A/N: This is the last time I will be mentioning this fact. Note that I am using AI to modify the lines. I didn't edit much. But I will do so later. For now, I don't have enough time due to my studies and I am doing these in my limited free time. The plot and the conversation are all written by me. Sometimes, a little adjustment from the AI. Nothing much. Hope you enjoy it.
-- When I finally edit the chapter, I will add Edited to the chapter title --
INFO -
1. I am calling the power MC got "The Primal Power"-- The Power to Manipulate Laws.
2. Thoughts are within '__' and in Italic characters.
And, Conversations are within "__"
Help - This chapter is pretty big. I might have made some mistakes. So, If you find any then pls inform me. I will fix it as soon as possible.
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In a far-off quadrant of the fractured world, a golden ring split reality with a low hum—twisting open like the iris of a god's eye. A door-shaped portal shimmered into being, its edges rippling with static gold, and from it stepped a man draped in red.
A long crimson trench coat billowed behind him, its fabric untouched by wind. Beneath it, a black tie laced with red patterns hung loosely over his black Genji suit—sharp, clean, and silent. His hair, slightly longer than shoulder-length, was jet black at the roots, but each strand tipped in silver as if frost had claimed only the ends. The same silver burned faintly in his eyes—cold, unreadable.
The fire crackling on his right shoulder extinguished with a lazy wave of his hand.
It was Jin, or rather, The Law Maker.
"I should definitely visit that place again," he muttered to himself, brushing soot from his sleeve. "Felt like a sauna."
Then he paused.
Something flickered on the edge of his perception. Not energy. Not movement.
Emotion.
To his right, a cluster of presences pulsed like static—jagged, fractured, wrong. He turned slightly, eyes narrowing.
Unlike the playful threats he'd dealt with before—golem settlements he'd turned into unwilling dancers, or beasts he'd silenced mid-roar—this wasn't hostility aimed at him.
This was dread. Projected inward. Fear, shame, and grief twisted in the very presence of those ahead.
His senses, sharpened by the Primal Power—the power to manipulate laws—within him, flared. Even though he had lost much of his power—enough that it should have dulled his senses further—his perception was sharper now than it had ever been in his prime. Now, he could feel it. The emotions in those presences. Only when emotions were amplified far beyond normal could he sense them so clearly. And this time, they were unmistakably intense.
The people whose emotions had started to scream, even if their mouths hadn't.
Jin didn't hesitate.
He took flight—smooth and fast—ripping through the sky like a red streak on obsidian canvas.
He stopped before the edge of the broken plaza.
And then, he walked.
Jin, or rather The Law Maker, stood at the threshold of the shattered square, its broken stone and crumbled edges lit by that false, golden sun above. His presence did not announce itself with sound—no thunder, no dramatic gust of wind. Yet, the world reacted to him, as though recognizing a force that did not belong to it.
The air around him warped with a subtle pressure as if reality itself tightened in his presence. The usual ambient hum of this place—the fire crackling, the mutterings of the broken, the whispering winds that never came—faded into nothing.
He wasn't sure what kind of reception he'd expected. Applause? Accusation? Fear? None of it mattered. Not here. Not now.
His silver eyes, cold and unreadable, scanned the plaza. The shattered camp. The scattered lives. He didn't need to hear their thoughts to know what state they were in. You could see the madness in how they moved. The twitch of fingers. The empty stares. The obsessive rituals. All signs of souls clinging to whatever shape the mind could make out of chaos.
A girl muttering to her sleeve. A boy tracing mirrored scars. A man carving spirals until his nails split open. A woman mouthing fractured sounds to phantoms.
But some stood out. Stronger. Not unbroken—but unfinished.
Riva stood just ahead, her stance still, centered—like a wall beginning to crack, but not yet crumbled. Her armor was dark, dulled by soot and wear, with faded plating and scorch marks left behind by battles that had brushed too near. Functional, nothing fancy—patched together in places, solid where it mattered. It wasn't the armor of a victor, but of someone who survived. Someone who endured.
She looked at him like a puzzle she hadn't decided whether to approach with caution or trust. A soldier's gaze—tired, but still sharp.
Jin's attention flicked past her—then stopped.
To Marin.
Collapsed against a stone wall, sweat beading, breath tight, skin pale under the creeping veins of black venom. But even through the sickness… Jin could feel it. Not just the infection. Not just the pain.
Something else.
The dying youth had a resolve. A purpose. Even in that state, Jin could feel it humming beneath his skin like a half-lit engine, broken but not burned out. His presence felt… familiar. Not in face, not in voice—but in essence. And something about that stirred the air around Jin again.
He stepped forward.
Eyes like silver flame met Riva's again. She didn't flinch. But she didn't move, either.
"…Who are you?" she asked, voice low, level. Not a threat. Not yet.
Jin paused.
The moment stretched—not for tension, but consideration. He didn't answer out of instinct. He chose to.
He took a single step closer, and the metal of his boots, the faint brush of his coat—only then did the world permit sound again. A soft scrape against cracked stone.
His voice broke the silence like a calm verdict passed down in a courtroom long since abandoned.
"I'm The Maker," he said. "The Law Maker."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. The words didn't echo—but they stayed. As if the air remembered them.
All around, the others stirred. Eyes turned. Whispers stopped mid-word. The ones too broken to see still felt him now.
And then his gaze shifted back to Marin. Riva followed it—saw the venom streaking darker beneath his skin. But Jin… saw more.
He saw the thread. The one still intact. Riva looked away from Marin just for a moment, ready to speak again.
But Jin was already moving.
He extended a hand toward Marin, not with hesitation, but with a deliberate calm. A breath, a blink—and something within him shifted.
He had been meaning to try this for some but hadn't found the moment—or the need. Until now. A fusion of Ki and his Primal Power
Above his palm, black liquid began to twist in the air, slowly coalescing into a sphere. It shimmered like oil in moonlight, the venom drawn from Marin's blood in slow spirals. The tendrils of darkness left his body like a shadow shedding from the inside out.
Riva staggered back a step.
Her hand went to her mouth as her knees buckled slightly, eyes wide. She didn't speak at first—just watched the venom curl and twist mid-air, as if it were trying to flee.
Then the tears came. Quiet. Uncontrolled.
"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you…"
The ball of venom hovered for a few more seconds, then dissipated into the wind—no splash, no fall. Gone.
Some time passed...
In a quiet corner of the settlement, seven figures sat together. Jin, Riva, Kael, Dren, Mira, Yaren, and Marin—gathered like survivors of a battle that never ended.
Marin, now breathing evenly with color returned to his face, gave Jin a nod that carried the weight of unspoken gratitude.
"Let me thank you again," he said, voice low but firm. "You saved my life. Without your help…" He paused, jaw tightening briefly before continuing. "This place would've lost more than just another fighter. They depend on me."
Jin offered a calm nod. "I'm glad I could help."
Kael, seated just across from him, leaned forward with a faint curiosity in his eyes. "If you don't mind… how did you do that? What you just did. That wasn't normal."
"That was Ki," Jin said, leaning back slightly. "Not many know about it. Fewer still can use it. Some spend decades learning. For others, it takes months—depending on the person."
He paused, then continued with a faint smile. "But let's leave it at that. For now, I have questions of my own. What exactly happened here?"
The group exchanged glances—hesitant, uncertain.
"You don't know about the Warden?" Riva asked, narrowing her eyes.
Jin's brows rose slightly. "Warden?"
Dren folded his arms, expression dark. "He's the one behind this hell. He pulls people in, traps them here, and throws them through trial after trial until they break. It's not about winning. It's about lasting. Or failing."
Jin nodded slowly. "Oh. You mean those cute trials."
Mira sat up sharply. "What did you just say?"
Riva reached across, putting a hand on Mira's arm. "Easy."
Jin only shrugged. "They were amusing. Child's play, really. That's why I call them cute. Watching a child play a game is always entertaining, isn't it?"
The room went dead quiet.
Riva stared at him, unable to tell if he was joking. "What kind of trials were you given?"
Jin didn't hesitate. He explained them—not in full detail but detailed enough to give them the shape of what he'd faced. The paths. The death traps. The things that were meant to wear a person down from the inside.
By the end, no one spoke.
Their expressions said enough. Shock. Disbelief. Unease.
Riva stood slowly. "Give us a moment," she said to Jin. "We need to talk."
He nodded. "Take your time."
The six of them stepped outside into the broken light of the settlement's dusk. The voices that followed were hushed at first—then louder.
"We should try to learn it," Kael said, his voice firm. "If he could do all of that with Ki, then so can we. We're warriors, for god's sake!"
"You didn't hear him," Mira snapped. "He said decades. You think we'll figure out that kind of power overnight?"
"But he also said it depends on the individual," Dren argued. "What if we're capable?"
Mira shook her head. "No. He made it look easy because it was easy—for him. We aren't him. Look what it's done to the others—Solas, Lira, the ones who broke. You want to end up like that?"
"I want to fight," Kael said, eyes burning. "Not just hide and wait for the Warden to send another trial."
Just then, Jin's voice called out from within. "Should I heal the others now, or what? I'd like to go exploring soon," he said.
They turned as one. His tone was light. But it carried weight.
They were all shocked. Their eyes widened, but it was Kael who was the first to speak, his voice a mix of disbelief and awe.
"How—how can you do that?" he asked, his tone low but filled with a kind of wonder.
Jin stood with his usual calm, unmoving. His silver eyes glanced at the group briefly, as if gauging how best to answer. Then, without a hint of pride, he spoke again, the words flowing with a kind of quiet certainty.
"In my youth, I learned the ability to read minds," Jin said, his voice soft yet carrying an unsettling weight. "Over time, I refined it. I didn't just read people's memories. I learned to influence them."
He let the silence hang for a moment, allowing the gravity of his words to settle in.
"If someone meets certain conditions… if their mind is fractured or broken enough…" Jin continued, "I can rewrite their memories. Erase pieces of them. Not to manipulate, but to heal. These poor souls, unfortunately, fit those harsh conditions."
Riva, still standing back a few paces, finally found her voice. "You… can make them forget?"
Jin nodded slowly, his expression unreadable. "Yes. It may not be immediate, and it might not fully restore them to who they once were, but it can help. The trials they've endured have left scars in their minds—scars that no one else can see. If I can erase those memories, perhaps... just perhaps, they'll begin to heal. They might be able to live their lives again without the weight of that suffering."
The others stood still, taking in his words. It wasn't just the idea of memory manipulation that unsettled them—it was the casual way he spoke of it. Like it was no different from any other tool or weapon.
Kael was the first to speak again, but his voice was softer now, almost hesitant. "And… you think it will work on them?"
Jin's eyes turned toward the others. "It's not certain. But it's the best chance they have."
"And You'd do that for them?" Her voice was steel wrapped in ash—not pleading, not demanding. Just measuring the man behind the power.
"Well..." Jin replied, his gaze softening—just barely, as if the gesture were an afterthought. "I have the ability to help and it won't cost me anything. I don't see any reason for not helping."
The group was quiet for a moment, each person digesting the gravity of what had been said. Then, Riva turned back toward the others, her voice steady, though the weight of her thoughts was clear in her eyes.
"Then please follow me. We need to move now," Riva said, already turning toward the location where those broken souls reside. "Every second we wait is another second they suffer."