---
The door was unlike any before.
No carvings.
No runes.
No light bleeding from beneath.
Just a smooth obsidian slab—cold, mirrorless.
Yet it pulsed.
Not with power.
But with recognition.
It was waiting for him.
And only him.
---
> "What is this place?" he muttered.
The Tower didn't answer this time.
Instead, the door opened—
inward.
Not into the Tower.
But into himself.
---
The room was pitch black.
EXIN stepped inside.
The door slammed shut behind him.
Total silence.
Total darkness.
He took a breath.
And then he heard it—
Breathing.
Not his.
But something deeper.
Slower.
Older.
Bigger.
---
> "You finally came," said a voice.
EXIN turned, but there was nothing.
Only darkness... and presence.
> "Who are you?" he demanded.
The voice didn't echo.
It existed inside him.
---
> "I am the part you chained."
"The truth you couldn't accept."
"The origin you refuse to remember."
---
Light exploded.
But not light as in fire or mana.
It was memory.
Raw, brutal memory.
Visions surged:
A child with black eyes, born during a thunderstorm.
A woman screaming in terror.
A village burning.
A sky split by ancient symbols.
A voice—his own—saying, "Let them die."
---
He fell to his knees, gasping.
> "No," he whispered.
"That's not me."
But the voice laughed.
> "You still don't understand..."
The shadows coalesced before him, taking shape.
Horns curled from a skull-like head.
Eyes that saw through souls.
Hands dripping with stardust and blood.
It was him.
But older.
Twisted.
Real.
---
> "You are not the Honoured One."
"You are the Forgotten King."
---
The words hit like blades.
Suddenly, memories surged forward—
Thousands of years he had erased.
Galaxies he had ruled.
Planets he had burned.
He had led armies of silence.
He had ordered gods to kneel.
He had devoured reality before.
---
And then...
He had asked the Tower to make him forget.
To bury the truth beneath identity.
Beneath sorrow.
Beneath this lie of being just a boy.
---
> "You're saying… I was the enemy all along?"
The dark self stepped closer.
> "No. Not the enemy."
> "You were the reason the war began."
> "You are Existence:NOTHINGNESS."
---
The spiral on EXIN's chest flared violently.
His knees buckled, visions slicing through him like razors:
A crown made of entropy.
A throne orbiting a dead star.
A promise whispered to something older than gods:
> "If I forget myself… the war will wait."
---
He gasped.
Everything twisted.
The Tower wasn't leading him toward redemption.
It was restoring him.
Piece by piece.
Truth by agonizing truth.
---
> "But if I was the cause," EXIN said, "Why am I trying to stop it?"
His dark self smiled.
And pointed at his chest.
> "Because you gave yourself the one curse no god could carry…"
> "You chose to love the world."
---
The shadows burst.
The dark self dissolved—leaving behind only a symbol, burned into EXIN's ribs:
> A hollow eye.
Open.
Watching.
Forgiving nothing.
---
The door behind him reopened.
Only now…
It looked like a mirror.
And he didn't flinch when he saw himself.
Because for the first time—
He knew what he was.
---
---