While the city of blue crystal pushed Hayjin and Zhilian's nerves to their absolute limits, the Red Obsidian Palace was proving to be a nightmare of an entirely different nature for the team from Doeken. Evelyn and Atlas were not sprinting through wide-open, dizzying rubble; they were navigating the claustrophobic bowels of an architectural complex seemingly engineered to crush the human spirit.
The infinite corridor they had entered was suffocating. The walls, forged from a matte, pitch-black material that actively devoured the light of Atlas's magical torches, were heavily studded with veins of jagged red crystal. These veins pulsed at regular, rhythmic intervals, making it feel less like a corridor and more like the throat of some titanic, living monster.
"Just how long is this damn place?" Atlas huffed, his booming voice muffled by the low, oppressive ceiling. "We've been walking for what feels like hours. By now, that analytical kid has probably gotten himself lost in a dead end or turned into some apex predator's lunch."
Evelyn did not slow her pace. The crisp rustle of her pale ash-gray tunic was the only constant sound besides the heavy, metallic clanking of Atlas's armor.
"I have already warned you not to underestimate them, Atlas," she said, her voice cutting through the dark. "Fatigue is making you talkative. Silence is a virtue you should learn to cultivate, especially in hostile territory."
Atlas chuckled, shaking his white-helmeted head. "Come on, Evelyn! A little optimism won't kill you. Zhilian is exceptionally strong, I won't deny that, but that Hayjin guy... he's literal dead weight. She's probably wasting half her focus just keeping him alive. We, on the other hand, are a perfect machine. I am your shield, you are the magical blade. We are invincible. There is no competition."
"The competition is not against them; it is against time," she retorted, her sharp purple eyes tirelessly scanning the heavy shadows stretching ahead. "Every second we spend dissecting the weaknesses of others is a second stolen from our own victory. Focus on the path. I can feel the air changing."
Evelyn's intuition was flawless. The narrow corridor abruptly opened into a massive, circular hall, its walls decorated with grotesque bas-reliefs depicting long-forgotten battles. The red veins in the architecture suddenly flared with a violent, feverish crimson light, and the floor beneath Atlas's boots vibrated as if the dungeon itself were chuckling.
"Don't lower your guard," Evelyn whispered, her eyes narrowing as shadows began to drip unnaturally from the high ceiling. "These are no simple beasts. Can you feel their mana? It's deeply distorted."
From the shifting darkness emerged the Shaded. They were tall, slender, faceless humanoids forged from a dense, smoky substance that resembled molten glass and moving shadow, with eyes that were nothing more than thin slits of burning ruby. The moment their feet touched the marble floor, their arms elongated, mutating into long, curved blades of jagged red crystal that screeched horribly against the stone.
"Finally, some movement," Atlas exclaimed, cracking his neck with a loud, echoey snap. He unsheathed his sacred greatsword with a fluid motion, unleashing a blinding, pure white light that cut through the gloom. "I was starting to fear we'd die of sheer boredom."
The creatures moved with an eerie, hive-like coordination. They made no vocal sounds, only the sharp, rhythmic whizzing of their crystal blades slicing through the air. Three of them dashed directly toward Atlas, while two others melted into the shadows, attempting to bypass him to reach Evelyn.
"Stay behind me!" Atlas shouted.
"I don't need a babysitter, Atlas. Mind your own," Evelyn replied with an irritating calmness.
Raising an elegant hand, she called upon her magic. The air around her instantly turned freezing.
Atlas grinned, tightening his grip on his sword. The blade emitted a harmonic hum, illuminating the entire hall. The first three monsters lunged at him with superhuman speed. Atlas didn't retreat; he took a calculated sidestep, letting the first crystal blade graze his heavy shoulder plate, and used the momentum to drive the pommel of his sword directly into the creature's chest.
Crack. The sound of shattering glass filled the air. Without breaking his rhythm, Atlas spun into a devastating circular slash, severing the legs of his other two pursuers.
"See? Nothing to it!" he yelled.
But his boast was cut short as he was forced to raise his shield to parry a brutal vertical slash that would have split an ordinary man in two. The sheer impact forced his heavy boots a few centimeters into the solid stone floor. "Alright... maybe they are a bit heavier than they look!"
"You move too much, Atlas. You're wasting precious energy," Evelyn commented.
With a sharp snap of her fingers, she invoked a series of jagged lances made of pure green energy that erupted violently from the ground. Two of the humanoids were impaled instantly, their obsidian bodies shattering like brittle glass under the immense pressure of the magical strike. They spilled no blood, only a dense, choking red dust that stained the floor.
Suddenly, four Shaded materialized from the dark, completely surrounding her. Evelyn remained entirely unfazed. She elegantly raised both hands, her fingers twisting to conjure six spheres of emerald-green energy. They were no ordinary projectiles; they orbited her like planets circling a sun, emitting a lethal hiss like a nest of disturbed serpents.
"Veritas," she whispered.
The emerald spheres shot forward. They didn't just strike the monsters; they pierced right through them, leaving perfectly circular holes that began to corrode the Shaded's bodies instantly. One of the creatures attempted to structurally regenerate, but the residual green energy lingered in its cavity, aggressively consuming its mana until the beast collapsed into a pile of inert ash.
"Evelyn, on your left! More are crawling down from the ceiling!" Atlas shouted, repeatedly hammering a monster's head with his shield before impaling its crystal heart with a precise thrust.
"I see them, Atlas. Mind you don't scratch your pristine tunic; I know how much you care about looking polished," she retorted.
With a swift, sweeping movement of her arms, she made three green spheres converge above her head, fusing them into a singular, concentrated beam of emerald light. The blast swept away the entire wave crawling down the walls. The resulting magical explosion was so intense it made Atlas stagger backward.
"Hey! Watch where you fire that stuff!" the knight exclaimed, parrying a stray shard at the last possible second. "You almost singed my hair!"
Despite his arrogance, Atlas was a master of the Sacred Sword. He moved with devastating precision, parrying the furious blows of the crystal blades, channeling Earth and Light mana directly into his weapon. With a massive horizontal sweep, he severed the torsos of two colossi simultaneously, pulverizing them into smoke.
The remaining Shaded realized individual attacks were entirely futile. Retreating into the center of the room, they rapidly melted and fused together, rising into two massive obsidian colossi over three meters tall, armed with titanic battleaxes made of blood-red crystal.
"Now we're talking!" Atlas leapt forward, charging his strike. His sword flared with brilliant golden light, the centuries of martial mastery of the Altavilla family flowing through every muscle. He cleanly evaded an axe blow that shattered the floor and struck the colossus's calf, forcing the behemoth to its knees. "Evelyn, now! I won't hold it down for long!"
"There is no need to shout, I am right here." Evelyn extended an open palm toward the second colossus. A massive green sphere, vibrating with unstable, terrifying power, materialized in her hand. "Dissolve."
The sphere exploded into a vast web of emerald energy filaments that tightly enveloped both colossi. The creatures emitted a sharp, deafening hiss a collective scream of agony as their solid bodies were systematically reduced to atoms of pure mana. Within seconds, nothing remained of the threat but the faint, acrid smell of ozone.
"Skillful, but nothing I couldn't handle," Atlas commented, sheathing his weapon with a highly theatrical flourish. He panted slightly, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his steel gauntlet. "You certainly haven't changed at all. Always finishing things with maximum drama."
Evelyn wasn't smiling. She walked toward the remains of one of the creatures, inspecting the red dust. "It was bait, Atlas. These creatures only served to test our reaction times. Don't you see? The palace is actively consuming their residual mana to power something else."
The corridor of the Obsidian Palace seemed to suddenly contract. For a fleeting instant, the hum of the red crystals shifted to a violently high frequency, turning into a sharp, piercing hiss that dug deep into Atlas's eardrums.
The knight froze mid-motion, his hand locked tightly onto the hilt of his greatsword. The air grew impossibly thick, instantly saturated with a suffocating, copper smell of fresh iron and slaughter. Evelyn, walking just a few paces ahead of him, abruptly vanished into a thick, scarlet fog that seemed to ooze directly from the porous walls.
When Atlas managed to reopen his eyes, the very architecture of the palace had mutated into something grotesque. The crystals no longer glowed with magical light; instead, they dripped a dense, dark, slimy liquid that reeked of clotted blood.
Before him, at the center of a circular room engulfed by foul, choking fumes, Evelyn was on her knees. Her pale tunic was already thoroughly soaked in dark, purple stains.
Behind her, emerging from the dark like a parasitic demon, was Hayjin.
But this was not the emaciated, ironic boy Atlas had mocked in Opes's garden. This version of Hayjin possessed skin of a deathly, grayish pallor, and his wide-open eye sockets held pupils reduced to tiny black pins surrounded by a bloodshot, crimson red. Planted on his face was an unnatural, horrific smile a jagged grimace that tore the corners of his mouth up to his ears, revealing rows of sharp, blackened teeth.
Before Atlas could even emit a cry or move a single muscle locked in place by an invisible, crushing paralysis the monstrous Hayjin dashed forward with inhuman speed.
With a swift, savage movement of his arm, he clawed Evelyn's throat. His fingers, ending in nails as thick and sharp as dagger blades, dug deep into the tender flesh of her neck. A dull, sickening sound of tearing leather filled the room. The skin stretched and violently broke, releasing a torrential jet of arterial blood that splashed directly across Hayjin's face. The boy widened his aberrant smile even further, drinking in the spray. Evelyn could emit nothing more than a muffled, wet gurgle as her hands uselessly tried to hold the severed edges of her trachea together.
Without a shred of hesitation, Hayjin brought his other hand down onto the girl's belly. His fingers penetrated the muscle tissue and the fabric of her tunic with the ease of a hot knife through butter. With brutal, primal force, he yanked downward, ripping her abdomen open from side to side.
The muscular wall tore open into a flaccid flap, and the internal pressure immediately caused the first loops of her intestines to spill outward, sliding onto the stone floor with a wet, heavy, squelching sound.
Atlas witnessed the scene in the grip of pure, visceral terror. He felt his frantic heartbeat thudding violently in his ears as Hayjin, sinking both hands deep into Evelyn's open abdominal cavity, began to rip out her internal organs with violent, savage yanks. Pieces of her liver, spleen, and stomach were torn away, cast carelessly to the ground amidst torrents of gastric fluid and dark, steaming blood. The ligaments of the flesh gave way with sharp, gruesome snaps.
Then, Hayjin leaned directly over Evelyn's face, her eyes still moving weakly in the final, agonizing spasms of death. The boy opened his jaws impossibly wide and buried his teeth into her face, tearing away a massive chunk of flesh with a savage bite.
The horrific sound of chewing echoed through the room a wet, heavy noise of cartilage and facial muscles being ground between teeth, mixed with the sickening sucking of blood. Hayjin continued to devour the tissues of her face, exposing her white jawbone and underlying teeth, until he reached the cranium.
With fingers heavily soiled in brain matter and fat, he grabbed the edges of the wound on her forehead and violently cracked her frontal bone. A sharp, vitreous sound like a shattered coconut rang out, and Evelyn's gray brain mass, veined with purple capillaries, slid out of the eye socket and split skull, pooling on the floor in a shapeless, bloody mush.
Atlas opened his mouth to scream, but no sound could escape his throat.
"Atlas! Atlas, wake up!"
A firm, freezing hand grabbed his shoulder, shaking him with aggressive vigor.
The knight tensed his muscles all at once, letting out a deep, gasping breath as if he had just resurfaced from a long, suffocating drowning. His sacred greatsword slipped from his trembling fingers, producing a loud, metallic clang as it clattered against the stone floor of the obsidian corridor.
The ceiling was completely intact. The red crystals pulsed with their usual, rhythmic magical light.
Standing directly before him was Evelyn. Her pale tunic was perfectly clean, her throat was entirely intact, and her face showed nothing more than an expression of cold, composed perplexity.
Atlas was completely drenched in sweat. His hands shook violently inside his gauntlets, and his heart was hammering so hard against his ribs that it made his entire chest ache. He brought a trembling hand to his head, desperately trying to banish the lingering echo of that chewing sound that still rang clearly in his eardrums.
"What... what happened?" he hissed, his voice reduced to a frail whisper.
Evelyn studied him closely, crossing her arms defensively. "You froze completely in the middle of the corridor for nearly two minutes. Your pupils were fully dilated and you began breathing as if you were suffocating. Your mana experienced a chaotic, dangerous spike. What did you see?"
Atlas stared intensely at the floor, almost fearing he would still see the bloody traces of that horrific massacre. He took a long, stabilizing breath, forcing himself to regain the rigid composure befitting a knight of the Altavilla family.
"Nothing... just... a bad trick of this place. An illusion of death. I am fine now."
He picked up his sword, tightening his grip until his knuckles turned stark white inside his gauntlets. The memory of that red-eyed, monstrous Hayjin and the inhuman brutality with which he had torn his companion to pieces was permanently burned into the back of his eyelids.
"Are you absolutely certain you can proceed?" Evelyn asked, turning around to resume the march. "We do not have the luxury of time for mental weaknesses, Atlas."
"I am certain," he replied, wiping the cold sweat from his face with the back of his gauntlet. "Let's move. As fast as possible."
As they continued down the remaining length of the hall, they reached a titanic silver metal gate blocking the final exit. It was heavily engraved with ancient runes that glowed with an unstable, erratic light.
"I believe that is the final passage," Evelyn whispered, pointing toward the threshold. "Beyond that gate, there will be no more room for chatter."
Atlas grew deeply serious, feeling the magical atmospheric pressure increase drastically. "Then let's go secure that license, Evelyn. Allow me."
With a titanic physical effort, Atlas threw his weight against the doors of the gate. The ancient metal screeched in protest, fighting back with an opposing magical force, but the knight's raw determination ultimately prevailed. When the massive doors flew open, they didn't find themselves in another subterranean room, but on a vast, suspended balcony overlooking a staggering chasm.
Before them, a few hundred meters away, towered the majestic Black Spire. The purplish, twilight light of the mirror city washed over the two representatives of Doeken, illuminating the grand, neutral balcony.
Evelyn took a calm step forward, but Atlas froze dead on the spot.
His eyes darted instantly to the figures resting on the far side of the terrace. There, covered in fine blue dust and leaning heavily against a fragment of rock, was Hayjin.
For a terrifying, fractional millisecond, Atlas's mind superimposed his vivid hallucination directly onto reality. He seemed to see the boy's skin fade back into that deathly grayish pallor, his eye sockets dilating into pools of dark blood, and the corners of his mouth stretching into that aberrant, razor-toothed smile, ready to maul.
A violent, visceral shiver started at the base of Atlas's neck and shot straight down his spine, freezing the blood in his veins. His fingers contracted convulsively inside his steel gauntlets, and his chest tightened in a sudden, suffocating panic attack. His heart rate skyrocketed once more.
Instinctively, the knight took a heavy half-step back, his hand flying to the hilt of his greatsword as if to defend his life against an ancestral demon.
"Atlas? What is wrong with you now?" Evelyn called out in a low voice. She didn't turn around, but she could easily sense the sudden, rigid terror in his posture.
The sound of her voice acted like a cold shower, shattering the optical illusion. The phantom overlay vanished instantly. Hayjin was simply standing there looking disheveled, thoroughly exhausted, and decidedly human, intent on making one of his usual sarcastic remarks to Zhilian.
Atlas gritted his teeth so hard they ached, forcing his rampaging heart to slow down. He expelled the trapped air from his lungs in a long, trembling sigh that he masked behind the heavy grunt of his armor. He forced his body back into absolute control, straightening his spine and planting his boots firmly onto the stone floor.
He is just an annoying kid, Atlas reminded himself. A mana-less analyst.
"Nothing," Atlas replied, his voice returning to its solid, deep register, though a slight edge of residual nervousness still betrayed the profound shock he had suffered. "The journey just left a bitter taste in my mouth. But I am here now."
With a heavy, deliberate step, the pride of the Altavilla family once again serving as his shield against fear, he advanced toward the center of the terrace, ready to face reality. He narrowed his eyes, tracking Zhilian's elegant blue silhouette and Hayjin's messy form. "I don't believe it... they actually made it here too. How is it physically possible that that kid is still in one piece?"
"Luck favors the bold or the incredibly foolish," Evelyn replied, her boots clicking softly as she began to traverse the wide stone bridge connecting their red labyrinth to the neutral zone of the tower. "Let us go find out which of those two categories they represent."
And so, while Hayjin and Zhilian desperately tried to catch their breath, the shadows of Doeken emerged from the red crystal labyrinth, bringing with them the crushing weight of a challenge that was about to turn into an inevitable, violent collision. The race was no longer merely against the design of the dungeon, but face to face against their own reflection.