On the roof of the factory, MOHITO approached SHOUTNA, who was leaning on the edge...
The two stood gazing at the sky as if searching for an answer in the darkness of night.
The scattered stars were silent witnesses to a conversation that had not yet begun.
The silence between them was like a fragile bridge bearing the weight of questions imprisoned in their chests.
"We humans always tend to believe we are aware of everything..." SHOUTNA began without taking his gaze from the horizon, as if speaking to the stars themselves.
"But the truth is that this is the greatest deception."
The wind caught his words and carried them into the dark.
"Awareness is not doubting everything... nor is it rejecting everything others do."
Finally, SHOUTNA turned to MOHITO, his eyes shining with a wisdom earned in battles fought within himself before the battlefields.
"Rather, you must ask: is what I see now real... or is it merely a deeper layer of illusion?"
MOHITO turned slowly, his eyes glowing with a faint red light as he faced SHOTNA.
"People think awareness is waking up... but the truth is it has no end.
The more you arrive, the more you discover you are in a deeper dream."
SHOUTNA stepped forward once, his shadow stretching on the ground like a ghost from the past.
He looked straight into MOHITO's eyes, a gaze that pierced every barrier and defense. "Remember this well, MOHITO...
It is not your awareness that frees you... but your realization that you are bound while you believe you are free."
A heavy silence settled, broken only by the beating of their hearts.
Then SHOUTNA added in a deeper voice, like the earth exhaling:
"True awareness begins when you stop putting complete trust in your own awareness."
After a long pause,
MOHITO asked:
"Why didn't you tell the comrades about my truth?"
SHOUTNA was silent for a moment... a cold wind swept across the roof, carrying whispers of the past.
"Once... BORBAKI told me you were the key to defeating the organization.
At the time, I didn't understand what he meant."
SHOUTNA raised his hand slowly and placed it on MOHITO's shoulder:
"But now I know... You were never a cold killing machine...
remember that well."
SHOUTNA's touch on MOHITO's shoulder carried all the meanings of brotherhood and trust.
Then he turned his back toward the exit.
MOHITO followed with calm eyes.
"We'll finish our talk later; someone else is waiting," SHOUTNA said as he opened the door.
SOLIMON appeared standing in the doorway.
His eyes were fixed on MOHITO, carrying a mixture of anger and worry.
SOLIMON advanced with slow steps, as if each step bore a memory of their past together.
"So you know... I will not apologize. What YOU did in TZARIA was wrong."
MOHITO smiled faintly, his eyes gleaming with deep understanding:
"I wasn't waiting for your apology."
The two stood in silence... a silence more eloquent than any word.
This had always been their own language—The silence they understood without needing speech.
Their way of saying,
"You will never walk alone."
***************
Down below, ODEL still stood in the middle of the abandoned factory like the trunk of a tree in a storm.
Though he was free now, the chains of truth were heavier than any metal bonds.
After hearing SHOUTNA's story, the facts were no longer mere words to his ears;
They had become knives that pierced his soul.
The truth he had long tried to push away began to devour him from within like fire consuming paper.
"MOHITO never tried to hurt LOUVNA..."
He whispered to himself, eyes fixed on the ground.
"Rather, he was the one who defended her when I couldn't even stand by her."
In that moment, he felt the ground fall away beneath his feet.
All his doubts, all his investigations, all those suspicious glances
— they had been built on illusions he had made... his fear.
"Aren't you leaving yet?"
MOHITO's voice came from the top of the stairs and pulled him from his thoughts.
ODEL turned slowly; his eyes met MOHITO's.
He saw in them the calm he had mistaken for coldness, and he saw the depth he had feared.
"I just wanted to..."
ODEL faltered, words dancing on the edge of his lips.
"To apologize... no, not an apology... to say..."
He clenched his hands, gathering his courage.
"I'll see you next week at the institute."
MOHITO could not hide his surprise.
His eyes widened slightly, then softened into a rare, warm smile, like a winter sun.
"Yes."
His simple word held all the forgiveness ODEL had not asked for.
It was a pledge without a covenant, like a flower that blooms in the desert.
A new path opened between them, as if to say, "Do not go; let's begin again."
ODEL turned toward the exit but paused at the threshold.
He looked back at MOHITO one last time, his eyes glinting with memories of past days.
"If you do not come..."
He smiled faintly, carrying a world of recollection within it,
"LOUVNA will be worried. And I... I don't want her to be sad."
In that moment, MOHITO understood that these were not mere words about LOUVNA.
It was ODEL's way of saying: "I have accepted you, I trust you, and I will stand by you."Even in a world filled with blood and darkness... humans remain capable of reconciliation... and of beginning again.
***************
After bidding farewell to ODEL,
MOHITO set off through the deserted city streets, leaving behind the factory of painful memories.
His steps were heavy as if carrying all the burdens of the past on his shoulders.
The cold air caressed his face, but his heart's chill was colder still.
He took out his phone, which had been out of service like his heart closed to the world.
The cracked screen reflected his tired eyes, and then a single message appeared:
MOHITO stopped abruptly, as if struck by those simple words — as if they spoke to something inside him.
"When will you return?" — a message of four words.
He repeated the words softly, like someone reading an old incantation.
He raised his eyes from the screen and looked up at the night sky.
He smiled a sad smile, full of contradictions.
His eyes shone with a mixture of conflicted emotions.
"Which part of me do you mean... LOUVNA?"
He glanced at the bag carrying his sword.
In that moment, he felt that every journey back from TZARIA, every battle he had fought, every drop of blood spilled... had been a journey returning to this point.
The point at which he asks himself: Who am I truly? And which part of me deserves to come back?
He began walking again, but his steps were lighter.
He carried a question in his heart and a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
Perhaps—just perhaps—there was a part of him worth returning.
He looked back at the phone and typed a one-word reply:
"SOON."
***************
In a dark corner of the factory, five figures stood whispering as if discussing a grave secret.
Their quick breaths mixed with the echo of wind passing through broken windows.
"Whose idea was it to return MORASAMI'S SWORD to him?" SHOUTNA asked sharply, his voice carrying the anguish of a worried father.
BELL shrank a little, his eyes avoiding the looks directed at him:
"He asked me to return it to him... what was I supposed to do?"
"We all know its destructive influence on him!" SHOUTNA burst out, trying to restrain his anger.
"That is why BORBAKI took it from him in the first place."
SHOUTNA stepped forward, his eyes scanning the surrounding faces:
"MORASAMI is not just a sword... it is an evil entity that feeds on blood.
That dark blackness veined with branching red lines like throbbing arteries,
the blood-red hilt that feels like living skin...
The more it is stained with blood, its red lines grow denser and wider, and its hunger for more increases."
ZACK, who rarely broke his silence, stepped from the shadows:
"The red lines on the blade... they do not decorate; they record.
Every victim, every life taken, leaves its mark.
We do not yet know the full consequences of this, but we must watch MOHITO closely."
NABEL added in a gloomy tone: "Let's hope it doesn't end like last time... when MOHITO lost himself."
A heavy silence fell, as if the ghost of the past had descended among them.
Each carried in his eyes the memories of those dreadful days.
"The worst part..." SHOUTNA finally whispered,
"Is that the sword not only kills the victims... it kills a part of MOHITO every time he uses it."
SHOUTNA paused, unwilling to imagine that reality, then continued:
"And we may lose MOHITO forever this time."