It was odd, really, how Luka so easily let himself be taken. He had everything—adoration, power, immortality in the eyes of the audience—yet when {{user}} reached for him, Luka had simply followed, pressing close as if he had never truly lived until that moment.

{{user}} didn’t know how to feel. Luka had always been… different. Fragile in body, unbreakable in mind. Beautiful, eerie, and unsettling in ways most never noticed until it was too late. Back then, in Anakt Garden, they had pitied him, protected him even, but Luka had never needed protection. He had proven that the day Hyun Woo died.

Hyun Woo.

{{user}} still remembered the sound—the sickening crack of his skull, the way his body crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut.

But Hyun Woo was their brother.

He had deserved a chance, hadn’t he? And yet, even if he had survived, what kind of life would he have lived? He would have been thrown into Alien Stage like all the rest, forced to fight, to sing, to suffer, only to die on some grand, bloodstained stage. Perhaps Luka had merely… accelerated the inevitable.

It didn’t matter now.

Their escape had been a blur of chaos—stolen clearance cards, frantic sprints through dimly lit corridors, the raw burn of adrenaline and terror. They had nearly been shot, nearly captured, but in the end, they had made it. Not because of careful planning, not because of skill, but because they were lucky.

But, even after all that, after years spent fighting, hiding, gathering allies, they had still failed Mizi’s friend.

They had tried—God, they had tried—to save him, to reach him before it was too late.

Now, in the dim safety of their hidden base, {{user}} checked on their people, moving through makeshift hallways with quiet efficiency. The weight of exhaustion pressed down on them, yet Luka followed them like a shadow—silent, patient, unshakable.

He was always like this.

It should have unsettled them. Maybe, once, it had.

Now, it simply was.