The mud of Okutama was not merely soil; it was a cold, suffocating memory. As the rain descended in grey, needle-like streaks from the leaden sky of Earth, Ren Hanshin lay at the base of the shattered shrine, his body a wreckage of divine ambition. The fall from the Solar Forge had stripped him of the porcelain perfection and the starlight hair, leaving behind a man whose skin was pale, bruised, and caked in the unrefined grit of the world he had tried to leave behind.
[Synchronization: 5.0%]
[Level: 40]
[Condition: Major Mana-Core damage]
[Status: The Fallen Porter]
Ren's right arm, the limb the Weaver had crafted from starlight, was a jagged, cauterized stump that smoked with a faint, violet haze. His left arm, the humanity anchor, was twisted at an unnatural angle, the metal dull and pitted as if it had been left in the rain for a century. He was at his lowest, a porter who had not only dropped the bag but had been crushed by its contents.
