---
It began with a whisper that wasn't sound.
Farro sat alone in the warehouse, cross-legged, stone in hand.
The Narrator had vanished again—leaving behind no instructions, no expectations.
Just a sentence written on the wall in charcoal:
"Close your eyes. Listen to the silence… until it speaks back."
Farro did as instructed.
And the world… slowed.
Not in speed—but in density.
Everything felt thicker. The air. The shadows. Even his thoughts.
Then he felt it:
A pull—not outward, but inward.
As if the space within his chest had grown teeth… and was beginning to open.
---
Something tore.
He didn't scream, though every nerve begged him to.
He couldn't.
The world was gone. The warehouse. The city.
Even the cold.
He was nowhere.
Suspended inside a sphere of grey nothingness, like floating in ash.
And then—it bled.
Not blood.
But silence.
The nothingness around him cracked and leaked ink-like strands of darkness.
They twisted, coiled, and then—
Spoke.
But not with words.
Each tendril that touched him gave him a memory—but not his own.
A child staring at their dying parent.
A soldier burying a friend.
A lover forgotten in time.
And he felt them.
All of them.
As if the void was feeding him the weight of every forgotten sorrow in the world.
"What… is this…?" he gasped.
"This is Nen," a voice finally answered.
But not The Narrator's.
It was the voice of the Faceless One.
The same formless version of himself he had seen in his dream.
"Nen is not power. Nen is truth you refuse to see."
"And now you've seen it."
Farro fell to his knees. The strands of memory withdrew.
And in their place—he saw light.
---
Suddenly—
He was back.
The warehouse. The cold. The stone. All returned in a blink.
But now… something was different.
His body radiated heat—not from fire, but from presence.
Like his existence had acquired weight. As if the world could finally feel him walking upon it.
---
The Narrator stood in the doorway, nodding.
"You didn't die. That's better than most."
Farro looked up, drained. Pale. Changed.
"Was that… Nen?"
> "No," the Narrator replied. "That was your shadow being introduced to its skin."