Some stories arrive all at once. This one arrived like a whisper—patient, persistent, and quiet as moss.
The Truth isn’t an adventure in the usual sense. It’s a journey inward. A soul walking toward the thing it’s always known but never dared to face.
If you’ve ever searched for meaning in all the wrong places. If you’ve ever looked in a mirror and not recognized the eyes staring back. This story is for you.
Let the forest hush. Let the temple open. And whatever you carry, bring it gently.
The Truth
By Steven Smith
“Ow!” Clayton winced, stubbing his finger in his mouth. “Infernal thorns.”
The path, if one could even call it that, was so overgrown, it seemed the forest itself was trying to claim it; to erase it forever.
Forbidden…
The word floated on the wind and seeped into every leaf, flower, and tree.
The air itself was oppressive. The sweet sickly scent of rotting vegetation — pungent — seemed to join the unrelenting resistance of the forest itself. It was as if the entire ecosystem surrounding Clayton knew the destination. Knew it was forbidden.
Even light was subdued by the spectral watchers, guardians of the treasure sought; pale, washed out, the colors barely bleeding through the gloom.
Clayton scanned his surroundings, glancing down at a small hand drawn map. He was sure he was on the right path. Years had tried to hide the secret he was after, but he was too seasoned to be deceived. He had traveled the world; searched for Yeti in the Himalayas and tracked bees using baby powder in Appalachia. This treasure, this awareness, would be his.
He knew it was not much further. He made a futile attempt to wipe the sweat from his forehead, but the perennial humidity restored it as fast as he could wipe it away.
He folded the map and stowed it in his shirt pocket. Wiping his hands on his stained brown pants, he continued to press forward through the dense bulwark of entangled verdure.
Each step brought a new resistance, not from the terrain, but from something older. A hush had fallen over the forest. No birdsong. No breeze. Even the insects, ever faithful to jungle loquaciousness, had gone quiet. It was not silence. It was... waiting.
Clayton pressed forward, feeling the weight of the hush settle into his chest. It wasn’t just the forest that resisted him; it was something older. Something inside himself.
He had told the world he sought the scroll for knowledge, for the pursuit of the eternal questions. But that was only half the truth.
In the quiet spaces between expeditions, when the applause faded and the newspaper clippings yellowed, Clayton felt the gnawing ache of something missing. He had seen the summits of mountains, traced the cracks of ancient tombs with reverent fingers, and crossed deserts that swallowed lesser men whole.
And yet, with all he had uncovered, one thing remained hidden.
Himself.
The scroll, the promise of enlightenment; it wasn't just a treasure. It was a final hope. A desperate reaching for something he had spent a lifetime running from: the question of whether he had ever truly lived at all.
Leaning low, he pushed a large branch out of the path, and ducking under it, he stepped into a large clearing. The temple loomed suddenly before him.
The light filtering through the arboreal guardians — restrained — barely illuminated the scene. Dust danced in the rays of light drawing pale golden lines across the moss encrusted stones of the massive ancient edifice.
The temple rose from the jungle like a memory made stone; vast, weatherworn, and still. Columns twisted with ivy and age framed a darkened archway, its carvings eroded by time but not scratched out. Strange symbols, neither fully human nor entirely foreign, etched their way across the face of the entrance; a vain attempt at recreating a story long forgotten.
Clayton approached slowly, each step echoing across the hollow of the clearing as if the space itself had begun to listen. Had begun to… wait.
Clayton paused at the threshold.
The air within the archway seemed denser, thicker somehow; a heavy breath exhaled from the stones themselves. He took one final glance at the forest behind him, where even the trees seemed to lean inward, watching… Waiting.
Then, stepping through the arch, he crossed into shadow.
Inside, the temperature dropped sharply. The light filtering through the entrance faded into a faint suggestion, swallowed almost greedily by the gloom. His boots scuffed against ancient stone, the sound startlingly loud in the hollow dark.
As his eyes adjusted, faint glimmers began to emerge along the walls, silver threads, shimmering in the low light — dancing, playing.
Mirrors.
Dozens of them. No, hundreds, lining the walls, the floors, the ceiling. Some were whole, some fractured into jagged mosaics. Some so clouded with age they barely reflected at all.
Clayton stepped forward, his reflection multiplying into infinity; dozens of Claytons walking with him, beside him, ahead of him. He caught flashes of himself as a boy, wide-eyed and full of reckless wonder. As a young man, defiant and burning to leave his mark on the world. As the man he was now, lines heavier on his face, but something deeper, too. A sadness. A hunger.
He tried to push forward, but the path twisted with each step.
Reflections blurred, stretched, and shifted, showing not just his face, but his fears. Visions of failure. Moments of betrayal. A memory of a woman’s face, tear-streaked, looking back at him as he walked away.
“Is this who you are?” the temple seemed to ask.
“Or only who you were?”
Clayton staggered, overwhelmed, reaching out to steady himself, but where he touched, the mirrors dissolved like mist, leaving only more reflections, more selves.
There was no way forward.
Only through.
Breathing deeply, Clayton straightened his shoulders and did the only thing left: He looked… not away, but into the faces staring back at him.
He saw the boy who had dreamed.
The man who had failed.
The seeker who had never stopped searching.
And in that moment, without words, he accepted them all.
The mirrors rippled.
And then…
A doorway appeared, silent and waiting, where no passage had been before.
Clayton hesitated. Then exhaling slowly, he stepped through, and vanished into the deeper darkness beyond.
The air grew thicker as Clayton moved forward.
The darkness shifted from velvet to stone; no longer a lack of light, but a presence of something else, something older than memory.
Ahead, a wall rose from the gloom: vast, seamless, and cold. At its center stood a door, simple, unadorned, and immovable.
No carvings.
No hinges.
No handle.
Just stone against stone, silent and unyielding.
Above it, an inscription barely visible in the dim light:
“The heart must speak what the mind dares not say.”
Clayton ran his hand across the door’s surface. It was smooth and lifeless, as though it had been waiting longer than the forest, longer than the temple itself. Waiting for a voice that would unlock it. Waiting…
He cleared his throat, the sound brittle against the silence.
“I seek enlightenment,” he said.
Nothing.
He thought for a moment, and tried again.
“I am worthy,” he insisted, voice sharper, almost defiant.
The door did not move. The air pressed heavier on his chest.
Clayton closed his eyes, remembering the mirrors.
The boy.
The failures.
The ache he never could explain.
He leaned his forehead against the cold stone, and from some cracked and tender place inside him, the truth slipped free:
“I am afraid,” he whispered.
“I have lived for the applause and called it purpose.
I have chased ghosts and called it discovery.
I have run from myself and called it courage.”
A long, trembling breath escaped him.
“I don't know who I am anymore.”
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then… a sound like stone weeping.
The door shuddered. Lines of faint light spiderwebbed across its surface, tracing unseen patterns.
With a slow, groaning sigh, the stone split, revealing a narrow passageway beyond.
Clayton did not hesitate this time. He stepped through the doorway, carrying not certainty, but the first fragile seed of truth.
The passage narrowed.
Walls pressed close now; slick with moisture, veined with roots that pulsed faintly, as if the temple itself had veins and breath. Clayton ran his fingers along the stone, feeling not just age, but intention.
This place wasn’t just built, it was grown. Grown around the soul of something watching.
At last, the path widened into a small chamber dimly lit by an unseen glow.
In the center stood a pedestal, and on it, a single object:
A knife.
And behind the pedestal, in the far corner, sat a figure; a child. Or something that looked like one.
Small. Shivering. Cloaked in rags. Its eyes wide, hollow, watching, reflected the same fear Clayton had felt inside the mirrors.
A voice, not from the child, but from the walls, the roots, the air itself:
“The final step requires sacrifice. Take the blade. Pass through. Leave the rest behind.”
Clayton's eyes moved between the blade and the child. The words echoed again, colder this time, more insistent.
“Take the blade. Pass through.”
The passage forward was behind the figure. No other door. No other choice.
Clayton stepped closer. The knife was simple, iron, ancient — honed.
His hand hovered above it.
The child did not move.
For a long time, he stood frozen, torn between what the temple demanded and what he had become. Then, slowly, he lowered his hand.
“No,” he said.
He turned from the pedestal and knelt beside the figure instead.
“I won’t harm to move forward. I won’t leave you behind.”
The child flinched as he reached out, but Clayton only extended a hand; open, empty, human.
“I’ve spent my life taking. Conquering. Proving,” he whispered.
“But I know now... the truth isn’t something you take. It’s something you live.”
For a breathless moment, all was still… waiting.
Then, the child reached for his hand.
The chamber pulsed. The pedestal cracked. The blade crumbled to dust.
Behind them, a new passage opened in the stone, wide and golden with soft light.
Clayton looked once more at the child. But it was no longer a child. It was himself, young, unguarded, unbroken. And then it vanished.
Clayton stepped into the final corridor, light on his face, the scroll waiting.
The corridor sloped gently upward; finally, almost inviting.
With each step, the weight on Clayton’s shoulders seemed to lift, not with ease, but with understanding. The air was different here, lighter, cleaner, almost luminous.
At the end of the corridor, an archway opened into a small, circular chamber carved from the living rock.
The walls shimmered faintly, as though woven from starlight entangled in stone. And at the center of the room, resting on a pedestal of black marble, lay the scroll.
It was simple.
Unadorned.
Bound with a single red thread.
Clayton approached slowly, reverently. He stood before it for a long time, hands trembling, not from fear, but from the quiet gravity of what he was about to do.
He untied the thread.
The scroll unfurled with a whisper, ancient parchment curling open like breath drawn in for the first time — complete — as if for this, it had been… waiting.
There were no glowing symbols.
No divine language.
No thousand-line riddle.
Only five words:
You alone know the truth.
Clayton stared at the words.
For a moment, he felt nothing. Then, everything. As if his entire life had been an echo trying to remember this one sound. He laughed. Softly. Then the laughter gave way to tears; slow, unguarded, and silent. Not because he had been fooled. But because he finally understood: There had never been a mystery to solve. Only a truth he had never stopped running from.
You alone know the truth.
The scroll did not glow. It did not vanish. It simply… waited, as if asking a question of its own:
Will you take this?
Or will you live it?
Clayton stood in silence, then gently re-rolled the parchment and replaced the thread. He set it back on the pedestal, exactly as he had found it. And without another word, he turned and walked out, not with answers, but with something far better…
Peace.
Thank you for walking this path with me.
If this story stirred something in you, an ache, a memory, a sense of recognition, I’d love to hear what rose.
We all seek answers. But maybe the truth was never something to find.
Maybe it was something to remember.
Stay entangled, my friends.
—The Bathrobe Guy
I am not entirely sure why this piece triggers this reaction in me, but I'm finishing it in tears.
There is a calm softess in this piece that just made its way to me, I think.
A lot I liked in it. The sentences "He saw the boy who had dreamed.
The man who had failed.
The seeker who had never stopped searching."
And then, when he tells the truth to the door, I found those sentences powerful.
This is beautifully written, Steven, thank you for taking us on this journey.
I was not expecting that. Good lead. Nice job. :)