The scream echoed through the corridor, and Rudeus froze.
His entire body locked up, muscles refusing to obey. His breath caught in his throat, and suddenly he wasn't standing in a dark hallway anymore he was back in that white void, back on the cold stone floor with hands around his throat, back in the endless cycle of pain and humiliation that had defined his existence for… how long? Days? Weeks? He had no idea.
It's another trick, his mind whispered. Another layer of the nightmare. If you run toward that scream, you'll just find more torture waiting for you.
But what if it wasn't? What if someone was actually suffering, actually dying, while he stood here paralyzed by fear?
Rudeus gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached. His hands were shaking when had they started shaking? He forced them into fists, nails digging into his palm hard enough to draw blood.
Move, he commanded himself. MOVE!
I took one step. Then another. Each movement felt like trenching through thick mud, his body was tired and felt heavy. Then he tried to run.
His legs, weakened from who knew how long of lying unconscious, immediately gave out. Rudeus hit the ground hard, his knee
cracking against the stone.
Pain shot up his leg, and it was sharp. He used that pain as an anchor, pushing himself back up as fast as he could. His muscles screamed in protest. His vision swam. His entire body felt like it was held together with wet paper and desperation.
But he ran anyway.
Every step was agony. His lungs burned. His legs threatened to collapse again with each stride. But he forced himself forward, using the wall for support when his balance faltered, ignoring the way his vision blurred at the edges.
Please don't be another illusion, he thought desperately. Please let this be real. Please let me be able to actually help someone this time.
The corridor seemed to stretch on forever, but finally finally he rounded a corner and saw a larger space opening up ahead.
A room.
Dimly lit by a handful of candles scattered around the perimeter, their weak flames creating more shadows than light. The flickering made everything seem unstable, like reality itself was wavering.
And there, in the center of the room, was a figure lying motionless on the ground.
Rudeus's heart stopped.
Silver hair. Slim build. The curve of a face he'd know anywhere, even in this terrible lighting It was Sylvia.
She was just lying there, completely still. Was she breathing? He couldn't tell from this distance. Was she alive? Hurt? Dying?
Every instinct screamed at him to rush forward, to check on her, to help
But he wouldn't move.
Something was wrong. The air felt heavy, charged with danger like the moment before lightning struck. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and a cold sensation crawled down his spine.
He could feel that this was definitely a trap.
His hand moved instinctively to his waist, reaching for his backup sword the shorter blade he always kept on his right side for fights.
His fingers closed on empty air. But he grasped nothing. They'd taken it while he was unconscious. The only weapon he had left was Ghislaine's blade strapped to his left side, and drawing that one-handed was always awkward. And he couldn't draw it his pride wouldn't let him.
Rudeus's breathing quickened. He took a careful step into the room, his eye scanning the shadows, searching for
"Shhhhhh."
The sound came from right next to his ear.
Rudeus's body reacted before his mind could catch up. He threw himself backward, already gathering mana for a spell, his heart hammering so hard he thought it might break through his ribs.
But there was no one there. Just empty air where the sound had come from. Just shadows and flickering candlelight and Sylvia's motionless form.
"For someone half-alive, your senses are impeccable." The voice came from a different direction now somewhere near Sylvia, maybe? "A normal person would never sense me while I'm just sitting here. Interesting."
Rudeus's eye darted to where he thought the voice originated, and there just barely visible in the dancing shadows he saw it. An outline. A person-shaped darkness that was somehow darker than the surrounding gloom.
He didn't hesitate.
Mana surged through his body, coalescing at his fingertip.
A small fireball barely bigger than his thumb but intensely bright formed in an instant. He fired it at the outline, the spell leaving a trail of light through the dim room.
The shadow moved. Or at least, Rudeus thought it moved. The fireball hit the wall behind where the figure had been, illuminating the space for a brief moment before fizzling out. But had he seen someone dodge he couldn't tell they moved so fast.
Rudeus jumped backward, putting more distance between himself and Sylvia's prone body. His mind raced through possible spells, possible strategies.
Freeze the entire corridor, his mind suggested. Fill it with ice try and freeze this guy.
But Sylvia was right there. If he froze the whole room, he'd freeze her too. And even if he tried to exclude her from the spell, he didn't have the mental focus right now not after everything he'd been through. His concentration was shot, his mana control shaky at best.
He couldn't even cast a stone cannon right now he's scared it would go wrong. Rudeus felt for his mana again testing it like someone might test a sore muscle. It felt slow and weird whatever that guy had done to me had messed up the circulation on my mana.
Rudeus dropped into a combat stance feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, hand raised and ready to cast. His hand-to-hand skills were mediocre at best, but combined with magic? He could make it work. He had to make it work.
"I've been waiting for this battle for a while now, you know."
The voice came from a different location again. Rudeus's head whipped around, trying to pinpoint the speaker, but the darkness in this hall made it impossible. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"They gave me this power specifically for this moment," the voice continued, conversational, almost friendly. "The ability to slip into minds, to wear faces like masks, to make people see whatever I want them to see. It was supposed to be the greatest gift imaginable." A pause. The candles flickered.
"But you want to know something funny? It made me empty. Completely, utterly empty." There was something terrible in the speaker's tone now not anger or sadness, but absolute hollowness. "I can have anything I want. Make anyone do anything. Experience any pleasure, any luxury, any experience. But none of it feels real anymore. Nothing touches me. Nothing matters."
Rudeus's eye tracked movement in the shadows, He kept his mana ready, kept his stance solid despite his shaking legs.
"The only thing that comes close to feeling real is the pain," the voice said, and now there was something like hunger in it. "The suffering I inflict on the people I torture. I feel everything they feel every ounce of agony, every moment of despair. For just a moment, it almost feels like I'm alive again."
The shadow moved, separating itself from the darkness. A figure stepped forward into the weak circle of candlelight.
"But even that's not enough anymore. I'm numb to everything now. Completely. Totally. Irreversibly numb."
The person who emerged from the shadows had a smile on their face.
But it was the most disturbing smile Rudeus had ever seen.
It wasn't happy. Wasn't sad. Wasn't cruel or mocking or triumphant. It was just… there. An expression painted onto a face that didn't know what expressions were supposed to mean anymore. The smile muscles were engaged, the lips were curved upward, but there was no life behind it. No emotion just soulless eyes and a curvature of the lips.
And the eyes god, the eyes were worse. They were dead. They stared at Rudeus with the same interest one might give to an interesting rock or a mildly entertaining cloud formation.
Every expression that flickered across the face curiosity, amusement, anticipation all of them looked fake. Like someone had described emotions to a statue and told it to try its best.
"Old friends reunion!" the person said, spreading their arms in a gesture of warmth.
"It's me, your buddy Glen!"
He laughed or made the sound of laughing, at least.
Rudeus didn't laugh he looked at the man dead in his eyes and quickly shot Multiple water bullets that erupted from his extended hand in rapid succession bang bang bang bang bang each one the size of a large marble and moving with the force of a crossbow bolt. They spread out in a pattern designed to cut off escape routes, to force the target to dodge into the path of another bullet.
Glen moved, his body blurring with impossible speed. Most of the bullets missed, splashing against the wall with hard thumps. But three found their mark one catching his shoulder, another his thigh, the third his side.
They didn't pierce deeply.
Glen's body seemed more resilient than a normal human's. But they hit, and they stuck, the water clinging to his skin and clothes.
Now.
Rudeus poured mana into the water, freezing it solid in an instant. The ice expanded as it solidified, and he shaped it with desperate precision, forming spikes that dug into Glen's flesh from within the frozen mass.
Glen's eyes widened slightly the first genuine expression Rudeus had seen on his face. He looked down at the ice spikes protruding from his shoulder, thigh, and side with something approximating surprise.
"What a neat trick," he said, that smile still plastered on his face even as blood began to seep around the ice. "I knew you were proficient in magic, but this…" He poked at one of the ice spikes experimentally, like he was examining an interesting bug. "This will be interesting. Really, truly interesting."
He took a step forward, the movement making the ice spikes shift in his wounds. If it hurt, his face showed no sign of it.
"Come on then, Rudeus," Glen said, his voice almost eager or what eagerness sounded like. "Show me everything you've got. Make me feel something. Anything."
He spread his arms wide, like he was inviting an embrace.
"Try to kill me. I'm begging you. Please. Make me feel alive again."
Rudeus's hand was already gathering mana for his next spell, his mind racing through options, his body tensed and ready.
But somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice whispered What kind of monster have they created here?
And What if I'm still in the dream?
The candles flickered.
Glen took another step forward.
And the real fight was about to begin.