Inside the main chamber, the air felt old in a way the surface never could. Cold. Still. And dry.
Their footsteps echoed across polished stone as Team Nemean spread out just enough to breathe again without losing sight of one another. The main hall of the cryo-tomb was far too clean compared to the ruin outside. Dust existed, yes. Time had touched this place, yes. But not in the same way. The chamber still held itself together with a quiet dignity, like something important had once slept here and expected the world to behave.
Murals covered the walls. Not one or two, but a whole stretches of them.
The plaques beneath the images were written in a language none of them could read. The shapes bent too hard, warped too strangely, like letters made by something that understood the idea of human writing but not the logic beneath it. It reminded Jake of those old early AI images people used to laugh at. Words that looked almost right until you actually tried to read them.
Only this was not funny. Not here. Not with the pictures above them.
The murals showed war between humanity against monsters. Not one city, not one ruin, not one dungeon floor, not even a single country. A war big enough to unite mankind. It made the walls themselves feel heavy.
There were armies of creatures twisted into shapes Team Nemean could barely follow at a glance. Swarms in one. Towers of flesh in another. Winged things with too many limbs in the next. Beasts crawling over cities and plains and dead landscapes. And in the middle of the scenes, humanity answered with its own champions.
Heroes wrapped in huge amounts of mana, so dense it looked like they were cloaked in comet tails. Light and force streamed behind them as they charged toward one constant figure that appeared again and again across the murals.
A hooded figure, draped in gray. Always gray. It never attack directly. Sometimes it stood above battle, sometimes it walked through ruin. And in the other, it just watched while the world behind it burned.
No one liked the implication of that.
Séline was the first to give it shape. "Time loop."
Her voice carried too well in the chamber.
Jake frowned at the mural. "That's a cheerful thought."
"It would explain prophecy ruins," Séline said. "Or murals of things not yet happened."
But even as she said it, the idea sat wrong with most of them.
Emma folded her arms and kept staring at the wall. "No."
Séline looked over. "No."
"If this were a time loop," Emma said, "then why murals showing a future that already happened like this exist?" She narrowed her eyes. "They... well, we would just repeat."
That landed. Because she was right. A loop explained repetition. Not this feeling. This felt more like someone trying to leave a mark.
Camille stepped closer to one broken section of mural and traced the air near it without touching.
"What if some people from the previous loop survived, or they awaken memory from the previous loop in this life" she said. "And they left this ruin here to warn the next cycle. In Manhwa and Manhua there are a lot of stories that use regression like that."
That made the chamber go quiet again. Because no one had a clean argument against it.
Dominic rubbed a hand over his jaw. Joanne looked unhappy in that particular way she did when too many answers sounded possible. Janet turned her gaze back to the hooded figure in gray and muttered something under her breath that was probably not kind.
Alex stared longest. Then she spoke without looking away from the mural. "Or the dungeon is a cosmic being."
That pulled several eyes toward her. She went on, calm and cold and thinking fast.
"It devours worlds. Incorporates them into itself." Her hand lifted slightly toward the surrounding walls, the metal orbs on the roof outside, the whole dead city around the tomb. "That would explain the ruins. Different cultures. Civilizations that never existed on Earth. Not one history, but many."
Jake let out a breath. "I like that one better."
Jack nodded slowly. "Same."
Joanne gave a sharp little point toward Alex. "Yes. Big cosmic sentient dungeon eating worlds is somehow more comforting than time loop hell."
Janet snorted. "Because it means our lives aren't meaningless repetitions."
Emma said nothing for a few seconds.
Then, quietly, "It also fits the ruins better."
Dominic looked from one mural to the next, then made the practical call like that time with the Monstrous Phoenix.
"We rest!"
That snapped the team back into motion. Not relaxed, not in this kind of unexplainable ruin. But functional. They had earned that much.
A rough meal was started in the chamber while watches were arranged and injuries checked. Nobody trusted the tomb fully, but the pixies' fear of it bought them room, and room meant survival. For now, that was enough.
Alex sat against one of the smoother walls after they made camp and pulled out her phone.
Dominic, passing by with food in hand, glanced over without much thought. Then he paused. Scrolled names caught his eye: Jin Yong, Gu Long, Wen Rui-An.
He looked at her, then back at the screen. "You're reading wuxia?"
Alex did not look embarrassed in the slightest. "Yes."
Dominic lowered himself onto a nearby piece of broken stone and gave her a curious look. "Since when?"
"Since recently." She scrolled once, eyes still on the text. "I figured expanding my perspective to a different culture might be the push I need."
"For your fighting style."
That got a small nod. Alex locked the screen and looked up at last.
"I already have range, flexibility, control is my forte." She glanced toward the Dragon Slayer resting nearby in its dissolved state, waiting to be called again. "What I'm missing isn't more weapons. It's… weight. I archived it once through raw stats. But doing that again without blowing myself up with Phong's strawberry might require a different way of thinking about force."
Dominic understood that faster than most people would have. He had watched her ever since Phong pointed out the flaw. Ever since she started trying to give her style more weight and more finality.
"That makes sense," he said.
Alex leaned her head back against the wall.
Then Dominic added, "You know you can use Bai Hu's storm."
That pulled her eyes back to him.
"The skill," he said. "If you want to use it, use it. We'll adapt."
Alex said nothing right away.
Dominic continued, steady and practical.
"We can learn the new positioning. We can work around you being the eye of the storm." He shrugged a little. "You don't have to hold back for us."
Alex was quiet for a moment. Then she shook her head.
"I wasn't holding back," she said. "Not really."
Dominic raised a brow.
"That was our first real encounter with the pixies," Alex said. "I didn't use it because I didn't know enough yet. That's all."
He studied her face for a second, judging whether she was protecting the team's feelings or simply stating fact. With Alex, the two could overlap. Still, he believed her. So Dominic let the matter rest.
Around them, the cryo-tomb stayed silent. The murals watched from the walls. The dead city beyond the chamber waited under strange metal orbs and broken windows. Somewhere outside, the pixies still circled the edge of the tomb's fear.
Inside, Team Nemean ate, rested, and tried not to think too hard about the gray hooded figure painted across the walls of a world that might not have been theirs.
For now, surviving the next hour was enough.
Midnight broke apart under Dominic's scream. It hit the cryo-tomb walls and came back twice as loud. Everyone was awake in an instant.
That alone said enough. Dominic was not Jake. He was not Rico. He was not the kind of person who screamed because he got startled, or annoyed, or saw something ugly in the dungeon. For someone like him to make that sound meant something had gone very, very wrong.
Alex was on her feet first, psychic spear already in hand. Joanne rolled up with her ring raised, a spark gathering at her fingertip before she was even fully standing. Jake and Jack moved as one, both already armed. Janet snatched up her weapon and shoved the last of sleep out of her face. Séline and Camille came up low and ready, the way people did when they expected blood the moment they turned a corner.
They followed the sound deeper into the tomb. Into the burial chamber.
And then all of them stopped.
Because there were, somehow, two Dominics.
Their Dominic stood near the entrance to the chamber, pale in a way none of them had ever seen on him. He had mostly gotten himself under control by then, but only mostly. His chest still rose too fast. His eyes were fixed on the altar at the center of the room. One shaking finger pointed forward.
"What the fuck is that?"
No one answered him. Because on the main altar of the burial chamber, there really was another Dominic that hadn't been there when they checked the place for ambush earlier. He was kneeling there. Still. Silent except for a broken murmur that rose and fell like a damaged recording.
The chamber itself seemed built around that altar. Wide steps led up to it from all sides, and above it hung old crystal fixtures that no longer gave light. The whole room was lined with more murals and broken frozen caskets, but none of that mattered now. Not with that thing on the altar.
The other Dominic wore heavy armor. Not like Dominic's own usual look.
This armor was bulkier in some places and more layered in others, shaped in a style none of them could name. It had the look of old war gear, severe and proud, with broad shoulder guards and overlapping plates that made Alex think of a samurai from some old movie Phong once made her watch. In front of the kneeling figure stood a huge tower shield planted against the floor, its surface worked with a strange bronze-like face pattern. Wide eyes. Harsh lines. A design none of them recognized, only that it looked ancient and wrong in a way the dungeon seemed to love.
(the shield was inspired by San Xing Dui's culture fyi)
But the armor was not the worst part. The body inside it was ruined. Deep cuts covered the other Dominic from head to toe. Dozens, maybe more. Some were slashes, some looked like punctures. And some looked too torn to be from any clean weapon.
From every opening came blood, but not red. It was golden. It gushed and dripped down the armor in shining streams, and every time the light caught it, it gleamed like molten metal.
Joanne swore softly. Emma's face tightened. Janet's grip on her weapon hardened.
Then the other thing became clear, and that was what made Jake take one step back. Some of the wounds were not wounds. Or maybe they were, but not in any way he understood. They looked like glitches, static on an old television. Jagged strips of noise cutting through flesh, armor, even the outline of the body itself. As if pieces of that other Dominic were not just bleeding out, but breaking apart. Information tearing loose from whatever he was.
Alex felt the skin on the back of her neck crawl. The kneeling figure's head twitched. Then it spoke again.
"Stop the gr..."
The voice cut out halfway through the word. It dragged into a burst of distortion so ugly it made everyone flinch.
"...rrkshh...gr...aaaa..."
Then again. "Stop the gr..."
Dominic stared at it like he was seeing his own corpse trying to talk. Joanne was the first to say what everyone else was already thinking. "The gray one."
Her voice came out hushed without her meaning to.
Emma's eyes flicked at once toward the chamber walls, toward the murals they had studied earlier. Heroes. Monsters. A war. And always, somewhere in the images, the hooded figure in gray.
Jake swallowed. "You think that's what he's trying to say?"
"What else would it be?" Jack muttered.
Séline narrowed her eyes at the altar. "It fits too well."
Camille's voice was colder. "Too well is usually bad."
Janet glanced from the kneeling figure to their Dominic and back again. "I don't like any of this."
Alex said nothing at first. She just looked. Same build. Same face. Same presence. And yet not.
This Dominic on the altar looked older in a way that had nothing to do with years. He looked worn down by too much war and too much pain. Even kneeling, even half broken, he gave off a kind of weight. Not just power or level. History scarred with battles, a past shrouded in despair.
Dominic found his own voice first. "That's not me."
Jake let out a weak laugh that held no humor. "Really?"
Dominic did not even spare him a look.
"That's not me," he repeated, more firmly this time, as if he needed to hear it himself.
The kneeling figure twitched again. Golden blood dripped from the altar to the floor.
"Stop... the gr..."
The last word died in static.
Emma took a slow step sideways, eyes fixed on the other Dominic. "We need to consider the obvious problem here."
"No shit," Joanne muttered.
Emma ignored that. "If this tomb is tied to those murals, and those murals really are warnings, then either this is some kind of projection..." She paused, visibly hating the next option. "...or that is Dominic from somewhere else."
"Time loop," Séline said again.
Camille folded her arms. "Or another world."
Jake looked deeply unhappy. "Great! Love both options."
Jack frowned. "Why would it look like Dominic?"
No one had a good answer.
Dominic himself seemed to have stopped hearing them. His breathing had steadied now, but that almost made it worse. He was focused. Locked in. The kind of look he got when he had already decided something and the rest of the world was just trying to catch up.
Alex noticed first. "Dominic."
He did not answer.
Janet took one step toward him. "Dom."
Still nothing.
He was staring up at the altar, at the kneeling figure wearing a stranger's armor and his own face. Then Dominic started forward.
Janet caught his wrist at once. "Are you serious?"
He looked at her, then back at the altar. "I need to see it up close."
Emma frowned. "That is a terrible idea."
Jake pointed at the bleeding double. "For once, rich girl's right."
"Don't call me that right now," Emma snapped.
Joanne kept her ring trained on the figure. "I can shoot him from here if he moves weird."
"Please do not shoot the maybe-Dominic unless we have to," Jack said.
"That was implied."
Alex stepped in front of Dominic by half a pace, psychic spear still in hand. "We don't know what this is."
Dominic met her eyes. "Exactly."
It was such a Dominic answer that nobody liked it.
Janet exhaled through her nose. "You are not doing this alone."
"I'm not asking to."
The kneeling figure shuddered again. Its head lifted a little. Enough for them to see the full face. It was Dominic. No mistake now.
Dominic, but harder. Dominic, but worn out. Dominic, but less gentle giant and a lot more Dark Soul NPC. It was their captain if he was carrying something old and grim in the set of his jaw. Golden blood ran from one eye.
"Stop..." it whispered.
Then the static tore through the rest of the sentence.
Alex cursed under her breath.
Emma's expression had gone sharp and calculating. "If he really means the gray figure from the murals, then that thing knows something."
"That thing," Dominic said quietly, "looks like me."
Emma pressed her lips together but did not argue. That was answer enough.
Dominic gently pulled his wrist free from Janet's hand. She hated that he did it gently. If he had been rough about it, she could have yelled. Could have shoved him back. But Dominic being Dominic made it harder.
"Just close enough to look," he said.
"No touching," Joanne said at once.
Jake added, "No touching, no heroic nonsense, no dungeon horror deals."
Jack lifted a hand. "And if it moves wrong, we pull you back."
Séline cracked her knuckles. "Fast."
Camille nodded once. "Very fast."
Alex held his gaze for another second, then stepped aside, though her spear stayed up. "If I say stop, you stop."
Dominic gave the smallest nod. Then he turned toward the altar.
The burial chamber felt colder with each step he took.
The other Dominic remained kneeling, bleeding gold, static crawling through his wounds in ugly flickers. The tower shield stood before him like a grave marker. Behind him, the dark wall murals watched in silence.
No one breathed easy. No one blinked for long.
Dominic reached the base of the altar stairs.
And then, with every eye in the chamber fixed on him, he started to climb.