Silence fell over the arena, but it was not an ordinary silence.
It was a heavy silence, as if the earth itself was holding its breath.
***
Victor resumed his training. William had ordered him to perform running exercises. He told him: "I want you to run fifteen laps around the arena without stopping."
When Victor heard this, he was shocked and began to stutter as he ran, dripping with sweat, his breath ragged, his heart pounding fiercely.
Victor fell on his face and broke his nose, but he did not surrender. He rose, wiped the blood from his nose, and resumed running.
Then he fell again, but he quickly got up, refusing to give in.
***
As for Nicholas, he did not move from beneath the withered tree.
But his blood-stained hand began to tremble again, not from fear, but from something growing inside him.
Something warm... alive... as if the blood was no longer a memory, but a seed.
From afar, he saw Victor stumble for the third time.
He fell to his knees and struck the ground with his hand, angry at himself.
Then he rose, without saying a word.
He did not look at William.
He did not ask for help.
He simply stood up again and began to run once more.
***
At that moment, Nicholas felt a slight pain in his chest.
Not the pain of a wound, but the pain of envy.
He wondered in confusion: "Why? Why does he not surrender? Why does he not break?"
"Why does he not kneel like the others?" he whispered to himself, his eyes fixed on that fragile body that refused to die.
William approached Nicholas and stood beside him without looking at him.
He said in a faint voice, as if addressing the wind rather than his friend:
"Jack the Ripper... did not kill anyone in vain. Every victim carried something. They carried a secret or thoughts that opposed the organizations and their elitist judges. A document. A message. Or... a memory." No, they do not want anyone to remember them."
Nicholas did not answer.
But his heart began to beat faster.
And William continued his speech: "The necklace around his neck... is not like the others. It is one of the five that have petrified; it is not bleeding blood only, but now the necklace has begun to turn to stone. The necklace has taken control of Jack the Ripper's mind and controlled him."
***
At that moment, Nicholas recovered images from the past—images of people shackled in chains—and heard their voices. He said to himself: "It cannot be that the same curse is hunting me again."
***
Victor stopped training.
He caught his breath, because he had heard their conversation.
He asked William: "About how the necklace controls its user?" William sighed and said to him: "When the user of the necklace becomes angry, when anger, hatred, and revenge take hold of them, they transform into a monster without feelings or sensations, a puppet controlled by the necklace. The necklace reflects the user's emotions and grants them power. But if the
user is weak
of will, and surrenders to defeat, then they will be defeated. There are limits to the power of the necklace and its use. When you trained in your first session in the Room of Awareness, when I asked you to solve the riddle of the City of Lies and Truth. It was not just a test or a simple riddle. This room purifies the mind of the necklace's user."
And Victor listened to William's words in silence, appearing stunned.
Victor said: "I still do not understand. Can you simplify it for me?" So William answered him: "Very well, humans possess:
Sight
Hearing
Smell
Taste
Touch.
They use these senses in their lives. And there is also an additional sense, the sixth sense. This term is used to describe the ability to perceive or feel things that cannot be explained by the five traditional senses. This sense includes things such as:
- Sensing danger
- Prediction
- Sensing others
- The ability to sense the atmosphere or surrounding energy
And the necklace enables the use of all these senses at once."
And there is another way to purify negative energy: doses of 'Kyprinew'. But they are dangerous. The user—as a leader or bearer of the Path of Wisdom—is allowed only one dose, to activate a secondary path (such as the Manipulator or the Deceiver). More than that... they may lose themselves."*When the heart of its user becomes polluted