As Hayjin crossed the threshold, Riko executed a fluid, almost graceful movement. She reached out and lightly touched his shoulder, letting her fingers slide down the boy's arm in a subtle caress a sly, calculated attempt at seduction designed to make him feel at ease and lower his defenses.
"It has been an exhausting day for all of us, hasn't it?" the woman murmured in a warm voice, her eyes half-lidded as she closed the door behind him and engaged the iron lock. "I'm sorry if I was a bit too strict with you in the past. I only wanted to ensure you were capable of protecting the princess... but tonight, I wanted to talk to you alone. Just you and me."
Hayjin did not move. He felt the touch of Riko's fingers on his arm, and his stomach twisted into a knot of pure disgust, yet he maintained a gullible expression on his face the slightly embarrassed smile of a naive boy.
"Ah... well, I actually didn't expect such a warm welcome, Riko," Hayjin said, taking a couple of steps into the room and glancing around with apparent nonchalance. "I thought you still hated me for how I acted during our early training sessions."
"Hate you? Of course not..." Riko said, approaching him from behind with soft, padded steps, her hands clasped behind her back. "It was merely professional concern. But tonight... it felt like the right time for us to get to know each other better."
What Riko could not see was that as Hayjin turned his back to her, pretending to admire the room's furnishings, his right hand was concealed behind his lower back, shrouded by the loose folds of his tunic. And between his fingers, the boy gripped the bone handle of a long hunting knife with a vise-like hold.
Yet beneath that mask of apparent tranquility, Hayjin was literally suffocating.
A heavy cold sweat doused his back, soaking his undershirt beneath the tunic. His armpits were drenched; tiny beads of anxiety slid down the nape of his neck, trickling into his collar. His heart slammed with such violence it caused physical pain against his ribs a jackhammer rhythm echoing in his eardrums. He was terrified. The thought that this woman could move with the speed of a viper and drive a blade into his throat before he could even react was devouring him alive.
But he had to play the part. He had to push her to the breaking point.
Hayjin turned slowly toward her, resting his hips against the edge of the wooden table and crossing his legs with feigned indifference, keeping the hand holding the knife tucked securely behind his back.
"You know, Riko..." Hayjin began, his tone shifting imperceptibly, turning subtle, colder, laced with calculated psychological provocation. "It's strange. Because as I was coming up the stairs to get here... a weird feeling washed over me. A sense of déjà vu."
Riko froze two paces from him, her mischievous smile freezing slightly on her lips. "Déjà vu? In what sense? What does that word mean?"
"In the sense that I often wonder... what drives a person to do what they do," Hayjin said, locking eyes with her without blinking. "Take you, for instance. You're so devoted to Wren, so protective... to the point where you're constantly questioning if anyone around her is friend or foe. Have you ever wondered what would happen if I decided Wren is no longer of use to me?"
The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. The sweat on Riko's forehead seemed to freeze.
"What... what are you saying, Hayjin?" the woman asked, her voice stripping away every trace of warmth, returning to the razor-sharp edge it had always been.
"I'm just saying..." Hayjin continued, leaning into his provocative grin while internally praying that Zhilian and Isabelle were ready outside, "...that if I wanted to, I could choose to take Wren out at any given moment. I could do it tonight. I could walk into her room while she sleeps and settle the score. And you... you couldn't do a single thing to stop me. Absolutely nothing."
Riko's eyes widened. For a fraction of a second, an expression of pure, blind murderous rage swept across her face. Her pupils narrowed to pinpricks, and her right hand glided inside her sleeve in a lightning-fast motion.
"You... vile little bastard..." Riko hissed, dropping all pretense.
Yet before striking, the woman attempted to play dumb for one final instant, taking a step back and raising her hands. "I don't know what you're talking about, Hayjin... have you lost your mind? You're delusional..."
But she did not finish the sentence.
With superhuman speed, Riko whipped the dagger from her sleeve and lunged forward, thrusting the blade straight at Hayjin's throat, intending to sever his jugular in a single, clean strike.
Hayjin's eyes bulged in pure terror, his heart leaping into his throat as he scrambled to pull the knife from behind his back to parry the blow.
Fuck, she's too fast! his mind screamed.
But Riko's attack never reached its target.
A split second before the blade grazed the skin of Hayjin's neck, the wooden door exploded inward with a deafening crash.
A concentrated sphere of pure, blinding light magic, fired point-blank, tore through the shattered threshold and struck Riko squarely in the chest.
The impact was devastating. A roar of radiant energy and heat blasted the woman backward like a ragdoll. Riko flew across the room for over four meters, slamming violently against the opposite stone wall. The masonry cracked under the force of the blow, and a muffled scream escaped her as the dagger flew from her grip, clattering across the floor.
Riko collapsed onto her knees, coughing violently and struggling desperately to rise, her vision blurred by the golden glare.
"Not another step!" an imperious voice shouted.
Zhilian crossed the destroyed doorway, her hands still shrouded in a shimmering aura of light magic, her gaze heavy with regal, menacing majesty.
Riko tried to leap sideways toward the window, but before she could even push off her legs, Isabelle's voice rang out from the entrance.
"Spatium Consalvatus: Vincula!"
The air around Riko's body distorted instantly. The three-dimensional space encircling her arms, legs, and torso folded inward, creating invisible, rigid blocks of pressure that pinned the woman to the ground. Riko remained frozen in an unnatural posture, unable to twitch even a pinky, as though cast in transparent concrete.
"Curse you..." Riko hissed from the wall, straining her muscles in vain, the veins in her neck bulging from the effort. "You damned bastards... so you're standing with him, are you?!"
Within the room, a commanding silence returned.
Hayjin remained slumped against the wooden table. His legs gave way slightly, and he slid down, ending up sitting directly on the edge of the furniture.
The hunting knife slipped from his trembling fingers, clattering onto the stone floor. The boy was drenched in sweat; his hair clung to his forehead, his tunic stained with dark patches along his ribs and back. His heart slammed with terrifying force, a frantic beat causing his hands and jaw to quiver.
He spent three full seconds just breathing, gulping down massive lungfuls of air to dispel the sensation of suffocation.
We made it... Hayjin thought, bringing a hand to a chest tight with panic. Fuck... I was sure she was going to take my head off. I was convinced I was going to die again.
Zhilian lowered her hands, letting the light energy fade from her fingers, and turned to him. A small, tired, yet triumphant smile touched her lips.
"Still in one piece, sir knight?" the princess asked in an amused tone.
Hayjin looked up at her, letting out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a hysterical laugh. He slowly pulled himself up, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
"By a hair..." Hayjin murmured, taking a couple of steps toward her. "You arrived exactly one second before she severed my carotid."
"My timing is impeccable, you should know that by now," Zhilian replied.
The two stopped half a meter apart, locking eyes for a moment to share the sheer relief of their success. Instinctively, they raised their right hands, slapping their palms together in a loud, satisfying high five that echoed crisply through the ruined room.
Isabelle, standing on the threshold to maintain focus on her spatial magic, offered a faint, joyful smile upon seeing them finally united and safe.
But the moment of relief lasted less than a heartbeat.
BOOM!
Suddenly, the very bowels of Castle Opes were shaken by a tremendous, terrifying tremor.
It was no simple seismic shift. It was a violent, deep, guttural shockwave that rattled the very foundations of the stone fortress. The floor beneath their feet lurched with such force that they lost their balance: Hayjin had to grab onto the table to avoid falling, while Zhilian leaned back against the doorframe.
Showers of dust and small rock fragments rained down from the vaulted ceiling. Lanterns along the corridors swayed precariously, several flickering out entirely and plunging vast stretches of the floor into darkness. From deep within the walls came a dull, prolonged roar of rending stone, accompanied by a metallic reverberation that rattled every windowpane in the castle.
The quake was so massive that even Riko, pinned by spatial magic, widened her eyes in terror as the structure shuddered around them.
"What the fuck..." Hayjin swore, struggling to keep his footing as the earth slowly subsided, leaving behind a terrifying ringing in his ears.
Zhilian composed herself immediately, her face pale as a sheet. "This... this isn't a natural tremor. It came from inside the castle! From the foundations, or the east wing!"
"The Council Chamber..." Hayjin said, his eyes widening in realization. "Wilder and Arkon!"
Hayjin spun toward Isabelle, who was trying to regain control of her breathing after the violent shock.
"Isabelle!" Hayjin ordered, his voice steady and resolute. "You stay here! Keep the spatial magic locked on Riko and make sure she doesn't move a single millimeter! If she tries anything, bind her even tighter! Do not leave her side under any circumstances!"
Isabelle nodded vigorously, gritting her teeth. "Don't worry! She isn't going anywhere!"
"Zhilian, let's go!" Hayjin shouted, drawing his sword from its sheath at his hip and bolting out of the ruined room.
The princess didn't need to be told twice. She fell in right behind him, and together they sprinted through the castle's dimly lit corridors, giving chase to the reverberating echo of that terrifying explosion.
In the depths of the east wing, the corridor leading to the subterranean Council Chamber no longer resembled its former self.
The tall marble walls were fractured by deep cracks spiderwebbing across them like black webs. The ceiling had partially collapsed, dumping massive stone boulders onto the floor and choking the air with a dense, gray fog of crushed stone dust.
The scent of burning incense was entirely swept away by a devastating, nauseating stench: the smell of spilled guts, bile, hot iron, and charred flesh.
Amidst that haze of dust and blood, a solitary figure moved with the dull fury of a wounded beast.
Wilder was unrecognizable.
The captain's plate armor, once pristine and gleaming, was coated in a thick crust of dense black blood oozing along the joints of his shoulders and chest. His blue cloak hung in scorched, tattered ribbons. Across his face split open by a deep gash on his left cheek dripping bright red blood was painted an expression of pure, blind, primal ferocity.
All around him, the floor had been transformed into an abominable slaughterhouse.
Littering the ground were the dismembered remains of dozens of monstrous, deformed, terrifying creatures.
They were beasts that must have once been common animals wolves, boars, massive hounds horribly mutated and disfigured by a dark, perverse magic.
Extra limbs sprouted directly from the ribs of some; others had been entirely flayed, exposing raw red muscle fibers oozing yellowish pus.
Several had heads split open vertically down the middle, revealing multiple rows of razor-sharp fangs slavering a black, corrosive liquid.
"Come on! You damned, filthy monsters!" Wilder bellowed. His voice was an inhuman roar, raspy and raw from a throat scorched by smoke.
Two deformed hounds, nearly two meters tall and eyeless, lunged at him simultaneously out of the dark fog.
Wilder didn't retreat an inch. Pivoting on his iron boot, he executed a full torso rotation, delivering a sweeping diagonal slash with his massive two-handed sword.
The steel blade whistled lethally through the air and struck the first beast. The blow was so devastating that the sword sheared cleanly through the monster's neck, decapitating it outright. A horrific high-pressure jet of thick black blood sprayed across Wilder's chest and face as the beast's head tumbled across the dark stone, emitting a final, stifled grunt.
Without breaking the momentum of his swing, Wilder reversed his grip on the hilt, driving the point of the sword directly into the gaping maw of the second creature leaping at him.
The metal sank into the soft flesh of its throat, shattering the palate and skewering the monster's skull from the inside out with a sickening crunch of crushed bone and destroyed brain matter.
The creature writhed in a violent spasm, clawed paws scratching frantically against the plate armor on Wilder's legs without managing to scratch the steel.
Wilder planted his boot against the beast's bloody chest and, with a powerful yank, freed the blade from its ruined head.
A river of grayish brain matter and thick blood gushed from the wound, flooding the stone at his feet.
The fog around him cleared slightly, revealing the true scale of the carnage.
Wilder stood at the center of a mountain of deformed corpses. Amputated limbs still twitched neurotically on the ground, torn throats gurgled pus-filled bubbles, and ribcages split in two exposed disfigured, pulsing internal organs infected with sick life. The air was saturated with the visceral sound of blood dripping from the walls and the tip of the captain's sword, tapping the stone floor in a steady, rhythmic pattern.
Wilder rested the tip of his sword against the ground, leaning forward slightly as his breath came in short, ragged gasps, his chest heaving irregularly. A trickle of blood leaked from his nose, mingling with the black discharge of the beasts smearing his mouth.
A few meters from the slaughter, completely untouched by the grime, dust, and unbearable stench of butchered flesh, two figures observed the spectacle in absolute silence.
Sage Arkon stood near the ruins of a collapsed pillar. His silk robe was immaculate, devoid of the slightest stain of blood or dust. He kept his hands folded over his jade rosary, moving the green beads in a slow, rhythmic motion, utterly indifferent to the massacre that had just unfolded before his eyes. His face was serene a picture of icy, elegant detachment.
Beside him, cloaked in the absolute darkness of a heavy black mantle, the mysterious hooded figure remained motionless. Their face remained shrouded beneath the deep hood, yet their presence radiated an aura of lethal cold that froze the blood pooling on the floor around their feet.
Arkon observed Wilder as he struggled to catch his breath amidst the dismembered bodies of the monsters.
"Remarkable..." Sage Arkon murmured. His voice rang out quietly, crystal clear, almost disappointed amidst that nightmare of blood and entrails. "Truly remarkable, Wilder. You fought with the fervor of a true wartime knight. Your father would have been almost proud to see you slaughter these poor beasts with such efficiency."
Wilder slowly raised his head. His eyes, bloodshot and laced with blind terror mingled with desperate fury, locked onto the old man.
"Arkon..." Wilder rasped, his voice a fractured mess of pain and bile. "You're... you're a monster..."
Arkon didn't even blink. He merely slid another jade bead through his fingers, giving a slight shake of his head.
"I am not the monster, my boy," Arkon said with extreme calm. "I am merely the one preparing the ground for what is to come. And it is a tragic pity that you chose to end your road here, amidst dust and rotting flesh."
The hooded figure at Arkon's side gave a subtle, almost imperceptible upward tilt of their head, as if listening to something in the distance.
The swift, hurried footsteps of Hayjin and Zhilian were echoing along the destroyed corridor, closing in at full speed toward the scene of the carnage.