If you can choose what others see, what happens when reality slips beyond your control?
That morning, Lila had woken up with a question she already hated. Who had added the third silhouette?
She had remained sitting on the edge of her bed, back straight, hands resting on the sheets, staring at nothing.
The smell of a live broadcast always came back to her before the images: dried sweat, cold exhaustion, coffee too strong, the lingering scent of hairspray and powder hastily touched up. But this time, one image returned before all the others.
Two silhouettes injected. Three on screen.
The night before, at the foot of the Wall, the glare of the spotlights had turned the Crack into an unreal set, a hole lit like a stage. They had dressed it up, framed it, cleaned away anything that didn't fit. They had turned it into a theater because they weren't allowed to show emptiness.
While Aria and Sophie were falling asleep in their hammock, far away from the city, Lila had stepped in front of the screens and taken her place again.
She always spotted the cameraman before anyone even said "go." A tiny movement of the shoulder, a breath in her earpiece, the stage manager raising two fingers and counting down—three... two... one...
Lila had taken a long breath, and then her face had rearranged itself like a perfectly fitted mask: not warm, not cold. Just the exact expression needed to make everyone on the other side feel personally involved.
"We are back on "Detective Trials" she had said, her voice soft and composed, paced by perfectly measured micro-pauses. "Before us: the Crack, the breaking point, the place where the world... seems to falter."
She had let the silence settle—not an empty silence, no. A carefully crafted silence, stretched tight, a silence that promised something.
The camera had glided toward Kael.
Kael Orvelle wasn't pretending to be brave. He was pretending to be seen. The difference was subtle, but it gave everything away: the angle he offered the lens, the breath that was a little too controlled, the single drop of sweat gleaming on his temple as if someone had painted it there with a brush.
He was ready and in position.
In his eyes, excitement and fear lived side by side, wrapped in the gift paper of confidence.
"Kael is ready," Lila had continued. "And the team is safe, with reinforced protocols and active surveillance through the drones covering the area."
She pronounced drones the way one might pronounce proof.
Then, without changing her tone, she added:
"For some time now, rumors have been circulating. Images, whispers... 'presences.' Some people speak of spirits. Yes, spirits of nature."
In the control room, no one answered. But everyone had heard.
Idriss, the stage manager, had slid a finger across the console without looking up. He had the hands of a surgeon and the face of a man who rarely slept. On a secondary screen, the raw feed of the Crack played on a loop: infrared, thermal, spectrum, slow motion.During pre-production, he had spent hours searching for something.
The result: nothing.
No silhouette. No entity. No impossible shadow. Nothing but interference and emptiness. And emptiness, on live television, was forbidden.
So he had made his proposal to Lila, who had, of course, accepted.
In Idriss's headset, the FX supervisor whispered:
"Your overlays are ready. On my signal, we launch."
It wasn't a pure lie. It was worse. It was a decision. A narrative choice.
For hours, he had layered the spectrums, isolated variations, amplified micro-artifacts until they became "readable." He had created what the audience expected.
Kael, without being told, had understood before anyone else.
Deep down, despite himself, Kael had hoped something real would happen. A real shiver. Uncontrollable proof.
A moment that wouldn't depend on editing. But in front of him, the Crack remained an unmoving fracture. A set that refused to perform.
Lila had given him a brief look. Not a worried look. A look that meant one thing.
Play your part.
Kael had nodded, almost imperceptibly.
He had learned screens the way others learn a sport: repetition, reflexes, control of the image.
He moved forward. The ground seemed slightly colder beneath his shoe. A shiver ran up his spine despite himself.
One step.
Then another.
And then...
Nothing.
No invisible breath. No supernatural whisper. No spectacular vibration. Only that strange feeling of standing at the edge of something that refused to show itself. So he had stopped, waiting for the world to do its part.
The world did nothing.
In the control room, the silence had become dangerous. The kind of silence that threatens to become ridiculous and forces you to improvise...Or lie.
Lila didn't panic. She hadn't survived years of live television by relying on luck.
"Kael... what do you feel?" she had asked, syllable by syllable, as if placing clues in front of him. "Can you sense... something?"
Kael swallowed. He could have told the truth. Nothing.
But nothing wasn't an answer.
It was a failure. So he tilted his head, as if listening to an invisible world.
"It's... strange," he said. "Like... like it's watching me."
The sentence hadn't described reality. It had described exactly what the audience wanted to hear.
Lila gave the slightest hint of a smile.
"As if... it's watching you," she repeated softly.
In the control room, the FX supervisor whispered:
"Go. Now."
Idriss triggered the effect.
On the return screens, the two planned forms appeared near the Crack: blurred, luminous, beautiful enough to unsettle, ambiguous enough for everyone to project whatever they wanted onto them.
Lila knew their trajectory.
She knew exactly when the first was supposed to appear, when the second would cross the frame, and the precise moment both of them were meant to disappear.
Then a third shape moved.
Lila saw it. She didn't step back. She didn't turn her head. Her face remained perfectly composed for the broadcast.
But in her earpiece, Maya whispered:
"Lila... that one isn't ours."
For once, Lila didn't pretend to be surprised.
A blink. Half a step back.
"Did you see that?" she breathed, as though speaking directly into the ear of the entire city.
At home, the audience held its breath.
Kael felt his stomach tighten. He knew nothing was really happening. He knew they were manufacturing something else.
But then something moved behind the two luminous silhouettes inside the Crack.
He froze. This time, Lila didn't need to ask him to act afraid.
Kaissa Valdor was watching from a living room that was too clean, without history, where every surface seemed disinfected of all memory.
On a table, a secondary screen displayed graphs: engagement, retention, emotional peaks. The numbers were rising. She didn't smile. She never did.
Her gaze remained fixed on the third silhouette, frozen on one of the screens.
In Lila's earpiece, her voice came through, smooth and institutional:
"Continue. We want a strong ending. And above all, make it quick."
Lila understood. Kaissa had seen it too.
She took a breath and turned toward the camera.
"If these presences exist, then perhaps it means our history... is larger and more complex than what we've been taught."
Another perfect sentence to feed the mystery. But this time, Lila wasn't inventing everything. A real mystery had just opened before their eyes.
Kael stared at the Crack. He was standing right in front of it, and he no longer wanted to go inside.
For the first time, he felt it as something other than a set. A real boundary. And he was standing in the middle of it, carrying the humiliation of being used to support a beautifully packaged lie...
And the unsettling possibility that he might have seen something real.
Yet in front of the cameras, he smiled.
"I'm ready," he declared, confidence feigned, voice steady.
Idriss triggered the halo and the breath effect again. Only the planned effects.
No third silhouette appeared.
The audience gasped.
Kael felt shame cling to his skin, now mixed with something even more disturbing.
Doubt.
Lila concluded flawlessly:
"Whatever lies behind the Crack... one thing is certain: we have just crossed a boundary."
Then, more softly:
"Join us again tomorrow. This is only the beginning..."
As soon as the signal cut, everything came apart in moments. An assistant switched off Kael's microphone. The production crew folded in on itself like a retreating tide. The spotlights went dark. The drones left the area. The cables disappeared. The voices faded into the distance. Within minutes, the Wall had returned to its emptiness.
Kael remained alone, out of frame. He looked at the Crack the way one looks at a mirror that no longer reflects anything.
Behind him, Lila's soft voice appeared.
"Kael. You were perfect."
He turned, hesitating.
"The first two... that was you?"
Lila didn't answer right away.
"You already know the answer."
Kael looked back at the Crack.
"And the third?"
This time, Lila remained silent.
Kael slowly turned his head toward her.
"Lila... what was it?"
She could have lied. She knew how to do it better than anyone.And yet no words came.
"What exists, Kael," she finally said, "is what people remember. And what they remember... is what we choose to show them."
"That's not what I asked you."
For the first time, Lila looked away.
Kael remained silent. He wanted to protest, but the words wouldn't come.
He had always wanted to become a hero, but he had never asked himself what such a desire might cost...
Lila placed a hand briefly on his arm, almost tender or professional?
"You did your job. I did mine. Now we go home... and we'll see tomorrow."
Then she walked away, already somewhere else.
Kael remained alone for one more second. Facing the Wall. Facing the Crack.
And for the first time, he had the feeling that an abyssal emptiness… Was spreading through his entire body.
Far away from the spotlights, miles from there, in the untouched forest, the morning light was softer. Here, the world didn't shine to be seen. It shone because it existed.
Neris Valdor moved alone.
Her boots barely made a sound. She had adapted her movements to the moss, the roots, the dampness. A discreet, economical way of moving, as if apologizing for being there.
Around her, the air smelled of wet earth. And something else. A light scent, almost perfumed, that hadn't been in the forest the day before.
Neris stopped. Then crouched down. On the ground, between two ferns, there was a mark. Not a human footprint. This one was too regular. Too clean.
A geometric pressure, as though something harder had pressed into the earth without hesitation.
She ran a finger along the edge. The ground was slightly compacted, but not crushed as if something had passed quickly and with control.
It wasn't an animal. She felt her heart tighten, but her face remained neutral.
"Thirty-two seconds," she murmured, without knowing why.
Her haptic watch vibrated faintly. She had programmed her own signals. A rhythm to keep her mind clear. She raised her wrist and activated a mini-swarm.
Three micro-drones emerged from her case like metallic insects, silent and disciplined. They rose one meter above the ground, just high enough to scan without giving away her position.
Neris followed them with her eyes.
On her screen, the map took shape in real time: terrain, humidity, thermal anomalies. The forest appeared like a living organism, with a thread of irregularities running through its center. Like a small scar.
Someone walked through here.
Something passed through here.
Neris stood. She thought of Kaissa, her mother.
The way she held on to things, the way someone grips an object too tightly.
Had she already sent her guards after me?
Or was this what she had detected yesterday?
Or the people she was looking for?
She wants to control everything, Neris thought.
But here...
Here, nothing obeyed. The forest had no protocols.
No badges.
No earpieces.
No armed guards.
No secret police...
The forest had only its own presence. And that presence seemed to surround her with gentleness and peace.
A feeling she wasn't used to at all, she who was always on guard and protected herself behind a swarm of mini-drones.
Neris took a breath and moved forward. The drones flew ahead of her, then returned, then moved out again. It was like a silent ballet. She began to feel more confident and decided to follow the tracks.
Farther ahead, in a clearing, she found something else. A broken branch, but not broken by accident, more like someone had deliberately cleared a path.
The break was clean and angled, and on the bark there was a mark, as though something smooth had slid across it.
Neris froze.
Her mind calculated a thousand possibilities. Her heart did something much simpler. It hoped.
Good. I'm finally going to find them.
The ones who had crossed. The ones who knew. The ones who, some time ago, had left all this illusion behind.
She looked at the trees. Almost despite herself, she whispered:
"Who are you?"
The wind moved through the clearing. And for one second, Neris had the absurd feeling that the forest… Was listening.
Her drones returned, blinking. A silent alert appeared on her screen. Movement twenty meters away. Weak thermal signature. Too low for an adult standing upright. But too steady for a hunting animal.
Neris held her breath. She shut down the drones and placed a hand on her case.
Her inner voice, cold and precise, ordered:
Don't move.
But another voice, older, more fragile, and deeper, whispered:
This isn't a trap. It's a meeting. Go and find them.
Neris took one step. Then another.
And at the edge of her vision, between the ferns...Something moved. She still couldn't see what it was. But she knew one thing.
Her mother was constantly manufacturing reality.
Here, in the forest… It was different.
Reality itself was preparing to step into the frame.
The Guardian Angel: Do Lila and Kael live in a dream, an illusion, or reality? Now, it is up to each of them to choose their own destiny… And the world they want to live in.