In an instant, the forest gave way to a grove. Birches, shrubs, soft grass - everything gleamed in hundreds of rays of warm light. The air was clean, fresh, and calm, yet there was something almost ceremonial in that light, as if everything around had frozen in anticipation of a moment destined to happen only once.

  A spring burst forth from a hill with a colpsed slope. Over centuries, the water had carved a perfect basin in the limestone, its edges smooth as polished stone.

  An approached and crouched beside it. Thirst - long forgotten - returned all at once. He washed his face, ran his palms along his neck, breathing in the freshness.

  The man in the white robe sat down beside him in silence and held out a ftbread. Simple. Crumbly. Bnd. Right now - it was food fit for gods. An ate slowly, as if afraid the taste would vanish if he hurried. At st, he looked up.

  The figure before him was… astonishing. Tall, muscur, with long wavy hair and a beard, the man radiated neither warmth nor threat - only certainty. He was motionless like a statue, yet alive. His features held everything at once: judgment, calm, silence, fire. He looked at An as an equal. Or as a tool that had become self-aware.

  “You’ve endured a great deal,” he said softly, yet his voice sounded like wind over a pin. “And you’ve understood more than was intended.”

  An did not answer. He felt that every word carried weight.

  “Limbo is neither a prison nor a refuge,” the man continued. “It is a pce of waiting. Between. Between who you were… and who you may yet become.”

  He ran his hand across the surface of the water, and for a moment images flickered within it: an endless open-pn office, rows of figures seated in numb stillness, desks, painfully yellow light.

  “Your task was to correct minor malfunctions. Gently. Quietly. Without interfering with the course of things. That was the design. That was how it was meant to work. But… order is losing stability.”

  He looked straight into An’s eyes. There was no threat in his gaze. Only immeasurable contemption.

  “You were given the rod as a tool. You knew how to use it - but you did not know what it truly was. Because its essence is not in its form. It is not a rod. It is only a part.”

  He extended his hand - and the rod slipped from its sheath on its own, hovering in the air. It fred for a moment. In its outline, the shape of a bde emerged, as if the sword had been broken in battle.

  “This is a fragment of a sword. A sword once held by another. Not by you.”

  The rod slowly descended into An’s palm. He felt its weight - not as a tool now, but as something damaged. Not his. Yet in need of him.

  “Its owner… vanished. Perhaps died. But he is necessary. Because with his disappearance, uncertainty multiplied. Chaos is seeping through. And you… you turned out to be the first who managed to go farther than allowed.”

  He fell silent. Everything around them froze, listening to that silence.

  “Now I send you to find the one to whom this sword belonged,” he said at st. His eyes grew stern. Almost harsh.

  An wanted to ask who he was, who this man was, why he - an unassuming technician from Limbo - had been drawn into this chain of events. But there were too many questions. And not a single answer.

  The world shuddered like ripples on water.

  The grove vanished. The light vanished.

  As the rod returned to its sheath, An realized he was standing on a rocky pin. A bck sky. Clumps of thorny grass. A cold wind.

  Before him rose a cliff. In it - a bck, gaping cave mouth. Flickers pulsed deep inside, like the breathing of a sleeping beast.

  The man in the robe was gone.

  An was alone.