” she asked quietly.

Kael’s tail twitched. “Then the light finds you first.”

He didn’t explain what that meant. He didn’t have to.

Somewhere beneath the ice, something began to stir.

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—"Maybe mercy was never meant to be bright. Perhaps it was always something softer — the quiet understanding of shadow, the acceptance that even light must rest somewhere dark."