Around him, the anguished cries continued.
He looked at the people around him.
Someone buried their face in their palms, shoulders heaving violently.Someone raised their red-printed palm high, like holding aloft a flag that could never be torn.Someone did nothing at all, simply knelt in place, like a piece of driftwood forgotten on the shore.
He didn't know what to do.
For the devout, he wasn't fervent enough.He couldn't force out that throat-ripping "Salvation," nor could he shed those scalding tears that seemed capable of drowning fear.He just knelt here, his knees grinding painfully against the cold ground, like a clumsy imitator.
For ordinary people, the red handprint on his face signaled belonging, stretched taut and half-dried across his cheekbone, like a skin of lies that could peel away at any moment.
He didn't know what he was, anymore.
In the end, he chose compromise.
No shouts, no lunging, none of those intense gestures he couldn't learn or squeeze out.
He just—
His whole body, slowly, heavily, knelt forward.
His forehead pressed into the cold ground.Dust burrowed into the cracks in his palms.He heard a cry escape his own throat.
The sound was dry, short and abrupt, like a stone dropped into a dry well, sinking to the bottom before the echo could even ripple back.
Even if this cry from his own mouth lacked that certain warmth, that emotion.
But he still cried out.
As a member of the Red Hand, he should do the same as everyone else.
Now, he knelt.
Like all the others.
That made him feel slightly more at ease.
—
The fervent ones lunged forward, again and again, thrown back by that invisible barrier, crashing into the crowd and being lifted up again.
The ground.
The crowd, surging like waves, like a black sea churned by violent winds, each wave pushing him—this tiny grain of sand—further toward the edge.
The ground.
The empty stage.
The ground.
The ground.
The ground.
He didn't dare raise his head for long.
Each time he did, that dark, yawning emptiness on stage pressed down on him.
So he could only stare at the ground.
Stare at his own fingertips.At the heel of the person in front of him.At that stubborn blade of grass in the crack between stones—trampled by who-knows-how-many feet, yet still clinging to a thread of green.
The shouting didn't fade with time.
It grew louder.
Not orderly, ritualistic chanting, but chaotic, individual pleas—different frequencies of supplication squeezed from different chests.
They collided, weaving into a vast, invisible net, strangling every inch of air in this warehouse.
And at one edge of this net,
he knelt.
—
At some point—
Something felt different.
Wind?
He felt a chill at his side.
Not the draft forcing its way through the door cracks.That wind was hard, cold, carrying the smell of outdoor dust.
This, brushing against the back of his neck, was light, soft, a warm, slow current—like breath.
He paused his prostration.
Didn't raise his head.
Just the fingers braced against the ground tightened slightly.
Smoke.
Somehow, smoke was flowing across the ground again.
Not that thick, explosive white tidal wave from before.
This was shallow, thin as the vapor rising from a deep autumn river, crawling slowly along the ground, like morning mist, like the leading edge of a rising tide.
He lifted his head slightly to look.
The smoke flowed past his kneeling knees.
Didn't pause.
Didn't even detour around him.
It passed through the hem of his robe, washed over his fingertips, as naturally as passing through a stone, a withered blade of grass.
It was moving forward.
Toward that direction.
Toward that empty stage, pinned in place by countless eyes that didn't dare look directly at it.
—
The smoke slowly coiled around the platform.
No, not "climbed" the platform.
It clung.
Like vines finding deadwood.Like the lost seeing lamplight.
The thin mist flowing along the ground, the instant it touched the platform's edge, suddenly came alive.
No longer scattered and hesitant,
but bundle by bundle, thread by thread,
along the wood grain, through the gaps between crates, along the hanging folds of the felt—
climbing upward.
Slow.
Steady.
Like some ancient, irreversible ritual.
He didn't dare blink.
He saw the smoke that clung to the platform didn't stop.
It climbed higher,
coiling around the air,coiling around that still-burning torch,coiling around the already-dried yet still vivid palm print at the edge of the felt—
And then,
it began to rotate.
Not that violent, explosive whirling from before.
This was a slow, tightening rotation,
like a vortex gradually constricting in the abyss,
like an invisible hand stirring a pool of still water.
The center.
All the smoke,
toward the same center—
that empty space at the heart of the stage, flickering in and out of torchlight—
converged.
The warehouse suddenly fell silent.
Not that the smoke had extinguished the sound.
It was that all their throats, in the same instant, were seized by the same hand.
Anguished cries.Weeping.Commotion.Shoving.
All gone.
Only—
Breathing.
Rising simultaneously.
Held simultaneously.
Exhaled simultaneously.
The sound merged into a low, undulating sigh,
like an eternal tide in the distance.
He, too, held his breath.
The smoke grew denser and denser.
No longer that shallow, semi-transparent fluid,
but a thick, almost opaque white mass.
It rotated,
piled up,
kept growing upward in that small square of space at the center of the stage,
as if constructing an invisible altar made only of mist.
And then—
A hand.
Reached out from the smoke.
He saw it.
That hand, slowly, unhurriedly,
like pushing open a lightly latched door,like parting a thin gauze curtain.
The smoke coiled around it—
not clinging,
not attaching,
but submitting.
It obediently withdrew from the palm,
retreated to the wrist,
retreated between the fingers—
like the tide receding,
yielding that patch of vivid red.
A palm,
vivid red.
Not painted.Not pressed on.Not any method he'd ever seen that could dye skin this red.
It was a red that shone from within.
Like a lamp buried under the skin.
Like the blood flowing through the veins wasn't blood,
but magma.
Fire.
Something more ancient than life,
more enduring than death.
He forgot to breathe.
—
The smoke retreated from that wrist,
not dissipating,
but peeling away—
like shedding a heavy overcoat,
revealing the outline beneath.
Then the arm.
Then the shoulder.
Then the chest.
Layer after layer,
the smoke peeled away,
like peeling the skin of a ripe fruit.
That body gradually took form within the white mist,
like a sculpture awakened from a block of marble.
Then the face.
A mask.
Pure white.
Flawless.
No features.
No expression.
Not a single trace of joy, anger, or sorrow.
Only in the place of eyes—
two thin, dark slits—
not for seeing,
but for being observed.
The torchlight found no purchase on that smooth surface,
slid off,
shattering into countless drifting flecks of light.
Invisible.
Nothing could be seen.
Beneath that mask could be anyone.
Could be that figure who vanished in the smoke.Could be any rumored name.Could be the owner of that hand he'd seen within the palm print.Could be—
No one at all.
Just power itself.
Then the robe.
Dark, heavy, falling from his broad shoulders like congealed night, like a motionless abyss.
No embroidery.No ornamentation.Not a single unnecessary fold.
It was simply there,
silently covering that silent body,
blurring the shape of "human" into something more abstract,
more indescribable.
—
The smoke completely dispersed.
Not exploding.Not fading away.
It simply, having completed its final duty, quietly vanished—
as if it had never been.
The stage.
He stood at the very center.
Mask.Robe.The vivid red palm hanging at his side—no longer raised, no longer proclaiming.
Just existing.
The torchlight cast a wavering, elongated shadow at his feet.
That shadow had no features, no expression—
just silently crouched on the stage,
like a tamed black beast.
The warehouse—
No sound.
A thousand people.A thousand heartbeats.A thousand pairs of eyes locked fixedly onto that silent figure on the stage.
No one dared move.No one dared breathe.No one dared be the first to speak.
Because they didn't know—
At this moment, should they plead?
Or kneel in worship?
Or—
Fear.
He knelt in the shadows at the very edge, forehead pressed to the ground, not daring to raise it.
But he saw.
Through the gap between his fingers and the ground,past the trembling edges of his own eyelashes—
he saw.
That figure.
That mask.
That presence, expressionless yet palpably heavy.
He suddenly remembered the red handprint on his face.
That print was stolen.Fake.A lie that could peel and fade at any moment.
And that hand on the stage—
That was real.
Born of smoke.Manifested from silence.Walking here under the gaze of a thousand eyes.
He wanted to cry.
Not from piety.Not from reverence.
Just because—
He could never become that.
And he didn't even know if this thought was humility,
or despair.
—
In the warehouse, someone let out an extremely faint sob, forcibly pressed down into the throat.
Like a pebble dropped into a bottomless ancient well.
The ripples hadn't even spread
before they were swallowed by deeper silence.
"My children."
The voice came from the stage.
Low.
Not a roar.Not a shout.Not even deliberately amplified.
It simply passed steadily through the warehouse's stagnant air,
like a massive stone dropped into a deep pool,
sinking heavily,
irresistibly,
pressing down every thread of restlessness,
every breath.
Not any kind of voice he had imagined.
No fervor.No incitement.No beast-tamer's control capable of kneading and reshaping the emotions of a thousand people.
Just—
Heavy.
Like a father speaking by candlelight.
Like a whisper through gauze in a confessional.
He knelt prostrate, forehead still pressed to the dust.
He didn't dare raise his head.
But that voice did not enter through his ears.
It drilled in through the gap at the very end of his spine,
flowed upward with his blood,
coiled in the center of his chest,
like a piece of red-hot iron,
branding itself down slowly and irresistibly.
"I have sinned."
—
What?
He suddenly froze.
Those three words.
Not from the condescension of royalty or nobles.
Not from the charitable humility of the respectable.
Not from any sinner kneeling beside him, also bearing the red handprint.
But precisely from that one.
From beneath the pure white mask revealed amidst the clustered smoke,
within the vivid red palm—
The savior.
Saying—
"I have sinned."
He didn't know when he had raised his head.
When the tears had begun flowing.
He only knew—
That figure on stage, silent as the abyss—
those open, vivid red palms—
that confession, squeezed not from the throat but from the deepest recesses of the soul—
Had not come to judge him.
Had not come to condemn him.
That voice lifted his kneeling, trembling, lie-covered body from the mud.
Not absolution.
Heavier than absolution.
It was sinking down together.
—
No cheers in the warehouse.
No anguished cries.
Not even breathing.
A thousand people knelt there, heads raised,
like a thousand parched, dry wells
receiving the first drops of rain at the same instant.
His fingers dug into the gaps in the ground.
His nails split.
Blood seeped into the dust.
He didn't know whether those words were true or false.
Didn't know who hid behind that mask on stage.
Didn't know whether he would walk out of this door alive tonight.
He only knew—
Those words were spoken to him.
Not "you."
Him.
This sinner who had stolen a red handprint,
crammed at the outermost edge of the crowd,
whose very repentance was a clumsy imitation.
He heard his own throat release an extremely faint, broken sound.
That wasn't crying.
That was something that had been dry for too long,
finally cracking open its first fissure.