“If we leave it like this, it’s only a matter of time before we lose control.”
The cult leader looked down at him without expression.
On a white cot, Orta lay there.
Unconscious. All equipment had been removed.
The deputy leader spoke carefully.
“Disposal··· shall we proceed?”
Without taking his eyes off Orta, the cult leader answered in a low voice.
“I told you. This isn’t a failure.
If it can be used··· then even broken, we use it to the end.”
The cult leader flicked his fingers lightly.
*Tap.*
With that sound, a heavy iron door slowly opened.
Cult technicians in black robes appeared in silence.
On the cart they pushed, a new set of magitech lay neatly arranged.
Much larger than the previous one,
it was designed to be implanted directly into the body—like fitting on a prosthetic limb.
Its core was a translucent mana crystal.
A metal frame was built with meticulous precision around it,
and along the surface, control sigils were carved so finely they were almost invisible.
Red mana did not flow in any steady pattern.
Like living nerves, it flickered irregularly as it circulated through the device.
One of them—
the control collar to be mounted on Orta’s neck—was a forbidden-grade enchantment, carved with *Brainwashing.*
Faint letters, written in an ancient magical language, glimmered on its surface.
Erasure of will
Sealing of memory
Suppression of emotion
This wasn’t a simple command-injection device.
It was a mechanism meant to erase a being from the root.
The deputy leader swallowed softly.
The cult leader spoke without wavering.
“From now on, this child will operate
without the inconvenient obstacle called ‘self.’”
A magic circle began to glow quietly.
Red sigils turned in slow rotation,
linking to the control collar at Orta’s neck.
When cold, smooth metal touched skin,
his breath trembled—ever so slightly.
He had no consciousness.
But somewhere deep inside his body, remnants of emotion remained,
rising like a rejection response.
In that moment,
the brainwashing spell began to inject itself deep within him.
*Wheeeing···*
The magic circle beneath the cot began to screech.
Sigils that should have settled into place in a fixed sequence
started to shake out of alignment.
Red lines tangled and twisted.
At the center, small flashes erupted again and again.
“The sigils are destabilizing!”
“The readings don’t match—something inside is bouncing it back!”
The control mana kept pouring in.
But in the opposite direction,
shards of emotion spilling from Orta’s interior
were colliding unconsciously—head-on.
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The space compressed.
Spells broke apart.
Mana balance was collapsing.
And then—
A single burst of mana, like a red flame, tore through the core sigil.
“What—!”
A crimson flash detonated.
The air split. Mana went berserk.
The force that surged outward from the center
shattered walls and equipment into fragments.
Screams died
before mouths could even open.
Flesh ripped.
The unstable magic circle collapsed, leaving behind a warped sound.
Everything···
ended within barely ten seconds.
A broken altar.
Collapsed walls.
Only blood and traces of mana remained.
At the center—on the white cot—
a small child lay quietly.
Orta···
slept as if nothing had happened.
◇
How much time had passed?
The ruins were still steeped in silence.
Dust settled slowly over the shattered altar,
and the scorched walls had cooled.
The rampaging mana had calmed, but
residual energy still drifted through the air—
a trace of the boy’s outburst.
Then—
from beyond the forest came footsteps crunching leaves.
Careful movement, hiding its presence.
Someone was approaching the ruins.
“This is it. Matches the reported location.”
“The mana response was stronger than expected. And··· looks like there was an explosion.”
Four silhouettes in black cloaks emerged from the thick woods
and stopped before the ruins.
They were seasoned adventurers stationed in the kingdom’s south.
Not long ago, a report had come in:
*The Black Sun Cult sacrificed children.*
And when word followed that some children were still alive,
the kingdom dispatched a rescue team at once.
At the swordsman’s signal,
the mage in the rear cast a detection spell.
“Life signs··· two zones.
One at the end of the northeast passage.
The other at the altar’s center.”
They tore open the door to the holding cells at the end of the corridor.
A dark space reeking of dust and blood.
Three children were curled up, trembling.
They were conscious, but silent.
They only nodded faintly in response.
“The report said those three were all.
Then··· who’s the one at the altar?”
They moved carefully toward the altar.
And soon, they found a child.
At the center of the ruined altar.
Among shattered equipment,
a small body lay still.
White hair. Pale skin.
Fragments of broken restraint magitech were scattered around him.
“···This child···”
Rough remnants of mana-suppression gear clung to him,
and his white hair and pallor made him stand out sharply from the other survivors.
“He was alone at the altar’s center.
Restraint marks, too··· proof he was meant as a sacrifice, right?”
“So a mana outburst happened, and··· the summoners got wiped out?”
“Insane cult bastards. They grabbed a kid, tried a summoning ritual, failed—that’s all.”
One adventurer clenched his fist and spoke low.
“In the end, they died by the ritual they started themselves.
What’s left is··· one child who almost got offered up. That’s it.”
Another adventurer examined the scattered magitech fragments.
On the broken metal pieces, crimson control script had been torn apart,
and one side was blackened with burn marks.
The red lines were warped irregularly.
The tangled shapes looked like severed nerves—complex, snarled.
“···This device really did go berserk, huh?”
He set the fragment down and shook his head.
“Either way, rescue comes first. We’ll confirm the rest later.”
The adventurers nodded.
The four children were lifted gently
and brought out of the ruins’ darkness.
They eliminated the remaining cult stragglers in a brief engagement,
sealed off the site,
then returned to base.
◇
A few days later.
The children were transported to a facility in the south of the Kingdom of Santia.
Its name was the Seren Lian Orphanage.
A quiet, secluded hill.
Modest stone walls and an old wooden roof.
For decades, it had sheltered children
who’d lost their homes to war and mana disasters—
a private healing sanctuary.
On the surface, it was simply an orphanage.
In reality, it was also where children rescued from extreme situations—
forced experiments, rituals, and biological trials—were often sent.
A prominent local family oversaw its operation.
High walls and a wide garden.
The outer walls were faded, but the inside was kept neat,
and white curtains at every window swayed softly in the wind.
Most of the children didn’t speak.
They ate at fixed times,
and in the daytime, they steadied their emotions
through work therapy or quiet play.
It was a quiet refuge—and at the same time,
the “last stop” for wounded children.
Orta, too, blended into that flow without resistance.
His body was weak. His consciousness blurred.
No trace of weapons or magic remained.
“This child··· he’s especially quiet compared to the others.”
“What could he have gone through··· it hurts to imagine.”
No one knew what past he carried.
Orta looked like nothing more
than one of the children who happened to still be breathing.
The orphanage was quiet.
A shabby but warm place in a rural village.
Orta spent each day in silence
among the rescued children.
An unfamiliar ceiling. Unfamiliar blankets. An unfamiliar smell.
He didn’t ask where he was.
He simply kept breathing.
There, for the first time,
he learned the feeling of *waiting.*
Staring up at the white ceiling,
he thought—very quietly.
‘···What am I supposed to do?’
The question rang small, but stubborn,
somewhere deep inside him.
Time passed in silence.
◇
Then, one day,
he suddenly felt hunger.
The sensation was unfamiliar and awkward.
It might have been a faint memory from somewhere far away—
or perhaps··· a feeling he was experiencing for the first time in his life.
His body felt heavy.
His insides felt empty—
like something had been drained out and left unattended for too long.
And for the first time,
a thought formed in his mind:
*I want to eat.*
Before, he hadn’t needed such things.
Orta’s body had been sustained by absorbing others’ living energy through mana.
But now it was different.
That method no longer existed,
and his body—like an ordinary child’s—
was beginning to respond slowly, humanly.
Orta walked quietly to the dining hall.
Barefoot down the corridor,
he took a seat at a corner table.
On the tray, bread and soup remained.
The other children had already finished eating and left.
In that moment,
something surged up in his throat.
An emotion—
a raw, instinctive craving.
I want to eat.
I want to live.
Without even washing his hands, he grabbed the bread
and began to devour it.
A caretaker who’d been cleaning the hall
watched him for a moment, then said softly,
“···You must’ve been very hungry.”
◇
A few days later,
during a gap in mealtime, one child asked,
“What’s your name?”
It was an innocent, casual question,
but Orta couldn’t answer.
The moment he spoke,
a strange fear rose from deep in his chest—
as if something would go wrong.
Orta turned his head away in silence.
Days later.
The orphanage director paused while clearing trays
and sat down quietly beside him.
In her hand was a small slip of paper.
She smiled gently and offered it to him.
“Since you won’t say it,
we made one for you.
If you like it, you can use it.”
On the paper, in neat handwriting, it read:
Rynel.
Orta stared at the letters without a word.
The director explained softly.
“‘Rynel’ means ‘a slender light’ in the old tongue.
Even in the dark, it’s the last thing that remains···
a faint hope.”
After a beat, she added one last thing.
“No matter what past you carry,
here, right now···
it’s okay for you to live as yourself.”
Orta slowly closed his fingers around the paper.
His eyes wavered—just for an instant.
Then he spoke.
“···Rynel···”
The sound that left his mouth was small and quiet,
but it was the first name he had spoken by his own will.
To the boy, “Orta” was a brand—
a name someone had stamped onto him.
But “Rynel”···
was the first thing ever
*given* to him.
He thought,
In this moment—
who will I live as?
◇
Days passed.
Rynel still didn’t speak much,
but he would sit outside on the playground with the other children.
He learned—carefully—small things:
tossing a ball back and forth,
sharing bread.
But sometimes,
a scene would surface without warning.
A small, warm hand.
Soft hair holding sunlight.
And eyes that looked at him in the end.
Whenever it brushed past him,
something in his chest collapsed quietly.
He didn’t know what that feeling was called.
But it was suffocating—
and it hurt.
That evening.
After dinner, Rynel gathered a small bit of courage
and stood in front of the director’s office.
He lifted his hand, carefully, and knocked.
Knock, knock.
A gentle voice answered from inside.
“You may come in.”
Rynel slowly opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was quiet.
Near the window where a little sunlight still lingered,
a woman sat at a desk.
A soft smile.
Calm eyes.
The orphanage director looked up at him
and asked warmly,
“What is it, Rynel?”
