Adin returned to the room, but the chill creeping down his spine would not subside.

  Mimos’s gentle, perfect smile on the terrace had been undeniably polite. However, the afterimage of the sunflower shadow—undulating grotesquely at his feet—obstructed Adin’s intuition.

  Knock, knock.

  A cautious rapping broke the silence just as Adin’s unorganized thoughts were about to overflow. He opened the door to find Lou standing there. It was their first face-to-face encounter since the meeting in Ebony.

  For some reason, he couldn’t look her straight in the eye. Though awkward and uncomfortable, a deep, mutual concern resonated between them. Adin wordlessly welcomed her and served warm tea. Heavy air settled between them amidst the rising steam.

  Breaking the uneasy silence, Lou spoke first.

  "Adin, is something wrong? You seem... restless. Not like your usual self."

  Fiddling with his teacup, Adin struggled to find his voice. He couldn't bring himself to utter the name 'Mimos,' but he began to describe the vivid grotesqueness he had witnessed.

  "Lou... I met a man today. He was a flawless gentleman. But... and I don’t know how to put this, his shadow was strange."

  "His shadow?"

  "Yes. Under the light, where there should have been only one, his shadow spread out like a sunflower, undulating like a living creature. When those shadows touched the tips of my feet, I felt a bone-chilling sensation, as if my soul was being pulled somewhere."

  Lou’s hand trembled slightly. The teacup clattered sharply against the saucer as she set it down in haste. Her face turned pale, and her eyes sank into a deep abyss of fear.

  "That man... did you say his shadow was shaped like a sunflower?"

  Lou’s voice was heavy, like wet sand—entirely unlike her. As Adin nodded, Lou took a breath and continued.

  "He is Nathan’s special private patient. And I... under Nathan’s direction, assisted in the 'Shadow Grafting' surgery performed on him."

  "Shadow Grafting?"

  Lou spoke as if dragging out a painful memory.

  "Shadow Grafting is, simply put, a surgery that physically excises the 'Synaptic Echo'—an electromagnetic afterimage of brain cells projected at the moment a human feels their most intense emotion.

  Nathan carves out those traces etched in the donor’s subconscious using a specific wavelength laser and grafts them directly onto Mimos’s primary neural ganglia. It’s the act of physically connecting intangible fragments of data, treated with conductive drugs, to a living neural network."

  Adin murmured low, "Then what does a shadow mean to him? Why does it manifest in such a grotesque form?"

  Lou stared at the dark surface of the tea for a moment, then answered with a calm, certain tone.

  "A shadow is originally proof of absence, created when light is blocked by an object. But for him, it’s the opposite. He is a hollow, ghost-like being who can neither emit light nor possess the volume of existence.

  So, he stole the afterimages of the moments when others burned most brightly and stitched them under his feet. To him, a shadow is not darkness; it is the 'weight' of others that he himself cannot possess."

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  She continued, her gaze fixed on the steam.

  "That sunflower-shaped, layered shadow is like a grotesque garden made of countless fragments of stolen egos tangled together. It is the product of a tragic thirst—the need to fill his own void with the essence of others to finally draw his own silhouette upon the world."

  Lou gazed into the darkness outside the window, describing the Mimos she had observed.

  "To me, he seemed like a man without a mirror inside that one could call a 'self.' Ordinary people live through their own emotions, but he seemed to find a sense of being alive only when those grafted shadows stimulated his brain.

  Yet, those forced emotions seemed to evaporate quickly. That is why he must constantly collect and layer new, provocative moments from others beneath his feet."

  The tea between them had already grown cold.

  Adin realized the meaning of the predatory gaze Mimos had cast upon him on the terrace. Mimos wanted to graft Adin’s peculiar 'transparent density'—a purity devoid of any residue—under his own feet.

  Adin decided he could not merely watch in fear. He had to meet him; he had to truly know him.

  He intentionally headed toward the terrace where Mimos often appeared. The artificial night air brushed his skin, and before long, a familiar sensation crept up from his feet. As usual, the grotesque, undulating silhouettes reached out to pull at his own shadow, announcing Mimos's arrival.

  Adin turned and offered a calm, natural nod. Mimos approached with his usual sophisticated smile.

  "Still guarding the terrace, I see, Adin. It is a beautiful night. I knew we would meet again. There is a certain texture to you, Adin... something that draws the eye, unlike anyone else in this city."

  His voice was smooth as silk, his demeanor impeccably gentlemanly. In stark contrast, however, the sunflower petals on the ground were hungrily scanning Adin’s feet.

  "You have a complex and brilliant shadow. I suppose that means it holds many stories?"

  At Adin’s probing question, Mimos laughed softly.

  "A deep shadow is merely evidence of having received much light. But if my shadow is speaking to you, it is likely because it is captivated by that special 'density' you possess."

  To see the real man, Adin had to strip away those brilliant, decorative shards.

  Holding his breath, Adin drew the Sollet hidden in his sleeve. Focusing all his senses on his fingertips, he thrust the Sollet into the air.

  Caught in the cold light of the artificial sky, the silver grains glittered sharply like fragments of a broken star and rained down upon Mimos’s feet. The moment the powder touched the undulating shadows, a crackling spiritual friction erupted, accompanied by fine blue flashes.

  It was not a mere scattering; it was Adin's resolute declaration toward the ground of Mimos, which was paved with lies.

  Then, a shocking sight unfolded.

  As the silver particles touched the layered shadows, they began to peel away with surgical precision, like a heated scalpel slicing through layers of frozen membrane. Those countless 'Synaptic Echoes' stolen from victims emitted sharp, screeching frequencies, as if yearning to return to their rightful owners, and broke off into pieces.

  The blooming sunflower petals could no longer sway gracefully. They curled up black from the edges like paper caught in flames, leaving grotesque afterimages as the final emotional pulses of the plundered souls scattered into the air.

  One appeared briefly as the silhouette of a sobbing woman, another as a man filled with rage, before turning to ash and vanishing.

  As each layer of stolen life was stripped away, the brilliant illusion surrounding Mimos became pathetically transparent, and finally, his cold essence began to reveal its naked identity.

  Once all the plundered shadows were cleared, there was no black surface projected on the ground at Mimos's feet.

  As Adin looked closer, a terrifying truth was witnessed. Mimos’s true shadow was not a flat shape lying on the ground according to the laws of physics.

  It was a column of pitch-black darkness that eerily penetrated the solid marble floor of the terrace, descending infinitely toward the vertical underground. It did not look like a shadow formed by blocking light; it looked like a massive vertical void, an entity passing through the very floor of this world.

  What... what on earth is that?

  Adin was breathless with shock at the abnormal shape—a shadow that could not lie flat but instead plunged deep through the ground. Why was the silhouette, which should have been cast on the surface, pierced vertically toward the center of the earth?

  What lay at the end of that dark column that forced him to layer the shadows of others to hide this grotesque form?

  Gasp!

  Adin inhaled sharply at the sight.

  Amidst the silver resonance of the Sollet floating in the air, Mimos maintained his gentle expression, seemingly unaware that Adin was peering into his essence. But the vertical hole at his feet was deep and dark enough to swallow Adin’s sanity whole.

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