The moment the trio stepped across the threshold, the laws of the physical world dissolved like salt in a turbulent sea. The long, vaulted stone hall didn't just fade; it curdled. The air grew heavy with the stench of damp earth and the metallic tang of dried blood. The emerald mist thickened, swirling into pillars that resembled the twisted trunks of ancient, dying trees.
"Juniors, hold your breath! Stick close to my aura!" Veora's voice rang out, sharp and commanding, though it lacked its usual arrogance. Her rapier was drawn, the silver blade humming with wind essence as she tried to cleave through the encroaching fog. "Elara is weaving a High-Tier Phantasm. Do not trust your eyes!"
But the warning came too late. The floorboards beneath their feet turned into soft, rotting soil. The stone walls vanished, replaced by an infinite, desolate horizon under a sunless, purple sky. They were no longer in a manor; they were standing in the center of a sprawling, ancient graveyard.
Rows upon rows of jagged, moss-covered tombstones stretched into the distance, looking like broken teeth jutting from the gums of the earth. Rayn looked down at the grave directly at his feet. His eyes, cold and sharp, scanned the inscription.
[Freddy Orenstein: Servant of the Crown, Servant of the Grave]
He looked to the left. [Novara: The Weaver Who Lost Her Way]
To the right. [Veora: The Fallen Flower of Ashbury]
Names he had only known for a few days were etched into the stone as if they had been dead for centuries. But then, Rayn's gaze shifted to a cluster of smaller, older stones in the shadow of a weeping willow. His breath hitched.
[Jai. James.]
Names from Aetheleon. Names from the life he had lived for a week and before he arrived at this planet, before he find Vespaera and before he join the Spectre investigation team.
"How?" Rayn whispered internally, his voice echoing in the chamber of his soul. "How could a petty Ghoul in this backwater world know the names of those from a world across the stars?"
Inside his Dantian, the duplicate soul of the Sovereign stirred. The chains of the soul-realm rattled, though the sound was now familiar and almost comforting.
("She doesn't know them, Rayn,") the spirit rumbled, its voice dripping with intellectual disdain. ("This is the 'Mirror of the Heart's Abyss.' It is a passive spell that leaches off your own subconscious. She isn't showing you what she knows; she is forcing your own mind to decorate your own execution. It is a clever trick for an ant.")
Rayn adjusted his internal focus. "Speaking of tricks... I cannot keep calling you 'YAOWANGMING' or 'Will.' It is cumbersome. Do you have a name you prefer, Ming?"
The spirit paused, the crimson fires of its eyes flickering. ("A name? I have forgotten many of my titles. But... in the era before I ascended the Nine Suns, I was a scholar of the hidden arts. I wrote books that no man was ever worthy to read. In one of those volumes, I created a character—a silent guardian who walked between the stars. Call me Silas.")
"Silas," Rayn repeated, the name tasting like old wine and iron. "A name from a book you wrote. Fitting for a man who is currently a figment of my own existence. Tell me, Silas, why am I unaffected by this? Veora looks as though she is fighting a tidal wave of grief, yet I feel nothing but a mild annoyance."
("You are the Sovereign Yao Wang Ming reborn,") Silas replied with a rasping laugh. ("Your soul is an infinite ocean; her spell is a cup of vinegar thrown into the Atlantic. And that girl, Vespera... she is a Dragon of the True Lineage. Her spirit is forged in the fires of the Primordial Era. This Ghoul is trying to drown a whale in a puddle.")
Rayn looked at Veora. The high-spirited Spectre was struggling. Her face was pale, her knuckles white as she gripped her sword. She was seeing the graves of her mother and her friends, and unlike Rayn, she didn't have the soul of an ancient god to shield her.
Suddenly, a wave of green fog surged toward them. Instinctively, Veora lunged forward, grabbing Rayn and pulling him into her protective circle.
"Don't wander off, you idiot!" she hissed, her voice trembling.
In her desperation to protect her 'weak' juniors, she pulled Rayn's face directly into her chest. Rayn felt the sudden, suffocating pressure of her form against his face. For a moment, the scent of lavender and ozone filled his senses, a stark contrast to the rot of the graveyard.
Rayn's eyes remained wide and deadpan. He didn't move. He didn't struggle. He simply waited for a second before his muffled voice emerged from her cloak.
"Senior... I appreciate the concern. Truly. But your 'ballistics' are quite heavy, and I believe I am closer to death by suffocation than I am by Elara's magic."
Veora froze. She looked down, realizing she was practically burying the boy in her bosom. Her face went from deathly pale to a violent, incandescent red in a heartbeat.
"You—you lecherous brat!" she shrieked, her embarrassment momentarily shattering the phantasm's hold on her.
With a surge of wind mana, she shoved Rayn away. The force was more than she intended. Rayn flew backward, his body tumbling into a thick patch of green mist that seemed to open up like a hungry mouth.
"Rayn!" Vespera shouted, reaching out, but the mist snapped shut.
Rayn felt the sensation of falling, not through air, but through a viscous, cold liquid. When he finally hit the ground, the graveyard was gone.
Rayn stood up, dusting off his black Spectre coat. He was in a different part of the manor—or perhaps a different dimension altogether. The space was a vast, dark hall filled with a fog so thick he couldn't see his own feet. The silence was absolute, heavy enough to weigh on the eardrums.
("She separated you,") Silas noted. ("She thinks you are the weak link. She wants to feast on the 'chick' before dealing with the 'hen' and the 'dragon.' Show her the error of her ways, Rayn.")
"I intend to," Rayn whispered.
He held out his left hand. Using the Controller power, he reached into the ambient mana of the room. He sensed the metallic traces in the walls—iron nails, brass hinges. He focused his will. "Coalesce."
Small flecks of metal flew from the shadows, swirling around his palm. Within seconds, they forged themselves into the intricate frame of a vintage lantern. Then, he knelt and touched the floor. He used his earth element to draw the silica from the dust and stone, and with a flash of intense heat generated by his fire essence, he smelted the sand into clear, tempered glass.
In less than two minutes, a perfect, functional lantern sat in his hand. He snapped his fingers, and a tiny spark of his Conqueror flame ignited within. The pale light didn't just illuminate the room; it pushed the green fog back as if the light were a physical wall.
"Now," Rayn said, his red eyes scanning the darkness. "Where are you hiding, little ghost?"
A piercing scream echoed through the hall—a woman's cry, filled with such raw agony that it would have shattered the mind of a lesser man. Rayn narrowed his eyes. He began to walk toward the sound, his boots thumping rhythmically on the old wood.
At the end of the hall, he found them. Four women were chained to a stone pillar, their clothes tattered, their faces hidden by long, matted hair. They were sobbing, their bodies shaking with rhythmic, rhythmic grief.
Rayn stopped five paces away. His heart ached. Not because he felt pity—the man who was Yao Wang Ming had seen empires fall and billions perish without blinking—but because the spell was trying to force a physical reaction of 'empathy' from his body.
("Look at them,") Silas mocked. ("The perfect bait for a 'kind-hearted' hero. You can feel it, can't you? The artificial sorrow?")
"It's annoying," Rayn muttered.
He walked forward and placed a hand on the shoulder of the woman closest to him. "What happened, lady? Why are you crying in this wretched place?"
The sobbing stopped instantly.
The four women turned their heads with a sickening, wet crack of bone. Their faces were not human. Their skin was the color of bruised plums, their eyes were hollow pits leaking black ichor, and their mouths were filled with rows of needle-like teeth. They let out a simultaneous, glass-shattering shriek, lunging at Rayn's face with clawed hands.
To a normal person, this was the moment of heart failure. To Rayn, it was a nuisance.
A creepy, thin smile spread across Rayn's face. In a motion too fast for the human eye to track, a blade of pure, white light manifested in his hand—the Conqueror's Sword.
Slash.
The head of the first demon-witch flew into the air, its black blood vaporizing before it could touch Rayn's coat. The headless body slumped, turning into grey ash before it hit the floor.
The other three witches screeched in genuine terror. They weren't used to their prey fighting back with such clinical efficiency. They scrambled backward, their claws clicking on the wood as they tried to flee into the fog.
"Running?" Rayn asked, his voice low and melodic. "In my world, once the sword is drawn, the debt must be paid."
He didn't chase them. He simply raised his other hand. Using the Controller power, he gripped the air and the earth. "Boundary."
The stone walls groaned and shifted, the very floor rising up like a wave to block the witches' path. They were trapped in a square of compressed air and solid stone, with Rayn standing at the only exit.
Realizing they couldn't escape, the witches fell to their knees, but not in prayer. They began to chant in a guttural, forgotten tongue. They scratched their own chests, spilling black blood onto the floor.
"Come to us! Children of the Void! Feed on the arrogant light!"
The ground beneath them began to ripple. One by one, shapes began to emerge from the shadows. Hellhounds with skin made of shadow and teeth of obsidian. Shadow-crawlers with spindly, multi-jointed limbs. Spectral knights in rusted armor, their visors glowing with baleful green fire.
In less than a minute, the hall was no longer empty. A total of four hundred monsters stood between Rayn and the end of the corridor. The collective killing intent of the horde was enough to make the air itself feel heavy and toxic.
Rayn stood his ground. Instead of fear, a familiar heat began to rise from his core. His blood began to sing—the song of the Sovereign who had stood atop a mountain of corpses to claim his throne.
"Four hundred," Rayn whispered, his aura shifting. The 'weak junior' mask vanished, replaced by the terrifying, suffocating pressure of a God. "Silas, do you see this? They brought a feast."
("Then eat, Yao Wang Ming,") Silas replied, his voice filled with a savage joy. ("Show them why the heavens feared your name.")
Rayn gripped the hilt of the Conqueror's Sword. The blade, which had been a pristine, holy white, began to change. Deep, crimson energy bled into the metal, turning it the color of fresh arterial spray. Veins of black lightning—the Void Scourge—began to crackle along the edge, dancing with a destructive hunger.
The monsters hesitated. Their primal instincts were screaming at them to flee, to burrow back into the dark. They realized they weren't facing a human. They were facing a disaster.
Rayn crouched low, the ground beneath his boots cracking from the sheer pressure of his release.
"My turn," he said.
With a boom that shook the entire manor, Rayn launched himself into the center of the horde, a crimson streak of death in the emerald gloom.