....
i stood amidst the sand, her body barely holding her weight, her eyes fixed on the severed body of the bandit leader.
Blood. Silence. A head torn from its place.
Everything felt like a heavy dream.. a nightmare that refused to end.
She whispered, her voice trembling like a winter breeze slicing through bone..
"Second layer...?"
She couldn’t believe what her eyes had witnessed.
"Di" had moved with invisible speed, wielded indescribable power.. strength unfit for soone his age.
He had pierced a barrier only legends were said to cross.
As her voice faded, Di calmly bent down and picked up the bandit leader’s head from the blood-soaked sand.
He showed no discomfort toward the blood or its stench, as if he were holding nothing more than a mundane object.
With a simple gesture, he stored the head in his ring, then raised his cold eyes to i.
She froze.
His eyes.. carried no emotion. No pity. No rage. Not even boredom.
Just a dark void staring at her.
He stepped toward her slowly.
The earth beneath him seed to fall silent with every step.
i didn’t know what to do.
She wanted to back away, but her legs felt like stone. Her lungs trembled with fear.
He ca closer, until he stood directly before her.
He looked at her for a mont.. then raised his hand... and wrapped it around her neck.
She gasped.
"Di... what... are you doing...?"
But there was no answer.
Her eyes widened, her body began to shiver.
She tried to push him away, to speak, to plead.. but her voice was gone, as if even the air had abandoned her.
Her skin paled, veins protruded, and her face lost all color, as though life itself was being drained.. drop... by drop...
"Aaaahhh...!!"
A broken scream finally escaped her, but it was no more than a faint ripple in a rciless desert.
Her body began to wither at a terrifying pace. Her limbs shriveled, and the light vanished from her eyes.
And then, in a single mont.. stillness.
She stopped resisting.
Her arm collapsed, and her body fell to the sand.. light as if it had never truly lived.
Di released her neck, gazing at her corpse.. a hollow shell.
One final glance.
Then he turned and walked away.
The desert again. The sky again. The solitude again.
No one knew who Di truly was..
But one thing was certain: anyone who tried to get close would have to be ready to pay a price too heavy to bear.
In truth.. from the very mont he t i, he had seen her as nothing more than bait.
Her awkward smile, her childish fear, her sickly attachnt to hope.. none of it moved him.
He didn’t see her as a person.. but as a tool.
A tool to lure out the bandits and finish the mission.
He wasn’t even sure if they had placed a trace on her.. sothing they could follow.
But he decided to try.
The plan was simple: if they showed up, he’d kill them.
If they didn’t.. he’d kill her.
That simple. That cold.
There was no room in him for pity, or loss.
Di had nothing left to lose.. or maybe, he had chosen to abandon such things long ago.
In his eyes, the world wasn’t made of friends and enemies.
Only tools.
And targets.
i was a tool. Nothing more.
And once she had served her purpose.. or failed to.. there was no reason to keep her.
That’s how he saw allies: chairs pulled out from under the table when the eting ends.
Fleeting faces unworthy of mory. Nas not worth speaking twice.
He wasn’t evil in the traditional sense.
He was empty.
A void that moved, breathed, and killed.. without needing a “why.”
For in the end..
The goal isn’t everything.
It is the utter absence of aning that grants an action its true freedom.
And as i’s body stretched lifelessly in the sand, her face drained of all life...
He didn’t look back.
He didn’t regret.
He didn’t even stop.
For who stops to look at a tool once it’s broken?
His footsteps sank into the sand, leaving behind a trail with no mory.
Ti passed, as corpses drift in the river of oblivion…
Quietly. Heavily. Without mourning.
Di returned to the city.
The familiar chaos greeted him: clashing voices, contradictory scents, a battlefield of auras, each painted with a different shade of greed, ambition, pain.. or madness.
It didn’t take him long to head toward the mission hall.
Everything passed with suspicious smoothness.
The reward was ready.
No one ntioned his companions.
No one asked about them.
As if they had never existed.
Even Di himself.. felt a strange sense of dissonance.
He thought they’d examine him, interrogate him, perhaps even deny him the reward.
But no.. it was as though the dead held no value in the ledgers of the hall, so long as the mission was complete.
He exited with steady steps.
But he didn’t get far.. before he accidentally bumped into soone.
A mont.
Ti slowed.
Di looked at the person before him.
A young man around his age, long white hair like frozen snow, and eyes of cold gray.. devoid of hesitation, as though they had seen far too much.
Their gazes locked in a strange stillness...
As if ti itself paused to listen to the heavy silence between them.
Di felt everything inside him exposed.. like this stranger’s eyes were not for looking, but for excavating.
From him radiated an aura of stagnant wisdom...
And another aura.. dark, as if it had survived hell and returned with stories untold.
This man.. was in the second layer as well.
But sothing deep within Di whispered: Do not ss with him.
He couldn’t be sure he’d win if a fight broke out.
In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d walk away at all.
But no words were spoken.
Just a single glance.
Then, the white-haired stranger turned, and walked away.
And Di continued on, as if nothing had happened.
.....
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