The silver mist inside the Fortress of Crying Glass didn't just feel like fog; it felt like a thousand tiny needles of cold logic pressing against Shin's temples, trying to pry open his consciousness. Every step Shin took echoed with a dull, hollow thud against the obsidian floor, a sound that seemed to be swallowed by the weeping walls before it could even reach the ceiling.
As they approached the massive gateway—a shimmering wall of liquid obsidian that rippled like a dark lake—a series of ancient glyphs began to burn across its surface. They glowed with a pale, ghostly light, illuminating the cold sweat on Victor's face.
"It's a synaptic lock," Victor whispered, his voice cracking as a sleek, glass console emerged from the floor between them. He stepped back, his eyes darting frantically. "I've seen records of these in the Organization's forbidden archives. It's not asking for mana, Shin. It's asking for a 'Core Anchor'. It wants a memory—one that defines your soul. If you don't give it what it wants, we'll be frozen here as part of the architecture."
Shin stood motionless, his storm-grey eyes fixed on the pulsating glyphs. The fortress wasn't just a building; it was a hungry, sentient entity that fed on the identity of those who dared to enter. To pass, he had to sacrifice a piece of his past, effectively erasing it from his mind forever to fuel the gate's mechanism.
"Choose," the voice of the fortress echoed, a dual-toned vibration that felt like it was coming from inside Shin's own skull.
Victor gripped his bound wrists, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. "Maybe... maybe you can give it the memory of the fire? Or the betrayal of the Van Croft manor? Get rid of the nightmares that haunt you! You'd be free of the burden, and we could finally move forward!"
Shin turned his head slowly, looking at Victor with an expression so cold it seemed to drop the room's temperature by several degrees. "Freedom through forgetting is just another form of death, Victor. Only a fool discards the scars that taught him how to survive. My memories, even the agonizing ones, are my only true weapon."
[The Logical Cruelty]
Shin's #HIGHIQ mind was already analyzing the flow of energy between the console and the gateway. He noticed a slight delay in the feedback loop—a resonance gap. The gate didn't specifically require his memory; it required a memory of absolute loyalty to the Van Croft bloodline.
With a swift, predatory movement, Shin grabbed Victor by the collar and slammed him against the glass interface.
"Shin! What are you doing?! Stop! You're hurting me!" Victor screamed, his body sparking as his skin made contact with the cold, hungry glass.
"The gate wants a memory of 'loyalty' and 'humanity'," Shin said, his voice a low, terrifying rumble. His black lightning began to hum with a rhythmic, hypnotic frequency. "I have no use for such weaknesses. But you... you still cling to the pathetic hope that you were more than just a tool for the Organization. Your loyalty is pure—and misplaced. It will serve a better purpose now."
Without a shred of hesitation, Shin didn't sacrifice his own past. He channeled a precise surge of his Reign of Black Lightning into the console, using it to "bridge" Victor's neural pathways directly into the gate's processor. He was forcing the fortress to strip the memories from Victor instead, using the man as a living, breathing conduit.
"NO! MY FAMILY! I CAN'T... I DON'T WANT TO FORGET!" Victor's shriek echoed through the chamber, then suddenly became a hollow, airy sound as the silver mist began to spiral around his head, draining the very essence from his eyes. His memories—his childhood, his first day at the Academy, the faces of those he loved—were being consumed, turned into raw data to power the gears of the fortress.
"Consider this your final contribution to the Van Croft legacy," Shin remarked dryly, watching as the gateway began to dissolve into a violent, royal purple vortex. He felt no pity. An #EGOIST doesn't weigh the lives of others against his own survival.
[The Awakening of the Fractured Monarch]
As the obsidian wall vanished, a pedestal made of bone-white glass rose in the center of the next chamber. Resting upon it was a dark, pulsating orb—the Void Core.
Shin drew his current blade, a simple piece of steel that had seen too many battles. But as he brought the metal near the core, the weapon began to vibrate so intensely it hummed a low, mournful tune. The orb didn't just merge with the sword; it shattered the steel into a thousand shards, then pulled them back together in a swirling vortex of black fire.
The sword was reborn. It was no longer a mere tool, but "The Fractured Monarch".
Shin gripped the new hilt, and a surge of power blasted outward, cracking the glass floor beneath him. His grey eyes flashed with a deep purple light, a reflection of the true king he was becoming. Victor lay on the floor, a hollowed-out shell, his mind a blank slate. He was alive, but the man he was had been erased to pay the toll for Shin's ascent.
"The descent is over," Shin whispered, the tip of his new blade glowing with a cold, abyssal light. "Now, the world will learn what happens when the Void stops waiting."