The blood had barely dried.
Yet the girl stood still. Not trembling, not hiding. Her eyes, pale as winter smoke, stared back at Mu Jin with a strange calm.
No fear. No hatred.
Only silence.
---
She knelt slowly, placing her small hands on her lap. Dirt-stained fingers, cracked nails. She had seen worse. Far worse.
"What's your name?" Mu Jin asked, his voice flat.
The girl hesitated. Then: "Rin."
Her voice was dry. Not timid. Just starved.
He tilted his head.
No signs of a lie. No flinch.
"Parents?"
"Dead."
"When?"
"Before I could remember their faces."
Mu Jin looked away.
He didn't sigh. He never did. But something loosened in his shoulders.
She reminded him too much of a boy once locked in a pit, fed to snakes.
He turned around.
Then paused.
"Follow me."
---
They didn't talk as they walked.
She stayed three steps behind. Not from fear, but instinct. She moved like someone who had followed monsters before.
Mu Jin stopped near an abandoned stable. The roof had caved. The wood groaned.
"Sleep here," he said.
She blinked. "You're not staying?"
He glanced over his shoulder.
"I'm not the type people like having nearby."
"I'm not people," she answered.
For the first time in days, his lip twitched.
--
Later.
He walked through the outer streets again. The bodies were gone. City patrols had cleaned up, leaving only the scent of bleach and poorly disguised fear.
People avoided him. They didn't know why. But instinct whispered.
He pulled his hood lower.
Even now, rumors were spreading.
A silver-haired man. Crimson eyes. Walks like a ghost.**
Alone. Always alone.
Not a hero. Not even human.
Mu Jin exhaled slowly. A sigh wrapped in exhaustion.
"This world talks too much."
---
Elsewhere.
Inside the grand chapel of Saint Origen.
The air reeked of incense and panic.
Father Elrin knelt before the altar, his hands trembling. He had been the one to initiate the summoning rite—the holy act meant to call forth a champion.
A savior from another world.
But what arrived was not a hero.
He had seen it. The man. The eyes.
No light. No mercy.
Only weight. A presence like death soaked in silence.
The high priests stood around the chamber. One held a scroll, ancient and glowing faintly with divine glyphs.
"We need to confirm," said the elder priest. "Show us the record."
Elrin's voice cracked. "I... I didn't mean to call **him**."
A circle of holy light opened before them. Images. Memories. Echoes of a life not lived here.
The priests saw everything.
The pit of snakes.
The child forced to consume venom.
The killings. The betrayals. The slow, methodical extinction of an entire assassin order.
"This... this is no man," whispered a sister. "This is ash."
"Ash that walks," another muttered.
"Ghost Ashes Mu jin."
The room went silent.
The name had rooted.
And names had power.
---
Meanwhile.
Mu Jin stopped atop a hill overlooking the city. The sky was beginning to gray, dawn scraping its way past the horizon.
He thought about the girl again.
Rin.
She had no place. No safety. Just like him.
He had no plans. No cause. He never believed in fate.
But if someone wanted to pull his strings again—through summoning rites, through lies of heroism and war—they would learn the same lesson the last world did.You do not summon a shadow.
You survive it.
He turned, cloak sweeping behind him.
And vanished into morning fog.