He took another step forward and felt something beneath his foot. Glancing down, he shifted his weight and moved his foot aside, realizing it was some sort of paper. He bent down, picked it up, and wiped it against his tunic, brushing away the dirt from his boots that had smeared across the small page.
He stared at it, surprised to see the letters remained perfectly intact.
'I don't think I've ever heard of this.' Rei paused for a moment, then exhaled and quietly repeated the words in his mind.
'Erok. Visu. Vas. Eiras. Truest of the Seven, I summon thee.
Let serpent's venom weep upon sacred stone.
Let eyes, clouded white, sear into the realm.
Where faith frays, and bloodlines blur.
By this vow, I awaken the Shrine of Venom.'
He repeated the rite a few more times in his head before slipping the small paper into his Arbiter: Vault, chuckling faintly to himself. He turned around, ready to walk away, but paused and glanced back at the shrine. Something about the words on that paper, the structure in front of him, and the curiosity still coiled within his chest made him hesitate.
'No.' Rei shook his head, brushing the thought away, and made his way back through the hallway toward the wooden box.
'It's just as I've read about. The less you know of cursed objects, the higher the chance of living to see the morning of tomorrow. The more you know, the higher the chance of being killed by your own curiosity, or by some hidden organization. Red Dawn, for example... I guess.'
He stood in front of the sealed wooden box again, cloth draped over it, and let out a quiet sigh. He glanced around. The floor was clean, except for the mud tracked in from his boots. Rei sat down against the wall opposite the box, inside the gate that encircled it. He leaned back and gave a deep sigh as he closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than a few hours of sleep.
But as his eyes shut, something stirred in the back of his mind, faint and familiar, like a memory long buried. His eyes snapped open and he scrambled up, sprinting back down the hallway until he stood once again before the shrine.
'The message!' The words echoed in his mind as memories began to surface. Beneath the temple, Zay had done something, something that had activated a kind of 'switch' and revealed the Resonance Lens.
He stood frozen, trying to piece together the memory. He didn't want to get this wrong. He had no idea what might happen if he did. His eyes shut, and after several moments of quiet, he murmured under his breath, "Interact with the shrine."
'Could this... be the shrine it was referring to? I'm not sure, but according to that piece of paper, the final line of the rite mentions Shrine of Venom. If the note was left in this room, then this must be it. But why leave it here?'
Rei took the paper back out from his Arbiter: Vault and stared at it again.
His heartbeat quickened. He couldn't believe he was even considering this. If he was wrong, which he assumed he was, what would the price be for enacting the rite? What would happen? He had no answers.
He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and kept his eyes on the words. Sweat formed at his brow. He swallowed hard and licked his lips, gaze rising to the shrine before him.
"Fine," he whispered.
"Erok. Visu. Vas. Eiras. Truest of the seven, I summon thee.
Let serpent's venom weep upon sacred stone.
Let eye's, clouded white, sear into the realm.
By this vow, I awaken the Shrine of Venom."
The moment the final word left his mouth, the shrine began to glow a brilliant white, tinged with sage. From the great stone before him, a wind picked up, swirling around him. Then, one of the holes within the shrine glowed a bright ruby red.
A soft sssssssss sound filled the air. Rei's eyes widened as he realized It was a snake.
He stumbled back in alarm. As his left foot landed on the stone, a small, all-white snake with emerald eyes shot out from one of the holes. It coiled around his right arm and sank its fangs into his skin. He gritted his teeth as the venom rushed into his bloodstream. Then, slowly, the snake loosened its bite and dissolved into a pale white mist.
His eyes narrowed as he gritted his teeth, a guttural grunt tearing from his throat. The bite from the fangs sent a violent sting through his arm, sharp and invasive. The pain didn't fade, it simply became worse. His vision began to blur as a dense white fog formed around the shrine, swallowing everything in sight.
He spun in place, searching for anything solid, but the fog was endless. He raised his hands and saw nothing but white mist clinging to his skin like smoke.
Suddenly, his head erupted in pain.
"URGH!" he screamed, clutching his skull. It felt like his brain was cracking in half, as though something inside was splitting him open. A hot, tearing sensation ripped through his right arm. He tried to summon his aura, but nothing came. It was like trying to move a dead limb.
The world around him melted into the white fog, and Rei had subconsciously, thanks to the shrine, received a vision of the future.
He saw Zay, standing with a revolver in hand. Black metal etched with golden stripes. A rose embedded into the side glinted in the ghostly light. In front of him sat Naomi, bound in ropes. Her hair was short now, reaching only to her neck. Her face was smeared with blood, and filled with tears. Signs of repeated abuse carved into her features. Cuts across her arms, and her cheeks. Blood flowed from her cheeks, and she had fingerprints around her throat.
"Stop crying!" Zay shouted. His voice came in a furious tone. A tone that Rei had never heard from Zay. He raised the revolver and fired, the shot entering through her forehead, leaving through the back of her head. Blood flowed from the wound before he cocked the revolver back again. Zay lowered the revolver to her chest and shot again. The bullet entered her chest, passing her heart, and coming out from her back, killing Naomi.
Rei's breath caught in his throat. Zay turned, his face was twisted with a grin formed out of pleasure in the act of killing Naomi. Rei's eyes widened and he noticed his teeth were missing.
'This... this can't be true. There's no way this... this is real.'
Zay began walking toward him. Rei's legs wouldn't move. Then, the vision warped again. He saw the word "Deny it," scribbled in uneven writing on cloth. The same cloth he had found.
His heart pounded in his chest as Zay raised the gun to Rei's head.
"This. All of this, is a lie! IT'S NOT REAL!" Rei screamed. His own teeth were missing, his voice sounded wrong, slurred and desperate.
Zay pulled the trigger and everything vanished.
Rei's eyes snapped open. He was back, back in the chamber, in front of the shrine. His breathing was ragged, heavy with panic. He looked down at his hands. They were whole again. He moved his tongue, felt his teeth and knew he was back. Despite being back, he felt a tight feeling in his chest.
"...W-what the hell... was that?" Rei stuttered slightly while pausing mid sentence to himself as he spat up saliva onto the floor next to him and looked forward. The same white mist appeared and before he could even react to it, the snake appeared, wrapped around his arm again. Its emerald eyes glowed with a crimson tint as it plunged its fangs back into his arms.
Rei gritted his teeth, feeling the pain of the fangs entering the same spot where it had bit earlier. The snake's body glowed white, absorbing the venom that it had injected before vanishing back into white mist.
After the snake had faded away, the pain faded with it. The intense feeling of watching the vision also numbed itself, fading away slightly from Rei's mind. It wasn't completely gone. It was gone to such an extent that he couldn't find the memory properly, even if he tried to find it through his memories.
The Resonance Lens appeared in front of him, his eyes widened as he read.
[2/3 switches have been activated. The mirror remains unactive. Leaving the Sequence remains impossible.]
[To activate switch 3, sacrifice a child to the Ancient Demon of Blood.]