Elias felt like hell.
His clothes were torn and ruined, dried blood clinging to every part of his skin. His head still rang with a sharp, shrill noise that made every breath feel heavier than the last.
After a moment, it began to fade—just enough for him to stop flinching with every pulse of pain.
He lifted his head.
Elyndra was ahead of him, staring into the darkness with a tense, unreadable expression.
Only then did something click in Elias' mind.
'Where are the Echoforms?'
He turned slowly.
And froze.
He swallowed hard.
All around them, scattered in the dark, were human skeletons.
Dozens of them.
Their bones were dry and brittle, blackened with age. Some lay across jagged rocks, others were strewn across the ground in messy heaps, as if they had collapsed mid-struggle.
But what made his stomach tighten was the way they looked.
Most of them had their hands clamped over their ears.
Their jaws were stretched open, frozen in silent screams.
And judging by where they were—
That probably wasn't an exaggeration.
Elias' thoughts started to spiral.
How long had they been here? Years? Centuries?
Had they entered this Mirroth and never left?
Or had the Echoforms dragged them here after—
No.
That didn't make sense.
Echoforms didn't leave corpses behind. They left something worse.
Madness. Empty minds. Broken remnants.
So how—
How did all these people end up like this? Just like Echoforms victims... dying with their hands over their ears.
"You need to leave. Now."
Elyndra's voice cut through his thoughts, sharp and urgent. Her small face was tight with something far more serious than before.
Elias turned his bloodshot eyes toward her, drew in a few rough breaths, and forced himself back onto his feet.
The air inside the Mirroth was stale and damp, with a faint metallic tang that made every inhale uncomfortable. It felt like his lungs were burning just from breathing.
He started forward.
The path ahead was lined with skeletons, and as he moved deeper, the solid rock beneath his feet slowly gave way to softer ground—blackened sand replacing stone. The place was dim, lifeless. In the silence, every step he took felt louder than it should have.
And yet, there was nothing comforting about it.
Only unease.
Massive rock formations rose around him, some stretching high into the cavern ceiling. Stalagmites jutted from the ground in uneven clusters, though they were less dense here than in the upper areas.
As he moved through the narrow gaps between the rocks, a sound caught his attention.
He slowed slightly.
His eyes narrowed into the darkness.
"...Water?"
Now that he focused, he could hear it—faint, distant splashes echoing from far away.
Soon, he saw it.
A massive stone bridge stretched across what looked like a wide valley, its pillars connecting one side of the cavern to the other. Beneath it, the sound of flowing water echoed softly through the space.
But Elias had no intention of going near it.
A structure like that... too open, too exposed. It was asking for trouble.
He needed cover. A place to hide. Somewhere safe enough to think.
Elyndra perched on his shoulder, her voice quieter now. "Did you feel anything?"
Elias staggered slightly, shifting his weight off his injured leg as he grabbed a jagged rock for support and kept moving, eyes scanning the shadows between the larger stones.
'Not really,' he muttered inwardly. 'But when I fell... for a second, it felt like something flickered inside me. I tried to grasp it, but it just... vanished.'
Elyndra went quiet.
Walking on, Elias found a small crevice inside a large black rock. Warily, he picked up a stone and tossed it into the opening, waiting a few seconds.
When nothing came out, he stepped inside.
The air was colder here, and the smell of damp sand stung his nose.
He lowered himself to the ground with a quiet groan, leaning back against the rock wall. For the first time since entering the Mirroth, he had a moment to actually assess himself.
And he looked...
God.
He looked like something dragged out of a battlefield and left to rot.
His body was covered in injuries. His face was smeared with blood so heavily it was hard to see any skin beneath it. His hair was matted and clumped together, stiff with dried blood, strands sticking like glue.
And yet... as bad as his body looked, the damage inside his mind was worse.
Awakening gave Chordbearers some resistance to Broken Songs. It made them harder to break than ordinary people—which was probably the only reason he was still functional.
But resistance wasn't immunity.
Given enough exposure, even Chordbearers would eventually fall to madness.
The only saving grace was that as long as their sanity hadn't been completely eroded, their minds could slowly repair themselves, pulling them back from the edge.
So that was what Elias was trying to do now.
Hold on long enough for his mind to recover.
But it wasn't easy.
Not even close.
His head was pounding—really pounding—like something was hammering inside his skull. His eyes were watery from the pain, and his ears rang under the strain, his thoughts starting to fray at the edges.
At moments, he had the urge to do things that made no sense at all—to laugh for no reason, to claw at his own skin, to rip off his clothes and just collapse into the black sand.
Then just as quickly, he'd snap back, forcing himself to resist it all. Every time he did, the pressure in his head spiked again, sending fresh waves of pain through him.
Minutes passed.
Slowly, the throbbing began to ease—just enough for him to regain a bit of control over his own mind.
That was when Elyndra fluttered in front of him.
She snapped her fingers, and a glowing interface lit up in the air above her tiny hands.
"Hmph. I couldn't say anything earlier because you were too busy trying not to die," she said dryly. "But the system already assigned you a mission the moment you entered the Mirroth. Look, dummy."
Elias was already staring at it.
[System Mission:
First Mission: Slay the Fractured Howlers
Mission Reward: 30 Mission Points per kill
Second Mission: Slay the Screaming King, Berrot, Voice of Unmaking
Mission Reward: 500 Mission Points]
His eyebrow twitched.
'Screaming King?' he mused. 'Seriously? There's a boss Echoform running this place?'
He wasn't new to the concept.
Everyone knew some Red-graded Mirroths came with what people called hidden bosses.
However, that was only some of them. Most Red-graded Mirroths didn't have hidden bosses at all—they were just legions of Echoforms, all roughly equal in strength.
So of course his first Mirroth had to be one of the dangerous ones.
Looking at the number of Mission Points assigned to that "Screaming King," Elias didn't need anyone to explain how strong it was.
And the problem was simple.
He couldn't even handle the normal Echoforms.
So against something like that... he was completely screwed.
"Stop acting like you're hopeless, okay? Because you're not," Elyndra cut in, folding her arms with her cheeks puffed out in a failed attempt at seriousness. To Elias, she just looked annoyingly cute. "All you have to do is find your Core and you can punch that monster in the face. Look around you."
She spread her tiny arms wide.
"It's quiet. No Echoforms trying to kill you. For once, you're not being chased or distracted. Do you know what that means?"
Elias let out a tired sigh, resting his head against the rock.
'Yeah... I should probably rest.'
The tiny gremlin's face twitched.
Then she flew straight at him and grabbed a fistful of his hair.
'Hey!' Elias flinched, reaching up to swat her away. 'What's that for?! Are you on your period or something?! Wait—do you even have those?!'
"Just shut up and meditate, you—ugh! You make me so mad!"
Elias grit his teeth. "Fine, fine. Just stop pulling my hair, you little furball."
"Hmph!"
She crossed her arms and turned away.
Rubbing his scalp with a resentful glare, Elias closed his eyes again and forced himself to settle.
He had done this before. Countless times. And every single time, he had come up empty.
At first, it seemed like nothing would change.
Until...
Something shifted.
He felt it in his chest first—right where his heart was. It was faint, almost unreal, but he latched onto it immediately, chasing it before it could disappear.
And as he followed it, his perception... changed.
The world around him faded.
For a moment, it felt like he wasn't inside the cave anymore.
In front of him stretched something vast—a massive black void, like a hole torn into reality itself. It swirled with heavy, suffocating darkness, swallowing everything it touched. Light didn't just fade near it... it disappeared.
Elias felt himself pulled toward it.
Falling.
Surrounded by nothing but that endless black.
And then he heard it.
A call.
Something soft, almost sweet, brushed against his awareness—like it was calling his name with quiet affection, as if it had been waiting for him all this time.
It felt like a child running toward her father. Close enough to see him, but too far to reach, so all she could do was cry out his name again and again.
Elias found himself drawn to it.
Pulled in.
For a moment, everything else faded.
But...
No matter how much he reached, he couldn't find it.
It was there. He could feel it. Right in front of him—yet completely out of reach.
Like it was sealed behind a door.
A massive, stubborn door that refused to open.
And to get to it...
He would have to break it.
But how?
What was he missing?
Before he could think further—
The ground beneath him rumbled violently.
"Elias! Duck! Duck right now!"
Elias had already thrown himself flat to the ground before Elyndra even finished speaking.
A massive bone blade flashed through the space where his head had been a moment earlier.
The impact behind him shattered the rock wall, sending debris and dust raining down across the cavern.
Elias coughed through the haze and forced his eyes open.
An Echoform stood right in front of him.
It looked down at him, its eerie eyes fixed on his body. Its tongue dragged slowly across its mouth as it sang, the sound warped and wrong.
But this one was different.
Around its neck and wrists were human bones, tied on like ornaments. Its skin looked older than the others—wrinkled, uneven, covered in sores. At its waist hung crude weapons made from ribs and bone fragments. In its hand was a femur, gripped like a club.
It giggled.
High-pitched. Unstable. Almost excited.
Like it was already imagining what came next.
And suddenly, the skeletons scattered throughout the cave made far too much sense.
Because this thing didn't just kill.
It kept things.
Elias stared up at it for half a second longer.
And all he could think was—
he was a few seconds away from becoming part of that collection.