“The Ashen Mountain.”

  The name alone sounded eerie and carried a weight that felt far more intimidating than the first floor, though thinking back on it, that floor had not even been given a name at all.

  Darkness surrounded Rain from every direction, and even after activating his vampire eyes the world remained dim and shadowed, leaving only faint outlines of stone and uneven ground visible.

  It seemed he had been placed inside some kind of massive cavern, where the distant sound of water droplets falling onto stone echoed through the darkness.

  For a brief moment, Rain felt the urge to shout just to see how long the echo would last in such an enormous space, but the thought of what creatures might be lurking within the cave quickly forced him to abandon the idea.

  There was a very real possibility that monsters lived somewhere in the darkness, and Rain hoped he would not encounter anything like that.

  As he continued walking forward, he found himself wondering where Stella had gone.

  They had stepped through the portal at nearly the same moment, yet she was nowhere to be seen, which meant she must have been transported to a different location entirely.

  Perhaps it was a good thing she had not been sent into this cave, because escaping such a place without the ability to see in darkness might have been nearly impossible.

  He kept moving in what he hoped was a straight line and at last he noticed a faint glow in the distance, weak and distant but unmistakably different from the darkness around him.

  Rain moved toward it with growing anticipation, and after what felt like far too long he finally reached the entrance of the cave, stopping only inches from the source of the light.

  Still standing within the cave’s shadow, he looked out into the open world beyond and immediately understood the reason for the floor’s name.

  Far in the distance, several miles away, rose a vast mountain whose peak disappeared into the haze above, its enormous shape dominating the horizon like a silent giant.

  Even when Rain strained his vampire sight in an attempt to see clearer, the distance was too great for him to make out more than a faint outline.

  At the very top of the mountain he thought he could see the shape of some kind of structure, though it remained blurred and indistinct no matter how hard he focused.

  As Rain prepared to leave the cave and cautiously stepped forward, lifting one leg into the light beyond the entrance, a sudden scream tore from his throat as unbearable pain exploded through his body, forcing him to stumble backward into the darkness almost immediately.

  His leg gave out beneath him as he collapsed onto the stone floor.

  The pain was overwhelming and came without warning, so intense and sudden that every injury Rain had ever experienced in his life felt insignificant in comparison.

  For two full minutes he screamed while clutching his leg with both hands, gripping it with desperate strength as if pressure alone might somehow lessen the agony burning through him.

  It felt as though a flamethrower had been held against his flesh without pause, scorching him relentlessly.

  Eventually the torment began to ease, not disappearing entirely but weakening enough for Rain to stop grinding his teeth and clenching his jaw in agony.

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  When his thoughts finally became clear again, Rain forced himself to lift the fabric of his pant leg so he could see what had caused such unbearable pain.

  Rain instantly raised his eyebrows, his eyes widening as his mouth fell open in shock.

  There was nothing.

  No burns, no wounds, no marks of any kind — his skin looked completely normal, as though nothing had happened at all, which made no sense considering how real the pain had felt.

  ‘Was that just a hallucination?’ Rain wondered.

  Perhaps it was because he had gone two full days without sleep, and even though he did not feel tired, that alone might have been enough to distort his senses.

  ‘But something that real… something that painful… could not have been fake.’

  At the end of the day, pain like that could not be imagined.

  Rain slowly forced himself back onto his feet, his heart still racing unevenly in his chest as he crept toward the entrance of the cave, leaning forward just enough to peer outside while making absolute certain that his head did not cross the boundary where the cool shadows of the cave met the pale daylight beyond.

  There was only one way to truly test his hypothesis, and even though he already feared the answer, he knew that avoiding the truth would make things worse.

  Raising his hand carefully, Rain extended only his index finger past the edge of the cave, moving slowly but surely.

  The instant his finger entered the light, he violently pulled it back into the darkness, a sharp cry escaping his throat.

  It felt as though his flesh had been submerged in molten lava.

  Fortunately, the pain did not reach the same unbearable level or longevity that it had when his leg had been exposed, most likely because he had reacted quickly enough to minimize the damage before the sunlight could fully take hold.

  As the pain gradually cooled, Rain lowered his hand and began to think, though the deeper his thoughts went, the more a quiet sense of dread began to settle over him.

  There were only two possible explanations for what had just happened, and neither of them brought any comfort.

  The first possibility was that the sun on this floor had the ability to burn people, which would explain the overwhelming pain he had felt the moment his skin touched the light.

  But the more he considered it, the less sense that explanation made.

  The first floor had been filled with goblins that were dangerous yet manageable, enemies that could be fought and overcome with enough effort and caution, and it would make little sense for the second floor to suddenly introduce something as unavoidable and overwhelmingly lethal as a sun that could burn anyone who stepped in its path.

  The difference in difficulty would be far too extreme, so extreme that it would border on impossibility, especially when only two people had been sent to clear the floor.

  Which left the second possibility.

  Because Rain had awakened as a vampire, he could no longer go outside during the day.

  The realization caused his heartbeat to accelerate even faster. Each passing second making the idea feel less like a theory and more like an undeniable truth.

  It made too much sense to ignore.

  Vampires were creatures of the night, beings that were never meant to walk beneath the sun, and now that he had fully awakened, it seemed inevitable that the true drawbacks of vampirism would eventually reveal themselves.

  Slowly, Rain lowered himself back down onto the cave floor.

  He regretted it.

  More than anything else in that moment, he regretted drinking the goblin’s blood.

  If he had not done that, he never would have awakened as a vampire, and if he had never awakened, he would not be trapped in a situation where even stepping outside during the day could mean unbearable pain or even possible death.

  “Fuck,” he muttered aloud, his voice low and bitter as the word echoed faintly against the cave walls.

  This might have been one of the worst possible outcomes he could have imagined, because surviving inside the Tower would already be difficult enough without being forced to move only at night, and the thought of navigating unknown dangers while limited by something as absolute as the sun filled him with quiet dread.

  As if that realization alone were not enough, his stomach tightened painfully and a low growl escaped him, the sensation was not the familiar hunger for normal food but something deeper.

  It was hunger for blood.

  Almost as if responding to that thought, the status window suddenly appeared before him.

  Rain froze where he sat.

  As the words revealed themselves one by one, his eyebrows rose sharply, his eyes started to widen.

  *You have discovered one of your two curses.*

  Sunmarked Curse — You have been marked as an enemy of the Sun, and its light shall burn your flesh wherever it finds you, for the daylit sky is no longer a place where you may dwell and only in the coming of night shall you find refuge. Should the Sun’s gaze rest upon you for longer than ten seconds, you shall perish.