Azmaik lay down in the bunker, his back against the cold floor, eyes shut but restless. The others around him were still whispering, coughing, shifting in sleep. He did not hear them.
His hand pressed against the pocket where a faint red rune pulsed like a heartbeat. The glow leaked out, small lines of light crawling across his shirt.
He knew what was coming. He had felt it before.
When sleep finally pulled him under, he did not fall into dreams of sand or blood. Instead, the void opened. A blackness without end, without ground, without horizon.
In that endless dark, a shape moved. Not a man, not a beast. Something else. Something that refused form. Its edges bent and stretched, like reality itself couldn't decide what it was.
Came the eyes.
Two enormous purple lights burned through the void, cutting into him. They had no pupils, no lids, just raw awareness. When they fixed on him, Azmaik felt his body vanish.
He was nothing but thought, naked before something too vast to understand.
The entity spoke, not with sound, but with a vibration that filled his bones.
"Azmaik… we meet again."
The words pressed against his skull. He gritted his teeth. "I know why you're here. Say it."
The shape shifted, slow and heavy, like a mountain dragging across the earth. Its purple eyes dimmed, then flared.
"The shards… you have done well. Blood is the price, and you paid it without fear."
Azmaik's jaw tightened. Images flashed in his mind, broken bodies, blood-soaked hands, his blade cutting down men and women in the bunker. He did not shake. He had done it knowingly.
The voice grew sharper.
"Now, listen. The 'Bizarro Solace of Sun'… you must claim it. It sleeps within the Durkan Legion. Guarded, someone is carrying it. Only then can the circle complete."
Azmaik frowned. "And then?"
The void seemed to shiver. For a moment, the thing almost smiled though it had no mouth.
"Attempt the Nine Day's Paradox. Suffer it. Endure it. Break through it. Only then will I find my vessel. My body. I will walk again, reborn as Artorias."
The name rattled inside his head like thunder.
Artorias.
He didn't understand its full meaning, but he knew it wasn't human. Something older. Something that didn't belong here.
Azmaik breathed heavily. His fists closed tight. He remembered the first time he saw those eyes, years ago, in another dream. That was when it first whispered about shards, when it demanded a toll in blood. He had thought it madness then.
Now, the rune in his pocket burned against his chest, proof it wasn't madness at all.
He forced his voice steady. "And if I fail?"
The purple light narrowed, as if amused.
"Failure will not be yours alone, Azmaik. This world will fold. Every life will rot. Every soul will scream as I unmake them. You are my knife, but also my gamble. Do not waste it."
Azmaik's breath caught in his throat. The weight of the words pushed against him, more crushing than any blade. He tried to step back, but there was no ground to stand on.
The voice whispered one last time, softer, almost tender.
"Wake. The time shortens. Find the Solace. Bleed for me."
The purple eyes vanished. The shape broke apart like smoke in the wind. The void collapsed.
Azmaik jolted awake in the bunker, sweat dripping down his temple. His pocket still glowed faintly red, as if mocking him.
He sat up, heart pounding. The others were still asleep, unaware of what stood inside his shadow.
He touched the rune, and for a moment, he swore he could feel the cold edge of another heartbeat pulsing inside it but not his own.
Azmaik sat alone, sweat still cooling on his skin, when the thought gnawed at him. He opened his Menu. Fingers trembled slightly as he tapped the [ Note ] tab.
There it was, a new line, a new note.
[ Note Uodated: The Nine Day's Paradox ]
The words pulsed on the screen in a deep crimson glow, almost alive. He tapped it, and the note unfolded itself into jagged fragments, as if the system itself struggled to contain the weight of it.
[ The Nine Day's Paradox ]
"A trial where time bends, where fate collapses in on itself.
For nine days of night, reality will split.
Each day devours the last. Each choice devours the next.
Only one truth will remain when the ninth night dies.
Failure means dissolution. Not death or erasure.
The world will not remember you. You will not remember yourself.
Your blood will feed the one who waits for the divinity to be swallowed."
The words sank into Azmaik's mind like claws. He read them twice, three times, but they didn't become clearer. If anything, they grew heavier, pressing on his skull, whispering meanings between the lines. Nine days… nine nights… a paradox that eats itself.
He exhaled sharply, forcing a laugh through the rising dread. His shoulders shook, his eyes gleamed wild.
So that was it. The Paradox wasn't just a trial. It was a slaughterhouse for time itself. A loop that would eat away at sanity, peel reality apart, test not strength but endurance of the soul.
The more he thought about it, the more the idea thrilled him.
The system didn't say what he would face in those nine days, shadows of himself, reflections of his choices, beasts that fed on memory, or worse. But it promised one thing: no one comes out unchanged.
Azmaik's chest heaved with excitement. His lips cracked into a grin, then split wider into raw laughter.
It hung in the bunker's quiet, a sound that didn't belong in the silence of the night.
"Tomorrow… it begins." His voice shook, both fear and hunger threading through it. "Nine days of night. Nine days of tearing. Nine days of truth."
He tilted his head back, laughing harder now, his eyes wide. The rune in his pocket pulsed along with his laughter, almost as if the deity inside was laughing with him.
The world outside remained flat and infinite, but the clock was already ticking. One hour of night was a night here for them. Nine hours meant nine days. The night had only just begun.
Something was coming.
Something that could erase all of them, or forge something greater.
Azmaik gripped his chest as if to steady his own heart, but the madness of anticipation lit up his veins.
Tomorrow.... the Nine Day's Paradox would open its jaws.
Azmaik's laughter faded into low breaths, sharp and uneven.
His hand drifted to the pouch at his side, pulling out a thin, crooked stick. Its surface was blackened, as if charred by fire, but still carried a faint glow.
He knelt on the cold stone and with deliberate care began drawing a chained sigil.
The lines locked together like teeth, each curve jagged, each stroke humming with an unnatural pull. The air thickened.
When he placed the stick at the center, the sigil shivered. A faint glow rose, not bright, not fire, but something like smoke made of light. Then the smoke twisted.
A figure began to form around him. Barely visible, like a shadow remembered from a dream where an outline with no body, a whisper with no mouth. Its shape bent wrong, folding in on itself, wings that weren't wings, limbs that stretched into nothing.
Azmaik's lips moved. Words spilled out, not his words, not his tongue.
Low, guttural sounds that vibrated in the air, half chant, half curse. The language itself felt wrong, like it shouldn't exist in this world.
The figure leaned closer. Its purple eyes flickered into view, for a second only. The sigil trembled harder. The stick cracked with a tiny scream, as if it had a voice.
Something dropped.
A black fruit appeared, hanging in the air before his face. Small, smooth, flawless, yet so dark it seemed to drink every shred of light in the room.
His pupils dilated, breath catching. Slowly, reverently, Azmaik reached out, grasped it, and without hesitation sank his teeth in.
The taste was ash, sweetness, blood then nothing.
The light vanished. The figure melted away. The sigil dulled into dust.
Azmaik sat in the silence, licking his lips, waiting for his veins to burn, for visions to pour, for the world to split.
Nothing happened.
Only the cold, the stone, and the echo of his own heartbeat remained.