After the encounter with Kael, Neo was no longer the same.
His walk through reality had become hesitant. The people around him seemed strange—as if each wore a mask that only he could see. False smiles, empty gazes, mechanical questions.
"Perhaps the world has changed. Or maybe only my eyes see differently now."
One evening, Neo sat down in an abandoned subway station, where no one came, where the echoes of thoughts seemed clearer. In the darkness, an old man appeared. He didn't seem lost. He seemed to know exactly where he was.
"You are looking for answers, aren't you?" he asked in a low but piercing voice.
Neo didn't answer immediately. He felt that the old man had seen him, truly.
"What happens when you reach the end of the questions?" Neo asked.
"Something else is born. Not silence. Not truth. But a mirror. In it, you no longer see the world. You see who you have become by searching."
Neo remained still. A mirror? To become the answer? Or the mistake?
"And what do you see in your mirror?" he asked.
The old man smiled gently.
"I don't know either. But, from time to time... I still ask. That keeps me alive."
At that moment, Neo understood something. Not everything. But enough. The question was not the enemy. Neither was silence. But stopping was. Giving up.
On the gray wall of the tunnel, words began to appear, as if space itself was listening:
"When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
Neo smiled, not with his lips, but with his soul.
He stood up. He still had a journey to make. Not to become someone else. But to find out who he is, step by step, between chaos and light.