The air in the Labyrinth of the Flayed was stagnant, but it wasn't empty.
These jagged tunnels bore the ten-thousand-year-old scars of mortal pickaxes. The limestone walls were stained black—not with mold, but with the dried, oxidized blood of the millions of Ash-Ridge slaves who had died excavating these iron veins. The oppressive, phantom weight of their lingering resentment pressed against the senses, cut only by the thick, cloying smell of sandalwood and blood emanating from the bronze censer in Dver's hand.
Purple smoke curled around his ankles like a living thing, illuminating the dark.
"He's here! I smell the Saintess's beacon!"
A shout echoed from a side tunnel. Footsteps followed—heavy, desperate, and filled with the murderous intent of men who knew they were in a zero-sum game.
Dver didn't run. He leaned against the damp, pick-scarred stone wall, his face falling into that pathetic, wide-eyed mask of terror. He began to hyperventilate, his chest heaving as three disciples burst into the corridor, their cheap iron swords drawn and glowing with Qi.
"Look at him," one of them laughed, a jagged-toothed youth with a scar across his nose. "The Saintess gave us a walking target. Easiest jade token of my life."
They lunged.
Dver's fingers tightened on the bronze handle of the censer. He was a microsecond away from snapping the lead disciple's neck when a blur of silver light intercepted the strike.
CLANG.
A girl, no older than seventeen, stood between Dver and his hunters. She wore the tattered grey robes of the Outer Sect, but she moved with a fluid, disciplined grace that spoke of a hidden legacy. Her sword was a simple iron blade, but it hummed with a sharp, focused intent—a rare sliver of pure Qi in a sect built entirely on butchery.
"Three against a cripple?" she spat, her voice cold but steady. "Have you no shame as cultivators?"
The three men hesitated, sizing her up. "Move, Ren! This isn't your fight. That trash is a dead man anyway. Give us your token and we might let you crawl out of here."
"No," Ren said, her knuckles whitening on her hilt. She didn't look back at Dver, but her presence was a solid shield. "Run, you idiot! Get into the old ventilation shafts!"
Dver blinked, his expression perfectly bewildered.
Inside his mind, the Void God resonated, a sound like grinding tectonic plates. "Ignorance," it murmured, its voice devoid of anything but cold, absolute calculation. "She seeks to shield a collapsing star. Let her stand in front."
Wait, Dver thought cleanly. A shield is useful. A witness to my 'struggle' is even better.
"I—I can't!" Dver whimpered, clutching the smoking censer to his chest like a terrified child. "My leg... it's stuck in the rocks!"
Ren cursed under her breath. "Then stay behind me!"
The three men snarled and charged. Ren was fast—terrifyingly fast for an Outer Disciple—but she was one person against three Rank-9 cultivators. She parried the first blade, ducked the second, but the third man circled around her blindly, aiming a lethal thrust at Dver's throat to end the "easy" target.
Dver watched the blade approach. In his perception, the world slowed to a crawl. He could see the microscopic chips in the attacker's cheap sword. He could see the sweat flying off the man's brow.
As the blade reached an inch from his skin, Dver "tripped."
He fell backward, flailing his arms wildly. In that "accidental" movement, the heavy bronze censer swung in a wide, clumsy arc. It looked exactly like the desperate, uncoordinated act of a coward.
CRACK.
The solid bronze hit the attacker squarely in the temple. Driven by the dense, terrifying weight of the Asura's Iron-Blood Mantra hidden beneath Dver's frail-looking skin, the impact hit with the force of a battering ram. The man's skull didn't just fracture; it collapsed inward entirely. He was dead before his body hit the stone, his sword clattering harmlessly away.
Ren, busy fending off the other two, didn't see the impact. She only saw the man fall.
"He... he tripped over the censer!" one of the remaining attackers yelled, his eyes widening in shock.
"Blind luck!" the other roared, swinging at Ren again.
Dver scrambled to his feet, "accidentally" stepping squarely on the hand of the dead man. His dense weight crushed the bones into powder instantly. He "panicked," swinging the smoking censer again in a wild, blind flail.
The edge of the bronze burner caught the second attacker directly in the throat. The man collapsed, gurgling violently, his windpipe completely shattered.
Ren finished the third man with a clean, desperate thrust through the heart. She turned around, breathing heavily, her iron sword dripping with blood in the purple light. She looked at the two bodies near Dver, then at the "trembling" boy who was currently sobbing violently into his dirty sleeves.
"You... you're alive," she panted, her eyes softening with a mix of pity and utter disbelief.
"I—I hit them," Dver blubbered, pointing at the bodies with a violently shaking finger. "I just swung the pot! I didn't mean to! I'm sorry! Please don't kill me!"
Ren sighed, wiping the blood from her face. She walked over and put a firm, calloused hand on his shoulder. "It was self-defense. If you didn't hit them, we'd both be dead. Listen to me... Dver, right? My name is Ren. My family was purged by the Inner Court. I'm only here to survive long enough to get out. You won't survive this maze alone with that smoke."
Dver looked up at her, his eyes wide and watery. "Y-you'll help me?"
"I'll get you to the exit," she said, her voice full of a doomed, iron resolve. "But you have to do exactly what I say. Keep that smoke behind me."
"Thank you, Sister Ren!" Dver cried, bowing low enough to hide his face.
As he followed her into the pitch-black tunnels, carrying the purple beacon that would inevitably draw every killer in the labyrinth straight to them, Dver's watery eyes went dead, cold, and razor-sharp.
She thought she was escorting a victim through the dark.
She didn't realize she was dragging a black hole through a crowded room.