The darkness thickened as Tom walked deeper into her thoughts. The air stank of iron and burned roses; his feet dragged across a ground that wasn't solid but felt like the memory of stone.
Webs of thoughts flickered around him. A broken laughter, screams sealed into silence, whispers that tried to coil into his ears.
Tom pushed them away. He wasn't here for nightmares or jumpscares, he was here for the truth.
A shard of memory that glowed violet against the sludge of her mind. It wasn't like the others; this one pulsed with life, with authority.
Tom reached toward it and was dragged in.
He stumbled into a chamber cloaked in shadows. A single flame burned at the center of the room, its light refusing to spread.
Sitting within the gloom was Ghira. Her face was sharp, proud, her rainbow hair pulled back, her violet peplos folded around her like a throne. She wasn't broken here. She was regal, waiting for someone.
Tom nearly fell to his knees. He knew that name, the whispers of Rosario, the files in the scraps, the warnings.
Azmaik Veyric. The one thought dead, a phantom in histories. How the heck he is alive!?
As Azmaik entered the room, his presence emptied the room. His body looked human, but his eyes were two voids swallowing the firelight that pulled everything inward. The sound of the chamber died as soon as he stepped in.
"Ghira." His voice wasn't loud, but it pressed like weight on her chest. "You know why I came."
She smirked, though Tom could see the stiffness in it. "You speak as though I have been waiting for you."
"You have." His words sliced straight, no hesitation. "Because you are tired of waiting for him. Tired of playing queen to a grave. Allow me to grab you a hand."
Her nails dug into her palm. For a second, Tom thought she would rise and strike him, but she stayed seated, jaw tight. "Careful, Veyric. There are some names I do not permit in my hall."
Azmaik stepped closer, unbothered. "Satan is gone. You know it. I will not lie to you about what you already understand."
Her eyes flared with hate, but also with something Tom couldn't name. "You came here to mock me? To preach that I am a widow in denial?"
"No." He leaned in slightly, the flame's light bending around his face. "I came to offer you what you crave most. His reborn."
The silence was heavy enough to drown in. Even Tom forgot to breathe for a moment.
Ghira's voice was soft not from weakness, but from the tremor of hope she wanted to bury. "Lies, the angels washed him up. They ripped his crown from his skull and burned it in the Ashura fields. Even I cannot reach him now."
Azmaik's lips curved in thoughts. It was not a smile, not mockery, but inevitability. "There are no absolutes in the Higher Depths. Death is an arrangement, not an end. You know this better than most. And I.… I know the paths."
Ghira looked at him long, her rainbow hair catching the faint flame, shimmering like tears that refused to fall. "What would you demand of me?"
Here, Azmaik straightened. His words came sharp, carrying the weight of a man who spoke not dreams but decrees.
"The Overseer is descending," he said. "The one banished from Durkan countless years ago. The One who once spread his wings over every mountain, every city, every soul. He was cast beyond the veil when a single man defied him, freed the lands from tyranny, and drove the Overseers into the void of space. That exile is unraveling. He is coming back to retrieve his Dorm."
Tom's blood chilled. He remembered the broken records, the whispers of ancient war but hearing it this way was something else.
Ghira's chin lifted, regal again. "If he returns, it is not my war. The empires will stand or fall without me. My throne is Darga, and my blood is my own."
Azmaik's eyes narrowed. "No. This is your war. Because he is not returning merely to reclaim Durkan. He is also seeking for the 5th Vessel of Artorias. The vessel is hiding in the Durkan and when he takes it, no empire will stand."
Tom recognized, if he is right, Artorias, is the highest on the Rank Board. Uptie 5. He remembered staring at it once, wondering if such a being could exist. Now, hearing Azmaik say it with reverence and threat. It made his knees feel hollow.
Ghira tilted her head, calculating. "The Vessel…. If that is true, then Durkan is already a graveyard waiting to be written. Why should I throw my power into a fire that will consume me?"
"Because," Azmaik leaned closer, his voice turned like a blade in silk, "when it is done, when the Overseer descends and I pull his strings, when Durkan restructures beneath us, I will give you what no one else can. I will restore Satan to you."
Tom's hands trembled, though his body wasn't even real here. The way Azmaik said it like he could actually do it.
Ghira's face was expression less, her composure broke into the raw wound of a woman who had waited centuries. "You would dare promise me this? Dare play with that wound in my chest? If you lie—"
"I do not lie," he interrupted with a cold vouce. "You know I do not need to. Look at me, Ghira. Have I ever come to waste words? My silence is worth more than your empire. But my offer, this is something beyond even your imagination. If we managed to be under the Overseer's roof then none can stop us!"
Her eyes flickered with an image of bloody war. Pride against longing. Rage against grief. She looked at the flame, as though waiting for it to give her a sign. Then, in a voice quieter than prayer, she said,
"What if I agree?"
Azmaik's expression didn't change. "Then you will lend me your strength tonight. When the Overseer steps closer, when the Vessel is revealed, you will hold the line. Your bracelets, your flame, your crown of Darga, everything you are, you will turn toward this war for the bargain we strike."
Ghira shut her eyes. For a moment, Tom thought she would refuse. Her hands clenched, veins showing through her skin. Her lips trembled with words unsaid.
Then she whispered, "Bring him back to me."
Azmaik's shadow moved, and Tom swore he saw the corners of the void curve like a smile. "Then it is sealed."
The flame went out. The memory shattered into shards of violet glass around Tom.
He stumbled back into the flow of her thoughts, gasping, clutching his chest though he had no body here. The weight of what he'd seen.
Azmaik is alive, the Overseer's returning, the Vessel of Artorias.... it all bouldered on him like a mountain of knives.
Through it all, Ghira's face haunted him. Not as the devil he fought, as the woman abandoned, betrayed, and willing to damn the world for one promise.
Tom staggered up from the deep layers of Ghira's mind, every step felt heavy like his legs were not legs but bundle of bricks. His head spun. His chest felt like stone.
Something was wrong about him.
The air…. It changed. The disgusting smell grew sharper, sour like rotten meat soaked in metal. The ground pulsed under him as though the memory itself had veins. The thoughts around him weren't whispers anymore. They had turned into screams, shredded, looping on themselves.
From the black sludge of the floor, something rose.
At first, he thought it was a shadow, but then it twitched. A pale, worm-like body stretched high, longer than any tower he'd seen. Its skin was half-transparent, full of writhing shapes that looked like trapped faces.
Dozens of jagged limbs stuck out at wrong angles, bending, cracking as if bones grew where bones shouldn't. Its mouth was no mouth at all, but a spiral of teeth grinding against each other, making a sound like knives on glass.
Its eyes were none. Instead, it carried hollows that sucked light out of the mind around them, leaving holes in reality.
He knew this.
It clicked inside his head, Elior's teachings flashing back to him like lightning. It's probably an Archghoul....
The Archghoul is a Spiritual Worm which protects the information in your mind from mind reading, forgetting or brainwashing. It can warp reality inside the person's mind to stop intruders and turn them into information itself trapping in a person's mind for eternity.
Tom's expressions dropped. His knees were vibrating. "…"
The worm bent its body like it was sniffing him, though it had no nose. The screams around them grew louder, louder, until they weren't voices but hands, reaching for him out of the air, trying to pull him into the black holes of its body.
The ground flipped. The horizon stretched sideways, bent like glass melting. Tom began to run. His feet splashed through memories, faces melting beneath his shoes, fragments of Ghira's life breaking apart and rearranging into jagged spikes.
The Archghoul screamed which shook the entirety of the place.
It wasn't sound. A pressure that split his head open like an egg. His vision cracked. For a moment, Tom saw himself not as he was, but as a word, a sentence written in someone else's book, ready to be erased.
"No—no, no, no—!" He spun his rotation desperately, twisting the air, trying to anchor himself, to keep his shape from unraveling into pure data.
The worm lunged. Reality bent with it. Walls of teeth opened where the ground used to be.
Tom jumped barely. His hand almost touched the spiral, and when it did, his skin fizzled into lines of text before snapping back.
He ran deeper, into the storm of memory. The faces, the screams, the bleeding ground, it all turned into a maze, a trap.
Behind him, the Archghoul followed. Its body slid without moving, bending in and out of the walls like it owned this place.
Tom's lungs burned. His mind burned worse than woods.
Tom knew this wasn't just about escaping. If he failed here, he wasn't going to wake up at all. He'd be nothing but a forgotten word, trapped inside Ghira forever.
The Archghoul's shadow covered him....