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6/27/2025, 7:20:22 PM
>>529043043
The air in the bunker was still, too still. Dust floated like ash through pale beams of artificial light, settling on the sleeping form of the Spider Bud. Its limbs had curled inward again, wrapped around its core like a grotesque chrysalis, whispering in tones only those who had touched madness could hear.
Kim Jihoon, now more shadow than man, sat slumped against a cracked steel pillar, the EGO armor slowly retracting into thin, black tendrils along his veins. The Curator had survived, but not untouched.
His eyes, once calculating and sharp, now bore brushstroke scars across the sclera, ink-black lines that pulsed faintly. He stared not at Monzo, nor at the Spider Bud, but at the floor, where an old Ryoshu plush lay, smeared with soot, yet whole.
“Even now,” he murmured, voice raspy and dry, “they cling to fiction like a raft in the flood. As if story could save them.”
Monzo stood a few paces away, knees bent in silent kneeling posture, scribbling containment runes with red chalk and powdered E.G.O dust. His writing was swift, but reverent. Each mark was exact, as though copied from a manuscript etched directly into his memory core.
“You did what was necessary,” Monzo said, voice as calm as ever. “They will rebuild, but without a leader. The memes are broken. The loop is ended.”
Jihoon didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled out a small notebook, his Field Codex. Its pages were brittle, water-damaged, annotated in both ink and what looked suspiciously like dried blood.
He opened it to the last page. There was a drawing.
Ryoshu.
The air in the bunker was still, too still. Dust floated like ash through pale beams of artificial light, settling on the sleeping form of the Spider Bud. Its limbs had curled inward again, wrapped around its core like a grotesque chrysalis, whispering in tones only those who had touched madness could hear.
Kim Jihoon, now more shadow than man, sat slumped against a cracked steel pillar, the EGO armor slowly retracting into thin, black tendrils along his veins. The Curator had survived, but not untouched.
His eyes, once calculating and sharp, now bore brushstroke scars across the sclera, ink-black lines that pulsed faintly. He stared not at Monzo, nor at the Spider Bud, but at the floor, where an old Ryoshu plush lay, smeared with soot, yet whole.
“Even now,” he murmured, voice raspy and dry, “they cling to fiction like a raft in the flood. As if story could save them.”
Monzo stood a few paces away, knees bent in silent kneeling posture, scribbling containment runes with red chalk and powdered E.G.O dust. His writing was swift, but reverent. Each mark was exact, as though copied from a manuscript etched directly into his memory core.
“You did what was necessary,” Monzo said, voice as calm as ever. “They will rebuild, but without a leader. The memes are broken. The loop is ended.”
Jihoon didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled out a small notebook, his Field Codex. Its pages were brittle, water-damaged, annotated in both ink and what looked suspiciously like dried blood.
He opened it to the last page. There was a drawing.
Ryoshu.
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