After finishing Frozen Storm, I turned my attention to the second image I’d selected for the month, Hall by kiklopp. Like the previous piece, this one called to me in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Yet the longer I stared, the more a rough idea began to take shape. I latched onto that small kernel of inspiration and built the story below.
Some places are not built, they are remembered. The hall in this image feels like one of those places. Despite the artistic style, its depth radiates an ancient power. It’s a kind of quiet life that rarely belongs to stone. The pillars rise like frozen waves, carved by time and silence. The air feels heavy with thought, as if it remembers every step that has ever echoed through its depths. Light bends across its surface not to illuminate, but to reveal a shimmer that seems almost sentient.
As the concept swirled in my mind, I began to wonder what kind of person would walk such a path alone. What would compel anyone to enter a place that seems to exist outside of time? Who would risk their sanity in a sanctuary built for those burdened by memory? This is not a hall meant for the curious. Rather, it’s a refuge for the haunted. A space where reflection means more than seeing your own face.
It lingers in that quiet awe balanced between fear and reverence. It’s a story about the weight we all carry. Those echoes of choices that refuse to fade. The image captured that stillness, that moment before revelation, and from there, the story simply followed where the silence led.
Eiren marched along the stone floor, each footfall rebounding off the walls and deepening the echo of his approach. The corridor stretched beyond sight’s reach. Pillars rose like frozen tides of marble, their surfaces catching the soft shimmer of the amber torchlight.
Between the cresting marble waves, a gray powder hung in the air, an unnatural musk of decay. Eiren squared his shoulders, forcing the symbols of death and destruction from his mind. He walked without a word, the silence broken only by his heavy footsteps. While his boots couldn’t mar the polished marble, the cloying debris claimed each exhalation.
He’d entered the unused keep through the mountainside entrance. He had been warned not to be the first to break the forced stillness. If he sought the hall’s aid, he must abandon all else and enter through doors no one remembered or maintained. Their origin was lost to time, and the doorway itself appeared only to those with dire need. The hall, in quiet mercy, deemed his plight worthy of acceptance.
As his journey intensified, the silence thickened, suffocating his breathing. He paused, licking his drying lips, as he reached out to brush a nearby pillar. The stone surface rippled at his touch, like the skin of a pond disturbed by wind and pebbles alike. For an instant, the opaque mock liquid reflected his countenance, not as he was, but as he’d been in his youth. For a moment, Eiren discovered a leaner face filled with soft laugh lines and sunlight playing between his strands of hair. Then, as quickly as it came into focus, the image faded, leaving only unrelenting marble.
He shook his head and continued his walk through the hall. With every step, the air grew colder, but the ambient illumination intensified and softened. Each stride carried him deeper into the hallway. Every pace blurred the boundary between the tangible world and the dreamlike echoes of memory.
The walls themselves began to hum. Shadows bent despite the lack of burning flames, and light gathered in seams that shimmered like the edges of thought. The farther he went, the more the hall seemed to breathe with him. Its pulse matched his own, as though testing his resolve.
At last, the corridor opened into a round chamber. At its center lay a still pool with water as smooth as glass. Eiren walked to the edge and peered into the depths to find his reflection staring up at him. Once again, instead of seeing his battle-weary features, Eiren found a younger and idealized likeness of himself. As the seconds ticked away, light shimmered within the pool, as though stars were trapped beneath the surface. With a glance over his shoulder, he kneeled, positioning his finger over his reflected twin, and traced the faint signs of long-forgotten mirth.
When the younger version of his reflection vanished, the water flickered to reveal a woman standing at the edge of a field, turning to smile. A young child ran across the grassland with arms wide open. Before the boy could reach the safety of his mother, a fire raced along the glade, silencing the sudden screams.
‘What happened there?’
Eiren clenched his fists as he whirled toward the source of the voice, his sword drawn, ready to strike the intruder. But the elegant figure gliding across the water shook his head. Eiren licked his cracked lips and re-sheathed his weapon. “I tried to save them all.”
Without uttering a word, the figure halted a stone’s throw away and gestured. The pool responded, shifting into another image. The waters showed his own hands, releasing a burning beam that collapsed the roof he’d sworn to hold. Eiren remembered the choices he’d weighed, and despite the harm he knew would mount, he made his choice between a pair of heartbeats. That decision saved hundreds of lives and all it required was the sacrifice of two innocent people.
“I came here to make this stop.” Eiren turned away from both the sight and the strange figure looming over him. His head shook as he fell to his knees and punched the stone. “This place is supposed to help me forget the cost.”
The hall seemed to breathe. The dust-laden light swirled, gathering into faint shapes. Dozens of silhouettes stood among the pillars. Each silhouette radiated calm patience despite its lack of form. Eiren glanced at the increasing army of ghostly figures as a voice rose from nowhere and everywhere.
‘To forget would be mercy. But to remember, that is where real forgiveness begins.’
He faced the pool again, finding his true reflection staring back at him. Although hollowness and weight filled his reflection’s features, Eiren discovered a wholeness mingled throughout that had been absent for far too long. He rose and stared at the figure standing over the water’s surface. “That’s the purpose of this place. To make us confront what we’ve done and learn to forgive ourselves despite our choices.”
The figure gestured at the still water.
Eiren looked back and saw his face, regaining some of the vibrancy he’d once seen in his naïve youth. He drew a slow breath as he kneeled and placed his palm on the water’s surface. Ripples spread outward, and the figure dissolved. The light dimmed to a pinprick before him as the ambient temperature rose to a soothing warmth.
‘You cannot receive forgiveness unless you accept responsibility for the actions that created the outcome.’
Eiren closed his eyes, surrendering to the darkness within him. “What happens after you make that decision?”
‘You endeavor to find peace in your history.’
He exhaled and opened his eyes, finding not the pool but the mountainside where the door had stood before his journey. Soft, uneven laughter filled the air, some of it his own. The ache in his chest remained, though its edges softened.
He turned toward the valley and began the long walk home. The hall had vanished, but its echo lingered like a whisper of peace carried on the wind.