Ardin stood silently before the door of Suite 404, Mimos’s space in M-Prime.

  The lingering afterimages of the rotunda—the chronicle of incineration and his parents’ study—still blurred his vision. Yet, his footsteps were firmer than ever.

  Click.

  As the door slid open, a wave of expensive perfume and perfectly tempered air greeted his senses. It was a scent designed to mask the world.

  “Well… you haven’t changed a bit.”

  The living room was a curated gallery. Mimos stood at the center of this opulent landscape, greeting Ardin with a wine glass in hand.

  At his feet, dozens of shadows, shaped like black sunflower petals, rippled like living creatures, beckoning Ardin inward.

  “I’m not one to open my door twice for clumsy intruders, but for you, Ardin, I suppose I can make an exception.”

  Mimos approached with an elegant smile.

  Ardin, however, offered no social pleasantry. He simply stared at the floor beneath the man’s feet.

  Whirrr—hiss.

  Amidst the dozens of flickering, fake shadows, there was one singular, immovable thing.

  A powerful conduit of darkness, driven vertically into the floor without a single tremor.

  “Mr. Mimos.”

  Ardin spoke, his voice low and heavy.

  “Beneath those beautiful petals of yours, I see a pillar I’d very much like to turn off.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean…”

  In a flash, Solet scattered from Ardin’s fingertips, slicing through the air.

  The ornate sunflower petals curled back and evaporated like paper touching a flame. As the false brilliance vanished, only one thing remained: a pillar of alien darkness, piercing the ground with sickening clarity.

  Ardin stepped down, grinding his heel into Mimos’s vertical shadow.

  In that instant—

  Static, sizzle!

  The dozens of shadows surrounding Mimos vanished as if an overloaded electronic device had screamed its last.

  Left in the glare of the bright lights was nothing but a pale, pathetic man with a single, thin vertical shadow.

  The wine glass slipped from Mimos’s hand.

  What spilled onto the floor was not fine wine. It was a violet, illegal drug—synthetic alcohol manufactured for artificial ecstasy.

  A sharp, pungent odor spread across the marble floor.

  “Hmm… Now you look like yourself.”

  Ardin brushed past the frozen Mimos and shoved open the bedroom door that had remained strictly closed until now.

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  Creeeeak—

  The scene beyond the door was a mockery of the living room’s splendor.

  The premium marble was gone. In its place were cheap plastic furniture with peeling gold leaf.

  Half-eaten disposable containers were piled under the bed, emitting a foul stench, and designer suits lay on the floor, stained with grime and never once laundered.

  The private life of the man who supposedly bought out the Monolith with his vast wealth was stained with a poverty and vulgarity that no amount of luxury could erase.

  “Well… you weren’t some special collector after all.”

  Ardin murmured tonelessly, scanning the room.

  “You were just so empty inside that you didn't have any rejection response to any shadow graft. The cheapest, easiest vessel to handle. That’s why they chose you.”

  “Shut up! What do you know!”

  The refined intellect vanished from Mimos’s voice, replaced by the raw, coarse language of the gutter.

  He flailed, trying to hide his cheap belongings with his body, looking as pitiful as an old clown desperate to hide behind a curtain.

  Crunch, crunch.

  Ardin turned his back on him, stepping over the dust on the floor.

  The Mimos who had once been an object of fear now seemed like nothing more than a miserable puppet trapped in a grand illusion.

  The man who tried to fill his void by stealing others’ emotions had ended up in a room where nothing truly belonged to him.

  Thump, thump.

  Ardin exited the room of chilling loss and stepped back into the hallway.

  But another darkness was waiting for him there.

  “Finished sooner than I expected.”

  At the end of the corridor, Nathan stood leaning against the wall in a neat suit, watching Ardin.

  Unlike Mimos’s, his eyes behind the glasses were piercingly cold and transparent.

  Nathan straightened himself slowly, meeting Ardin’s gaze. There was no bow, no polite smile. Only a chilling attitude that acknowledged Ardin as an 'equal observer.'

  Ardin approached Nathan, staring directly into his eyes.

  “Mr. Nathan, I have a question.”

  “Questions are free.”

  “The bizarre shadow transplant surgery happening in that room. Were you the one who performed it?”

  Ardin’s voice echoed low against the hallway walls.

  “Hmm… I saw the underground rotunda. I assume you already know exactly how the incinerator there and the smell of cheap drugs in this room are linked.”

  Nathan adjusted his glasses instead of answering.

  “Ardin, the peace of the Monolith isn't maintained by mere morality. Someone has to clear the overflowing emotional waste, and someone has to be the vessel to receive the dregs.”

  “So you chose a miserable man like that and plastered him with fake shadows? Just to use those souls harvested from the basement as props for such a cheap play?”

  Frustration welled up in Ardin’s chest.

  “Why are you doing this? What lies at the end of the 'Order' you speak of that justifies such cruelty?”

  “Cruelty…”

  Nathan took a step closer. The cold air emanating from him touched Ardin’s skin.

  “What is truly cruel is letting that man’s low-level depression spread uncontrolled into the air of the Monolith. We simply allocated the information to be 'incinerated' to the most efficient place. Following the precise algorithm your parents designed.”

  At the mention of his parents, Ardin’s eyes trembled.

  “If this is really what they designed… then you must be the most faithful tool for executing that design.”

  “I’d prefer to be called a manager rather than a tool.”

  Nathan’s expression remained unmoved.

  “You’ll find out soon enough, Ardin. In this massive system, pure good and evil do not exist. We all simply live as 'Gray,' adjusted to our own saturation.”

  A tense psychological battle surged between the two.

  Ardin sensed a much larger conspiracy hidden behind Nathan’s cold logic.

  As Ardin passed Nathan, a cold shiver ran down his spine.

  In this vast incinerator designed by his parents, if Mimos was the clown on stage, Nathan was the ruthless producer sustaining the theater.

  Ardin’s mind began to blur again with a sense of betrayal toward his parents and deep suspicion toward Nathan.

  Whoosh—

  An artificial breeze from beyond the terrace brushed coldly against Ardin’s cheek.

  He knew now. The real fight had only just begun.