The air deep within the archive was perpetually stale, filled with the scent of dust and ink. Ethan and Karl spread the heavy folio across the stone table. On the thick parchment, strange markings appeared—not ordinary text, but symbols imbued with Nightmare energy, writhing subtly in the darkness.
"This isn't historical record… it's more like… a wound," Karl murmured.
Ethan turned to the second page, and the scene before him suddenly came alive. It was not written text, but a fully formed three-dimensional vision. Dark mist unfurled before them, assembling into a complete cityscape.
Towering spires, intertwining streets, rivers, and plazas shimmered in shadow and light. But in the next moment, a tearing rift split the sky, and the Nightmare fog poured forth. The city's lights went out in an instant. People screamed in terror and were devoured, leaving only shadows in their place.
In the vision, the city vanished completely, leaving only ash-like ruins, as if erased from reality itself.
"This…" Karl's voice trembled. "How is this possible? There's no historical record of an entire city disappearing!"
Ethan's heart raced. He stared at the words gradually appearing within the vision:
"Vierno City."
A name he had never heard before.
Ethan drew a shaky breath and forced a joke: "Looks like the cartography teachers will be protesting. A whole city—just gone."
But his laugh was strained. His fingertips pressed tightly against the page.
At the corner of the folio, fragmented sentences remained:—"First overflow experiment… sacrifice necessary… human council approval…"
"Experiment?" Karl's head snapped up. "This wasn't a unilateral Nightmare invasion… humans did this on purpose?"
Ethan's stomach twisted as if gripped by cold hands. He swallowed a bitter laugh: "So the great march of civilization progress… was paid for with an entire city. Efficient, to say the least."
They continued flipping, only to find that the next few pages had been deliberately torn out, leaving charred edges. It was as if someone had gone to great lengths to erase the truth.
In the silence, Ethan felt a prickling at the back of his neck. The vision had not entirely dissipated—it had condensed into a pair of unseen eyes, fixed intently on him.
"You saw it," a whisper echoed in his mind. It belonged neither to the Reaper nor to any human. It was an ancient, indistinct presence.
Ethan instinctively struck a playful pose: "Perfect, bonus interactive audience. I'll have to charge admission."
But Karl clearly did not hear it. The voice spoke only to Ethan.
The vision gradually collapsed, leaving only a single line burned into his mind:
"Vierno is not extinguished; it still exists within the Nightmare."
The black mist vanished completely, leaving the stone table with blank pages.
Ethan leaned back in his chair, sweat beading on his forehead. He smiled, though it was bitter:"Karl, I think we're not just investigators… we're archaeologists. Except instead of digging through dirt, we're unearthing living nightmares."
Karl's expression darkened. His voice was low and heavy:"If what the folio says is true… that city still exists somewhere within the Nightmare dimension. There might even be people still alive inside."
Ethan said nothing. In his mind, the Reaper's earlier whisper resurfaced:
—The true enemy has always been within your ranks.
He suddenly realized that this was not just the shadow of history—it was a future poised to repeat itself.