Volume 3 Chapter 0: The pieces which needed to be fixed

The universe does not care for the math of a broken soul.

To the stars, a quadrillion is just a number, but to the man kneeling in the red-slicked dirt, it was the sound of a hammer shattering his skull one bone at a time. 

On the floor lay the mangled heap of quivering meat that used to be his identity—the dermal layers of a face he had flayed away to reveal the white gleam of bone and the pulsing, raw veins of a monster.

Standing in the heavy, metallic tang of impending doom, the man who was once Shin looked at his hands and saw only the "robber's mask" he had built from lies. 

He had killed his family to save them from a fate worse than death, and in return, the world had granted him the ultimate cruelty: 

The Silence.

There was no home to return to. No "Welcome Back" whispered by the women he remembered in jagged shards—the Maid, Elwin, Yurina. And then there was the One—the wife whose name was a hollow, aching void that made his throat lock and his breath turn to lead.

As his legs buckled and the trillion echoes of Shen’s mockery hammered against his mind, he glitched. 

A grotesque, twisted smile carved its way across his skinless lips, framed by deep, dark holes that looked like bruises from the abyss.

He screamed..

He roared...

And then... the static took over.

The memories vanished. The pain became a dull, nameless ache. 

The broken soul was reborn as a stranger. 

He wiped the tears falling beneath his eyes, looked at the mirror room and then at himself that he no longer recognized, and began to walk.

He didn't know who he was. He didn't know what a "Human" was. He only knew that somewhere in the gray fog of reality, there was a girl trying to pull him back from the grave.

The work was done. 

The man was gone.

 Now the suffering was also begins.

Volume 3 chapter 0 prologue ended.....