The smoke, at first just a faint veil, gradually accumulated. It swirled through the austere bedroom with each of Quinn's steady, rhythmic drags. It was no longer a light bluish-gray, but a thick, suffocating blend of harsh tobacco, stale air, and Quinn's own distinctly cold, metallic scent.
Erika's throat began to itch; the membranes in his nose stung sharply. He tried to hold his breath, but the dizziness from the earlier psychic shocks only worsened. Finally, an uncontrollable tickle shot up his windpipe.
"Cough! Cough—cough…!"
He jerked his head aside, clamping his hand over his mouth, desperately trying to suppress the sound. The violent vibration in his lungs tugged at the hidden injuries left by his flight and the recent annihilation magic, bringing a sharp, dull ache.
The cough shattered the petrified silence of the room. His head—already swollen with terror and confusion—felt as though it were being slowly crushed by an iron vise. The pungent smoke seeped everywhere, stinging his eyes until they watered.
The physical discomfort drove his sensation of being trapped to its absolute breaking point. Every breath felt like swallowing crushed glass. He wanted to flee—this room, this Sorcerer, this suffocating smoke, and those riddles that cut like surgical blades.
The urge to escape was so violent it briefly overrode his paralyzing fear. Between another fit of coughing, driven by a reckless, desperate defiance, he blurted out the question tearing at his mind:
"What if I want a good end?"
His voice was hoarse, warped by coughing and raw urgency. He wasn't playing Quinn's philosophical game anymore; he was pointing straight at his most primal desire—survival. "Are there really people who know everything… and still meet no good end?"
Was Quinn just issuing a threat dressed as a metaphor, or did this world truly contain those who grasped the truth and still fell into the abyss?
The moment the question left his lips, a cold sweat broke out across his back. He had disrupted the predator's rhythm.
Quinn remained sunk deep in his chair, staring blankly at the ceiling. Hearing the question, he didn't flinch. He slowly, deliberately drew the last of the smoke into his lungs, letting the ember burn dangerously close to his fingers.
Then, he exhaled a long, straight plume, watching it strike the ceiling and shatter into grey wisps.
Several seconds passed. Only the smoke moved.
Then Quinn spoke. His voice was utterly flat, devoid of any human inflection. He didn't turn to look at Erika.
"I don't know."
Three words. Light. Weightless.
And yet they hit Erika like a physical blow to the stomach.
I don't know?
The man who had just declared the rules of this meat-grinder world, who had pressed him with the authority of a god, was now dismissing the very foundation of his claim with the simplest, most infuriatingly bleak answer possible.
A surge of deep, freezing helplessness flooded Erika. Could he challenge Quinn? Demand an explanation?
No.
He swallowed the rising panic, his fingers unconsciously clenching his trousers until his knuckles went white. He didn't even dare cough anymore, suppressing the itch until his face flushed dark red and his chest heaved painfully.
The smoke thickened. Through the haze, the three figures in the massive oil painting blurred—the melancholy woman's gaze seeming to bore directly into his soul.
Erika sat rigid on the hard stool, feeling his sanity fraying at the edges. The conversation had slid into a suffocating, hopeless dead end. He had to say something—anything—to break this silence before it crushed him completely. He needed something concrete to focus on.
His desperate gaze fell once more on the oil painting.
He took a shallow breath, trying and failing to keep his voice steady. "Where are those… Sorcerers?" He paused, his trembling finger gesturing vaguely toward the canvas. "The ones in the painting."
He deliberately avoided asking about the woman—instinct screamed that she was the absolute epicenter of the danger—choosing instead the two men.
The room fell into a silence so profound it felt like the air had been sucked out.
Quinn didn't answer. He didn't change his reclined posture.
He only made a very soft, almost inaudible tsk with his tongue.
The sound was microscopic, yet it made Erika's heart slam against his ribs. It wasn't the calculating click from earlier. It sounded like an involuntary, physiological reaction to a rusted blade dragging across an exposed, festering nerve.
Then, Quinn's arms, crossed loosely over his chest, tightened. It was an imperceptible shift, but the shift of a coiled serpent.
He continued staring at the ceiling.
But Erika felt it. The ambient temperature in the room didn't drop; it simply died. An invisible, crushing pressure began to leak from the man in the chair, filling the small bedroom like rising floodwater.
No answer.
Just that suffocating, lethal silence.
Dread, pure and unfiltered, shot from Erika's tailbone to the crown of his head. He could hear his own blood rushing in his ears.
Could it be… are they already… dead?
The thought struck like black lightning.
Of course. That was why Quinn had lost control over the Grey Cloak's cyborg corpse. That was why this painting hung like a shrine in his austere bedroom. It was a memorial.
And he, a filthy, clueless Sanctum stray, had just blundered straight into the Sorcerer's deepest, bloodiest minefield.
The terror this realization brought eclipsed everything before it. This wasn't fear of magic; it was the ultimate, primal terror of waking a grieving, rabid beast. Quinn's earlier madness on the scorched earth flashed through Erika's mind.
Rage had patterns. This silence was the dead calm in the eye of a hurricane.
Erika's palms went slick with cold sweat. Every bone in his body screamed at him to run, to throw himself out the door, yet he remained nailed to the stool by sheer, paralyzing terror.
Time flowed like viscous tar.
"I'm... I'm sorry, Master Sorcerer…"
His voice was a dry, broken whimper. His mind, scorched by fear, was shutting down, leaving only the pathetic instinct of prey trying to appease a predator. He leaned forward involuntarily, his body trembling, teetering on the edge of slipping off the stool to press his forehead to the cold stone floor.
Quinn remained absolutely silent. His back was a wall of black ice.
Just as Erika's knees were about to give way and hit the floor—
Tap. Tap.
Two clear, light knocks at the door.
Erika jolted so violently he nearly fell.
Before Quinn could respond, the heavy wooden door creaked open. Loren peeked in, his face carrying the distinct, slightly smug relief of a task efficiently completed.
His eyes swept the hazy room—and locked onto Erika.
Erika was frozen at the edge of the stool, torso pitched forward, his face pale as a corpse and twisted in sheer terror, caught in a pathetic, half-kneeling posture of submission.
Loren's relaxed expression vanished, replaced by utter confusion. He clearly could not comprehend what he was seeing. Why was Erika acting like he was about to be executed?
"Master Sorcerer, I've finished sorting the inventory," Loren reported, his voice faltering slightly as he stepped fully into the room, his eyes darting between Erika's terrified face and Quinn's motionless back. "The list is on the outer table."
The interruption was jarring. It was the intrusion of mundane reality into a pocket of pure nightmare.
Erika stared at Loren, his eyes wide, silently screaming at the noble boy to run, to leave, to not draw the monster's attention.
Quinn finally moved.
He didn't jump. He didn't turn around quickly.
He simply, slowly, uncrossed his arms. The movement was lethargic, heavy with that bone-deep weariness.
"Leave the list." Quinn's voice was a harsh, scraping whisper that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. He still didn't turn around. "And take this shaking whelp out of my sight before I dissect him just for the quiet."
The words weren't a joke. They were a cold, factual statement of intent.
Loren swallowed hard, the last of his smugness evaporating. He didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed Erika by the arm—Erika's muscles were locked tight as iron—and practically dragged the terrified boy out of the room, slamming the heavy wooden door shut behind them.
The bedroom returned to absolute silence.
The smoke continued to drift.
And Quinn remained sunk in his chair, staring blindly at the ceiling, while the three figures in the painting watched over him with their eternal, unchanging gaze.