The scene quickened. One battle, then another.
In every battle, the man with the blurred face stood at the center, making that slight motion of pulling something out of his chest. All around him, from near to far, everything went limp, went quiet.
"Within the same Tier, no one could fight him.
Among those at Minor Mastery, very few were willing to fight him either.
Someone calculated that he alone was worth an entire squad of Practitioners."
The old man cleared his throat, his voice echoing over the battlefield.
"Pay attention to what he does after he wins a battle."
The scene slowed down.
The man with the blurred face stood in the middle of a freshly silenced battlefield.
He lowered his head, looking at his own hands.
After every battle, they changed a little.
This battle ended, and his fingernails faded to the color of black soil.
The next battle ended, and veins bulged on the back of his hands. Something was crawling under his skin, following his blood vessels.
After the next, when he raised his hand, Richard saw that the section of forearm revealed by his sleeve no longer looked much like a forearm.
"Every time he reached in and pulled, he sent a piece of himself further inside."
"The Strength behind the Curtain isn’t free. It lends itself to you, and you use it to win.
Win once, and it takes a little something back from you. What it takes is up to it."
In the scene, the man with the blurred face finished a battle and stood at the center. He didn’t look down at his hands this time.
This time, he raised his head and looked at the sky.
Richard finally got a clear look at a part of his face.
There was nothing else on that face, only hunger.
A hunger just like the child from the first story, the one who learned the new Breathing.
"And later on..." The old man’s voice slowed.
"He no longer needed to go to the battlefield. Wherever he went, things just fell silent.
He’d pass through a village, and the livestock would stop making noise first. Then the well water would become undrinkable.
The people living there would start having the same dream at night—dreaming they were falling into a bottomless place.
He didn’t lift a finger, didn’t do anything. He just passed by."
In the scene, the man was walking down a dirt country road.
With every step he took, the grass on both sides of the road would bend down, and once bent, it never rose again.
He left a trail behind him, a swath of limp, quiet stillness stretching from near to far.
"He became a walking blight."
The old man cleared his throat. This time, it took a little while.
"Do you understand? He still remembered his name, remembered he was a Hunter, remembered that he’d won every battle.
But wherever he stood, the ground would begin to rot. He himself had become a source of filth."
"When the higher-ups decided to seal him... they dispatched an Expert."
The scene pulled back.
Across the vast landscape, the walking source of pollution was surrounded. On the outer ring stood an indistinct, towering Shadow.
The Shadow raised its hand, and a Nine-Layered Stone Ring rose from the ground, one ring inside another, contracting from the outside in.
As the innermost ring fell, the man with the blurred face looked up in the direction of the Expert.
The old man recited the last thing the man said.
"’I won every battle.’"
"The stone rings closed, and that place is still sealed to this day.
Twice a year, in spring and autumn, people go to reinforce it. The ones who go to reinforce it don’t talk much when they get back."
The scene faded.
Richard’s palms were slick with sweat.
He wiped the sweat on his pants and picked up his pen again.
Outside, he heard the sound of a car crunching over an icy road. His father was home.
He heard the door open downstairs, the sound of Evelyn’s footsteps rushing down, and the standard interrogation:
"Dad, are you hungry?"
"Not hungry."
"Really not hungry?"
"...A little."
"Don’t you dare touch the top shelf of the cabinet!"
Sitting upstairs, Richard listened to the bickering below, and the tightness in his chest eased a little.
He lowered his head and, word by word, transcribed the Mysticism explanation corresponding to the second segment of the Ether Layer text onto his draft paper.

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