His steps were heavy—not because he was tired, but because they no longer entirely belonged to him.
In the back alleys of the noble district, Luin walked aimlessly.As if his body knew a path it had never been taught.
Everything within him had changed.Even his name… he began to feel it no longer referred to him.
He passed a rusted mirror, set between two abandoned buildings, and looked at his reflection.
He did not see Luin Mer.He saw something else.
Something not yet born, yet there it was… staring with eyes behind eyes.
⸻
A voice appeared behind him.
"You walk as if you've lost your shadow, Luin."
He turned.The nobleman stood at the edge of the shadow, his face half gold, half bone, hidden by a mask.
The nobleman said:"Disappointment grows wings within you… but do not try to fly before you know which sky to choose."
Luin did not respond; he only stared.
Then the nobleman spoke slowly:"What were you expecting from me? That I would open the seal? That I would lose myself?"
Luin answered internally:"I was waiting for you to shed your name."
⸻
From the gray clouds came a cold wind, as if it had emerged from an ancient crypt.The nobleman extended his hand, holding a folded paper.
"Take this, and go to the basement of the Valen Library. At the sixth wall… there is a gate you will not pass unless you have died first."
Luin took the paper.
"Is this… my will?" he asked.
The nobleman laughed, then fell silent abruptly.
With a serious tone, he added:"No. This is an acknowledgment that you were never truly alive."
⸻
On his way to the library, Luin felt as if the ground itself did not remember him.Everything he passed watched him like a stranger—people, walls, even his own voice when he muttered to himself… sounded foreign.
At the library door, a girl with one eye watched him.He sensed something in her… something not human.
She did not speak, only nodded.
And the door opened on its own.
⸻
The first step inside was not on wood… but on a memory that was not his.
As if the library swallowed him rather than welcomed him.
No one was there.The shelves soared, the corridors branching into endless paths.Every wall held books, and each book whispered a name forgotten centuries ago.
But Luin was not searching for knowledge.He was searching for the sixth wall.
⸻
He counted his steps.He passed five walls, each darker than the one before.
At the sixth, he stopped.
Nothing seemed special… except that it did not reflect his shadow.
He ran his fingers along it.
He felt his skin being stripped of meaning, as if the wall was reading him… but not touching him.
Then it opened.
⸻
Inside was not a room.It was a chasm.
Each step down deleted a feeling from his memory.Step—pain disappeared.Step—his inner voice vanished.Step—he began to doubt if his name was truly "Luin."
Until he reached the bottom.
⸻
There, a circular chamber.In its center, a black mirror hovered above an invisible floor.
Around it, seven statues wrapped in bandages, as if hiding demons that were once human.
Luin approached the mirror.
He saw himself… not as he was now, but as he had never been.A child… without a name.Without even a fixed body.Surrounded by voices tearing at reality.
Suddenly, one of the statues spoke:
"Those who are not erased… cannot be sealed."
⸻
Luin asked:"Which seal?"
The second statue replied:"The second… opened only through betrayal, or through erasure."
The third asked:"Have you forgotten what you were meant to forget?"
The fourth said:"Is there anything left of your name?"
Luin replied:"…It no longer matters."
⸻
The mirror shattered in silence.It did not scatter—it fractured into regret, falling onto his chest as a black tattoo that began to spread.
A cold pain… as if his bones were being crushed and reborn.
The second seal had opened.
But this time, the voice was no longer only in his head.
It was a full entity… emerging from between his ribs, unseen by the eye, yet impossible to deny.
⸻
The entity whispered:"Finally… you let go of yourself."
Luin replied, in a voice not entirely his own:"No… I have finally become mine."
⸻
When he emerged from the sixth floor, he was no longer as he had entered.The shadow followed him… but it no longer touched his feet.It was connected to something else.Something walking beside him, unseen, and unwilling to be understood.
He climbed the stairs, unaware of time passing.Each step restored feelings… but in a distorted way.
– Pain… had become longing.– Fear… sharpened his senses.– Guilt… no longer had taste, only color. A dark hue coloring his heart from within.
⸻
On the library rooftop, he found Celin.
She was not alone.Behind her stood a tall figure, covered in black feathers, featureless, silent.As if night itself had taken a body to guard her.
She said, looking at him:"You've opened the second, haven't you?"
He did not answer.
Instead, he asked:"Who follows you?"
She replied:"Something like you… that was in me before."
⸻
They walked toward the edge.
The city below no longer looked familiar.Buildings bent toward them, as if whispering a single secret:"We see you."
Luin said:"Celin, we're approaching something… larger than ourselves."
She answered:"No. Something we were part of, and were exiled from."
⸻
The first signs of change appeared on his body.The second seal's mark—a thin black line running from his chest to his neck, like a wound in flesh, unhealable.
But worse than that…
His inner voice was no longer alone.There was another, responding to him.Laughing when he fell silent.Whispering when he spoke.
⸻
The voice said:"The count has begun.The stages before the third opening are not optional.Stage one: things you see… will see through you."
⸻
Immediately, the books in the library screamed from behind him.All of them.
As if… they had seen his true face.
⸻
Time stood at the edge between night and dawn, that blue ash not belonging to any clear hour. Luin stood alone before a door.
A door unlike any other.
Not made of wood, nor iron, but of a material like petrified dream, pulsing slowly as if breathing.No handle, no lock—just a warped frame in a wall that did not belong to any building.
He stood before it without touching.He felt it in his bones, in his temples, in every memory he had tried to forget.
The voice whispered within him:
"This door does not open.It opens you."
Luin did not respond. His mind was full enough.
The nobleman who had betrayed him—or vanished deliberately. The church tearing itself apart. The entity deep within him began speaking in languages he was not made to understand. And Celin… Celin who had once told him:
"Sometimes, we do not need the truth to continue, but someone to carry our lie with us."
The door shuddered.And the first crack appeared.
⸻
He was not alone.
From afar, on the other side of the strange corridor where the ground had opened, William appeared, his clothes dusty but his steps firm.
"You see the door, don't you?"
Luin nodded."It sees me too."
"Do you know what it means?"
"Maybe… not."After a long silence:"I think it is a seal. Or a curse. Or a memory the church made me forget."
William approached until he was beside him, his eyes pale, something like fear… but deeper.
"What lies beyond this door… is not a seal, but a reminder.And if you open it now, you cannot return."
Luin asked, without lifting his eyes:"Is the memory worth all this pain?"
William did not answer.
But the door… began to crawl.
⸻
Something was being pulled outward.
The smell of childhood. The sound of a whip striking flesh. Damp walls he had seen one night, vomiting blood after the first rite. A priest without eyes, placing his hand on his head, whispering:
"You are not yours. You were made to be opened."
Everything collapsed on Luin at once.
Yet he did not retreat.
He raised his hand and opened his eyes, reaching toward the door.
…
Then—he stopped.
Behind him, a familiar, soft, sorrowful voice:
"Luin… do not open this door."
He turned.
Celin.
Standing alone, in dim light falling from nowhere, her lips trembling as if trying to catch a word lost.
"Why?" he asked.
She said, with a voice not only hers but the echo of something older:
"Because behind this door…is not your past.It is your first end."
⸻
Luin did not move.
His hand remained extended toward the door, yet his fingers froze, as if something invisible held them back.
Celin stepped closer, her eyes silently pleading. Her voice now seemed to come from two different places at once—present and echo, soaked in pain and longing:
"I saw this door once.I was not ready."
"And what was behind it?"
She answered:"My name was broken."
The answer was harsher than a thousand warnings.But something in Luin's chest longed to break something.Not his name, but the chains placed inside him since the first cry he had no choice in.
He turned to her, asking slowly:"Were you following me?"
"No."She said, then sighed:"I was waiting for you."
⸻
The air changed.
Not as it changed during rituals, nor when a seal pulsed, but differently… organically.As if memory itself was fermenting in the place, overflowing onto reality.
The door retreated slightly on its own, revealing a passage… without end.
William shouted:"Luin! Listen to me!"
But his voice sounded as if underwater.
"If you enter, you will no longer be yourself."
Luin answered, a voice neither fearful nor reckless:
"I do not wish to return as I was."
And he stepped in.
⸻
The corridor had no walls, no clear floor, only a grayish space in which he floated, his steps silent.
Then he began to see.
A small child crying in a damp cell.A masked man saying: "His heart beats too much still."A priest holding a dagger, whispering: "Every seal demands a twisted sacrifice."
And himself… but not himself.
A young man stands before a cracked mirror, with a lightning-shaped tattoo on his face. Behind him, a woman screams, and above her head a symbol appears, unlike any he had seen before, like a lost letter from the first alphabet.
"Is this me?""Or what I was to become?"
⸻
A fog-like entity appeared.It had no form, yet countless eyes, all pupil-less.
The entity said:"You have not completed the division.The door opened you, but did not close you."
Luin did not respond.
He approached the fog, extending his hand, gazing into its eyes.
"If I am a broken half, let my end be my second beginning."
He opened his eyes…
And stepped out of the corridor.
But he was not alone.
He emerged with the shadow.⸻
When Luin left the corridor, he did not feel light as usual.
The air around him was lighter, as if its weight no longer belonged to this world alone.On his back, along his spine, a gray line began to appear beneath the skin… like someone had written an ancient script visible only to those who had lost their first name.
Celin?She was still standing in place.
But she dared not approach.She shivered a step back, placing her hand on her chest, as if her heart had received an invisible stab.
She whispered:"What came out with you?"
Luin replied, in a voice barely more than a breath:"It has no name… yet."
⸻
Behind him, at the edge of the open door, stood a figure resembling a shadow stretched across three dimensions.It had no clear features, but anyone who looked knew it was no illusion.
It reflected Luin.But it only moved when unobserved.
William shouted from afar:"Luin! Return! Before it clings to you!"
But Luin raised his hand.
Not to the shadow… but to the sky.
At that moment, the third seal pulsed.
⸻
It was unlike the first two.
The first opened the eye.The second shattered the mirror.The third… allowed the voice to become an image.
In Luin's mind, symbols began forming.Fragmented images… sounds trapped between rites.And one thing screamed:
"The shadow is you… when no one watches."
Celin, her face pale, said:"This is not an ordinary seal… You no longer walk merely toward your fate… You have begun reshaping it."
⸻
The shadow approached.
But it did not attack.
It stood beside Luin, perfectly, imitating him.
Raising its hand as Luin raised his.Turning its head as Luin turned his.
And in the sky, small cracks appeared… invisible to the eye, yet their echo was palpable.
William ran to them, gripping Luin's shoulder tightly:
"Do you know what you have done? I made a mirror for you… but mirrors do not always reflect. Sometimes, they replace."
Luin looked at him… and said:"Let me try to be what I should not be."
Then he walked, the shadow following.
⸻
Behind them, at the still-ajar door, Celin whispered:"The mirrors have begun to break from both sides."
⸻
The night after the third seal's breaking, none who saw Luin slept.The voices in the lower city did not quiet.Everything became weaker… and clearer in its weakness.
Luin walked alone.Not because they had left him, but because he chose that no one follow him.
The shadow still accompanied him, yet its features began forming.Its eyes were dark, like another sky inside them.The gray line on his back became a living tattoo, moving as if it had a pulse.
⸻
At the shattered glass gate—the place of the first fall—William waited.The wind dragged his cloak like an old memory.
He said:"I thought I knew who you were… but you have become an unknowable question."
Luin stopped, raised his eyes, and replied:"I do not know myself either. But the entity inside me… has begun to remember its name."
Then he added softly:"And it seems the name… is mine as well."
⸻
Celin appeared from behind a slanted wall.Her face pale, her eyes full of something unspoken.She approached slowly, then whispered:
"You are changing. More than you should. And the White Church… will not stay silent."
Luin did not answer.
But he took a wrapped cloth from his coat.Opened it.
Inside was a small hollow statue, shaped like a faceless human.
He said:"This is what the man who tore my name in childhood left me… this statue was the first thing I felt was 'me.'"
Then he threw it into the air, letting it fall.
"But even this is no longer enough."
⸻
In the sky, a gray star began to flicker.
It was not a natural star.It was part of another entity, watching… from afar.
Suddenly…
The ground trembled.And an echo rose from beneath the city, as if a giant heart beat in the depths.
William turned immediately, eyes widening:
"No… not now… not at this time!"
Celin placed her hand on her chest, whispering:"It awakens… beneath the root… the entity sealed centuries ago… is beginning to stir."
⸻
But Luin did not move.
He looked at the shadow walking beside him.
And said:"Are you me… or am I who I was in another time?"
The shadow smiled.
For the first time, human features appeared.
Then it spoke one word:
"Come closer."
⸻
In the next moment…
Light exploded from within Luin.Not a burning light… but a light like silence.A light that made anyone who saw it remember a guilt forgotten since childhood.
And with this light… an inner voice began to speak, deeper than all others:
"The fourth seal is not something to be opened… it is something to be created."
"And you… have begun its creation."
End of Chapter 27 – End of Volume One THE FIRST SCAR: AWAKENING OF THE VEIL