The dust from the Purge Beam had settled, leaving a world that looked like a bleached bone. Shin didn't offer a hand to Victor. Instead, he unraveled a length of jagged, reinforced wire from his tactical belt—a remnant of the Cathedral's bell pull. With a cold, rhythmic precision, he bound Victor's wrists.
"Walk," Shin commanded. His voice was a low growl, devoid of any human warmth.
Victor stumbled, his expensive analyst uniform shredded and stained with the grey ash of the Crags. "Shin... my legs... the radiation from the beam, it's—"
"I didn't ask for a medical report," Shin interrupted, jerking the wire so hard Victor fell face-first into the sharp gravel. Shin didn't stop walking. He dragged the man for a few meters, the sound of skin scraping against stone filling the eerie silence of the wasteland. "You are a database on legs, Victor. If those legs stop moving, I'll just carve the information out of your brain and leave the rest for the crows."
[The Atmosphere of Despair]
The Ashen Crags were not just a place; they were a graveyard of logic. The sky above was a stagnant pool of charcoal clouds, and the ground beneath pulsed with a faint, sickly rhythm. Every step Shin took felt like wading through thick oil. His grey eyes, now cold and metallic, scanned the horizon for the Fortress of Crying Glass.
He could feel the black lightning beneath his skin—it wasn't a power anymore; it was a parasite. It burned his veins, demanding more "Void" than his body could provide. But he didn't show it. To the broken man behind him, Shin looked like an indestructible demon carved from shadow.
"Why go there?" Victor sobbed, his spirit completely crushed by the realization that his Organization had tried to delete him like a corrupted file. "The Fortress... it's a myth. No one enters and remains 'sane'. The glass... it reflects things that haven't happened yet."
Shin stopped. He turned slowly, the Silver Feather in his hand glowing with a pale, ghostly light. "That's exactly why we're going, Victor. Logic failed you. Equations failed you. Now, we're going to see what the 'Madness' has to offer."
He leaned down, grabbing Victor by the hair and forcing him to look at the distant, shimmering towers of the Fortress. "You're going to open those gates for me. And if you fail... I'll make sure your death is the only thing the glass remembers."