"In a world where strength is seen, and power is earned, we learned too late that what we fear most isn't death -
It's living after everything inside us has already died."
There is a silence that comes after grief. Not the silence of peace. The silence of what is never said aloud again.
That silence runs this world.
Long before the kingdoms rose and broke and rose again, before Guilds named their vows and Elders drew counsel from the shattered corners of their hearts, there was only one law:
You carry what you cannot let go.
And one truth:
The more it cuts, the more it becomes you.
The first DOMA wasn't forged in steel or ink or any sacred blood.It was carved in a boy's spine the moment he watched his sister disappear under rubble -and he did nothing.
It screamed out of him that night. And the earth shook just slightly, not in mourning, but in agreement.
He would never be whole again.
But he would never be powerless again either.
They say to wield a DOMA is to wear your wound on the inside of your soul and make the world feel it.
Some use it to protect.
Some to control.
Some to remember.
Some to forget.
But every bearer shares one thing:
They passed through a moment they were never supposed to survive. And they came out wrong. Strong, yes. But wrong.
In the Hollow District, under peeling skies and rusting bells, a boy wakes every morning with the same ache in his chest.
He doesn't know it yet, But his fracture is already speaking.
And soon, the world will hear it.