---
---
The wind didn't carry his name anymore.
It carried dust. Ash. Whispers of gods no one remembered.
Not even him.
EXIN walked through what used to be a kingdom.
He didn't recognize the ruins.
But they recognized him.
Statues half-swallowed by time twisted as he passed.
Not to follow—
But to turn away.
As if the stone itself had been taught to forget.
---
He came upon a field of silence.
No wind.
No birds.
Just black grass and broken pillars marked by shattered halos.
He knelt and brushed his fingers against the earth.
A tremor ran through the ground.
It didn't welcome him.
> "Designation not found," the mana hissed.
> "You do not exist here."
---
He smiled.
> "Good," he whispered.
"Then I don't have to follow the rules."
He stood, and the Fifth Mark across his chest—☩ The Collapsed Faith—burned cold.
And the world flinched.
The land itself remembered what he was.
And for a moment…
It hated him for it.
---
He continued walking.
Through a gate carved in bone.
Into a village made entirely of rope and salt.
Faces peeked out from curtains—blank, painted white.
Not in fear.
But in devotion.
Warped, twisted devotion.
A child walked up to him.
Eyes hollow.
Hands burned with symbols he'd carved in another life.
> "You're late," she said.
> "The gods already died."
> "But the Choir still sings."
---
The girl led him to a shrine made of mirrors.
But none of them reflected him.
Only light.
Only echoes.
Only a version of the sky that bled when looked at too long.
Inside the shrine, a body hung from threads.
It was still alive.
Still singing.
Each note twisted reality.
He had to clench his mind to stay whole.
---
> "This is what became of belief," the girl whispered.
"When your name was erased, they filled it with… anything."
> "Now they worship the idea of silence. They call it salvation."
> "They call it… The Faithless Choir."
---
EXIN stepped forward.
The hanging figure stopped singing.
And turned its head.
Where eyes should have been—only mouths.
It spoke through all of them at once:
> "We remember you…"
> "Not as god."
> "As mistake."
---
> "Then remember this," EXIN said quietly—
And raised his hand.
The Sixth Mark — 🜂 The Broken Return — ignited across his forearm.
Reality peeled backward.
EXIN dragged the Choir's voice into a past it wanted to forget—
To a moment it believed in him.
To a child kneeling at an altar, whispering his name with hope.
That memory screamed.
And so did the body hanging in the shrine.
---
Glass shattered.
Threads snapped.
And EXIN whispered:
> "I don't want your worship."
> "I want your truth."
The corpse collapsed.
The girl smiled.
And in the distance—
A bell rang.
Made not of metal.
But of weeping.
---
The girl turned to dust in his arms.
She had been a dream.
Not his.
But someone else's memory, still clinging to this place.
> "The Faithless Choir will hunt you now," a voice said behind him.
He turned.
A man in crimson.
Skin made of paper and ink.
Eyes like sealed letters.
> "They do not accept forgotten gods."
> "They burn them to keep the silence pure."
---
EXIN didn't respond.
He stepped into the light leaking through the cracks of the shrine.
And whispered to himself:
> "Then I'll give them a silence they can't endure."
---
From above, the wind shifted.
Carrying his name.
Once again.
Soft.
Tattered.
But real.
EXIN walked on.
Toward the next war.
One made not of armies…
…but of meaning.
---.
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