What was I doing?

The more I tried to remember, the less my memory seemed to come back.

Was I fighting? That's what I was doing most of the time, so it probably was. Yet I couldn't remember. If I was fighting, then who was I fighting?

But then again, where was I? All around me was darkness. I could barely make out my hands. It was far too dark. What was I supposed to do?

No sooner had this thought crossed my mind than a massive white door appeared before me as if by magic. Where it led to, I didn't know. But staying in that eerie darkness was less tempting than turning that gleaming, shiny handle and stepping through that door out of nowhere.

So that's what I did, my torn black glove reaching over the handle without hesitation to pull it down, and reveal what lay behind.

I left the nothingness to find myself assaulted by the faint glow of candles lighting the main room of a house. Screams hit my ears with force as small children began to circle me, chasing each other with smiles on their faces in an attempt to catch each other. In front of me, a man was probably lecturing me, his fist slamming down on the table, stopping the little ones in their tracks and sending them running away. Shouts filled the room again, but this time they were those of this man in his forties. He was yelling at me without me knowing why, as if I was to blame for all the bad things that were happening to him. What had I done to cause this?

Oh yes, that's right. I had refused to go fishing with him. I was tired of having my behavior dictated. This angry man was none other than my father. It was just like I remembered: a tantrum, my mother standing in the kitchen doorway looking on in horror, my younger siblings hiding in the corner and scared to hear the screams, and the older ones unmoved by the situation.

It's true, that was the day. That day I had enough.

The screamings that filled the room were heavy and overwhelming. Why couldn't he stop yelling at me? It wasn't my fault that I was fearful about everything, so why did he always keep blaming me? He who was strong couldn't understand what a poor, scared, puny kid like me was feeling.

I wanted him to shut up, but his lecture wasn't going to end. Yet the white door behind him was calling me, urging me to join it, to pull down the handle again and be free of this one-sided argument. So, without regard for this father who continued to bellow incessantly, I went around him to push that door open.

But no sooner had I opened it than I felt myself falling, caught up in nothingness and chaos, never to return to the home that was once so loving despite the many admonitions I had received. My existence hit a terribly hard ground, giving me unparalleled pain. I was in real pain even though everything around me seemed blurry and out of place.

I barely had time to blink when a horde of enemies appeared right in front of me, ready to attack my newly-found young body.

It was like that day when I had been slashed all over, leaving scars on my body that would never fade, as proof that what I had endured there was real.

My body moved of its own accord, puny but agile, to escape the sharp claws of those terrifying enemies. I could see the door, that white door that didn't belong there. It wasn't comforting, but it was still a way out in those moments of the past in which I was immersed. So I ran in its direction, out of breath, to lose my opponents and pass once again to the other side.

In a fit of desperation as an enemy grabbed my leg, my hand firmly encircled the handle and turned it with speed. Propelling me to the other side, my pursuer disappeared as I found myself feet-deep in snow, sitting on a moving body that was trying to hit my face. A young man older than me lay underneath me, his face bruised as I presumably beat him up.

What had he done? I couldn't remember. It couldn't have been very important. But I still couldn't stop my fists from smashing into the boy's face again and again, adrenaline taking over instead of my own consciousness.

But soon, some people approached, shouting my name and probably that of the boy who was now unconscious. Why were they interrupting me? Someone came up to me and hit me to free this unknown boy, forcing me to look up at these stunned adults.

Why were they looking at me like that? If I hit him, there must have been a reason, even if I couldn't remember it. It had to be right, so why were they stopping me?

Step by step, they closed the distance with me, their faces threatening and their weapons in hand, as if I were the real villain in the story. I didn't want this situation. So why shouldn't I escape again? The white door was nearby. If I took it, maybe I would stop being blamed.

So I got up, not giving those cheeky adults time to catch me, to cross that doorway that plunged me further into my past life, making me walk through that film of memories that make up my life.

This time I found myself in the middle of a carnage, corpses littering the ground that my black boots conferred by the uniform of the Fatui recruits trampled on, a bloodbath in which I was immersed with a smile plastered on my face, as if forever engraved on my features. In front of me, a man was battered, lying in the uncompromising snow, one hand at his ribs where his blood was dissipating. Drops of this crimson liquid dripped from my blade that I held firmly in my hand, staining the snow already reddened by the massacre.

This was the first solo mission I had been given. To exterminate a group of people who had put the ruler of Snezhnaya in a bad mood according to what I had been told. But I didn't ask many questions. What was the use of it if they were all going to die anyway?

So I repeated the same actions, raising my horrifyingly colored blade to finish off this man writhing in pain before me, spurting blood on my still childish face. Only then did the much sought-after door appear, visibly satisfied with my action executed only a few seconds earlier. This time, it is with calm that I crossed this frame.

The nothingness embraced me once again with its ghostly arms, letting a chill current of air surround me and give me goosebumps. I was dressed in my Harbinger uniform, so either this was still a memory or I was my current self.

When suddenly my whole family appeared around me, I realized that this was still not reality. They were all stoic, their faces impassive, their arms at their sides, and they didn't make the slightest movement. Then I reached out to Teucer, the little brother who admired me since birth and whom I cherished like the apple of my eye. But he nodded in disapproval, in unison with all the other members of my family whom I cherished more than my own life, and soon he turned and walked away from me, step by step, like all the others. They all went in opposite directions, deeper into the void, a fog surrounding their silhouettes as they gave themselves over to the darkness.

No matter how much I yelled, called out to them, said their names, they wouldn't turn around. I wanted to move, but chains appeared to nail me to the spot, chaining my arms and legs so that I could never reach them, catch up with them, talk to them again.

Then the ground around me collapsed, creating a precipice between me and all those people I desperately wanted to reach, as if to prove to myself that I could never be with them again.

No matter how hard I struggled, these chains of darkness around my limbs were far too strong. No matter how hard I tried to break them, they just kept tightening around me, burning my skin and crushing my bones, suffocating me. My lungs began to fire, giving me a sharp pain while preventing me from continuing my desperate cries to those family members who would never come back to me.

What was the point of struggling after all? Perhaps my destiny was here, to remain encircled in by these bonds that would never free me, gradually hindering my consciousness and my motivation, so that I would allow myself to be enslaved by this deity governing these depths in which I seemed to be imprisoned. My eyelids were so heavy, I just wanted to let go and lower my arms, so that I could start dreaming of a world where my family would be by my side.

Yet a voice seemed to be calling me, soft, comforting, far too familiar to be simply forgotten. It kept calling me to the surface, away from the chasm of my consciousness, from the bottomless precipice into which I was falling, from the ocean abyss into which I was sinking.

Then, a body threw itself in this cloudy water which enveloped me and pulled my body towards the bottom so that I could never re-emerge. This body brought me a thousand flashes of light to illuminate this night that this abyss was giving me, surreal arms embracing my body to free me from these chains tirelessly continuing to pull me deeper into hell. This dark metal that was crushing my limbs gave way to the new warmth that this presence brought, freeing me from my bonds that had seemed so unbreakable only seconds before. Golden hair tickled my face, forcing my eyelids to stay perfectly open so that I could engrave in my memory those delicate features and that anxious face.

Even underwater, she kept trying to shout my name, as if it would be the trigger for me to regain control of my body in order to come back up, to come to myself, to leave this darkness in which I was indulging since they had all left. I wanted to lower my arms, but she caught my hands in hers to make me raise my arms to the sky, towards the surface, towards the future.

So I followed her, ignoring the deleterious whispers that flanked my shadow to embrace that warm light that was just waiting for me.

"Ajax!"

The atmosphere gave off a metallic smell, weighed down by thick particles. Above me was the same young woman who had dived headlong to rescue me and forbid me to lower my arms, her large golden eyes letting out an unimaginable number of droplets that fell at regular intervals on my face.

Her sadness broke my heart, so I raised my hand to her cheek to gently comfort her. But this gesture brought a million pains through my whole body. If I was lying in front of her and she was crying uncontrollably, then no doubt I was hurt. Especially since this abyss of loneliness that had called me seemed very close to a one-way ticket to a place devoid of any living soul. So even though I was wounded, I wasn't going to let myself be tempted by this force that was trying to corrupt me so that I would give in to temptation, to the easy way out. I was going to endure the pain, to hold on, never to leave it, because she was my tie to this world.

Even though my family had moved away from me after discovering that I was a Harbinger, she had grown closer to me without ever feeling fear. She overcame that unpleasant first impression I always gave to others, to walk up to me, and break through my shell. She was my light, coming to save me as many times as necessary to prevent me from falling back, from being sucked into the darkness, from relapsing away from my humanity. So I had to surface, to get out of this grip of nothingness, to climb this slippery wall to come back to her side.

For Lumine's brilliance was the most important thing in the world to my eyes tainted with darkness.