I knelt before Astro.
Omega Servant before High Judge.
Lowest before highest.
The position felt wrong.
Violated everything I'd become.
Everything I'd fought for.
But the mask burned on my forehead.
Forcing compliance.
Forcing submission.
Making me into what it declared.
The marble beneath my knees was cold, unforgiving, each subtle shift of weight sending sharp pressure through kneecaps and shins. My spine curved into submission automatically, muscles remembering servitude they'd never learned, body conforming to expectations written into the mark. The air tasted different from this position—thinner somehow, as though oxygen itself knew hierarchy and rose away from the lowest, leaving me to breathe what others had already consumed.
Through the red thread, I felt Astro's horror.
His desperate fight against the High Judge role.
His refusal to accept this.
We have to break the masks. Have to find a way to remove them.
