---
---
The door opened without a sound.
No creak.
No echo.
Only silence.
That was worse.
Because silence doesn't warn.
It waits.
---
The room beyond was dim.
Not dark.
Just… muted.
As if the light didn't dare burn too brightly here.
As if even illumination feared what this place held.
---
A throne stood at the center.
Not golden.
Not iron.
But bone.
Smooth, polished. Shaped from hundreds of ribcages—woven together like a grotesque cathedral.
And on it sat…
No one.
Not yet.
---
> "You brought pain," the Tower whispered.
"Now see what it cost."
---
At the foot of the throne, a figure knelt.
A girl.
Small.
Silent.
Her hair was silver. Not from age, but from burning.
Burning mana.
She was the kind you didn't forget.
Even if you tried.
Even if you needed to.
---
> "Aren…" EXIN breathed.
The name hit the air like poison.
The room reacted.
The girl looked up.
---
Her eyes were hollow.
Not blind—empty.
Like whatever made her human had been peeled away, layer by layer.
And still…
Still she smiled.
---
> "You made it," she whispered.
"You always come back when it's too late."
---
EXIN stepped forward.
Not in hope.
In guilt.
He had buried this.
Buried her.
---
He remembered the day she died.
It wasn't war.
It wasn't fate.
It was him.
His choice.
His mistake.
His silence.
---
She had loved him.
Not blindly. Not foolishly.
She had loved his worst—because that's what love truly is.
And he had…
He had walked away.
---
> "I tried to forget," he said.
Her laughter was soft.
Shattered glass under velvet.
> "You didn't try hard enough."
---
The room around them changed.
Bones cracked.
Walls pulsed.
Now, they stood in the past.
A memory—twisting into a trial.
The battlefield.
The choice.
The fire.
---
Aren stood before a collapsing rift.
Behind it—thousands would die.
He had a choice:
Save her.
Or close the rift.
He had closed it.
She had smiled.
Even as her body burned.
---
> "You did the right thing," she had said then.
But in the Tower, she spoke again.
> "It was the right thing…"
> "…for them."
---
She stepped toward him now.
Ghost. Memory. Mirror.
> "But who saves you?"
---
His knees buckled.
His heart screamed.
He had bled for the world.
But no one had bled for him.
---
And that was the curse of The Honoured One.
He was the sacrifice.
He was the blade and the altar.
Always cutting.
Always dying.
Never buried.
---
Aren reached for him.
Touched his face.
Not with blame.
With pity.
> "You forgot me."
> "But I never stopped waiting."
---
His spiral mark flared.
The closed eye on his chest opened—bleeding light.
Pain surged through him.
Real.
Right.
Necessary.
---
> "I didn't come to be forgiven," he whispered.
> "I came to remember."
---
Aren nodded once.
And faded.
No scream.
No judgment.
Just a whisper in the bones of the throne.
> "Love that is buried becomes a crown made of thorns."
---
EXIN stood alone again.
But something had changed.
Not around him.
Within.
He still carried regret.
But now, it walked beside him.
---
A new symbol marked his back:
> A shattered crown.
The price of love.
The mark of loss.
...