The story resumes in a place very different from Luxia…
The moment Name entered the violet spiral, he lost consciousness. The swirling color faded quickly, swallowed by darkness, and then he began to fall...deeper and deeper into the void.
When he opened his eyes again, a massive, glowing ball hovered before him. Even without touching it, he could tell how hot and dense it was. Then, without warning, the ball exploded and began to expand outward.
But there was no sound. No heat.
It was like watching a silent memory unfold...something distant, unreachable.
Darkness crept in once more, blotting out the scene. Name closed his eyes.
The next time he opened them, he saw a white ceiling above him. He blinked slowly, then looked around.
The room was small and sterile, bathed in pale light filtering through half-drawn blinds. White walls enclosed a single hospital bed, its thin sheets wrinkled and the steel headboard cold and unwelcoming. The steady beep of a heart monitor cut through the silence...soft, mechanical, and uncaring. A tray of untouched food sat on a wheeled table nearby, and the faint scent of antiseptic lingered in the air like a warning.
Rooms like this weren't unfamiliar to Name.
He searched his body for stitches...scars. But there was only one, a faint line on his side.
He got it when he sold his kidney.
After the operation, he'd been kept in a hospital room for a few days. That room had been gloomier, more chaotic, and far uglier than this one. But still, this place shared something with that memory. A quiet stillness. A sense of being forgotten.
So, when Name found himself here, his first thought was that the boy from last night had taken something from him. Another organ, maybe.
But there were no signs of that.
Then again, after the things that boy had done, Name wasn't sure of anything anymore.
He turned to the table beside him. A tray held a few pieces of fruit and a couple slices of bread.
Name picked up an apple and took a bite.
Disappointment followed immediately. There was no taste. Nothing.
It felt like chewing on rubber.
He'd lost his sense of taste ten years ago. But that didn't mean he could ignore hunger. Even without flavor, his body still suffered. Still starved.
So he kept eating, biting into apple after apple.
That's when the door opened.
A man stepped inside.
His hair was a striking mix of black and white, tangled like ink and ash, giving him an almost otherworldly presence. Square silver-rimmed glasses framed sharp, perceptive eyes. He wore a plain black shirt, the sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows, and over it, a vivid violet apron. The color stood out...rich and bold against his otherwise muted appearance. Everything about him felt deliberate, as though even his silence was carefully arranged.
"You're finally awake," the man said. His voice was calm but edged with tension. "How are you feeling?"
Without answering, Name asked, "Where am I? What did you do to me?"
"You're in a hospital. And I should be the one asking what you did to yourself," the man shot back, his voice rising. "You were so weak, you passed out after crossing the Riftmere. And...you're missing a damn kidney!"
"I was starving for three days," Name replied flatly. "And I sold my kidney for money."
The man stared at him, stunned. "What? You sold your kidney for money? Did you lose your brain along with your memory?"
Name didn't respond. The man standing before him clearly lived a better life...one where the price of survival never involved slicing out a piece of yourself. He wouldn't understand.
The man seemed to catch on to the silence. He exhaled and softened his tone.
"It's okay if you don't want to say anything," he said. "But tell me...why were you starving when you'd already sold a kidney for money? What happened to it?"
"That's something I'm not ready to share with someone I met a few minutes ago," Name said calmly.
The man paused, then nodded slightly.
"Sorry," he said, "I got carried away." A breath passed between them. "You knew me before...but now that you've lost your memory, I suppose I should reintroduce myself. I'm Charles Welt, head of the medical sector of Aarin. You can call me Charles."
Name gave him a long, quiet look. "Where's the girl I brought with me?"
But before Charles could answer, a knock sounded at the door.
A middle-aged woman stepped inside.
"Can we have some of your important time?" the woman asked politely.
Charles gave a nod. Before going he said, " I will be right back. Hold your questions for the time being."
He left the room. Closing the door of name's room, the woman followed him.
Before she closed the door Name caught a glimpse of a girl standing outside.
She stood silently before the tall arched window, bathed in the soft golden light of afternoon. Only her back was visible, yet even that was enough to command attention...grace and majesty woven into every line of her figure.
Her golden-blonde hair cascaded down her back in smooth, shimmering waves, catching the light like threads of sunlight spun into silk. A few gentle curls framed her shoulders, moving ever so slightly with the breeze slipping through the open glass.
She wore a gown fit for royalty...deep violet trimmed with silver embroidery, the fabric flowing like water and clinging just enough to suggest poise rather than pride. The bodice was sculpted with precision, adorned with delicate beadwork that glittered faintly with each shift of her form. From her waist, the skirt billowed outward like a blooming flower, graceful and regal, trailing behind her in gentle ripples.
Even from behind, she carried the stillness of someone who belonged to a higher world...elegant, untouchable, yet quietly human. There was a weight to her silence, as if her thoughts reached far beyond the window she gazed through.
One didn't need to see her face to know: she was beautiful. A different kind of beauty...one that lingered like a song half-remembered, one that made you want to know her, yet hesitate to speak her name aloud.
If it were someone else, they might have fantasized about the girl for days...months, even years. But Name was different. He lived his life by taking only what was necessary and avoiding everything else. That was how he survived in a city like Luxia.
He forgot about the girl the next moment and focused on eating the apples.
Name deemed the girl unnecessary. So, he didn't think about her. In fact, he would've preferred to avoid any direct or indirect contact with her.
In big malls they keep some precious items. You don't need to look at the price tag to know you can't afford them. Just looking at those gorgeous things is enough."
The girl was like the precious items behind glass, there are always powerful, wealthy people fighting over them. And they don't take kindly to outsiders trying to reach for what they consider theirs.
Name knew just like the precious items of mall a girl like her must've had her share of admirers...wealthy men, powerful figures, maybe even magicians like the boy he met the previous night. He didn't want to become a target for their wrath.
After finishing the apples, Name took a slice of bread. It was far better than anything he'd ever eaten in Luxia. He ran his fingers over its soft texture and cursed his tongue for not being able to taste something so fine.
While Name was still busy cursing his tongue, Charles reentered the room. He walked over and stood beside the bed.
"So, where were we?"
"Where is the girl I brought?" Name asked calmly.
"Oh. She's doing great now," Charles replied. "She wasn't well at first...physically weak, mentally unstable. For the first time in my life, our treatments weren't working. But then Irin took her. I don't know what she did, but the girl is recovering fast."
Name gave him a confused look.
"You're saying the village treated her?"
Charles chuckled.
"You misunderstood. The name of our village is Aarin. Irin is the name of a person. So no, the village didn't treat the girl...you could say Irin did."
He paused, then smiled thoughtfully.
"I just spoke to her outside. You used to know her. She's beautiful. And smart. I've never met anyone like her...and I doubt anyone else has."
Name could tell from Charles' tone. He had a crush on the girl named Irin. So, he said nothing.
"Do you want to see the little girl?" Charles asked.
Name put the slice of bread back on the tray, untouched. Then, without a word, he lay down in the bed. Before closing his eyes, he answered calmly:
"No. I don't."
Charles understood. The conversation was over. Without another word, he quietly left the room.
Name lay in the hospital room alone.
He had many questions. About the boy he met the night before. About this strange village, Aarin. About how he had even ended up here. But he held himself back. He knew the conversation was heading in a dangerous direction.
Because if it continued, Charles would eventually ask about his connection to the girl.
And Name couldn't tell him the truth...that he had brought her as a trading object. That the only thing they shared was a memory soaked in violence.
He had brought the girl to Aarin to gain sympathy.
He knew it was only a matter of time before the villagers realized he wasn't who they thought he was. That he was a murderer. And once they knew, they might imprison him… or worse.
But if they saw a little girl beside him, they might hesitate. They might feel empathy...for her, if not for him...and let him go.
That had been his plan.
But it had all gone wrong the moment he lost consciousness. The girl was separated from him, and now, he didn't even know what she might've told Charles or the others.
Without knowing that, Name couldn't risk telling any lies.
So he simply chose silence.
Name lay alone in the quiet hospital room, the ceiling above him blank and still. The walls whispered nothing. Only the soft hum of machines and the sterile scent of antiseptic kept him tethered to reality.
He stared upward, unmoving, lost in thought.
What now?
He had no allies. No plans. No certainty about where he was...or what awaited him.
Then, suddenly, the world around him began to dissolve...not into darkness this time, but into light.
The walls, the bed, the sounds...everything blurred, bled pale, and vanished. A white radiance consumed the edges of the room until it no longer existed.
Another vision? Name wondered. A new version, perhaps?
For a while, there was only silence. Then he realized...he was no longer lying down.
He was floating, suspended in a vast whiteness. And as he steadied himself, he found that his feet now touched something solid...yet invisible.
He stood upright, as if walking on glass that wasn't there.
Below him stretched Luxia, the city of smoke and struggle. Its towering chimneys stabbed the sky like black spears. The crooked sprawl of rooftops, the thin silver of the river, the rusted veins of railway lines...he saw it all in uncanny clarity, like a map carved into the earth.
Then he looked up.
And Luxia was there too.
Inverted.
The river flowed upside down, threading between buildings like a silver snake coiling through a steel forest. Chimneys pointed toward him like accusing fingers from both heaven and earth.
Luxia below. Luxia above. And Name caught between two worlds, standing on nothing, surrounded by everything.
His breath caught.
In the distance, drifting like smoke on a windless day, a fog began to form...deep Prussian blue, dark as deep ocean, and strangely alive. It swirled in the air with slow, deliberate grace.
Then the shadows came.
Shapes began to move inside the fog, shifting like oil across water. They twisted, thickened, took form...
Until, from the fog, a silhouette emerged.
A great tree, vast and leafless, rose from the mist...black as ash and brittle as bone. Its crooked limbs stretched wide across the white sky like fingers reaching to grasp nothing.
And hanging from one of its branches was a man.
Suspended upside down by his leg, his arms dangled low, almost brushing the invisible floor beneath Name's feet. From his neck protruded a long, gleaming sword...pierced clean through, the blade resting from one side of the neck to the other.
Blood dripped from its tip, slow and steady, each drop falling with the rhythm of a ticking clock.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
In the blue mist, the silhouette of the tree, the hanged man, and the falling blood became a haunting tableau...
unfamiliar, unreal… yet impossibly vivid.
Name stared at the scene, his heart still, his thoughts reeling.
He did not recognize what he saw.
But something deep within him whispered...
This was not a dream.
This was not a vision.
This was something else.
The hanged man raised his head. Though upside down, his voice was steady...calm, yet commanding, like thunder spoken through silk.
"I am the wound and the weapon...
the question, and the hand that silences it.
I am God...the one who carved divinity from ruin."