The horn did not shine. It listened. Kariya walks through a realm where mercy has become dangerous. His gift hears what is broken and answers only true need, but kindness leaves a trace. Somewhere beyond the roads, eyes are learning the pattern - how to summon goodness, how to measure it, how to turn care into a leash. A man who believes protection is love begins closing his hand around what was never his to keep. A woman kept safe begins to disappear inside that safety. And the creature at the center of it must discover whether mercy can remain mercy once the world learns how to command it.

But every myth hides the wound that came before it. Long before anyone called him Kariya, before the horn, before the legend, something was already teaching him the oldest law he would ever carry: what is given freely cannot survive being possessed.