The lights dimmed behind him, and the music faded into silence as Eric walked away from the entertainment hub. He had only stayed a few hours, yet the place had settled into him quietly — like ink spreading through still water. He could feel that the third step of his method of control would go much more smoothly. He still wasn't there, but it was within reach, the way a distant peak becomes clear after climbing high enough.
The garden path back to the formation felt different beneath his feet than when he had first arrived. Unhurried, he walked it without looking down.
"Sixty percent good deeds now." Eric took a look inside the Imperator's Cross. He remembered how he had spent a day helping many before and only got it to thirty-nine percent. After he established the 'Helping Beggars', the good deeds in The Imperator's Cross were slowly filled up to forty-two percent. Now, after helping Lady Elara. It shot to sixty percent directly. This was a new high.
"So it seems that the amount I get is also based on the rank and power of the other person." Eric noticed another detail of the Imperator's Cross. He had not been able to help any Walker before so he couldn't figure this out but now that he did, it was pretty clear to figure this out.
At the station near the formation's edge, Eric paused and turned for one last look at the entertainment district. The lights there never truly went out — they simply changed color, chasing away the dark in every shade but one. He would return someday. He was certain of that the way he was certain of most things — quietly, without needing to say it aloud.
He turned back to the station attendant.
"Open it."
The man was the same Nova who had entered the formation before to verify his identity. He did not question a Lysi Nova. The formation responded to his touch, and the air in front of Eric folded open — a small, clean tear in space that hummed at a frequency just below sound.
Eric stepped forward.
"I wonder how Lord's experience was?" the Nova asked, his tone carefully plain.
"Satisfactory," Eric said with a plain voice, but there was a happy tone hidden underneath it.
He didn't turn around. The formation swallowed him whole.
He emerged in Layer 107.
The familiar sprawl of Visie's layer opened around him — the vast market buzzing at its usual pitch, Aura users moving between stalls, the air thick with exchanged Ancient Lumenian signatures and quiet negotiations. Eric moved through it without stopping, without looking. This was not his destination.
"I have completed the mission to help Lady Elara. I have gotten thirty contribution points now. I should now accept some missions to hunt and contribute Pathway beasts for the Codex. Wait, Sacrifice sounds better than contribute." Eric thought as he chuckled a little inwardly, his mood was quite serene right now.
The corner of his mouth moved slightly. Not quite a smile.
His thoughts drifted to Adrian.
As he walked, his thoughts wandered to Adrian. "I have gotten daily reports on Adrian's growth from Mr. Clown. He is showing shocking talent and curiosity. I should take him with me to Layer 102 so that he can get more experience."
Eric had already decided before he fully realized it.
Layer 102 would not wait. But potential like Adrian's was not something you left to train alone when you had somewhere worth taking it.
...
The night was filled with serenity, the moon lit Adrian's room with its shine, like how a mother's love illuminates a child's life. The breeze blew softly through the window, feeling like a cold but comfortable, thin veil on his body.
Adrian was reading with deep focus and practising to write Ancient Lumenian and pronounce it. He made sure not to make any compound letter that might cause a high reaction, like an explosion.
He was not even a mid-rank Aura user, so his blunders won't cause anything huge, but it was still better to avoid mistakes. Who would like to feel pain from an unnecessary mistake they could avoid?
He was deeply focused; hours seemed to pass like seconds. Adrian continued practicing till midnight. Symbols and the sounds of his pencil gliding through pages upon pages were the only sounds that filled the room for hours.
Finally, exhaustion caught up to him. Adrian leaned back on his chair and stretched his arms as he let out a breath of turbid air.
"I am more or less very close to comprehending the first twenty letters of Ancient Lumenian." Adrian had been trying his best to comprehend Ancient Lumenian and learn it so that he could read the books he had without the help of Mr. Clown and be able to comprehend the contents.
He also learned another thing. There is a hierarchy of languages through which you can comprehend Ancient Lumenian faster. English was a close language to Ancient Lumenian. So Adrian won't need a huge amount of time to comprehend it fully.
He still wasn't sleepy. He could go on for some more hours, but his mind still needed rest. He got up from his seat and started to walk around the room. He had heard it is better to move your body around after sitting for a long time. He felt thirsty, so he took a bottle from his desk and chugged it down. His Adam's apple gobbled up and down. The entire bottle was emptied in seconds.
He had just put the bottle in the trash can when a golden spark lit in his room as Eric appeared in his room, as calm and quiet as a crane. Mr. Clown immediately got up from his sleep and stood up. He stayed silent, saying nothing else. Eric barely gave a glance at Mr. Clown as he looked at Adrian with his cold gaze, which softened to make Adrian feel calmer.
"It has been a while," Eric said as he looked around the room. His gaze stopped at his desk and the large amounts of paper with symbols inscribed on them, and torn pages of books. "I have heard your growth has been quite good. It is even better to see that your efforts are also keeping up."
Adrian was frozen for a second as he stared at Eric before he nodded. "So what are you here for?" Adrian paused as he looked back at his door, making sure that no one was listening in. He saw a little gap between the door and quickly closed it off. "Sorry for that."
Eric didn't waste any time and got straight to the topic, "I have decided to go to layer 102 of the Meditation Realm. It is a layer for hunting down pathway beasts. I thought of taking you with me. It would be very beneficial for your growth. It is your choice." Eric spoke directly; he didn't hide anything.
Adrian blinked his eyes a few times as he turned around, thinking about Eric's proposal.
Obviously, he would go!
He likes studying and learning more things, but he was still a youngster with hot blood running in his veins. He wanted to get the practical knowledge.
He nodded cutely as Eric heaved a sigh and chuckled. He gazed at Mr. Clown, who turned his head down and said slowly, "I will take care of the house."
Eric placed his left hand on Adrian's shoulder without a word. His Meditation Aura rose quietly around them — not showy, not loud, just present, the way a tide comes in. Golden flames licked the air in silence. Sparks bloomed and died and bloomed again.
The realm this time seemed to put much more pressure Adrian, trying to reject him, the root cause of this was because Adrian was a little stronger than before, making more sparks bloom and die but Eric pushed and instilled more Meditation Aura, overpowering the restriction of the realm.
Adrian felt the world go soft at the edges. His vision stretched, wobbled, then snapped back into focus.
Except everything was different now.
The darkness of Layer 102 was not like the darkness of a room with the lights off. It was not the absence of light. It was something that had replaced light — dense, heavy, and old in a way that pressed against the skin. The air was bone-cold and perfectly still. Not the stillness of peace. The stillness of something holding its breath.
Adrian didn't move. He became aware, slowly, that his hand had found Eric's arm without him deciding to reach for it.
Eric said nothing about it.
"No need to worry," he said, his voice plain and unhurried in the dark. "We are inside a formation space. Nothing will happen to us here."
Adrian exhaled. Then immediately tensed again as something else made itself known — a weight pressing down from all directions, invisible and constant, like the layer itself had placed a palm on top of him and was slowly leaning.
"What is this pressure?" His voice came out smaller than he intended.
"The realm does not welcome those without Meditation Aura," Eric said. "It suppresses you — your body, your Aura, everything. The stronger you are, the harder it pushes back. You are still just a Nova, so it is still manageable." A brief pause. "You will get used to it."
Adrian nodded slowly, trying to settle into it the way Eric described. His body was still shaking, but he was getting a handle on it. He could manage this. He just needed a moment.
But for some reason, the more he stared in the dark, the more the dark seemed to stare back at him. Slowly, his heartbeat quickened. A lot of other things he feared started to pop up in his mind like firecrackers. His breathing became long and tensed, cold sweat slowly started to form on his forehead, plastering his hair to his forehead. His grip on Eric's arm became tighter.
"S-so what now? Do we just stand here? What if something comes to —"
Eric stopped listening.
Something was wrong.
By now, someone from the formation should have come to verify their identities. The protocol was clear. But the dark around them remained unbroken, and no footsteps came. Eric's eyes moved slowly across the black without turning his head.
Then he looked at Adrian.
Adrian was shaking too hard. His teeth were chattering in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. The black sparks appearing around his body were not the realm's suppression — they were coming from inside him. His eyes had gone slightly unfocused, not with fear but with something else. Something that wasn't quite Adrian was looking out through them.
Slowly, Black dragon scales started to form on his skin and his voice became deeper, his green eyes slowly changed colour and became blacker by the second.
"Adrian." Eric's voice sharpened — not loud, but with an edge that cut. "You are losing control."
He moved before he finished the sentence. A clean, precise strike to the artery on the side of Adrian's neck — not hard enough to harm, exactly hard enough to matter. Adrian's legs folded beneath him, and Eric caught him by the collar, lowering him to the ground without sound.
Eric knelt beside him, pressed a hand to his chest, and pushed his Meditation Aura inward — carefully, precisely as Adrian's body started to shine with a golden hue. It was dangerous work. He had done dangerous work before. Slowly, the scales faded. Adrian's eyes returned to green
After stabilizing Adrian's situation. He straightened up.
The silence that followed was a different kind of silence than before.
Deeper. Directional.
Eric did not move. He stood over Adrian's unconscious body and listened to the dark the way a person listens to a house they think might not be empty. His own heartbeat was audible to him now — steady, but quickening at the edges in a way he did not instruct it to.
Eric's eyes stayed still.
At this moment. Slow, deep footsteps could be heard. Something seemed to be crawling their way towards them from each direction. The silence was so quiet that he could hear his own heartbeat. The longer Eric stayed still. The more he felt his heartbeat quickened beyond his control.
The silence between each footstep was worse than the footsteps themselves. In that silence, something began to happen that Eric had not experienced in a very long time.
His mind cracked open.
Not by force. Not all at once. The way a sealed room lets in cold air through a gap too small to see — slow, inevitable, and wrong.
The kidnapping.
He was four years old. He remembered the smell before anything else. Rough hands. Darkness that was nothing like this darkness and yet suddenly identical to it. Max's voice somewhere behind him, small and afraid.
Eric's jaw tightened.
Their first kill.
The man who had saved them. His and Max's saviour. Eric remembered his face more clearly than almost any other face he had ever seen. He remembered the exact moment he understood what he had done. He had been so young that he hadn't known how long to feel it for.
The footsteps were closer now.
Eric could feel it — whatever was out there was not just approaching. It was feeding. The darkness wasn't simply hiding them. It was doing something to him. Pulling at the locked doors inside him with quiet, deliberate fingers.
His first awakening. The terror and the ecstasy of it, the feeling of something enormous moving through him for the first time, the moment he understood that his life would never resemble anything ordinary again.
His first time entering the Meditation Realm. How alien it had felt. How unwelcoming.
And then —
Shirakawa-go.
He did not let that one fully surface. His mind closed around it like a fist and held it down. Whatever was in the dark pulled harder. Eric held firmer. His heartbeat was loud in his ears now — not like a pump, but like a war drum counting down to something.
He exhaled once. Slow and controlled.
It is using the dark against me. He understood it now with cold clarity. It is also feeding on our fear.
He looked down at Adrian unconscious at his feet. Then back up into the black.
His eyes did not widen. His stance did not change.
But something in his gaze went very, very still.
"Something is in the dark with us..."