"It is a strange thing, watching a world that does not know it is ending."
The words slipped past his lips, quiet and measured, as if spoken more to the room than to himself.
The glow of a thousand monitors flickered against pale walls, painting them in artificial blues and sterile whites. The only source of light came from the right wall—a monolithic display of surveillance feeds, data strings, shifting maps.
The man seated before them remained still, his white robe draping across the metal chair like frost settling on marble. His face stayed hidden beneath the edge of the shadows, caught somewhere between reflection and ambition. Only the faint glint of his lenses shimmered now and then as he shifted his gaze.
One screen displayed Rhodes Island—its great landship crawling through a ravaged canyon like a beached beast trying to breathe again. Operators rushed through its halls, papers in hand, voices just out of earshot. The walls still bore scars from the last assault. A crack near the northern stabilizer hadn't been fixed. Again.
"They endure because they must. Because endurance is easier than collapse."
Inside, Kal'tsit stood beside a table, arms folded, eyes narrowed. Amiya, older now, leaned forward as if willing hope into the numbers. Neither spoke.
They didn't need to. The silence said enough.
Another screen shifted to Lungmen. Night lights bled against wet pavement as patrol lights scanned rooftops.
Chen walked the district alone, her coat fluttering in the wind, sword clipped to her side, fingers brushing the hilt more out of instinct than intent. Her reflection passed in shop windows—shoulders stiff, jaw tight.
"Pain is predictable. Measurable. So they cling to it. Familiar agony over uncertain mercy."
A group of children played behind her in an alley. She slowed. Glanced. Just for a moment. Then moved on.
Elsewhere, a different camera flickered—blinded momentarily from a distant drone skimming the edge of a ravaged no-man's land. Wind tore across broken metal and shallow graves.
A figure moved below it, draped in tattered cloth, face obscured beneath a wolf's jaw-mask.
"They carry the weight of silence like a shield. But even silence cracks."
He stopped before a ruined stone shrine, kneeling briefly—not to pray, but to remember something he no longer recalled.
And then he moved on.
A colder light bloomed across the next monitor. A cult hall, long-abandoned but breathing once more.
A man draped in priestly clothes stood above a gathering of hooded acolytes. His voice rose slowly, almost mournful, as he traced glowing ash through the air.
"They seek salvation, not in gods, but in themselves. And then wonder why the sky remains silent."
The followers did not shout. They did not cry. They listened. As if the ruin in his voice were sacred.
The screen to the far left darkened before revealing a forest set aflame. Figures ran, screaming. A man strode calmly at the head of it all—A monk, torch in one hand, staff in the other. Behind him, shadows moved like smoke given life.
"They believe their path is the only right one… because they are too afraid to see where it leads."
A child tried to run. Wang didn't look back. He simply walked, the fire dancing around him in tune with the distant scream that filled the air.
The monitors hummed, static bleeding faintly along their edges. Data scrolled. Flames flickered in some distant corner of the world. A collapsing street. A closed door. A mother's scream no one would hear.
"The world doesn't end with screams. It doesn't even end with silence."
The man leaned back in his chair, one leg crossing over the other, a finger idly tapping the glass beside him.
"It simply burns. Simply turns."
Another monitor buzzed to life—faint, washed out in color.
"Stranger still," he murmured, voice lower now, more intimate, "when the ones capable of stopping it..."
A stone temple, half-buried in moss and salt, stood at the edge of a canyon that yawned into the sea like the mouth of a sleeping god. The wind howled through it—not loud, not quiet, just… ancient.
Within the temple's crumbling hall, a man in grey robes sat cross-legged. His long black hair, streaked faintly with white, shifted in the breeze. His eyes were closed. The stillness around him was not peace— was something deeper. Something even he couldn't tell.
To his left, a towering figure—broad-shouldered and worn like a blade that had seen too many battles—swept the ground in silence. His scars ran deep, but none deeper than the one across his gaze, a mark half-forgotten.
Between them sat a child—or perhaps a boy pretending not to be one. His artificial horn sparked briefly as he tried to sit upright, imitating the man in robes with furrowed brows and an intensity far too big for his frame.
He wobbled. Fell forward. Huffed in frustration.
The scene played out in silence. Unremarkable to the untrained eye.
But the man behind the monitors leaned forward, shadows retreating from his face for the first time. Sharp features. Pale eyes. A face carved with restraint, not age.
And a quiet breath slipped from his lips, reverent.
"...would rather disappear into the silence."
His gaze didn't waver as the man in robes opened one eye—just one.
The faintest glint of amber. Calm. Cold. A gaze that pierced glass, distance, even time itself.
The monitor's light flickered.
The man in white paused.
Then—
a faint, reluctant smile tugged at the edge of his lips.
"...Or are they?"
His reflection disappeared in the glare of the screen.
And the eye on the other side did not blink.