The five bonds glowed before Faro, each pulsing like a dead heart awaiting rebirth.
A voice echoed deep within him — not quite sound, more like a presence:
"Break one… the others will fade. You can't keep them all."
But Faro did not move.
He didn't step forward.
He didn't choose.
He stood at the center of the black chamber, staring into the void as if trying to find a reflection of himself — not a choice among losses.
The bonds appeared before him:
A friend he hadn't met.
A memory yet to be lived.
A chain that felt like safety.
A moment of warmth.
A voice… a voice that made his heart beat for reasons he didn't understand.
Each one was a promise — or a threat.
And still, Faro refused to choose.
Instead, he stepped forward, arms outstretched as if to embrace the void itself.
"I will not forget.
I won't discard what was never truly mine.
This isn't my choice — it's my defiance."
Then, the crack.
The chamber trembled.
The ancient symbols carved into the walls began to dissolve. The ground turned fluid, shifting into strange geometric patterns that didn't belong to this world.
A silent scream tore through the space.
And in the shadows, the man in the long coat whispered:
"Impossible… he unlocked the third path."
The narrator said nothing, only turning toward the woman seated on the inverted throne, whispering:
"The void doesn't choose — it rewrites meaning."
---
After the Collapse
Faro awoke — still in the same room, but the light had changed.
Everything looked the same, but nothing was familiar.
The five bonds were unbroken.
Yet, they were no longer whole.
He hadn't kept them…
He had reshaped them.
Now, they were shadows — incomplete echoes, fragments of something new forming within him.
---
In the Shadows
Elsewhere, the woman, the narrator, and the man in the long coat spoke behind closed veils:
"He touched Nen without invoking it... What is he?"
"He doesn't summon Nen. He reshapes the language itself."
"Should we stop him?"
"No. We watch. From now on, everything will be a test — and he won't even know it."
---
Faro stood alone.
The warehouse he thought he knew felt colder now.
The air was heavier — as though something inside him had shifted irreversibly.
He didn't understand it yet.
But he felt it…
A faint aura was beginning to gather around his body.
Not Nen… not yet.
But the very possibility of it.
The Void had begun to breathe.