Before the girl could answer, an older voice was heard from behind her.

  "Anna! How many times have I told you not to open the door to strangers!"

  The owner of the voice appeared before Glenn, who opened his eyes wide. It was an older version of his mother, with a few more white hairs.

  "Mom?"

  The woman who was supposed to be her mother opened her eyes wide too, and then stopped. The little girl turned to look at the woman curiously.

  "Mommy?"

  The little girl's voice echoed outside the door. She had just called out to the woman who looked like Glenn's mother, Mommy.

  'Mommy...Mommy!?'

  Glenn let out a gasp of surprise. Meanwhile, the woman continued to stare at him intently, as if she didn't believe what she was seeing.

  Then, all of a sudden, she took a quick step towards Glenn, who, without having time to react, found himself in the woman's arms.

  "Glenn! It's you! This is unbelievable!"

  Without knowing how to react, Glenn unconsciously wanted to return the hug to the woman but then changed his mind when he felt the hot tears fall on his shoulder. He didn't recognize her; he didn't know who she was; he only knew that she looked like his mother and that she recognised him.

  Was he allowed to hold her?

  "Mummy? Mummy! What's happening to you?"

  The little girl screamed and then cried back; for some reason, Glenn didn't know. After a few seconds or minutes like that, the woman pulled away from Glenn's grasp. Then she looked him deeply in the eye and winced.

  "Don't you recognize me?"

  Glenn was in shock; he had no idea who the woman was. She took fifty years. Just a few days before, he'd hoped to see what she looked like when she was older, and here she was, even taller than he'd hoped.

  "Cassia?"

  A smile lit up the woman's face, and she moved a little further away from Glenn.

  "Yes!"

  That simple word jostled Glenn entirely; his sister, his own little sister now older than him, was even a mother. He hadn't seen her grow up, go to school, go through her teenage years, find her first love, or get a job. He hadn't seen anything of her; in that sense, the father of the little girl who had stopped crying by then, or some of his sister's friends, must have known her much better than he did.

  He had missed fifty fucking years, and that's when he realized it.

  With a huge crash, he fell to his knees. Surprised, Cassia stepped forward and grabbed him by the arm.

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  "Hey, Glenn! What's going on?"

  At the end of the path, an old woman appeared. She was old and had long white hair; she was dressed in black and walked with seriousness and dignity. She turned her indifferent and curious gaze towards the door.

  "What is going on here? What's taking you so long?

  Glenn, still in shock at the revelation, raised his head to meet the old woman's eyes. There she was, and he could not hold back his tears and bowed deeply to the ground. The world fluttered around him. His mind was crying as much as his eyes; he had been dead for fifty years.

  "I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I apologize for everything."

  He couldn't hold back his tears. For him, it had only been a few days since he had left; for them, it had been a few decades, and there was nothing he could have done. He imagined all the good times he could have spent with them.

  He was unworthy of being a brother and unworthy of being a son. If only he hadn't gone into the cave, all in pursuit of a useless light that had done nothing for him.

  Meanwhile, the old woman had approached Glenn and stooped down. Strangely, she looked calm, as if she knew it was coming. She looked into Glenn's eyes, still calm, with a deep relief in them and above all, the look of love a mother has for her child.

  "I'm glad, very, very glad to see you again, my boy."

  Despite her calm, straightforward tone, Glenn's mother couldn't help but let out a few tears for her son.

  "It's so good to see you, son."

  After a few minutes on the doorstep, they all found themselves in the living room, sitting around the wooden coffee table. Nothing had changed; everything was in the same place as before, even a little tidier. However, the atmosphere was still gloomy. Even after their emotional reunion.

  Everyone looked at each other but didn't know what to say. Before, strangely, it was little Anna who started to speak.

  "Uh, Mom, who's the man?"

  Without waiting a second, her mother, Cassia, answered.

  "That's Glenn, my brother, and therefore your uncle."

  The little girl looked at Glenn with a questioning look before smiling.

  "Hi, Uncle!"

  Glenn shyly returned the smile to the girl before a question popped into her mind.

  "Don't you wonder why I am like this? So... young? I mean, I've been gone a few days, a few years."

  His mother and sister watched for a moment before smiling with a sigh.

  "After you disappeared, many monsters with the appearance of the missing people came out of the cave, so we waited for you to come out too so we could identify you, and then..."

  She paused to turn her head toward the window.

  "You never appeared in one of those infamous forms, so we were convinced you would reappear one day, perhaps in an even more monstrous form, but at least that hope of seeing you again that consumed us would be gone, or in no specific form, just you."

  Then she looked away from her mother.

  "And then..."

  She paused.

  'And then?'

  Without finishing her sentence, she turned once more to offer Glenn a warm smile.

  "No, it's nothing!" And you? What happened to you?"

  Glenn looked down at the floor, remembering the days gone by. With a sigh that sounded ancient and heavy, he told everything that had happened, from the unease he had felt at the frescoes and the carving, the appearance of the light and the feeling it gave him, the way to the light, the moment when he fell into the hole and found himself in front of the monstrous fresco, the translucent blue seed, the message written on it, his fainting, his waking up, his race to get out of the cave, his meeting with the old man, and finally his arrival in front of the house.

  It may have seemed like nothing, but to Glenn, everything he had experienced already seemed enormous.

  After some more information, there was silence in the room. Cassia seemed pensive, while her mother did not seem surprised at all. After a moment, Cassia held Glenn's gaze.

  "Well, a lot has happened; it's only been, for you, a few days since you woke up. Amazing."

  Glenn listened to Cassia's few remarks, but the more she spoke and the more Glenn looked around, the more something was wrong. Then a question he should have asked before only now reached his mind.

  "Um, just... I have a question. Where's Dad?"

  There was a dead silence in the room, and then the look on the faces of everyone in the room, except little Anna, turned dark. Glenn didn't want to believe it; their behavior was worth more than a thousand words to him. His mother spoke up.

  "Your father is in the hospital; he's ill."

  Her tone turned even darker, turning her brow into a deep frown. Before she could speak, Cassia dismissed her daughter and sent her to her room. Then finally, Glenn's mother spoke.

  After you disappeared, your father did everything he could to find you, and he insisted that the government continue the search. He went half-mad. Later, when the search stopped and these human monstrosities invaded the world, he wanted many times to infiltrate the caves to look for himself".

  Closing her eyes, Glenn's mother continued her story.

  "Little by little, time went by, and he still couldn't accept your disappearance; he became ill, both psychologically and physically. After a while, he didn't even want to eat and went into a critical stage, so he is now in a hospital, fighting every day to see you again because he still can't accept your disappearance.

  After this story, a smile appeared on Cassia's face.

  "But you're here now! If we go to him, his heart will be soothed, right?"

  Glenn gave her a look of sadness, which surprised Cassia.

  "No, we can't. If it's the hope of seeing me again that keeps him alive, then he mustn't see me."

  But before he could finish his sentence, his mother cut him off.

  "Let's go see him."

  Glenn looked at her, full of surprise and accompanied by a disapproving feeling.

  "No! If he sees me,

  But again, she cut him off.

  "And so? For fifty years, he's been struggling to find you until he went mad!"

  Though she spoke with strength, righteousness, and dignity, a twisted frown reflected her sadness.

  "So, my son, we'll go together to see your father; show him that he didn't wait for nothing."