He walked through the fog unhurried, as if he were going to meet someone familiar. Then life, that nameless beast that always roams free, pounced on him and stayed there, on his chest, breathing slowly.

He didn't try to remove it. He opened his arms so it could settle in better.

His heartbeats became old drums repeating a single word "you exist" And there was no way to escape from that.

The beast didn't move, but it weighed like the truth. Under its body, the air grew murky and each breath brought back questions he didn't know how to ask. His skin stopped being a boundary and became an open door through which everything entered the cold, the fear, the certainty of being here.

Time stopped or perhaps accelerated so much it seemed still. His mind stopped inventing stories and limited itself to feeling the edge of each second against his bones and the blood that insists on continuing to flow.

There he understood that thinking about life from the outside is easy, almost a game. But to truly think about it, you have to let it weigh, let it sink to the marrow and create a silence so vast there's no escape.

When that silence arrived, deep and definitive, there was no brilliant revelation. Only the certainty of being alive without remedy.

And it was enough.

Because there, with his heart beating to the rhythm of a motionless beast, something awakened. For barely a second, the universe recognized itself in that trembling body breathing in the fog.