The first thing I noticed was the wall—cold metal, painted with blood and carved by claws far too deep to belong to anything human.
My stomach twisted.
It was a seamless expanse of iron, weeping streaks of rust and something darker. The air hung thick with the coppery tang of old blood, a scent that clung to the back of the throat.
Ahead of me, a mage and a warrior stood tall, while the rest of us… we were just meat. A handful of unawakened fools dragged into hell.
The stronger ones had already moved on, because of course they had. Staying behind meant dying here. The portal was gone. The way back was worse.
A scream cut through the silence. I turned just in time to see a man clutching the stump where his hand used to be. His blood hit the ground before I even saw the monster.
It stepped forward.
A raven's body. Talons as long as knives. And where its head should have been… a human face, snapping backward as if its neck didn't exist. Empty eyes stared at us upside-down.
The voice that grated from its throat wasn't human. It was a wet, scraping sound, like stones grinding in a tomb.
"New readers…" The mouth split open, the skin at the corners tearing as the jaw unhinged with a sickening pop. "...what a treat."
It wasn't just one row of teeth, but nested, layered daggers of stained ivory, all glistening and sharp enough to shred steel.
A jolt of pure, chemical terror shot down my spine and lit every nerve on fire. My muscles coiled, my stomach dropped, and the world narrowed to a single, desperate imperative: run.
Amidst the screaming in my own head, one absurd splinter of a thought lodged itself in my brain—Readers?—before being washed away by the sheer, animals need to live.
Every step felt like fighting through invisible threads, a web tightening around me. The others were the same.
We weren't fighters. We weren't hunters.
We were bait—thrown here because someone stronger wanted a distraction.
The raven lunged. One of the boys vanished into its beak, torn in half before he had time to scream.
Just like that, gone.
That was when the hunters struck.
The mage raised her staff, and violet light poured out, birthing vines of thorns that coiled around the beast's wings. The warrior leapt, his sword gleaming.
For a second, I thought maybe—
The raven caught the blade between its teeth and snapped it like brittle wood. Its face twisted into a grin too wide, too sharp.
"Strong warrior," it hissed. "So weak without your toy."
The warrior roared, dropped the broken hilt, and charged barehanded.
"No! You idiot!" the mage cried.
Another shadow moved.
A second raven ripped out of the darkness, its talons plunging straight into his chest. His scream turned wet. He clawed at the monster's grip, but the fight was already over.
The beast laughed.
I thought the sound alone might drive me insane.
What a sadistic fuck, I thought.
"Yes," the raven whispered, twisting its head toward me. "I agree."
A chill crawled down my spine, and my thoughts turned to sludge.
Its feathers fell away like ash. The face beneath was painted white, a nose red as blood.
A jester's leer stretched across its skin, as though it had been smiling at me all along.
"It can read your mind! Run!" the violet magician shouted. She and the other mages lifted their staves, light gathering around them.
Hunters rushed to form a barrier in front of us.
"We have to reach the Control Room," she snapped. "Only then do we have a chance."
The Jester tilted its head, amused. Then it tore through the barrier like wet paper.
"Impossible," someone gasped. "That was an S-rank barrier—"
The words died with him. The Jester's claws speared his chest. It lifted him high, drinking from his throat as he kicked and screamed. The crimson glow in its eyes pulsed brighter with every swallow. Its laughter slithered into our ears, worming deeper, until I couldn't tell if the sound was in the air or inside my skull.
Oh dear, oh dear—do keep up, little watcher; I'm already late with your heartbeat.
The invisible blow landed on every mind at once. For us, the unawakened, it was like having a railroad spike hammered through the eye. We shrieked, falling and clutching our heads. The hunters, however, only staggered. The assault washed over them, a wave that broke against the rocks of their will, leaving only a spray of pain.
Instantly, they reformed their line, not in front of us, but around the magician in violet. They became her shield, their bodies a promise of defiance as she fought to weave the chaotic threads of her spell into a weapon.
"I need one more minutes!" the violet magician cried, her aura flaring, light bleeding from the staff clenched in her shaking hands. Vines of energy burrowed into the ground, weaving a lattice of power. "60 seconds and I can get us out!"
The words hit me like a rope tossed to a drowning man. Out. I wanted to believe. I almost did.
But somewhere in the back of my skull, another truth gnawed. No one left a Gate unless the boss was dead… or unless they somehow slipped past it. Everyone knew that. She wasn't saving us. Not really. At best, she was moving us to another corner of hell.
Still, the lie was enough to keep me moving. To keep all of us breathing.
We all knew the truth, though. The Jester was playing with us.
The strongest hunter was already gone, body emptied and tossed aside. The rest stood frozen, weapons raised but unmoving.
Instinct screamed the same thing to all of us: run.
The Jester let the corpse fall with a dull thud. Crimson eyes swept across the survivors, its grin stretching wider, endless and wrong.
My insides knotted just meeting its gaze.
"We're almost there," the magician whispered. "Just a few more seconds."
Hope flickered in my chest. Fragile, desperate hope. Maybe—just maybe—I'd make it out alive.
Then her voice turned to steel. Cold. Certain.
"We only need a few unawakened for bait," she said. "Some of you will stay behind."
The words gutted me worse than any claw.
For a heartbeat, I feared her more than I feared the Jester.
She wasn't bluffing.
The spell she wove would pull us from this chamber, yes—but not all of us.
Never all.
The Jester's laughter swelled, vibrating through the walls, echoing inside my skull until I thought it would split. It understood the game better than we did. It knew survival meant sacrifice. It knew betrayal was inevitable.
And it savored every moment.
Light exploded, the chamber shattering into brilliance.
I closed my eyes and prayed.
When I opened them again, the world had shifted into jet black.
[Error]
The word didn't appear on a screen. It burned across my vision, carved into the air itself.
What… was this?
More lines flickered into place, jagged symbols rearranging into something I could almost read:
[Error: Insufficient authority to enter this room]
Authority? This is a room?
Before I could think, the letters bled into new shapes.
[Notification: Abyssal Jester has been alerted]
My stomach dropped.
"…fuck."
[Appraisal initiated]
[Rank: ???]
Mark: [Dormant Vessel]
Skill: [Fatebreaker's Providence]
Lineage: [Devil]
Class: ???
"…my ancestor is a devil?" I muttered. Then I shook my head. "Doesn't matter. The Jester is coming. Check the skill."
[Fatebreaker's Providence - X Class]
[Outcome: Ability determined by dice roll each side providing an ability of an old god]
[0/6 ability discovered]
"Fatebreaker's Providence has been granted," the system's voice rasped. "As you are the first human to enter the Boss Room."
Boss room? My stomach dropped.
The chamber shuddered.
[Survival Probability: 1% — Irrelevant]
A spark flared in my skull. One percent. One percent. One percent. The words pounded like a drum. My lips pulled into a grin I didn't recognize as mine.
For a moment, the insanity of it all—the glowing letters, the impossible Skill—actually made me smile. A hysterical, stupid smile. It was the kind of thing you read about in a webnovel, not the kind of thing that happens to you seconds before you die. I almost forgot. The Boss Room.
My eyes strained against the suffocating blackness. "Huh," I said, my voice flat. "No lights. Guess they don't get many visitors."
[Devil Sight Actived]
[User is able to see in darkness]
There it stood.
A Titan Jester.
Six arms—three stacked on each side like a grotesque chandelier—hung in tiers of white-gloved hands, each limb bigger than a piano and long enough to scrape the walls. Its painted grin stretched across a porcelain mask, cracked like old china, and behind it burned crimson eyes bright as stage lamps. The body was all wrong: too narrow at the ribs, too wide at the hips, legs like stilts clattering against the stone with each shift. Every movement came a beat too late, like the world struggled to keep up.
Its aura did not press down—it seeped. Thoughts rotted at the edges just by standing near it. Memories leaked. Names slipped away. A sugar-sweet carnival scent clung to the rot of corpses. Being in its presence felt like my brain was molding from the inside out.
The Raven Jester had been above S-tier. This monster sat outside the ladder entirely. An X-tier.
[Error]
[User is not authorized to enter this chamber]
For a heartbeat, the Titan was frozen, like a puppet waiting for the curtain to rise.
Then, a die materialized in the air, six blackened faces gleaming with pale light.
The die clattered against the stone, rolling end over end.
It landed on five.
[Time Stop]
[Time may be halted. Duration: 5 seconds. Uses: 5. Cooldown]
[Dice will refresh in 6 hours]
[1/6 abilities unlocked]
[Chronos shall lead his aid]
The words seared into my vision. The Titan's head twitched toward me. The painted grin widened.
The show had begun.