Felix stood in what could only be described as a workshop—though the term felt far too small for what he saw.
The room was a chaotic sprawl of creation. Splinters of wood littered the stone floor like fallen feathers. Spools of string were stacked in precarious towers, some unraveling into tangled nests. Dust hung thick in the air, stirred only by the occasional creak of the old timbers above. Blueprints covered the walls—hundreds of them. Some were carefully pinned and preserved, their lines sharp and immaculate. Others lay crumpled in corners, torn or half-burned, abandoned like failed memories.
Each design was a marvel.
Puppets—hundreds of them—rendered in impossible complexity. Joints, limbs, expressions, all annotated with symbols Felix didn't recognize but somehow understood. Every blueprint seemed to hum with life, as if the ink itself remembered movement.
"What's the point of showing me all this?"
Felix murmured, voice soft but tense.
"What am I supposed to learn from this place?"
Silence answered. Again.
He exhaled slowly, not quite a sigh—more like surrender.
Turning back to the walls, he studied the designs with a newfound weight in his chest. They were too perfect. Too alive. And that made him feel... small.
Was that the point?
He'd only recently begun carving his own creations—crude, clumsy things by comparison. These made his efforts feel like scratching stick figures in the dirt beside a cathedral's stained glass.
Still, he couldn't look away.
There was reverence in the way the joints were drawn. Compassion in the way each puppet's eyes had been shaped. Whoever made these hadn't just built things. They'd breathed something into them. Not art.
Intent.
Felix's gaze drifted, slowly, to the far side of the workshop—where a single door stood.
Unassuming.
Closed.
He moved toward it, boots crunching over discarded wood and curled parchment. With one last glance back at the blueprints, he reached for the handle.
It turned.
The door creaked open.
Revealing not a chamber, but a clearing.
Felix stepped through—and the chaos of the workshop vanished behind him like mist.
The air was still.
The sky overhead was a watercolor wash of twilight—violet bleeding into deep blue, stars just beginning to blink awake. Tall grass swayed around him, silver-edged under the fading light. Pale trees, bone-white and barren, stood in solemn silence along the edge of the clearing like sentinels. At its center was a shallow pool, glass-still, reflecting the sky with perfect clarity.
And beside the water…
A figure.
Seated. Slumped.
Motionless.
Felix moved with care, his boots silent against the soft, yielding earth. Before him, a figure slumped on a stone bench half-swallowed by the soil—its posture limp, limbs dangling like a marionette discarded mid-performance.
Once, it had worn robes—layered, ceremonial, regal. Now they hung in ruins, tattered and filthy. Fine threads trailed from its sleeves and wrists like spider silk—some snapped, others still clinging, fluttering gently in the breeze.
But it was the face that stopped Felix cold.
Or what remained of it.
The mask was shattered. Seven horns crowned it—some broken, some intact.
A ruin of what might've once been smooth porcelain. Most of it had fallen away, revealing only darkness beneath, but one jagged shard remained, clinging to the upper right side of its face.
And in that fragment… there was a glowing light.
It followed Felix as he moved. Like an eye.
Watching.
Felix froze.
That single, unblinking eye locked onto him. No sound. No words. Just quiet and stillness. Yet somehow, it screamed. It wasn't rage. It wasn't sorrow. It was worse.
It was knowing.
Felix's heart thudded against his ribs. A chill crawled down his spine. The thing—this Coward—shouldn't be able to look at him like that. Like it knew him. Like it recognized something.
And yet, he couldn't look away.
His breath caught.
It didn't move. Didn't speak. Just watched.
But even that was too much. That single cracked eye held a weight that felt like it could unmake a man.
"Stop it," Felix said quietly.
No answer.
He stepped closer, fists clenched, pushing back the fear that coiled in his gut like ice.
"I don't know what you are now," he said. "I don't particularly care either. But I'm not going to let you take my body."
The wind shifted. The grass whispered.
Felix stood tall, eyes burning.
"But—" he said, voice colder now, sharper, "—I'll make you a deal."
He extended a hand.
"Give me your strength. Whatever you've got left. And I'll use it. I'll make sure what they did to you doesn't get buried under paintings and half-truths."
He took another step forward, closing the distance.
"I'll burn their lies. I'll dig up their bones. If they're still out there—I'll find them. And if they're not…"
He shrugged, a bitter smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"I'll carve their names into the world anyway. Just so no one forgets."
The figure still didn't move.
Still didn't speak.
But the limbs creaked—ever so slightly.
Like they were listening.
Like they were considering.
Felix kept his hand outstretched.
"I'm not pleading," he said. "This isn't a prayer."
A pause.
Then—
"This is a pact."
The eye shook ever so slightly.
Then with a slow awkward movement.
It reached out to his hand with one of its remaining limbs.
And grasped his hand.
As it did, its eye faded as it slumped back over.
Then the world began to dissolve—
—not all at once, but gently, like the slow erasure of a dream. The twilight sky bled into shadows. The silver grass dimmed to ash. The figure slumped before Felix dimmed with it, its glowing eye flickering out like the last ember of a dying fire.
And just as the silence returned—
—he heard it.
A whisper.
Soft, fragile… yet piercing through the soul like a needle through cloth.
It wasn't a voice of hatred.
Not of vengeance.
It was sorrow—raw and unfiltered.
A voice stretched thin by centuries, yet somehow still full of grace.
And hearing it, Felix's fear vanished.
Every tension in his body unraveled.
He stood not before a monster—
—but before a man who had once loved something deeply, and lost it utterly.
"I wept for them… even as they betrayed me."
The words struck like a blade—but landed like a prayer.
A beat of silence followed.
Then, quieter still—so soft it might have been the wind through the trees:
"…Give them rest."
Felix didn't hesitate.
His voice was steady. Firm.
A pact sealed not in desperation—but in understanding.
"A deal's a deal."
And as the last light of the world faded,
Felix stood alone once more—
but with a new weight in his chest.
Not fear.
Not power.
Purpose.
Just then, Felix's eyes snapped open. For a moment, he lay still, chest rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths as his senses scrambled to catch up. The ceiling above him was dull gray—featureless and cold. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like angry insects.
He pushed himself up slowly, groggily, his head heavy and aching. The room he was in looked like a medical bay, but it felt all wrong—too sterile, too empty. The walls were bare, the corners sharp. No windows. No softness. Just metal, shadows, and silence. A heavy door stood opposite the bed—thick, reinforced, and sealed tight. It might've been a clinic once, but now? It looked more like a containment cell.
As he tried to piece together how he got here, a sudden jolt of pain tore through his forearm.
"Ghh—!" He hissed through clenched teeth, doubling over slightly. The pain was sharp, immediate—like fire lancing through his veins. He looked down and saw the arm tightly bandaged, the fabric stained faintly pink with dried blood. Wires snaked from his skin into a machine humming beside the bed. Some kind of monitor. Medical? Or something else?
Felix inhaled slowly, trying to center himself.
Think.
Okay… last thing I remember—I was in the Demon Domain. Before that, I fought my neighbor… or what was left of him. Then... blackness.
His eyes scanned the sterile room once more, the quiet hum of the machine beside him grounding him in reality.
They must've seen I was entering Stage Three. Locked me up in case the demon woke up before I did...
He gave a small nod to himself.
Yeah. That made the most sense. A containment protocol.
Just then, the mechanical locks on the door groaned to life—grinding gears, followed by a heavy click.
The reinforced door hissed open… and in stepped Instructor Madison.
She wore the same combat boots, the same spiraling horns, the same signature sneer. But now, there was something darker behind her eyes—an exhaustion poorly masked by amusement.
A grin tugged at her lips, and she said dryly,
"Good. You're awake. Thought I'd have to kill another."
Felix sat up straighter, his voice still rasped from disuse.
"Yes, ma'am. If I might ask… what happened?"
Madison leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed.
"Sudden surge. Something big happened in the Demon World. No one knows what yet, but it sent a massive spike of Dark Ether flooding through the rift. And since Cerberus is sitting right on top of it..."
She gestured vaguely around the room.
"Well, your little buds got an early boost. Budding stages accelerated like wildfire."
Felix's gaze dropped to the floor. He felt the weight in her words before he even asked.
"How many of us made it back?" he said quietly.
Madison was silent for a moment—long enough for his stomach to knot.
Then, her voice came—flat and unceremonious.
"You make thirteen."
Felix's heart sank.
Only thirteen? Out of how many? Dozens? More?
The number echoed in his mind like a death toll. He had expected losses—maybe a few. But not this. Not nearly everyone.
His voice was barely above a whisper.
"Do you know if a guy named William made it? About my height, dull eyes… kinda quiet."
Madison tapped her chin, thinking, then snapped her fingers.
"The gloomy kid? Yeah. He made it."
Felix let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. His shoulders relaxed slightly.
At least I'm not alone.