Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 292 Ashes Fall, the Journey Home Ends

They were smiling, not because they were safe.

It's not because they're afraid of that moment.
I've finally stopped laughing.

"……hiss--"

"Click... Buzz—"

What came through the headset was not sound, but some kind of distorted noise—like an entire universe being twisted and cracked on a sheet of paper, or like someone trying to pull back a channel through a tattered star map.

The wind is still.

The gray fog has not yet dissipated.

The seven people stood silently around the ashes left after Angela's fall.

The lingering echoes of the star map, not yet completely dissipated, still rippled beneath their feet, like the last unfiled heartbeat on an old battlefield.

“…Vera?” Lynn called softly, tapping the communication card with her finger. The conjured frequency transducer vibrated in her palm, attempting to connect to the main channel.

"Vera, respond if you hear me."

silence.

A piercing noise, like bones rubbing against an antenna.

Si Ming frowned slightly, about to adjust the tuning frequency, but in that instant—

A very light, thin, yet extremely clear sound came through the headphones.

"...Can you hear me...?"

That was Vera's voice.

Carrying static electricity and a broken rhythm of blood and breath, it seemed to struggle out from the depths of a collapsing stargate ruin.

She spoke at an extremely slow pace, as if each word needed to pass through a gap in space, being pulled through word by word by the rules of the world.

"Starbridge...location complete."

"All... mortals have been freed."

"Ruoli has been confirmed... Target coordinates..."

The voice paused slightly.

Then she whispered:

"but……"

Si Ming raised his head, his tone calm and firm:
"But what?"

The next moment, the noise suddenly increased.

It's like a signal being torn apart by a collision with a certain frequency of consciousness.

Hermann frowned:
"She's going to break up."

The next sentence—like a fragment of speech barely pieced together by a torn piece of cloth in the wind:
"...Starbridge is closed."

Then came silence.

It's so long that it feels like the next sentence will never come.

But just before the signal was completely cut off, Vera's voice, like a wisp of wind swirling in a vacuum, struggled to leave behind a final echo:
"You... hold on... the road can... be reopened..."

Then, communication was completely cut off.

Only a complete emptiness echoed in the headphones.

-

The seven of them stood in the open space.

The River Styx has receded, the Underworld is still, and ashes are like dust.

All around, the ashes of the Yellow Springs had not yet dissipated.

Above, the sky was like a faded womb wall, gray and gloomy, yet it did not rain for a long time.

Si Ming slowly lowered the communicator.

Lynn murmured:

"So...if we're going to leave..."

Hermann exhaled:
"Then there's only one way left."

Nobuna slowly closed the Book of Fate, her eyes resolute:
"Kill Madman Thirteen."

This statement is as clear as a judgment.

A hammer is fixed.

Selene looked up at the sky.

For the first time, weariness appeared in her eyes, but it only lasted for a moment before turning into a smile.

That was the laughter of a vampire, brimming with arrogance from the very marrow of their bones:

"It sounds... like we're really close to finishing the game."

Natasha gently stroked the second hand of her pocket watch, her expression remaining as cold and stern as ever.
"We've already defeated the bosses."

How difficult could it be?

They were not ecstatic.

Just sober.

Si Ming gently raised the corners of her mouth.

That wasn't the relief that came after a successful tactical plan, but rather a kind of confirmation from the narrator.

He looked at the crowd and spoke softly:
"so what?"

"When shall we set off?"

The wind blew up a corner of the ashes on the ground.

Angela's clothes fluttered in the wind, revealing an old identification card underneath.

Dilapidated, mottled, and long since unread.

But it is clearly visible.

It says:

X-00.

All seven of them saw it.

But no one spoke.

The next moment, they laughed almost simultaneously.

That was a long-lost laugh.

It's like a group of players finally leaving the main storyline, exchanging smiles after clearing the dungeon, and discussing whether to go back to the main city for a stroll.

The stars are rising.

A new day quietly unfolds amidst a gray-white morning mist.

—

In the center of the ruins, a glimmer of light ignites.

That was a "stardust fire" that Lynn activated with the help of the [Silent Mist].

The method of ignition is an old tradition of the Ash Tower:

To ignite a "non-existent flame" on "corpses that are not worth remembering".

Therefore, it is neither hot nor bright.

But it is gentle enough.

It burned slowly in the center of the seven people sitting around, its faint light illuminating each face covered in scars and weariness, yet still refusing to go out.

They didn't speak.

Because at this moment, they don't need a script.

—They are the ones who continue the story.

"Is it break time now?" Herman spoke first, sitting lazily on the edge of the ashes with one knee drawn up to his chest. "Shouldn't someone put on some music?"

"Can you sing?" Selene rolled her eyes, the firelight reflecting off her golden-red pupils like flames that hadn't been extinguished.

Hermann pondered for a moment, then became somewhat serious: "I remember... there's a lament in the Gray Tower... how does it go again?"

Lynn spoke calmly and unhurriedly: "If you sing, we'll erect a tombstone for you."

No one laughed; their gazes merely mingled among the firelight.

But as the flames leaped, the atmosphere was suddenly disrupted by an out-of-sync sound.

“Then let’s discuss something first,” Natasha suddenly said.

“Hmm?” Herman raised an eyebrow.

She sat very relaxed, a rare sight, with the gun on her lap, her short, silver-white hair bathed in a soft glow from the starlight.

In that instant, she no longer resembled a hunter, but rather a survivor who had finally missed the target.

“If we could really get out,” she said slowly, “what would be the first thing you’d want to do?”

—

There was a brief silence.

Then came Nobuna's voice, without hesitation.

"I will return to the Eight Leaves Divine Realm and burn half of the clan's divine register."

Her expression was calm yet resolute, as if she were announcing a verdict rather than a wish.

"Those false gods whose names I personally bestowed are no longer worth keeping."

As she spoke, the warmth of the Book of Fate still lingered on her fingertips.

—

Lynn slowly closed his pocket watch and whispered:
"I would like to apply for a formal star rating."

Everyone was stunned.

Lynn chuckled softly, almost imperceptibly, but the warmth remained.

"Ten stars is not the end."

“If the Gray Tower is to be rebuilt, a complete experimental report must be prepared again.”

It was as if she was drawing a neat line in the process for herself and for the past.

—

Herman lay back, gazing at the light of the tattered star map in the night sky, and lit his last cigarette.

"I want to find a place where nobody knows me and open a hotel."

"They put up a sign that reads—'Welcome to any guest you can't remember.'"

He smiled, as if greeting the depths of some memory.

—

Selene sat with her knees drawn up, her red tail swishing lightly, sparks flying from her fingertips.

"I want to drink beer."

"Really?" Lynn asked. "You can get drunk too?"

“No way.” She raised an eyebrow, smiling brightly. “That’s why I’m going to drink until I’m drunk.”

She spoke as if it were the way vampires fought against immortality—by creating brief periods of chaos.

—

Zhuang Yege wiped the Dead Tide Lantern in his hand as he said calmly:

"I'm sleepy."

Hermann snorted:
"Don't you usually just sleep?"

Zhuang Yege looked up at him:
"This time, I want to sleep... and never wake up again."

Everyone laughed.

That wasn't a relaxed laugh, but a loosening of the urge to finally acknowledge "exhaustion."

—

Finally, their gaze fell upon Siming.

He watched the flames silently, without saying a word.

Everyone waited.

After a moment, he said softly:

"I want to write a book."

Everyone was stunned.

"I've already thought of a title for the book."

He looked up and finally smiled:

"The Forbidden Hunt of Fate".

For a moment, everyone was silent.

Then, Lynn burst out laughing:

"Too rustic."

“That’s good,” Hermann praised.

"Let's finish writing it while we're still alive," Natasha muttered.

Selene raised her eyebrows:
"Would you write me in a more attractive way?"

Si Ming nodded: "Yes."

Shinobu added softly:
"Don't forget to write down the names of those who have died."

Zhuang Yege sighed, looking at the group of exhausted madmen, as if talking to himself:

"You guys... really think you can finish writing it?"

—

They were laughing.

On the edge of the land where Angela had turned to dust, in the receding tide of the precipice of the Fetal Sea, in the early morning when the wind finally died down in the City of Bones.

They were like true survivors, talking about a future that never existed.

They put out the fire.

Nobody said, "Let's go."

But everyone stood up in unison.

No destination.

No coordinates.

They knew all along that the next battle would not be on the map, nor on the star map.

It exists in a narrative gap that has yet to be defined—

Crazy Thirteen.

They never saw his true form.

But they knew he had never left.

And they haven't finished writing it yet.

The seven people slowly stepped into the central main road of the City of Bones.

That was the road that led to the old core area, the place where players first arrived, where the numbered ones were initially conceived, and where Madman Thirteen made his most frequent communications.

It's eerily quiet here now.

It was so quiet it was almost suffocating.

-

The streets were completely empty.

The building did not collapse, but it was as if "the story had been wiped out".

There was no blood on the wall, no body on the ground, and no spent shell casings.

Everything remained in its original place, as if no battle had ever taken place.

There was no wreckage.

The body was not numbered.

There is no wind.

Even the dust no longer flies.

It's as if time has frozen here—or been deleted.

-

Lynn spoke first, her voice so soft it was as if she were afraid of breaking the silence:
Is time flowing here?

She looked up and saw a wind chime hanging under the half-collapsed windowsill.

It doesn't move.

There wasn't even a metallic clang.

Natasha lightly tapped the muzzle of her gun, her gaze calm:

"The air density is too high."

She looked up slowly.

"It's not that there's no wind."

"The wind was 'suppressed'."

Like the stillness of a baby before its water breaks.

-

Hermann twirled some tobacco ash and suddenly chuckled softly.

"Doesn't it feel like... going back to the womb?"

Everyone else turned to look at him.

He shrugged:
"Enclosed space, lack of oxygen, bloody, warm."

"This place doesn't look like ruins."

"Like a giant uterus that hasn't broken its membranes yet."

No one objected.

Because he's right.

This is not a dead end.

This is some kind of "unfinished place".

-

Si Ming stopped in his tracks.

He looked ahead at a screen wall that was still intact; it was the core of the main system that Thirteen had used to broadcast the punishment of those numbered.

The screen is now black, but a line of text slowly appears on it:

【Experiment Log No. 9999】

[Phase Conclusion: Conception Aborted]

Si Ming frowned slightly:

"This is not the end of the experiment."

"This experiment was forced to be interrupted."

His tone was calm, yet more so than any battle.

The further they went, the heavier their hearts became.

It wasn't because the enemy was approaching.

Rather, it's because they already understand:

This is not the world after victory.

This is the tranquility of the uterus before the final ending truly begins.

-

Xin Nai stopped and looked at a half-kneeling, broken statue of a Destiny Seed by the roadside.

Number X-77.

Its skeletal structure was already twisted, its face collapsed, and it knelt before a mother statue.

Its mouth was open, but it had no vocal cords.

It was as if he wanted to say one last thing before he died, but he didn't have the chance.

Zhuang Yege glanced at it and whispered:
"Don't you think... every afterimage here..."

"Is it all like they're waiting for a resurrection?"

-

No one answered.

Then, they quickened their pace.

It wasn't rushed.

Instead, it's about being grounded and practical.

They are looking.

A place where you can lean on something.

It's also—the last place where I can sit down and put my pen up for a rest.

It wasn't for hiding.

It is for welcoming.

Welcoming the "madman" who has yet to show his face.

They finally reached the square.

The stone-paved road at the intersection of the cross, the origin of the city's central axis.

It is neither dilapidated nor collapsed, as if it has been deliberately polished by some hands.

In the middle, a whiteboard stood alone, its surface smooth, even the numbering layer had been erased, leaving only a scratch that was almost impossible to wipe away:
Who is the first?

No signature, no date.

Like a riddle, and like a trial.

-

They sat around the information board.

The seven men quietly laid down their weapons.

This is not giving up.

This is a signal to myself:
我们准备好了。

-

Lynn sat down first, her pocket watch resting flat on her lap.

“Grey Tower never has a monument.”

"Because what is truly remembered does not require stones."

-

Hermann leaned against a broken pillar of light, gazing up at the silent street:
"I really want to smoke another one."

"If I can draw the tenth one, it means I'm still alive."

-

Nobuna unfolded the Book of Fate and turned to a new blank page.

She put down her pen, as if leaving a blank chapter for the future:
"On this page today, God's name will not be written."

“Write about us.”

-

Natasha wiped the gun barrel, her voice barely audible: "Five shots. Godslayers show no mercy."

"But I would prefer not to fire a sixth shot."

-

Selene nestled beside Si Ming, resting her head on his shoulder, and whispered:
"I... don't want to act this time."

I will just be myself.

-

Zhuang Yege leaned against the back of the information board, closed her eyes, and breathed softly:

"Don't wake me."

"Once you're awake, let's start the war."

-

Finally, there is the God of Fate.

He stood there, looking at the blank information board.

Beneath my feet are the remnants of numbered projection rings, like circles of names that have been erased.

The wind finally picked up.

he said softly.

Not to them.

It is about this city—about this "drama" that has never truly ended.

This is also addressed to that madman who hasn't even appeared yet, but has been "reading" from the very beginning:
"We haven't even left the city yet."

Some people walked out of the Star Bridge.

But I still remain in that dream.

Some people stayed.

But they never looked back.

-

Shining Star Secret Realm, the main city of the Mysterious Master Guild.

Located at the central ridge where the eight gates converge, it is the last administrative hub between reality and the gate world.

The once majestic and solemn arched tower is now bathed in a pale golden glow from the morning light, its body as clean and flawless as washed bones.

At this moment, the star bridge light path that traversed time and space and guided the escape was slowly closing from the depths of the central platform, like a giant beast that had just retracted its tentacles.

A group of people fell out of the portal.

It's not a flight.

It wasn't a wail.

But -

A silence that lies somewhere between bewilderment and melancholy.

It's as if the body has been accepted, but the soul remains on the other side.

Vera was the first to step out of the portal, supporting the heavily injured Xiao Lianyin.

Her legs went weak and she almost knelt down, but she still gritted her teeth and pulled the person next to her away from the edge.

"Healing team!" she called out, her voice echoing between the three circular platforms, breaking the first second of silence after the light gate faded.

The emergency support team rushed over and lifted Xiao Lianyin up.

Blood dripped from her lips, meandering across the pure white stone slab in a curved line, like a crack in the surface of reality that had opened up from memory.

Xiao Lianyin weakly opened her eyes, her lips cracked, her voice almost drowned out by the wind:

"Si Ming...he's still alive...you can't...let him..."

Before she could finish speaking, her head lolled to the side, and she was carried into the Central Healing Center, her consciousness fading into darkness.

-

Vera steadied herself and was about to turn around to check the situation of the last wave of crossing when she saw Ruoli walking through the crowd.

She wore a star-patterned battle robe, the sunlight shining obliquely on her shoulders, like a cold-colored curtain falling from the sky.

She stopped in front of Vera, her tone flat yet heavy with emotion:
"Everyone?"

Vera nodded in a low voice:

"Except for...them."

Ruoli remained silent.

She didn't ask for his name.

But the suppressed emotion in her eyes showed that she understood.

Before she could speak, Duan Xingzhou and Rudolf stumbled through the portal.

Their bodies were covered in blood, their wounds still healing, and they still carried the scent of the City of Bones.

Duan Xingzhou said breathlessly:
"The last few mortals also came out."

He paused, his throat tightening:
"Apart from……"

Vera looked up:

"Xu Jinxiao?"

Duan Xingzhou nodded, gritting his teeth as he recalled:

"He was in my group, and he was always behind me."

"A spatial flow occurred before the Starbridge closed."

"We couldn't stand up straight, and many people were shaken away."

“I was knocked down, and when I got up—he was gone.”

Ruoli took a breath and lowered her voice:

"Perhaps they were caught in the astral plane."

"Perhaps... he voluntarily left the queue."

-

Vera stared at the ground, her voice almost clenched through gritted teeth:
"He's not that kind of person."

Ruoli did not argue.

She simply turned slowly and gave orders to the guards behind her:
"Notification Information Group."

“Compile all transfer records and identify coordinate errors, spatial cracks, and residual identification flows.”

“I don’t want him to disappear too cleanly.”

—

During the two hours that the Star Bridge was closed, the Shining Star Secret Site took in six survivors.

The vast majority of them are ordinary people who are not bound to the Mysterious Card.

They were all sent to the basement of the "Silver World Management Building"—a memory adjustment center, identity verification room, and temporary isolation structure specifically set up for returnees from the Gate World.

It's not for epidemic prevention.

It's not for questioning.

But -

Give them a choice.

A note was quietly handed to him, with only three questions written on it:

Do you want to remember?

Do you want to continue?

Or would you rather—as if none of this had ever happened?

Before answering the questions, everyone must sit in front of a window.

Outside the window lies reality.

Inside the window, there was that entire dream that had been burned down.

"Your decision?" Lilith asked in a low voice, her gaze passing over the processing hatch and looking at Lin Wanqing sitting on the other side of the corridor.

The girl sat on the metal bench, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, as if she were using all her strength to resist the lingering echoes within her body.

She did not answer the psychologist's question immediately; her gaze remained fixed on the ground, as if she were still traversing the unextinguished dream on the other side of the Star Bridge.

"What is your memory processing type?" the inspector repeated. "Do you request to forget, or do you wish to retain it?"

Lin Wanqing took a deep breath, as if searching for an echo at the edge of an abyss. She slowly raised her head, her voice without a tremor:
"I don't want to forget."

The inspector frowned: "Do you know what this means? You will face persistent nightmares, blurred identity boundaries, mental trauma, and may be unable to readjust to normal social order."

Lin Wanqing calmly interrupted him:
"I know."

"But what I fear more is encountering that kind of thing again someday... and forgetting that I once lived."

She didn't cry.

The voice was clear, like a name that had emerged from blood and fire.

The inspector remained silent, then made a striking mark in his notebook:

Memory retention: complete.

—

Not far away, Rudolf and Duan Xingzhou were also undergoing identity processing.

“Both of you possess bound Mystic Cards.” Another administrative officer said calmly, “According to the Amended Mystic Carriers Act, you can choose to apply for registration as non-official Mystic Masters, or relinquish the cards and enter the card recycling process.”

Rudolf looked down at his palms, the hands that had once operated machine tools and held his daughter, now covered with burns and cracks.

He spoke slowly:
"I want to stay."

"It's not because I'm young, or because I have any heroic dreams."

"But... if next time, it's my wife and daughter who encounter that kind of thing, at least I can do something about it."

Even if it's just—blocking it.

The manager nodded and filled in the remarks on the form:

"Application for recruitment: Survival type, compatible with life system."

—

Duan Xingzhou did not hesitate.

His voice was soft, yet it sounded like a nail driven into metal:
"My brother hasn't come back yet."

"Even if there is only a one in ten thousand chance, I cannot give up the means to pursue it."

"And that card is the only tracking tool I can keep."

Rudolf turned to look at him, and the two looked at each other and nodded.

Duan Xingzhou chuckled softly:
"Do you remember what that madman Thirteen said?"

"'Not every number deserves to live.'"

Rudolf gritted his teeth and responded coldly:

“Then let’s show him that ordinary people can also live a worthwhile life.”

—

At the end of the corridor, Lin Wanqing looked up and saw them.

The three of them exchanged a glance through the medical pod door, the system detection light curtain, and the memory determination device.

There was no smile.

But in that one glance, they exchanged a silent understanding.

—They are no longer “people who were rescued”.

They are the ones who retrieved the sword of fate from hell.

—

Night quietly fell, enveloping the entire Shining Star Secret Realm.

With sparse stars, the city silhouette projected by the main tower resembles a dying heartbeat.

On the seventh floor of the main control tower, in the post-war processing and starbridge tracking and dispatch center, the lights were dim and the control consoles stood silently like tombs.

Vera stood in front of the main abacus, arms crossed, her fingertips slowly tapping the table.

She didn't speak, but her breathing was steady.

Footsteps sounded behind me.

Ruoli entered, her cloak still on, the starlight still lingering on her shoulders—the residual spatial particles from the planetary bridge.

On her behalf—she had just personally completed that return.

Her gaze remained unchanged, cold and focused, but it was a degree deeper than before the war.

"No response?" she asked.

Vera nodded:

"The Star Bridge is completely closed."

"The coordinate link is broken."

"Even the spatial aftershocks were actively cleared."

Ruoli pondered for a few seconds, then summoned a string of numbers and projected them into the air.

[Number: 00013]

[Status Level: Creator of Destiny Seeds]

[Observation Level: No Ring]

[Structure Identification: Exceeding the Standard Construction for a Cataclysmic Event]

[Handling Recommendation: Above the Cataclysmic Disaster - Special Intervention Level]

Her tone lowered a few decibels:
"Madman Thirteen is no longer the Star Calamity Mystic Master we previously understood."

"He completed the 'reconstruction'."

Vera looked up, her eyes sharp:
"You mean—he is no longer a superhuman in the human sense?"

Ruoli nodded and responded softly:
"Do not."

"The current Thirteen is a structure."

"He no longer relies on cards."

"He is the seed of destiny itself."

"He is his own father, mother, bone... and definition."

Vera spoke in a low voice, as if squeezed from the depths of her throat, with an almost disbelieving tremor:

"What about Si Ming and the others..."

Ruoli gazed silently into the void before her.

There are no images there, but it seems as if hundreds of narrative chains are slowly intertwining.

"It's not that they are too weak."

"It's something they're facing that's no longer at the 'player' level."

Her tone was soft, yet every word seemed to echo against the metal wall of the control room.

After a moment of silence, she continued:
"He stopped attacking."

"He's building it."

"Like a...god."

"Build languages, build time, build populations."

"To build a second species that can rival the entire world of gates."

For the first time, her voice hesitated, and a rare unease surfaced in the depths of her eyes.

"If he completes the construction..."

"Then we've lost more than just the City of Mysterious Bones."

"We—may lose the right to define humanity."

Vera's throat tightened, and she murmured:

"He wants to become the 'God of Destiny'."

Ruoli slowly shook her head, her tone as cold as a severing stalk:

"Do not."

"He doesn't want to become a god."

"He is going to become—a new 'person'."

At this moment, the Creator of Fate - Thirteen and the Heart of the Swarm - Ruoli, two beings who transcend the Cataclysm, seemed to stand facing each other in the void.

There were no loud commands.

There was also no tactical layer flashing.

But the energy system in the main control room began to be rescheduled silently.

The lights were dim, and the walls of the isolation chamber were covered with dense lines of protocol lines, like some kind of unannounced declaration of war preparedness.

Ruoli turned around, her steps firm:
"I am prepared to go to the City of Mysteries in person."

"Because if we don't open the door again..."

"Then he will go out the door."

—

Meanwhile, in the city square.

The fire is out, the blood is cold.

The night was still dark, but there were no stars or moon, as if the sky itself had fallen into some kind of delayed loading crash state.

The seven sat silently in the center of the ashes, none of them uttering a word.

It was a spontaneous silence, not weariness.

Instead, we wait.

Waiting for some kind of "delayed inevitability" to occur.

Si Ming sat in front of the blank information board, his fingertips slowly turning the writing brush.

Round and round.

With each turn, he could feel his heartbeat slow down a little.

It was not due to the aftermath of battle.

Rather, it was because he felt he was being stared at by "someone".

-

Selene trembled slightly.

She wasn't afraid.

She is a vampire, and her race is not afraid of the alternation of light and darkness.

But she instinctively knew:
"There's something... waiting for us to finish laughing."

—

Lynn lifted the cover of his pocket watch, and the hands began to tick rhythmically.

The ticking sound became clear again.

But only she could hear it.

She suddenly realized that the sound of the wind, her breathing, and the distant echoes around her...

The audio tracks were all cut off by some invisible hand.

—

Herman was about to light his cigarette when, at the moment the flint struck, the flame paused for a split second in the air.

It's not an illusion.

Yes, the time has indeed been delayed.

—

Zhuang Yege said in a low voice:

"The dead tide has ceased to surge."

"The soul no longer moves."

He frowned and looked towards the end of the square.

"It's like... everything that's not quite dead yet is holding its breath."

—

Suddenly, Natasha whispered:
"do not move."

Everyone was startled.

She had already raised her gun.

She pointed to the street corner in the distance.

The wind changed direction there.

It wasn't a strong wind sweeping through.

Instead, there was a figure standing in the wind—blocking the wind.

—

Nobuna pulled out the Book of Fate, her fingers turning the pages, but before she could even put pen to paper, her knuckles became sweaty.

She murmured softly:
"It's not a number."

"Not a destiny seed."

"Not a god."

"It is not anything we have ever seen."

Her voice sounded like she was chanting a spell, yet it also sounded like she was confirming reality to herself.

—

The figure did not approach.

But it—seemed to have grown out of the gaps in their silence.

It wasn't stepped into.

They had been sitting there for a while, but only now did they dare to see them clearly.

Si Ming slowly opened his eyes.

He looked toward the center of the square, which was empty except for a shadow.

He stood up.

Everyone stood up.

He didn't say "I'm here".

It did not say "ready".

Just whispered:
"We have finally stood before the real 'Thirteen'."

—

The wind is moving.

Like the curtain of a theater, it finally falls after the previous chapter is finished.

And the true author of the script—

I sat in the very front row of the audience.

Sometimes they are not moving forward.

Instead, it was God who retreated—

Just so you can say one thing:
I thought I had won.

(End of this chapter)