Something cracks inside me.
Not outside. Not in the bag.
Inside.
A dry fracture. Invisible, but real.
Like a line drawn through everything I am.
I feel it give. No noise. No shatter. Just a break.
My body doesn't move, yet I feel like I'm falling.
Or rising.
Impossible to tell.
The black around me twists.
The suffocating leather-smell, the sticky dark, the weight of the Kidnapper's Bag…
All of it folds in on itself.
For a heartbeat, I'm nowhere.
No up. No down.
No bag. No city.
Just that fracture, widening.
They say a Word awakens when you want something so badly you're ready to die for it.
Not when you're scared.
Not when you're begging to be saved.
When there's no room left for doubt, or fear, or lies.
Maybe that's what this is.
Me, breaking past the last layer of pretending.
The world flips.
When my eyes open again, I'm not in the same place.
Before me stretches an immense sky, empty, a sickly pale blue.
No sun. No clouds. No birds.
Just a color that looks tired of existing.
Around me, nothing.
No wall. No tree. Not a shadow of life.
The silence is absolute. Heavy. Without the slightest vibration.
Even my thoughts sound too loud in here.
And in the middle of that nothingness stands a mountain.
Colossal.
Too high to measure, too wide to go around.
Its sides are sheer, raw, carved by no hand.
As if someone had taken a knife to the world and pulled a peak out of the wound.
I'm already at the very top.
Planted there, motionless, sitting on a stone chair.
No… not a chair.
A throne.
Hewn from the rock itself. Rough edges. Frozen angles. Rigid, like it was never meant to be comfortable.
My wrists are bound.
My ankles too.
Even my torso is strapped tight to the back of the stone.
Iron chains, thick and dark, coil around me like dead serpents. They bite into my skin without leaving wounds, as if they're not made to hurt my flesh, but something deeper.
I can't move. Not a gesture.
Just breathe.
Just remain there, locked on that barren summit.
The air is thin here.
Each breath feels borrowed.
I look around as much as I can.
Empty sky. Empty horizon. Empty mountain.
And in the quiet that imprisons me, I understand.
I'm at the top, yes.
But this is not victory.
It's a verdict.
I am the king of an empty kingdom.
A throne of silence.
Chains of oblivion.
This place…
It doesn't feel like a dream.
Dreams blur at the edges.
Here, everything is sharp. Solid. Brutal.
It feels like a definition.
Like someone took the inside of my chest, my history, my fears, my habits, and froze them into landscape.
This is what my soul looks like.
A mountain no one can reach.
A throne no one shares.
Chains I didn't choose, but never tried hard enough to break.
And this breath, here…
This breath I have left…
Maybe it's all I still have of myself.
A voice rises.
Not from the sky.
Not from the ground.
From everywhere at once.
Strange.
Inhuman.
Warped like a broken whisper sliding through shards of glass.
— I am the one who took your memory. Your family. Your past. Your life.
The sound doesn't vibrate, it snaps.
Each word pierces me like a needle heated white-hot.
My fingers strain against the chains by reflex.
They don't move.
Not even a rattle.
The voice continues.
— You are about to change.
To become a Chosen.
To receive your Word.
My curse is ending.
You will be able to live again.
But… no one will remember you.
From now on, you are free to choose your destiny.
I remain still.
Clinging to that stone throne like an idiot nailed to his cross.
Free to choose my destiny.
After erasing everything that made me who I was.
My jaw locks. Teeth grinding.
Inside, something ugly wakes up.
Killed in the egg.
Erased.
Banished before even existing.
Damn it… but why?
What's wrong with this world?
This world crushed me without even knowing me.
It took my past, my name, my roots.
It left me with one memory of hands in the soil and a smile that might be my mother's…
Then cut the rest.
And now it gives me the right to choose?
Now it talks about freedom?
After taking everything?
Silence stretches.
The chains dig in deeper.
The mountain watches without eyes.
Fine.
You want me to choose?
You want me to decide my damned destiny?
Then I choose.
— Then free me.
I don't whisper.
I don't beg.
I scream.
Not with my throat.
With everything I am.
With all the years erased.
All the mornings where I woke up with nothing.
All the moments I let life drag me like a piece of luggage.
I want to be free.
Freed from this throne. From these chains.
From this memory that oozes emptiness.
Freed from being the guy who just endures.
If that's what it takes to awaken a Word…
Then I'll die for it.
The answer is immediate.
The chains break.
Not one by one.
All at once.
The sound is not metal clanging.
It's the world screaming.
The sky splits in two.
A crack of violent blue tears the sickly pale apart.
Light seeps through. Then surges.
A breeze rises.
Not cool. Sharp.
Each gust slices through the old air, shredding the stillness around me.
A divine light falls on me.
Not gentle. Not tender.
Burning.
It doesn't warm.
It judges.
It carries a Word.
Unbound.
I don't see letters.
I feel meaning.
A concept without walls.
A path without rails.
A "no" spat in the face of everything that binds.
The Word enters me.
It doesn't content itself with engraving.
It doesn't politely stick to the surface of my soul like a tattoo.
It pushes in.
It forces its way through every layer.
It lacerates.
I fall to my knees.
Stone shatters under me like glass.
My body screams.
My soul burns.
It's as if acid were being poured into my veins, yes—
but it's more than pain.
It's dismantling.
Everything I believed I was, every excuse, every resignation, every "that's just how I am"…
The Word tears through them, one by one.
It shows me the truth:
I was never free.
Not in my amnesia.
Not in my silence.
Not in my fake distance from the world.
I just sat on a throne made of chains and called it "normal".
Unbound doesn't accept that.
It refuses my habits, my cowardice, my comfort in being nothing.
It wants a blank space it can carve into.
But I do not cry out.
I grit my teeth.
I hold.
I survive.
I won't let this light erase me like everything else did.
If it wants to live in me, it'll have to do it with me, not instead of me.
The pain fades, eventually.
Not really.
It doesn't disappear.
It sinks.
Becomes silence.
Becomes a foundation.
Like molten metal settling into a mold.
I breathe.
Once. Twice.
The air feels different.
Less borrowed.
I rise. Slowly.
My legs tremble, but they obey.
My breath is short.
My gaze… new.
The chains are gone.
The throne is cracked.
The mountain is still there, but it feels smaller.
Or maybe I finally feel alive enough to stand on it.
I step forward.
I look at the horizon.
I defy it.
Something answers.
In front of me, a tablet of light appears.
Thin. Floating.
Like a sentence.
Like a promise.
Words write themselves upon it, letters of fire and law.
Word: Unbound
Rank: Dormant
Active Ability: The bearer can acquire what he desires.
Passive Ability: Heyo is free to choose his passive ability.
I stare at it.
"The bearer can acquire what he desires."
The old me would have laughed.
I don't even know who I am.
How am I supposed to know what I desire?
But another thought pushes forward.
Quiet. Sharp.
If my Word is Unbound…
Then maybe, for the first time, I'm not just something the world drags around.
Maybe this mountain, this throne, these chains—
this whole soul of mine—
isn't a prison anymore.
It's the starting point.