Capítulo 116: Chapter 116
In the quiet hours, when the wind didn't speak and the moon hadn't shown its face, there was a stillness that settled over the village. The people inside their homes would go to sleep, knowing what they had to do the next day. The same things, the same people, the same paths. But it wasn't always like that. They knew, with a certainty born of dread, that one day—sooner than later—The Memory Eater would come.
Bahayu, they called it. The creature that didn't steal your memories, but your dreams.
In the years before, stories would circulate about the whispers. About how people lost their will, their ability to smile, their ambition. As if their souls were being hollowed out by something dark and ancient. No one knew what it was at first. They thought it was a curse. But it wasn't. It was Bahayu, a thing that thrived on the dreams of others. But it wasn't the dreams themselves it wanted. It came for the life that lived within those dreams, and every time it took one, it stole a year of life from its victim.
It was a fact everyone knew, though it wasn't spoken of often. It wasn't even mentioned on the rare nights when the villagers gathered for warmth. There was too much fear. Too much shame. Because once you became a target, it was too late. Everyone had someone they knew who had been taken. No one was exempt.
Zach sat by the window of his crumbling home, looking out at the barren streets. A dim light from his candle flickered, casting strange shadows across the walls. The silence in the room felt like a pressure. He looked up at the blackness outside, his thoughts drifting to the things he had heard about Bahayu. His grandmother had died five years ago, just after speaking about seeing Bahayu in a dream. She never woke up. He had dismissed it as some old woman's rambling, but now, as he sat there, alone and aware of the fear creeping in, he couldn't shake the thought.
The candle flickered again.
Zach turned his attention back to the room. A slight shiver ran down his spine, though he didn't know why. Maybe it was the fact that the wind outside had died down completely. Or the strange quiet that had fallen over everything. Or maybe, deep down, he could feel it, the sudden presence of something unseen, something that shouldn't have been there.
His body tensed, but he stayed rooted to his chair, eyes locked on the door. He didn't know if it was an instinct or something more.
The door creaked.
Zach's breath caught. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he turned his head to see the faint outline of a figure standing in the threshold, too still, too unnatural. It didn't move at first. Didn't speak.
Zach knew who it was before the door fully opened.
Bahayu stepped in.
The figure was tall, wrapped in a cloak of darkness so thick it seemed to consume the room's faint light. There was no face, only the faintest outline, like the figure was built from the space around it. As if it had been carved out of the night itself. It didn't belong in the world.
Zach's pulse hammered in his ears.
Bahayu had come for him.
It had come for his dreams.
"Don't," Zach whispered, his voice cracking. His breath felt heavy, almost painful, as he stared at the thing in his doorway. His heart pounded like a drum in his chest.
The Memory Eater didn't speak. It didn't need to. Its presence alone was enough. The quiet in the room thickened as Zach's chest tightened with panic. He reached for something—anything—but there was nothing. He was trapped, and Bahayu was already inside, moving closer, moving with an unhurried, deliberate grace. Zach couldn't bring himself to move, to scream, to fight. His body was heavy, unwilling to obey.
Then it was there, standing beside him, closer than he had expected. Its presence seemed to collapse the space between them, pushing him against the wall. Zach could feel it now. His dreams slipping away like sand through fingers. His memories. The things that had kept him alive, the things that had kept him human, all fading as the shadow reached inside him.
A cold hand pressed against his forehead.
A suffocating coldness seeped through his skin, into his bones. He could hear it now—the whispers, faint and strange, like echoes of people he had never met. His thoughts began to fragment, pieces of him flying in every direction. It wasn't his mind that was being stolen. It was his essence, his very will. Bahayu was taking it all, leaving behind nothing but emptiness.
Zach tried to push it away, but his arms felt weak. His body grew numb. He could no longer focus on anything except the feeling of being hollowed out, the gnawing sense that his time was running out. His heartbeat was slow now, not from fear but from the life slipping away.
When Bahayu pulled back, Zach felt it—the full force of what had been stolen. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His breath was shallow, as if each one cost him more than the last. The thing that had stood beside him, that had taken what it wanted, was now a step back, fading into the shadows. It didn't look back. It didn't need to.
Zach remained where he was, frozen, unable to move. The pain inside him wasn't physical, but it was worse. It was the absence of something he had always known but could no longer remember. He could feel the years slipping away from him, but they were more than years. They were memories he couldn't retrieve. Faces, places, feelings—all erased, as if they had never existed.
A year. Two. More. He couldn't tell. But it didn't matter.
He sat there for what seemed like hours, waiting for the world to feel real again, for the silence to break. But it never did. There were no answers left to find. Nothing remained to reach for. His life, as he had known it, was gone. And now, even the very thought of what he had lost seemed distant, unreachable.
The villagers knew what had happened. They all knew. But no one spoke of it. No one could. The curse was too powerful, too complete. The Memory Eater had come, and in its wake, only an echo remained, a shadow of what was once alive.
Zach didn't have much left. But he could still feel the cold.
It wouldn't be long before it claimed the rest.
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