The Story of one Awakening

© Zohar Leo Palfi, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0067-2809-7

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Dear Reader

This is not just a book. You’re looking at a journey. A journey to the most secret corners of the human soul, where pain is intertwined with hope, and despair gives birth to incredible strength.

“Echoes of Silence” is the story of Elias Burton, a talented artist whose life was shattered by a single betrayal, locking him in voluntary recluse. But even in the most impenetrable darkness, there is always room for light. And when mysterious letters appear on the doorstep of his old home and an elusive shadow flickers in the depths of a broken mirror, Elias begins his painful but necessary return.

This novel will take you through labyrinths of deception and self-discovery. You will witness the struggle for justice, the uncovering of old secrets and difficult encounters with the past. You will feel how every brush stroke, every note, every word in this story is filled with sincere emotions – from searing pain to all-encompassing forgiveness.

Echoes of Silence has no one-size-fits-all answers. It invites you to ponder the nature of talent and envy, the cost of choice and the ability of human beings to find their own path to redemption. Perhaps in Elias’s story you will recognize a part of yourself, your own doubts and aspirations.

I hope this book will capture you from the first pages and leave a deep mark on your soul. May it become for you not just a story you read, but a mirror in which you will see your own possibilities for the Dawn.

Enjoy your reading.

Prologue

Silence had always been his companion. Not that comforting, deep silence that embraces the soul in a forest or on the top of a sleeping mountain. No. It was a different kind of silence-dense, sticky, like a spider’s web, woven of unspoken words and forgotten promises. It seeped through the thick walls of the old house, crawled into the cracks of the window frames, hung heavy and pressing in the air. He had long ago learned to breathe it, this silence, this dust of oblivion that settled on every object, on every memory.

Ten years. Ten years separated by the gulf between what he was and what he had become. Between Elias Burton, the genius whose brushstrokes whispered to the world about the invisible, and Elias, the recluse whose hands could only shakily take a cup of coffee to his lips. His studio, once flooded with light and filled with the smell of paint, was now a crypt. An easel stood in the center, covered by a faded canvas like a mute accusation. Beneath it were hundreds of other, equally mute, sealed canvases, each holding not a painting but a fragment of a soul frozen in time.

He remembered the day his world came crashing down. The flashes of cameras, the noise of admiring voices, the promise of fame. And her eyes. Anna’s eyes, in which he had seen only love and faith. Eyes that carried something else in them – a harbinger of imminent disaster. And then her words, scathing like the blow of a whip, had turned his talent, his future, his very existence into ashes. She sold him. Sold him for money, for power, for the place that should have been his.

He’s been dead to the world ever since. And the world died to him.

But even in this dense, all-consuming silence, a whisper was sometimes heard. A whisper brought by the wind, seeping through the cracks under the door in the form of a white envelope with a single word. Words that were absurd, meaningless, but which, like drops of poison, were slowly eating away at his apathy. “DUSK.” “SHADOW.” “LABYRINTH.”

And then one day, through the dust and oblivion, Elias saw something in the eyes of the painted Anna in the old portrait that stood in his studio. A barely perceptible glare. A tiny, distorted reflection. A reflection that carried far more than just light. It carried a hint. A hint of the presence of a third. A hint of a lie that was deeper than he could imagine.

Silence. She was still his companion. But now she wasn’t dead. It was tense. Filled with anticipation. Because Elias Burton, the man who had buried himself alive, felt something forgotten in him awaken. Something stronger than apathy, stronger than fear.

Thirst for truth.

And he knew that when the real dawn came, it wouldn’t just be a new day. It would be the end of a long night. And the beginning of his personal battle for justice.

Chapter 1: Whispers of the Canvas and Echoes of the Past

Elias’s mornings always began with silence. Not the soothing, peaceful silence of a deep forest or a mountaintop, but the dense, crushing silence of the old house, swallowing up sounds like a thick fog. It seeped through the thick walls, crawled into the cracks of the window frames, hung heavy in the air like a spider’s web of unspoken words and forgotten memories. He didn’t wake up, no. He was just slowly drifting out of the nothingness of sleep, where his only companion was the same silent gloom, into the nothingness of wakefulness.

The sun, if it managed to get through the perpetually closed blinds, only glided in pale streaks across the wiped parquet of his second-floor workshop. It was the largest room in the house, with huge windows that once should have flooded it with light but now seemed more like portals to an invisible world. In fact, Elias had closed them himself. Too much light, too much reality.

He never set the alarm clock. Why would he? The days had long since ceased to be different from one another. Up at seven, no breakfast. Coffee, black as his soul, on the old, scrubby kitchen table. Then a leisurely, almost ritualistic climb up the creaky steps to the workshop. There, in the center of the room, under a blanket of faded canvas, stood him – his easel. His only refuge, his silent confessor, his curse.

Elias didn’t paint. He hadn’t for years. His hands, which had once worked wonders on canvas, were now mere tools for the most basic needs: lifting a cup, turning a page of newspaper, wiping dust off polished surfaces that no one but he watched. Canvases, hundreds of them, stood along the walls, neatly folded, leaning against each other. Each one was sealed, like a tombstone burying not a painting but a part of his soul. He couldn’t throw them away, couldn’t burn them. They were part of him, and each such “slab” was a mute reproach, a testimony to his former greatness and his present collapse.

This morning was no different. Elias slowly ran his hand over the dusty surface of the old dresser. His fingers, once sensitive to the slightest nuances of texture, now felt only rough dust. He sighed, and that sigh carried through the room like an old gramophone making one last squeak before it stopped. Going to the window, he carefully opened one of the slats of the blinds. A narrow strip of light cut through the twilight like a blade, and he squeezed his eyes shut. The street below was empty. No cars, no people, not even stray dogs. The old, ivy-covered fence seemed to hold not only the perimeter of his lot, but time itself, making it flow slower, more viscous.

He let go of the blinds. Ordinariness enveloped him again. The letter carrier. He should be here soon. The only connection to the outside world, and even that was questionable. Not that he was expecting anything. Just habit. Years of habit, embedded in his subcortex, like the smell of turpentine in his old, living workshop.

Elias moved toward an old chair upholstered in faded velvet. He sank into it, feeling the springs sigh under his weight. An old, tattered book clutched in his hand. He wasn’t reading it, just holding it. The heaviness of the volume, the smell of it, it was all part of the ritual. His eyes glided over the lines, but his mind was far away. He was in another time, in another life that seemed to belong to a completely different person.

“Talent is a curse, Elias, if not managed,” came the voice in his head that he had carefully tried to drown out over the years. Anna’s voice. Her words were always as sharp as a pencil and as precise as a brush stroke. She knew him better than anyone. She was his muse, his critic, his manager. And his betrayer.

The memory came on suddenly, like a wave on the shore, leaving behind only the bitter taste of salt. He felt his heart clench. The old, nagging ache that he’d learned to ignore, but that never fully went away. It was always there, smoldering beneath the surface, ready to flare up at any moment.

That was ten years ago. Or was it a hundred? Time had erased the clear boundaries, leaving only a blurry blur of searing pain. His exhibition. The culmination of his entire life, years of painstaking labor, dozens of paintings, in each of which he put a part of his soul. Critics called him a genius, a new voice in art, prophesied his world fame. Anna was by his side, always, her brilliant eyes shining with pride, her words of support were a balm for his ever-doubting nature.

He remembered the day he had come to the opening. The hall was full. The murmur of voices, the flash of cameras, the sparkle of champagne glasses. He stood in the center, feeling on top of the world. And then…

Then Anna took him aside. Her face was pale, her eyes glittering feverishly. “Elias, I… I couldn’t help myself. I’ve been offered a deal. Huge sums of money. They wanted your… your work. For themselves. I promised them exclusivity. Forever. You can never exhibit again. Ever.”

Her words seemed absurd at the time, a joke. But the look in her eyes… He couldn’t believe it. Anna, his Anna, had sold his talent, his future, his life, like a commodity on the market. He remembered the air gone from his lungs, the ground gone from under his feet. The galore, the screams, the flashes, it all suddenly took on a surreal hue, becoming the setting for the worst nightmare. His name, his fame, his future – it had all been stolen from him, sold for money he never saw, never wanted to see.

From that moment on, the world around him began to crumble. Contracts were being canceled, galleries were refusing him. His name became toxic. He tried to fight, but without Anna, who was his only link to the art world, he was helpless. She simply disappeared, leaving behind only the ruins of his career and soul. He locked himself in this house that had once been his bastion of creativity, but was now his prison. The paints dried up in tubes, the brushes hardened, and the canvases, once clean and full of potential, became white shrouds for his unborn masterpieces.

He hated her. No, he didn’t hate her. It was something much deeper than hate. It was pain mixed with disappointment, with a sense of irreparable loss. The loss not only of his career, but of his faith in people, in intimacy, in love.

The thoughts were interrupted. Somewhere downstairs, on the first floor, there was a light knock. The letter carrier.

Elias rose slowly. Every movement seemed like an effort. He descended the stairs, his steps heavy, like a man carrying an impossible burden. In the hallway, on the floor, through a slit in the door, lay an envelope. White, unmarked and without return address. Exactly like the hundreds of others he’d received over the past five years.

He bent down, picked it up. His fingers felt the thin, slightly rough paper. He ran his thumb slowly over the surface, as if trying to read something between the lines, to catch some invisible meaning. His eyes, gray and tired, focused on a single word written in calligraphic, elegant handwriting. A handwriting that was painfully familiar to him.

“DUSSELS.”

One word. Every day, a new word. Sometimes they were ordinary words: “Autumn”, “Rain”, “Stone”. Sometimes they were more abstract: “Dream,” “Echo,” “Oblivion.” But there was never anything that directly indicated the sender or purpose of these messages. He tried to analyze them, to find a pattern, but to no avail. They were meaningless, and yet… there was something about them. Something that kept him going, something that kept him afloat in this sea of loneliness.

Today’s word – “Dawn” – struck him as particularly cynical. What dawn? There had been no dawns in his life for a long time, only an endless twilight day followed by an equally endless twilight night.

He placed the envelope on the antique table in the hallway, next to a stack of other letters just like it that he had never thrown away. They were his personal collection of riddles, his unsolved rebus. He went back to the workshop. The streak of sunlight streaming through the blinds now fell directly on the easel standing in the center. The white canvas, under the coverlet, seemed even whiter in this ray.

Suddenly, on an impulse he could not explain, Elias reached for the bedspread. His fingers touched the rough fabric. He felt something inside him tremble. It was like touching a sleeping beast that was about to wake up. He knew he shouldn’t. Knew it would only bring pain. But there was something in the word “DUSK” that whispered to him: look.

He pulled down the bedspread. The canvas was clean. For ten years it had stood there, pristine white, waiting for the touch of a brush. But Elias did not pick up the brush. Instead, he walked over to one of the closed canvases against the wall. That one was the size of a door. He carefully turned it over, careful not to make any unnecessary movements.

A painting appeared before him. It was painted in his late, “golden” period, shortly before his collapse. It was a portrait. A portrait of Anna.

Her eyes, deep, sparkling with laughter, looked straight at him. Her lips were slightly open, as if she were about to say something. Her red hair, spilling over her shoulders, seemed alive, fluttering in the breeze. He remembered how long he had worked on this painting, putting all his love and admiration into it. She was his ideal, his inspiration, his everything.

Elias reached out and slowly touched her painted face. The cold, rough surface of the canvas. He closed his eyes, and her voice, her words of betrayal, came back into his mind. And then… he was overcome by a sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time.

It wasn’t just a memory. It was a feeling. The feeling that the painting was looking at him. That Anna, painted by him, was trying to tell him something. Not with words, but with a look, a facial expression. Something he had missed then, in the maelstrom of pain and anger. Something important.

For the first time in years, Elias felt not just despair, but a thin thread pulling from the past. A thread woven from incompleteness, from unspoken words. And in that thread, like a spark, something like… curiosity. curiosity.

Who’s sending these letters? Why is it “Dawn” today? And what was Anna trying to tell him from that canvas? For the first time in a long time, the familiar, stifling silence of his house did not seem so dense. Through it, very quietly but insistently, a whisper of some kind was breaking through. A whisper of the past, calling to him.

Chapter 2: Touching the Shadow

The silence in the studio seemed to grow thicker, but it was no longer a deaf, dead silence, but rather a tense, ringing stillness, as before a thunderstorm. Elias stood in front of Anna’s portrait, his fingers still touching the canvas, feeling its cool, slightly rough surface. He wanted to yank his hand away, to pull away from this image that had once been the embodiment of his love and now was a symbol of his fall. But he couldn’t. The painting held him, attracted him with some new, inexplicable force.

Her eyes. He’d always remembered their brilliance, their liveliness. Now there was something different in them. Not mockery, not regret, not even indifference. Something elusive, something that demanded to be unraveled. It was as if the painted Anna were trying to tell him something important, something he had stubbornly refused to hear all these years, hiding behind the walls of his anger and resentment.

Elias sank slowly to the floor, never taking his eyes off the portrait. His legs felt as if they were shaky. He felt suddenly weak, as if he had been ill for a long time. For the first time in a long time, this house, this refuge, seemed to him not a fortress, but a crypt, where he had voluntarily buried himself alive. And now, after ten years, something began to breathe in that crypt, something that was much more alive than he was.

Thoughts fluttered around in my head like caught birds. “Dawn.” That word from the letter. He tried to connect it to Anna’s image, to the betrayal, but the meaning eluded him. What kind of dawn could there be after such a hopeless night? What could rise after his world had been razed to the ground?

He closed his eyes. The memories came back with renewed force, no longer just fragments, but a coherent, painful movie. He saw himself young, full of strength and ambition. His hands, confidently leading the brush on the canvas. Each stroke was an embodiment of an idea, each line an emotion. He remembered the smell of paint, the sound of solvent, the rustle of canvas under the brush. It was his element, his air. He was born to paint. And Anna was there for him.

Their meeting was like a lightning strike. He, then a little-known artist, exhibited in a tiny gallery on the outskirts of the city. She was an art student, bright, intelligent, with eyes full of fire. She immediately saw something in him that others didn’t. Not just talent, but something more – providence, the ability to convey on canvas the very essence of the human soul.

“Elias, you’re a genius,” she whispered to him, her breath tickling his ear as they sat until dawn in his then small studio, “you’re going to change the art world. I know it. I can feel it.”

Her faith was his fuel. Her energy was its engine. She took care of everything: finding galleries, negotiating, promoting. He just painted. He created, and she created the space for him to create. She was his voice, his shield from the harsh world of business. He trusted her completely. Trusted her more than he trusted himself. It was the total, blind trust of a man consumed by his art, the person he thought understood it best.

But there was one shadow he hadn’t noticed at the time. Or didn’t want to notice. Anna had always been incredibly ambitious. He appreciated that in her, seeing her drive for success as part of their shared path. She wanted not just fame for him, but unconditional, undeniable greatness. And he, in his creative frenzy, didn’t realize how perverse that desire could become.

He remembered their last conversation, the one that had taken place the week before the exhibition. They had been sitting in a café flooded with sunlight. Anna looked unusually excited. “Elias, I’ve received an incredible offer,” she said, her eyes running around, “From the Absolut Foundation. They’re willing to invest millions in your name. To make you the most influential artist of our time. But… there’s one condition.” He waved it away then. “There are always conditions, Anna. What’s the condition?” “They want an exclusive. Complete. All your work, present and future, will have to belong to them alone. No exhibitions, no selling to others. Only they will decide how and where to show your paintings. In essence, you will be creating for them.” Elias laughed then. “Bullshit! I won’t be able to work like that. I’m not their property. My art is my freedom. It is my breath. Tell them no, Anna. Tell them we are going our own way.” Anna only smiled weakly then. “Of course, Elias. Whatever you say.” He was not alarmed by her strange calmness then. He was dazzled by the anticipation of the exhibition, his ego inflated to the heavens. He couldn’t even imagine that she’d already made her decision, that she’d already sold him.

And now he sits here, ten years later, in front of that damned portrait, and realizes that that smile was not consent, but anticipation of his own triumph. A triumph built on his ruins.

Bitterness filled his mouth again, but something else was mixed in. A confusion. Why? Why would she do such a thing? For money? For power? Or for something else he still couldn’t fathom? She knew how much he valued artistic freedom. She knew that to him, it was the same as taking his breath away. And she did it anyway.

Suddenly Elias’s gaze fell on the small, almost imperceptible glare in Anna’s eyes in the portrait. He squinted at it. There, in the depths of her pupil, was a tiny, barely perceptible glow. Not just a light, but a sort of… reflection. He stood up slowly, stepped closer. It was strange. It seemed as if that glow wasn’t just a glare, but something that had appeared there after the painting had been completed. Or maybe he had just never paid attention to it before, absorbed in the overall image.

He leaned closer, almost touching the canvas with his nose. The glow was so small that it was barely distinguishable. But the longer he stared, the clearer it became that it wasn’t an accidental glare. It was… a reflection of something. Something that had been there with Anna at the moment he’d written it.

He closed his eyes, trying to replay in his mind the day he had worked on that portrait. They were in his old studio. The sun was shining through the large window. Anna was sitting in an armchair. He remembered every detail of her face, every movement of her eyelashes. But what could have been in her eyes?

Then Elias remembered. Across from her, at the other end of the room, stood a large, antique mirror in a carved frame that he used to see the whole picture, to make quick assessments from afar. A mirror he later sold when he sold off the remnants of his past life. So what he saw in her eyes was a reflection of that mirror? But why did it seem so strange? So… wrong?

He stepped back. He looked at the portrait again. And then it hit him. If it was the reflection of a mirror, what should it reflect? A room. A workshop. But what he saw in Anna’s pupil was just a tiny dot of light. Perhaps it was just some kind of aberration? Or a play of light and shadow?

But something inside him refused to accept this explanation. Intuition, his old, rusty artist’s intuition that had always led him to truth in art, whispered: “Look closer. There’s something there.”

Suddenly, a crazy thought occurred to him. What if it’s not just a reflection of the room? What if it was a reflection of something inside the mirror? Or a reflection of what was behind the mirror, at the moment Anna posed? It was absurd, but his mind, for the first time in years, began to work, to search, to analyze.

He walked over to the stack of other paintings again. His gaze fell on one of them, standing slightly off to the side. He remembered it. It was a sketch. A sketch for another series, never completed, on which he had begun work after the portrait of Anne, but before the exhibition. The sketch had been made in the same studio, in the same light.

Slowly, almost reverently, he removed the veil from this painting. It was a quick, dynamic study of a dancer. There must have been a reflection in her eyes, too, he knew, if she was posing in the same spot. He squinted, peering into the tiny pupils. And there, in one of them, he saw the same, strange, tiny glare. But this time it was a little more discernible, as if a little more light had hit it. And Elias saw it.

It wasn’t just a reflection. It was something behind the mirror. Or at least it seemed to be. A blurry, almost indistinguishable blur, but he had a feeling that it was… a figure. A human figure, hidden from direct view, but captured by the reflection in the model’s eye, and then transferred to the canvas by his subconscious.

Elias’s heart beat faster. He wasn’t paranoid, didn’t believe in ghosts. But this was too strange, too inexplicable. Who could be behind the mirror in his workshop? In his private workshop, closed to everyone but Anna?