“Sounds like something out of a scripture.”

  As a believer in the concept of science, the word evil doesn’t stir anything noble in me. Evil isn’t some abstract stain to be scrubbed away. It’s necessary. It exists because the universe demands balance. It exists because humans exist. And I am human.

  Human enough to know that I am evil myself.

  Dragons were beings of absolute good. Pure. Untouched. And even though I walk the pathway of the dragon, I am not that. I have killed. I have wanted to die. I have wanted others to die in my place. Whatever lives inside me is not clean, not holy, not worthy of what they stood for.

  The words on the wall are not telling me to turn back if I am impure. They are telling me to enter because I am. They are asking for acceptance, not innocence. That realization makes my chest tighten.

  For the first time since waking up in this hell, I hesitate.

  The doors loom in front of me, silent and patient, as if they already know my answer. As if they have been waiting for someone exactly like me. Someone who understands that goodness alone cannot survive what lies beyond.

  My hand twitches. Should I summon Horus’s Agony? No. Whatever waits on the other side won’t be solved with steel. Or maybe it won’t require a weapon at all. Maybe it requires something far worse.

  “Fascinating, isn’t it?”

  The voice snaps through the corridor. I turn instantly like prey. Cold fear punches straight through my chest, sharp and sudden, stealing the breath I thought I had under control. So much for bravery.

  A man is standing in the corridor. He’s tall. That’s the only thing my mind manages to register at first. Everything else about him is swallowed by the darkness of this floor, as if the shadows themselves are clinging to his body, refusing to let him be seen.

  “Who are you?” I ask. My voice doesn’t crack, but it comes close. I force it to steady. I force myself to steady. Because if I die here. If I really die. I might have to restart everything.

  Again. He laughs softly and takes a step forward. Then another.

  “Don’t you recognize me?” he asks. Each step echoes, louder than my heartbeat pounding against my ribs. The sound crawls under my skin. Why do I suddenly feel like this? Like my instincts are screaming at me to run, even though my feet refuse to move.

  “Don’t you recognize your father?” The word hits harder than any blade. He raises his voice, and when he shouts, the darkness recoils.

  It peels away. The shadows rip back as if afraid of him, revealing a man with piercing, unnatural blue eyes. Blonde hair frames his face, a thick beard spreading across his jaw like a lion’s mane. His expression is calm. Familiar. Gentle in the way nightmares are gentle right before they tear you apart.

  My stomach drops. It’s Adam. It’s fucking Adam. The man we called our creator. Our teacher. Our god in a white coat. My hands curl into fists before I realize they’re shaking.

  “Adam…” The word barely escapes my mouth. It scrapes my throat raw on the way out. My breath locks halfway in, halfway out, like my lungs have forgotten what they’re supposed to do. Am I choking on air? I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.

  “No… this is not real,” I tell myself that, clinging to it, even as the Whispers of Agony curl louder inside my skull. They never lie. If they’re here, then I’m awake. I’m here.

  “You are the Darkest Night.”

  I don’t hesitate. Horus’s Agony forms in my hand like it’s been waiting, metal screaming as ether floods into it from my pool. The blade cackles, delighted, alive in a way that makes my skin crawl. I hold my breath and brace.

  He vanishes. Not fades. Not moves. He’s gone for one moment, and the next he’s in front of me.

  I thrust. I am much slower than him as he slips past the blade with movements that are too perfect, like he’s already seen this attack a thousand times. His counterstrike punch lands dead center in my chest, right where I’m open, right where it matters.

  There’s a faint crack. I don’t hear it so much as feel it bloom inside me. The world snaps sideways as I slam into the wall beneath the scripture I just read. The stone doesn’t move, but my body does. The impact ripples through me, and pain detonates everywhere at once.

  At this rate, I might die.

  I try to move. My body refuses. My limbs feel distant, borrowed. Like they belong to someone else.

  Then his voice echoes through the corridor, sharp and amused. “The ability to return.”

  My blood runs cold when I hear the mention of my curse. 'Bloodydamn. I was too late. It knows.’

  In that instant, everything clicks into place. The calm. The precision. The way he wore Adam’s face so easily. This isn’t a trick layered on top of a monster.

  This is the monster. The Darkest Night itself, wrapped in the skin of the man I hate most. The only presence that ever sat in my mind without whispers. The only thing that could watch me this closely.

  It knows. It knows about my ability. And now it’s smiling at me as if I’ve already lost.

  “What are the odds that you would attract that kind of constellations?” His voice is laced with humor, soft and indulgent, like he’s admiring a clever experiment. “The Undying curse is truly marvelous for us who want to live forever. But a curse to those who desire short lives. Those like you.”

  I catch the shift. The way his tone bends around the word that. Not vague. Not accidental. It refers to a specific group of constellations with names I do not know. They’re the ones who looked at me and decided I was worth keeping.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  My stomach twists. If he’s here. Here, in this place, wearing that face, then something has gone wrong. Very wrong. The Darkest Night does not seem like the kind of entity to leave things unchecked.

  So what happened to Nico? To Devon? Am I the only one who clawed my way out of its mental trap?

  No. That can’t be true. Something else is happening. Something layered beneath the illusion and beneath the fear. Something I wasn’t meant to notice until it was already too late.

  And whatever it is, I don’t like it.

  “Where is Nico?”

  Even as the words leave my mouth, my body betrays me. My healing factor kicks in at the worst time. Bone grinds against bone. Tendons snap back into place with wet, internal pops that make my stomach churn. Pain floods me in violent waves, sharp and intimate, like my body is punishing me for surviving.

  If this is the pain I am meant to endure as a Nexus Being who fights for others, then you might as well throw me on a farming planet and watch me live the rest of my life cleaning animal shit.

  Meanwhile, the Darkest Night smiles. Its face then melts. Adam’s features stretch and peel away like soft wax, reshaping into someone older. Silver hair spills down its shoulders. Red eyes burn with depthless calm, and a white beard frames a face carved with authority and decay.

  “Nico is alive and well,” it says. Relief flickers in me and dies instantly.

  “I was going to hunt him,” it continues casually, “but there has been a change in priorities.”

  ‘Hunt? Does that mean that he made it out of the illusion? It has to be.’

  “You see,” it continues, pacing slowly, each step echoing too loudly in the corridor, “the Dragon Monarch is an Undying too. An undying by rebirth.”

  My breath catches. Fuck.

  “He did not want to live,” the Darkest Night continues, smoothing into something almost reverent, “so he caged his soul beyond those doors, in hopes that he would never have to be reborn.”

  It laughs. It's not Adam’s laugh, it's not even human. It's a deep, hollow sound that vibrates through the walls and into my bones.

  “It’s pathetic, isn’t it? How dare he forsake his purpose!” The air feels heavier. Thicker. Like the Spire itself is listening. “That is the moment,” its eyes gleam, “ I realized something very important. I gave my life to a false king. As the corruption cleared my mind, I understood what had to be done.”

  Its smile widens. “The next Monarch will not flee.” The lights in the walls pulse once, like a heartbeat. “He will be something I have shaped. A true king,” it whispers. “A Monarch.”

  His gaze shifts to me. The red in his eyes ignites in the dark, glowing like embers buried beneath ash. They don’t just shine, they bury deep into the target. They sparkle with madness, but not the fractured kind that consumed Horus. This is controlled madness that has had centuries to learn patience.

  “What are you talking about?” I manage to speak once the worst of the pain recedes, my voice still tight, still trembling in places I can’t control.

  “For centuries, I have lured mortals into this realm.” His words sink into the walls. “I fed their greed. Tested their resolve. Most of them broke the moment I showed them the perfect world they wanted to see.” His lips curl. “They surrender so easily when happiness is handed to them. It was only recently, when I discovered the first group of Adam’s children, that I began to see the possibilities.”

  The red in his eyes deepens. “Each one of you came close. Close enough to almost pass my test.” His voice lowers. “I then waited until they finally created something interesting. You. A weak-blooded silverblood capable enough to digest the blood of a dragon.”

  He pauses when I try to stand. My legs scream as Horus’s Agony coils back into my muscles. I wobble, but I don’t fall. Not yet. “So,” I say, forcing air into my lungs, straightening even as my body protests, “you want a puppet.”

  I let out a hollow, practiced laugh—the kind I learned in the lab. The kind the investors loved.

  “And you think I’m the perfect one for that?” The laugh echoes wrong in the corridor. “I don’t think I want to do that,” I add, leaning into the mockery. Then I smile. “And let’s be honest, you don’t actually want me dead,” I say while tipping my head.

  His eyes narrow.

  “Because I can restart the day. Hehe.” A weak chuckle slips out.

  His eye twitches when I say that. “Yes, the return ability is a problem.” A thin smile stretches his face. “But there are many ways to make you give up. I was a silverblood too before I was reborn. A warrior no Nexus Being of your universe can ever beat.”

  The air suddenly tightens. He vanishes, and the space where he stood collapses inward. My instincts scream. I twist just in time. His fist flashes past my face, close enough that the pressure alone snaps my head aside.

  I swing with all the might I can muster with my body. Horus’s Agony screams as ether coats the blade, but it bites into nothing. An afterimage.

  Then he’s behind me. The kick lands between my shoulder blades. Pain detonates. Mt breath rips out of me as my body lurches forward, and I almost fall as I barely stay on my feet.

  But underestimating me is perhaps the bigger mistake he’s made since we met. I may not be the strongest here, but I play dirty. I make a quick summon for a ring, and suddenly the corridor is bathed in electric blue light. I turn with my hand out as I use one of the few aces.

  Lightning detonates point-blank. The corridor howls when electric arcs rip outward in chaotic veins, shredding the darkness like torn cloth. The blue light floods the walls, crawls over the scripture, and for the first time since entering the spire, I see it all clearly.

  BOOM!

  As expected, the former silverblood doesn’t dodge. He takes the strike head-on. Lighting coils around his body, hammering him again and again with violence strong enough to reduce most beings to scorched ash. The impact drives him back half a step. Just once.

  ‘And just like about forty percent is gone. This ring is a total scam.’

  The smell of ozone burns my nose. My arm screams in protest as the ring overheats, skin blistering where metal bites flesh.

  It doesn’t take a genius to know that I am not supposed to perform a second one.

  “Oh,” his voice cackles through the static. “Good. You will make a great monarch, indeed, with this spirit. Please think of the great things we can do together. Soon, demons will return. Khaos has already planted itself on a planet in your universe. What will you do about that?”

  He says those words as though I would give a damn if demons returned. I've never seen one to care.

  He steps forward, lighting still crawling over him like decorative jewelry. The arcs bend unnaturally. They slide off his skin and ground themselves into the floor as if the Spire is protecting him.

  ‘Bloodydamn.’ My heart sinks when he reaches out and grabs the lighting. Not metaphorically. Not defensively. He closes his hand around a writhing arc of energy, and the bolt screams as it collapses into his palm and dies.

  In that moment, I finally understand that this fight—the fight where I’m risking my life—is play to him. No trick in my arsenal can defeat something as old and powerful as him.

  “Those with the blessing of the dragon are immune to all forms of lightning. You would know this if you choose to let go of this world,” he speaks calmly, examining the fading sparks between his fingers.

  ‘The Blessing of the Dragon? Is that one of the other beings?’ My thoughts scribble while I try to think of a way of getting past those doors. I am not equipped to fight the darkest night, but I can escape it.

  Without warning, he attacks, wielding the same lightning I’ve thrown at him. I parry the first swing. Once again, the darkest night’s power makes it hard to even parry.

  Why can’t I fight someone as strong as I am? Someone weak?

  Bang…Bang

  We split for a second, and I use the window to retreat instinctively and run towards the doors meant to lead to the heart of a dragon.

  I hold my breath and let the ether go wild as I swing at the wall instead. The blade crashes into the scripture with everything I have left. The sword’s surface cracks as Ether explodes outward, spider-webbing cracks across the surface.

  The words flare bright gold for half a heartbeat—then sink inward, collapsing like burning paper sucked into a void.

  The corridor shudders, and a new pressure spikes so hard my knees buckle. My ears ring. Blood leaks from my nose in a warm, steady trickle. I taste iron and ozone and something older—dust that remembers stars dying.

  I then hear a voice.

  [The Dragon Monarch invites you]