Chapter Two: When Life Offers You a Freedom Without Meaning
___A patch of moonlight fell through the trees—barely enough for the moonlight to illuminate anything… And there… what was there?
___Will you survive us, or will we survive you?
Secrets yet to be revealed. They have always been—and still are—the best solution to ending what is now known as looting and plundering. Should they ever be discovered…
Joy usually implies happiness, and misery suggests sorrow, but!
Did you not know that there's a law that reverses all these things?
It is called: The Chapter that Reflects What Lies Behind the Curtain.
The walls were bleeding dampness and cold, as if trying to remind him of the bitterness of every day that passed among these dead stones, surrounded by rotting corpses.
"Baroyama"… the name once whispered in terror across kingdoms, now murmured in prison cells.
Twenty years—he was counting the days, not in hope of salvation, but awaiting what he knew was inevitable…
Because history cannot be erased—it merely hides.
He did not last as the emperor of Shinzohi, but he remained emperor of himself.
Underground…
Even shadows… those with superhuman hearing wouldn't hear him or sense the prison's presence buried deep beneath the earth.
After a mission was dispatched by the second ruler of the Clan of Shadows, Samirada, consisting of just one guard—
With only the appearance of ruler Samirada, who extended his hand to the guard, delivering a paper bearing the names of prisoners to be pardoned.
The guard, Omari, held a paper seemingly written in elegant and original script, but!
It wasn't written in ink nor graphite…
It was written in blood.
Inscribed on it:
> "The matter is settled. Two prisoners have been released.
Their time in the Abyss was not long in years, but long in thought and torment.
Their perception of life and its futility has changed after this escape…
Yet one of them still clings to his predatory gaze, as if he never heard the decision.
Tenshi Baroyama... Hisuki Randa"
The names were written in warm blood, seemingly of a recent victim whose soul had left only minutes ago.
No one hears a sound…
No one tracks a movement…
Even if you wished to walk, to take a step forward—
Your shadow would take it without your company.
The scene shifts to Guard Omari as he burns that paper after leaving the palace and heading toward the Abyss…
No one knows why he burned it.
Perhaps jealousy.
But… jealousy of what?
Baroyama reflects on his time in prison:
> "Do I live to discover myself again, or to show the world that I'm still alive?"
___Because of the silence that had ruled the Abyss for many years…
No laughter, no loud conversations, as if they had been tortured into silence after endless screams.
How will you see life outside?
Will it open up to reveal to those who once saw it, the masked curtain again?
Not far away…
Footsteps echo, loud and relentless, without pause…
And without the courtesy fit for the arrival of a figure from the outside.
As if he's entering another world without rules,
As if it's a game without laws.
Omari extends his hand to unlock a door beside a large mirror.
He gazes into it and says:
> "My reflection here isn't like reality, and certainly not like how humans perceive… Strange."
Behind the door, there's a narrow corridor with a small staircase. Omari walks down humbly, whistling at the same time.
The scene shifts to someone's past…
But whose?
Place: The Imperial Palace of Shinzohi
Time: Undefined (20 years ago)
> "The next leadership will go to the one who has worked hardest to earn it.
We are obliged to grant it to him.
The next supreme ruler, in whom we place all our hopes, is…"
In that moment of proclamation—where the fate of over ten individuals listed on the red list of Shinzohi was about to be decided…
The decree was made.
> "Tenshi Baroyama"
The ruler of highest rank and victor in attaining the royal title—ushering in a new era of sovereign rule.
The officiator placed the royal crown upon Baroyama's head, who was overjoyed by this unforgettable victory, knowing he would now rule all of Shinzohi.
Baro's face still carried a smile and innocence then.
He was a just young man, full of positivity, never pessimistic despite all odds against him.
And now…
Omari enters the Abyss and is met by the gaze of 200 prisoners… strange.
To Omari, it wasn't strange—he knew everything that happened within the Abyss.
He calls out in his coarse voice:
> "Tenshi Baroyama…
Hisuki Randa."
"You are released, while 198 others remain condemned."
Baroyama's head rested on his knee, hand on his head—
That was him.
As for Hisuki, he was like the rest of the corpses buried underground…
A rotting body, surrounded by dust, the stench worsening by the second.
Maria breaks her eternal silence and says, sorrowfully:
> "This cannot happen."
Baroyama rises without drawing attention or making a sound.
He begins walking toward Omari, his features unclear—
As though walking toward the unknown.
The image around him flickers—past and future—
He speaks within himself, without sound or movement of lips:
> "What will I gain when I walk toward a freedom that will imprison me once again?
No… even more so—this freedom offered to me is not a decree…
It is a new suffering, a maze I will only escape by restoring myself.
But!
It wasn't me who corrupted myself…
It was freedom!"
Maria also rises and shouts:
> "You're leaving so quickly?!
Without even a goodbye?"
Baro stops walking but doesn't turn around.
Despite the tension and drama happening underground, no one notices.
Two hundred people—and no one cares!
Maria says after a brief silence:
> "You're leaving?
Is this your idea of freedom?"
Baro replies:
> "Freedom without meaning…
And a stay without meaning."
He continues walking, with no clear response, no evident pain…
As if he has no heart.
Maria breaks into tears, ending a 20-year relationship between a cold man and a woman who tried to melt that coldness.
Omari whispers in Baro's ear:
> "You were the only survivor.
Lucky you… Four-men Emperor."
Baroyama emerged from the Earth's Abyss like a corpse that had regained consciousness after a century of silence.
His steps were slow, heavy, but every trembling limb, every breath from his chest… carried a promise of an unforgivable return.
His eyes, meeting the light for the first time in twenty years, didn't blink.
They looked at the world as if they knew it well…
As if the darkness he lived in was merely training—to rule it.
He had no desire to see the light, for he didn't seek escape, nor what they call "freedom,"
which to him was selfless freedom.
His shadow became more pronounced than ever.
He recalls his younger self—Baro—walking among blooming fields, while his adult self speaks:
> "My time in the Abyss equals that of a man who's lived twenty years and achieved much.
And I wasted mine in a pit with no fate except certain death or the stench of corpses.
A boy grows up, reaches twenty, has complete freedom, and sets goals that shape his life.
Life is like a glass of water. If you sip it slowly, it will take time to empty.
But if you drink it quickly, it will vanish without warning.
> Your life will end if you don't slowly enjoy it.
I narrate… but I do not live."
Omari whispers to Baro:
> "Be careful…
Emperor."
Omari returns from the Abyss and sits near the river, staring at his reflection in the water…
He remembers Baroyama as a young man, when he handed him the sword, or first entered the palace.
He mutters softly:
> "His release wasn't freedom…
It was a warning."
A weakened body, torn clothes, a mouth longing for water and food… but nature offers no reply.
Baro says:
> "If nature doesn't lend you a hand—deceive it."
After walking more than a hundred steps through a long forest, Baro decides to rest and cook something.
He gathers firewood from trees he had chopped down, collects large stones and arranges them like a pyramid with thick branches.
Then he lights the fire.
But he forgot something…
There's nothing to eat.
Just an hour before sunset, Baro falls asleep… for perhaps the first time.
He sleeps in peace, without troubles—
Any human would feel serenity after escaping slavery into freedom.
But to Baro… nothing had changed.
The fire goes out instantly.
Baroyama wakes up, slightly alarmed.
It wasn't a human… nor a creature that extinguished it—
But something Baro had grown used to.