The blackout was only for a moment. The magical residue from the labyrinth still flowed through Sassel's body like a cold stream on a frosty plain. The dark magic stung his mind, making his face twist in a grimace.
The grayish-white ray had greedily devoured all the twisted souls in the entire corridor, leaving only a floor full of stinking toys stitched together from rotten flesh and blood. On both sides of the corridor, the candles had all been extinguished, as if an invisible ghost had swept past. The dark curtains, covered in faded, bloody handprints, lay like shrouds over the still-twitching, stitched-together limbs, making the place feel like a moldy, endless morgue.
Silence. The silence pressed down like a heavy stone slab, weighing on the spirit. The pattering footsteps of the dolls behind them did nothing to break the quiet; the monotonous echo only made the house seem even more deathly still.
Every step on a doll produced the wet squelch of treading on rotten sludge. From Sassel's point of view, yellowed dead maggots and rotten eyeballs tumbled out, rolling across the old floor. He had to admit, the master of this labyrinth had a hearty appetite, accepting the soul of any living thing without prejudice.
Jeanne dragged him for several hundred meters. During that time, the black sorcerer had to consume more souls to drive away the dolls surging from the side corridors. Fortunately, the "solid waste" piled on the floor blocked their clumsy, stubby legs, saving Sassel a bit of effort. Because the corridors were narrow, he only needed to find the easiest chokepoint and burn the souls of one or two dolls to block the entire column behind them.
After reinforcing their concealment spell, the black sorcerer's excess soul reserve was down to half. He signaled for Jeanne to take a few more turns to put some distance between them before they rested.
The dreams came again.
The year 1351 of the Millennium, late autumn.
Valleys of frozen tundra, giant rocks extending thousands of meters into the earth, the massive and ancient city of Cas occupying almost the entire horizon, the Dark Elf lord's Moon-Nest floating like a black meteor in the smog-filled sky above the city... every detail was presented before his eyes like a mural.
Tens of thousands of giant crows poured from their nests, blotting out the sky like a black storm cloud before a downpour. The energies of dozens of labyrinths collided, turning the entire world into a living nightmare. Boulders rained down from the cliffs like a storm, and the Empire's summoned demon legions howled as they were annihilated along with the mountain range the Dark Elf lord had flattened...
The Empire's hope of unifying the continent was ultimately shattered.
But whether it was failure or success, it had nothing to do with him—Sassel Betrafiio—an ordinary mage in the Roman Third Legion's Mage Order.
It was just that, after witnessing every single mage in his order get wiped out, he couldn't help but feel an intense fear—the fear of death.
In that same year, Sassel joined the black sorcerer group of the Zavulon Sect, began to make contact with the gods from beyond, and learned the art of reincarnation.
A while later, the black sorcerer woke up—but he woke up within a dream and entered another.
It was an unfamiliar voice, an unfamiliar song, a ghostly, ethereal song... A doll dressed as a young girl was kneeling in an unknown garden, praying amidst a thicket of lilies. Before her downcast gaze were several simple gravestones. The clean night wind tirelessly accompanied her song, making the bright white moonlight surround her like a halo. Stars swam in the night sky, like fireflies flying over a lake, drifting down toward the water's surface and falling into the strands of her hair. The black sorcerer just stood there, his consciousness dim. After a while, he saw the doll turn her head. Beneath her soft golden hair was a strange, somewhat cold, yet gentle smile. "Oh, what an interesting dream. It reminds me of Mister Hunter."
What the hell was that... A specialty of this labyrinth?
Sassel opened his eyes and sat up from his spot in the corner of the dark, winding corridor. He looked around. The corridor's candles were still out, and the air was filled with the smell of moldy dust. The silence was oppressive. He patted his head and enchanted his eyes with a spirit-sight spell. And just like that, the outlines of Jeanne, sleeping soundly in the opposite corner, and the black cat, dozing on his lap, emerged in his black-and-white vision.
"Y-you're awake?" the black cat opened its eyes. Its turquoise pupils looked up at him, its voice still trembling with fear.
The crisp sound of a young girl's voice made him feel a little better.
Sassel felt that the inquisitor wouldn't be waking up anytime soon, so he sat up cross-legged and struck up a conversation with the cat on his lap. The cat's black fur was glossy, clearly well-groomed. Its body was slender but not thin, looking healthy. It was obviously well-fed, a completely different treatment from that pile of moldy dolls.
"Hey you, do you have a name?" The black sorcerer pinched the cat's front paw and began to knead it slowly. The feel of the paw pad was surprisingly good.
"V-Viola," it flinched, its small arm trembling.
"Oh, did your master give you that name?" the black sorcerer asked heartlessly.
"N-no... it was the name my... my father gave me."
As it disagreed, the cat looked as if it was about to faint from fright.
"Hey now—do I look that scary?" Sassel asked it.
"I... I'm still a young girl... sob sob sob..."
The black cat's eyes instantly filled with tears. Its legs trembled, and it didn't dare pull the paw Sassel was holding, looking as if its whole body was about to slide to the floor. Suddenly, it forced itself to calm down and said, as if in utter desperation:
"M-Mister Black Sorcerer... can you take Viola away from this place? I can sweep the floor, I can wash clothes, I can even weave fishing nets... If M-Mister Black Sorcerer wants me to... to serve..."
"What are you doing?" Jeanne asked, letting out a lazy yawn as she sat up.
"A moment ago, I thought I was just teasing a cat. Then I realized I was basically creeping on a little girl," Sassel told her, though he didn't mention that he had actually found it quite amusing.
"Mister Black Sorcerer, my lord Black Sorcerer, I can bury... bury bodies too, no matter how rotten they are, just give them to me..."
The cat begged again and again, its voice a whimper, constantly interrupted by tears.
"Is our reputation in the country fishing villages really that bad?" he asked, stroking the beard on his chin with his other hand.
Jeanne cut in with a sneer:
"Usually, you're put in scary bedtime stories to frighten children. For example—if you don't go to sleep, the black sorcerer will snatch you away for experiments. If you're naughty again, the black sorcerer will feed you to terrifying extra-dimensional monsters."
Sassel looked at the inquisitor, his meaning clear. "You seem to know a lot about children. Were you, by any chance, a caretaker at an orphanage?"
"..."
She fell silent, her expression turning extremely foul.
"How about you sing 'The Stars of the Field' to soothe this little one?" Sassel taunted. He could sense that the Cross Church had probably made the inquisitor do many things she deeply hated, for example...
"I'll start it for you, Miss Child-Care-Worker," he cleared his throat and opened his mouth. "The stars of the field hang high above my father's little hut, my mother's sorrowful hands..."
The black cat choked back a sob. The song probably sounded familiar, and it grabbed the black sorcerer's clothes with its free paw. But the inquisitor's voice scared it half to death again.
"—Sing my ass! Are you black sorcerers all fucking morons!?"