The air in his parents' room, [MP.10-L], was as still as a frozen clock.

  The artificial sunset outside seeped deep into the study, staining the desk in amber, while the scent of old paper and dried flowers softly grazed the tip of Adin’s nose.

  This was the only bridge left for him to converse with the parents who were no longer there.

  Vrrr—thud.

  A heavy vibration from the device in his pocket broke the silence. Adin turned on the screen. The sender was Nathan.

  [Come to the Data Archive. I will show you the true identity of the ‘Anchor’ you have been so desperate to find. - Nathan]

  Adin stared intently at the typed sentences.

  Nathan’s message was as flawless and cold as his manner of speech.

  As the memory of the mature composure Nathan showed while treating So-ri in Ebony overlapped with the perfect smile he wore beside Ru, a searing sense of defeat flared in a corner of Adin’s heart.

  Jealousy is often a more powerful motive than a sense of justice.

  Adin stood up without hesitation.

  He reached into the shadows behind a massive bookshelf that had always blocked the light. Along with the touch of cold metal against his fingertips, the vertical secret passage his parents had hidden finally opened.

  Adin threw himself into the pitch-black entrance.

  Whoosh—

  The sound of wind, sharp enough to tear his eardrums, rushed past him. Gravity, like a giant invisible hand, snatched his ankles and dragged him deeper down.

  The air was excruciatingly cold and sharp.

  Adin squeezed his eyes shut amidst the sensation of falling.

  The fear of the truth he would face at the end of this path was greater than the terror of his feet vanishing into the void.

  ‘Why did my parents hide this path? What did they design this vertical hell to protect—or to conceal?’

  The questions shattered between his fluttering hair, finding no answers.

  Swaaaa— The density of the air rose sharply, and his body grew heavy. The trajectory of the descent began to twist from a straight line into a gentle arc.

  It was a massive curve, meticulously engineered to condense gravity.

  Curved time.

  Pushed by centrifugal force, his body slid precariously along the smooth metal wall. It was a grotesque experience, as if he were sliding down the esophagus of a gargantuan beast.

  Though his speed gradually decreased, his heart rate climbed in inverse proportion. From the far end of the curve, the chilling blue light of the Archive began to bleed in.

  Thud. With the touch of solid metal against his soles, the fall stopped.

  Beyond that bizarre curvature, at the heart of the Anchor, he felt Nathan’s gaze through cold glasses piercing his back.

  He looked back up the path he had descended, but the top was invisible.

  Falling had been a choice, but returning was no longer a matter of will.

  The smooth metal plate, which he had thought was merely a wall, slid open without a sound.

  Nathan passed through it with the practiced ease of someone entering his own living room. Without even glancing back at the visibly bewildered Adin, he lightly pushed up the bridge of his glasses and walked ahead.

  This was the ‘Data Archive,’ the coldest heart of the Monolith, accessible only to those permitted by the system.

  Watching Nathan’s back, Adin suppressed a rising surge of revulsion.

  It wasn't merely the righteous indignation of one seeking to destroy the system. It was a visceral jealousy toward the fact that this man—who had been so perfect and gentle beside Ru—remained equally composed in the middle of this blueprint of hell.

  The air inside the Archive was ice-cold, and the blue glow emitted by thousands of server racks soaked the floor.

  When Nathan lightly touched the central console, the darkness in front of them receded like an ebbing tide.

  Tens of thousands of monitors filling a massive semi-circular wall flickered to life simultaneously.

  They were not mere screens. They were a massive 'culture dish of emotions,' where the vital signs, brainwaves, and visual fields of every resident in the Monolith were decomposed and streamed in real-time.

  “Adin, let me show you the true identity of the ‘Anchor’ you so desperately wanted to deny.”

  Red values fluctuated violently across the screens.

  Fleeting moments of passionate love, unbearable instances of rage, and the peaks of bone-deep sorrow.

  The system moved with agility at every second to capture that 'optimal value' where human emotion became most dense. The monitoring, designed to steal a fleeting moment, tracked every soul without a single error.

  The moment a value reached the threshold, an invisible data hook descended upon the figures on the screen.

  In that split second, their most precious memories and emotions were stolen in the form of information and sucked into the abyss of the system.

  The victims, unaware of what they had even lost, continued their mundane lives with hollow eyes.

  One wall of the Archive was made of transparent reinforced crystal.

  Beyond it, the main body of the Anchor stretched vertically, revealing its overwhelming majesty.

  At the very bottom sat the 'Curved Gravity Accelerator,' intertwined like the roots of an ancient giant tree, designed to overcharge gravity.

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  It was a neural network of polished metal, specifically refined to force time to bend.

  Future paths, designed in geometric spirals and not yet opened, floated in the air as perfect blueprints.

  The paths in the schematic gripped the Monolith’s time firmly in the prison of the present, much like the roots of a great tree clutching the earth.

  Nathan’s voice was as dry as a mechanical tone. At the center of the screen, the name of the algorithm appeared in red letters.

  [Project: Stasis Sink - Algorithm: MIN-MAX (Minimum Sacrifice, Maximum Preservation)]

  Maximum preservation through minimum sacrifice.

  Adin rolled those cold words in his mouth.

  For a conclusion to the academic life his parents had spent their lives polishing, it was far too chilling and cruel.

  As if enjoying the trembling in Adin's eyes, Nathan played an old audio file.

  Static—click.

  A sharp digital resonance pierced the eardrums like a needle, flowing through the chill of the Archive.

  Before the lingering echo could fade, a blue hologram flickered, opening a rift in the old records.

  “...Someone must become the Anchor. That is the most efficient cost we must pay to protect the brilliant light of the Monolith.”

  What flowed through the speakers was the voice of his mother, Arum.

  It was the conviction of an architect who allowed no margin for error—entirely different from the gentle humming he remembered from the study.

  Adin wanted to cover his ears, but the sound became a sharp needle, piercing through his eardrums.

  Were all my warm memories merely a mirage built upon this cold calculation?

  Adin staggered and leaned against a server rack.

  His parents were not victims of the system. They were the protagonists who designed this massive incinerator and perfected the logic justifying momentary sacrifice.

  The back of the 'mission' Dr. Oh had spoken of was stained with such a deep gray smudge.

  “Mr. Nathan.”

  Adin spoke, suppressing his tremors.

  His gaze was still fixed on the unfinished structures in the lower section, gaping emptily behind the transparent crystal.

  “Those empty slots down there... the ones that haven't found their owners yet. Will they also be filled by stealing people’s emotions? By thieving the most burning memories someone is feeling at this very moment?”

  Nathan did not hurry.

  Like a master receiving a question from a seeker who had traveled a long path, he stood beside Adin with a relaxed stride.

  “To be precise, someone’s ‘purest passion’ will fill those spots,” Nathan replied softly.

  His tone was as peaceful as a priest delivering a blessing, and his eyes behind the glasses admired this massive extraction system like a work of art.

  “That place is a sanctuary where the greatest aspirations born of the Monolith are preserved. A moment of someone’s life becoming eternal gravity to sustain the world—what more honorable devotion could there be?”

  He continued, his gaze drifting toward the void.

  “Those unfinished paths you see are scheduled to be filled with the honor of the chosen ones soon.”

  Honor.

  Adin chewed on the word. It tasted like bitter iron.

  The composure of this man, wrapping the act of hijacking another’s soul and plugging it in as a mechanical part in the packaging of ‘honor,’ was nauseatingly loathsome.

  For the first time, Adin was certain.

  The man before him was not merely Dr. Oh’s subordinate. He was an ‘Enemy’ with whom coexistence was impossible—one who believed in and executed this cold calculus like a religion.

  Nathan slowly approached Adin. His shadow covered Adin’s feet.

  Nathan leaned his lips close to Adin’s ear and whispered like a baring of fangs.

  “Ad?, you already know, don't you? That ‘justice’ of yours—carving the flesh of that man and trapping him in a prison of flames to save So-ri.”

  Adin’s heart hammered irregularly.

  Nathan already saw through Adin’s past—the cruel judgment he had carried out.

  “Was that revenge? Or was it a ‘useful evil’ to protect your beloved Auri, So-ri? How is your parents burning time for the Monolith any different from you burning that man’s time for So-ri?”

  Nathan’s question was placed before Adin like a massive mirror.

  In that mirror, the boy with shining eyes no longer existed. Only a cowardly man stood there, blinded by jealousy and hatred, breaking taboos and finding solace in inflicting pain on another.

  “You are the same color as us, Adin. No, you are a much darker shade of Gray.”

  Nathan’s vile smile filled Adin’s vision. Adin wanted to answer, but the self-loathing stuck in his throat forced him into silence.

  After Nathan left, Adin was left alone in the Data Archive.

  Amidst the pouring blue light of the monitors, he silently watched the process of thousands of lives being calculated.

  Every time the numbers on the screen danced violently, someone’s life was preserved like a specimen; those whose numbers remained calm wandered the system like ghosts.

  A spark ignited in Adin’s eyes as he stared at that bizarre causality.

  The only way to survive here is to never reach a 'peak.'

  One must confine oneself within a colorless Gray, ensuring that joy, anger, and sorrow never cross the threshold. To create a swamp of stable emotions that the system cannot detect and hide within it—that was the only way to avoid being stolen.

  Yet, paradoxically, the method to destroy someone became clear as well.

  If he wanted to trap the perfect Nathan in those curved structures below, he had to drive him to an emotional peak.

  He had to strip away the glasses of logic and composure, pushing him to the edge of the 'human passion' he so loathed, forcing the system itself to harvest him.

  The formula for war was complete.

  Nathan, I will make this cold calculus you created the very rope that strangles you.

  Adin looked down at the central console of the Archive alone.

  Tens of thousands of eyes were watching him, but he no longer trembled. He was no longer a mere victim. He was an intruder who understood the language of the system and sought to plant poison by exploiting its flaws.

  How much time had passed?

  He quietly looked around.

  In this place, where the remnants of gravity emitted by the Anchor were most deeply deposited—this abyss of time where all flow had been removed—it was excruciatingly silent.

  However, Adin felt his own vivid pulse overpowering that silence.

  The Solet powder in his pocket brushed against his skin, but now it felt not like a voice of reproach, but like the touch of one holding the architect’s legacy.

  It is a terrifyingly precise design. Did my parents already know that I would find this path and witness the contradiction of this calculus?

  As the noose of truth tightened around his throat, his mind grew paradoxically cold.

  Within the massive prison of his parents' legacy, he instead tasted the boundless freedom that only the one holding the key to that prison could enjoy.

  Yes.

  He would no longer live as the result of a calculation designed by someone else. He would write his own destiny from now on.

  He wasn't sent here as an expendable part; he was cast here as the only ‘variable’ capable of proving the error of this algorithm and bringing it to an end.

  At that moment, the words Dr. Oh had whispered while sending him off from the clinic in Ebony struck his mind like a vivid wave.

  “Adin, you must be a thorough underdog.”

  Underdog.

  That pathetic word, meaning a weakling with slim chances of winning, was read here as an entirely different ‘verdict.’

  It was a secret mission to hide in the colorless shade of ‘stable emotions’—undetected by the system’s radar—and rectify this massive contradiction from the bottom up, unseen by anyone.

  A silent struggle of flowing quietly without being swept away by the waves of passion, making the system bite its own tail. Only now did he understand the nature of the real weapon Dr. Oh had placed in his hands.

  Dr. Oh, the reason you pushed me here is clear. You didn't need a repairman for this system; you were waiting for the ‘architect’s bloodline’ who could stop the gears of this massive machine. Whether he intended to save Adin or preserve him as the most perfect part no longer mattered.

  Adin took a slow step toward the entrance of the Anchor.

  The mechanical pulse heard from the darkness was no longer a mockery. It was merely the heavy breathing of a massive prey.

  He was now a being who could not return to the light, but simultaneously, he had become a predator that even the darkness could not easily swallow.

  Adin closed his eyes.

  The chilling blue light of the Archive remained as a lingering image behind his eyelids, but he no longer turned away.

  It was no longer a weight he had to bear, but a powerful lever to make the world flow once again.