Élise lived within the margins of a perfectly ordered life.
By day, numbers; by night, routines that no longer touched her.
She liked to think she wasn’t running away — only observing, mostly herself.
The “exercises” she sometimes performed were her way of probing her own silence, of feeling her body answer when boredom left it untouched.
That night, the forest called to her more strongly than usual.
The ruins of Lornac, lost and voiceless, promised the perfect emptiness.
She arrived as the light was already fading. The walls sagged like tired bones; moss swallowed every edge.
The air tasted of damp stone and rotting leaves.
Élise settled in the middle of an open alcove, placed her phone on a slab of rock, and started recording — she wanted a witness, like a private diary that could see.
Her small black bag was almost ceremonial. She took out the blindfold first.
The touch of fabric against her skin calmed her inner noise — a voluntary silence, a promise.
She tied it on without hesitation, erasing the world in one gesture.
Then, with quiet precision, she pressed a strip of tape over her lips.
Not to dramatize the moment, but to seal it — to make her own breathing louder, more tangible in the dark.
The sticky contact against her skin sparked a tremor that wasn’t pleasure or fear, but something in between: the raw awareness of being alive.
She felt her muscles tense, estimating the distance to the stone where she had left the keys — always within sight, just out of reach.
Next came the cuffs, the cold metal, the soft click that confirmed her choice: to stay still and listen.
There was nothing theatrical in her motion, only the quiet metallic sound echoing faintly through the ruin.
Before completing the setup, she fixed a chain to a solid pillar — a point of anchor, her assurance of safety.
The chain hung like a link between her will and the unmoving stone.
To it, she attached a small timer lock, set for thirty minutes.
The keys remained visible but distant, resting on a rock a few steps ahead: a test she had chosen for herself.
The ruin, which had felt simply abandoned, began to change.
Darkness behind the blindfold thickened; the tape over her mouth amplified every breath.
She listened — inward and outward — to the scratch of something small, the hum of insects, the shift of branches.
Her heartbeat synced with the forest’s pulse.
For a moment, she felt at peace, convinced she could end it all whenever she wished.
Then came a sound.
At first, faint and hard to place — a stone rolling somewhere behind her.
She froze.
Listened.
Nothing. Only the forest breathing.
A minute later, the sound returned.
Closer.
Now unmistakable: footsteps.
Slow, measured.
Someone — or something — was circling the alcove.
Élise tried to turn, to call out, but the cuffs pulled tight.
Her breath quickened; her pulse roared in her ears.
The timer clicked — the small metallic ping of its cycle ending.
But before relief could come, another sound followed: heavier, lower, deliberate.
A metallic thud.
Something being placed against stone.
And then, a distinct clack — not hers.
A lock.
A large one.
A second lock had just been added to the chain.
She didn’t hear the hand that placed it — only the sound of her certainty vanishing.
The timer lock, once her safety, was now useless.
The keys, visible in the dim light ahead, were nothing but decoration — a reminder of control she no longer had.
On the recovered video, the last clear image shows her kneeling in the center of the ruin, blindfolded, tape over her mouth, motionless.
Behind her, in the shadows, a shape passes briefly.
Then comes the deep metallic sound of the heavy lock closing.
A breath brushes the microphone, and a quiet voice murmurs:
“You chose silence.”
The image flickers.
The light fades.
And the first night ends there — with Élise caught inside the trap she built to understand herself.