I opened my eyes—
—and immediately realized something was different.
Not around me.
Inside me.
For the first time since entering that cursed sanctuary… the unbearable weight crushing my chest was gone.
No panic.
No suffocating dread.
No trembling fear clawing through my nerves.
Only—
Heat.
A violent heat flowing beneath my skin.
My blood burned.
Every heartbeat sent waves of pressure through my veins like molten metal being pumped directly into my body. It hurt… but not in the same way the loops had hurt.
This pain felt alive.
Awakening.
I slowly lifted my head from the cold stone floor near the staircase entrance.
The sanctuary was silent.
Too silent.
Behind me, the others were still talking quietly, unaware that something inside me had fundamentally changed.
Ever since I touched that pendulum…
Something had connected to me.
Or maybe—
something had finally noticed me.
My fingers twitched violently.
Thin strands of black mist leaked from beneath my nails for a fraction of a second before vanishing again.
My breathing became uneven.
Not from fear.
From anticipation.
I wanted to go back inside.
No—
I needed to.
The realization made my stomach twist.
I wanted to fight.
The thought should have terrified me.
Instead—
a smile slowly stretched across my face.
Not a normal smile.
Not relief.
Something sharper.
Something unstable.
Something that felt born from the countless deaths carved into my mind.
The loops had broken something inside me.
And whatever replaced it…
was smiling.
I stood up slowly.
The others immediately noticed the difference.
Alya frowned first.
"Dark…?"
Her voice sounded distant.
Muted.
Like the sanctuary itself mattered more than the people around me.
That thought should have disgusted me.
Instead, excitement crawled beneath my skin.
I looked toward the corridor leading to the Pendulum Chamber.
The walls pulsed faintly.
Like veins.
Like the sanctuary had a heartbeat.
And somehow—
mine was beginning to synchronize with it.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Every pulse sent more black mist leaking from my sleeves before dissolving into the air.
Professor Adermat noticed immediately.
His expression darkened.
"…Your energy changed."
I looked down at my trembling hands.
Then back at the corridor.
"I know."
My voice sounded calmer than it should have.
That terrified me more than anything.
Because after everything I had seen…
after every death…
after murdering my own friends with my own hands across endless loops—
I should have been broken.
Crying.
Screaming.
Begging not to go back.
Instead—
I was excited.
The realization made my smile widen slightly.
Something was wrong with me.
Something deeply wrong.
And yet…
for the first time since entering the sanctuary—
I felt powerful.
The corridor ahead almost seemed to breathe.
Waiting.
Calling me forward.
The black mist leaked again from my fingertips.
Longer this time.
Thicker.
Alive.
Kimberly instinctively stepped back.
Xia Jing narrowed her eyes.
Miriam's expression hardened immediately.
Only Alya kept looking at me without fear.
That hurt more than it should have.
I inhaled slowly.
The burning in my veins intensified.
The sanctuary was reacting to me now.
Not rejecting me.
Recognizing me.
That thought sent something dangerously close to euphoria through my chest.
I started walking toward the chamber.
No hesitation.
No fear.
The massive doors appeared ahead once more.
White stone.
Ancient gears.
The faint metallic ticking echoing from beyond them.
The sound no longer felt threatening.
It felt familiar.
Like a heartbeat answering my own.
I pushed the doors open.
The Pendulum Chamber revealed itself once again.
The enormous crystal pendulum hung silently in the center of the hall.
Black-and-gold liquid floated inside it like a miniature galaxy drowning in darkness.
Silver threads extended infinitely into the void above.
The priests were already waiting.
Five crimson figures standing beneath the pendulum like statues carved from blood.
But this time—
the moment I saw them—
I didn't feel fear.
I grinned.
A crooked, unstable grin stretched across my face as adrenaline flooded my body.
The priests noticed immediately.
One of them tilted his head slowly beneath the hood.
The others tightened their grip around their floating hourglasses.
They sensed it too.
Something had changed.
I raised my arm toward the pendulum.
Then shouted with everything I had.
"ATTACK THE PENDULUM WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE!"
The chamber froze.
Even the priests hesitated.
Miriam looked at me like I had gone insane.
Airi blinked repeatedly in confusion.
Kimberly frowned.
"What?!"
I turned toward them violently.
"NOW!"
Something in my voice made the entire room move instantly.
Blue flames erupted from Kimberly's hands.
Airi unleashed concentrated laser fire.
Miriam summoned dozens of massive energy spikes behind her.
And then—
the assault began.
The chamber exploded into chaos.
The moment Minho's fist connected with the priest's face, something inside the chamber changed.
Not emotionally.
Physically.
Reality itself reacted.
The impact exploded through the hall with a thunderous crack, and for a single instant the gears embedded inside the walls stopped rotating.
Every ticking clock fell silent.
Then—
The pendulum pulsed.
A deep, monstrous heartbeat echoed across the chamber.
THOOM.
The silver threads connected to it vibrated violently, spreading waves of distorted time through the air like invisible tsunamis.
And the priests smiled beneath their hoods.
Not calm smiles.
Relieved ones.
As if they had been waiting for violence to begin.
"Dark!"
Alya's voice reached me from behind, but I barely heard it.
My blood was burning.
No—
Boiling.
Every heartbeat felt heavier than the last.
Like something ancient was moving beneath my skin.
Something asleep.
Something that had just opened its eyes.
The priest Minho had punched slowly lifted his head.
His neck cracked unnaturally.
Then rotated.
Too far.
Farther than a human neck should.
Until his hood faced us again.
And beneath it—
There was no face.
Only darkness.
A hollow void filled with floating golden clock hands rotating inside black flesh.
Minho froze.
"…What the hell…"
The creature tilted its head.
Then the broken jaw split wider.
Wider.
Wider—
Until it tore open completely.
A sound came out.
Not a scream.
Not a voice.
A ticking noise.
Thousands of clocks ticking at different speeds simultaneously.
The chamber erupted.
The remaining priests raised their hands together.
Golden circles manifested beneath their feet.
The pendulum beat again.
THOOM.
The portals exploded open.
This time not ten.
Not thirty.
Hundreds.
The air split apart across the ceiling as countless temporal rifts opened like infected wounds in reality itself.
And from them—
The creatures descended.
Some crawled.
Some floated.
Some dragged themselves with broken limbs.
Others had bodies stitched together from different eras of decay.
One creature had the skeleton of a wolf covered in transparent flesh where gears rotated inside its organs.
Another possessed six human arms growing from a reptilian torso, each arm moving seconds before the others.
One of them kept aging and de-aging every few seconds—skin rotting away into exposed muscle before instantly returning.
Their existence hurt to look at.
Airi lowered her camera slightly.
"…Okay."
Her voice trembled.
"That's actually terrifying."
"Don't stop attacking!" I shouted.
Kimberly grinned violently.
"Now THIS feels like a real fight!"
Blue fire erupted from both of her hands.
Not normal flames.
These flames screamed.
The firestorm surged across the floor like an ocean explosion, swallowing the first wave of creatures whole.
Their bodies ignited instantly.
Flesh melted.
Bone blackened.
Temporal fluid exploded from inside them like boiling oil.
The smell hit us immediately.
Burned meat mixed with rust and rotten seawater.
Xia Jing descended from the air like a blade fired from heaven itself.
Her sword flashed once.
Then again.
Then dozens of times.
I couldn't even follow her movements anymore.
The creatures around her simply… came apart.
Heads separated from bodies.
Limbs spun through the air trailing black blood.
Organs splattered across the white floor beneath showers of silver sparks.
One beast lunged toward her with its jaws open—
Xia rotated midair and split it vertically from skull to pelvis.
Its internal organs slid out onto the floor in two steaming halves.
She landed without even looking back.
The corpse collapsed behind her.
"Too slow."
She smiled.
God.
She was enjoying this.
The priests finally moved.
All five raised their hourglasses simultaneously.
And suddenly—
Everything slowed.
Not completely.
Only us.
My body felt heavier instantly.
Like gravity had multiplied.
Even breathing became difficult.
The falling blood droplets around the chamber hung frozen midair.
Miriam clicked her tongue.
"They're layering time fields now."
Professor Adermat stepped forward immediately.
Silver energy spiraled around his arm.
Then he snapped his fingers.
The distortion shattered.
Time resumed normally around us.
The frozen blood crashed onto the floor all at once.
The priests reacted instantly.
They pointed toward the professor together.
Golden clocks manifested around him from every direction.
Some rotated forward.
Others backward.
Adermat's body began changing rapidly.
Wrinkles appeared.
Disappeared.
His hair shifted from gray to black to gray again in seconds.
Blood leaked from his nose.
But he kept smiling.
A dangerous smile.
The smile of a scholar staring directly at the impossible.
"Fascinating…"
He extended both hands.
Then crushed the clocks around him.
The temporal constructs exploded into silver dust.
And that was when the pendulum beat again.
THOOOOOM.
Harder this time.
The entire chamber shook violently.
Cracks spread across the white floor.
The silver threads connected to the pendulum began glowing brighter—
And something started descending inside the darkness above.
Slowly.
Massively.
Watching us.
The priests suddenly knelt.
All of them.
Every creature in the chamber stopped moving.
Even the dying ones.
The ticking noises ceased.
Silence swallowed everything.
Then the priests spoke together.
"The Great One watches."
The darkness above moved.
And my blood froze.
Because something enormous had just opened its eyes inside the void beyond the ceiling.
And it was looking directly at me.
Not at the group.
Not at the professor.
Not at Xia.
Me.
Only me.
A violent migraine exploded inside my skull.
Images flashed through my mind.
Endless darkness.
A sea without stars.
A throne made of black hands.
And something whispering beyond reality itself.
Something ancient.
Something familiar.
Then—
A voice.
Not from the chamber.
Not from the priests.
From inside me.
Cold.
Infinite.
Hungry.
"You finally touched time…"
Blood ran from my nose instantly.
My knees nearly buckled.
And for the first time since entering the sanctuary—
I felt genuine fear.
Because somehow…
Something inside me had answered that voice back.
Blood dripped from my nose onto the white floor.
One drop.
Then another.
Black mist spread beneath my shoes like living smoke.
The voice inside my head faded—
—but the feeling remained.
Something had awakened.
Not around me.
Inside me.
And worst of all…
it felt comfortable there.
The enormous presence above the chamber continued staring at me from within the darkness beyond the ceiling.
I still couldn't fully see it.
Only fragments.
A shape too large for my mind to process.
Eyes opening and closing across an impossible body.
Clock hands rotating beneath layers of black flesh.
Tentacles moving like rivers through an endless void.
The longer I looked—
the more my vision distorted.
The chamber stretched unnaturally.
Walls bent inward.
The ticking of clocks became screams.
Then whispers.
Then laughter.
I staggered backward.
Alya immediately grabbed my arm.
"Dark!"
Her voice snapped through the distortion for a second.
I blinked hard.
The chamber returned to normal.
Almost normal.
Because now…
I could still hear the ticking inside my skull.
The priests slowly rose from the ground.
Their movements were synchronized perfectly.
Like puppets controlled by the same invisible strings.
One of them pointed directly at me.
Its hollow face twisted unnaturally beneath the hood.
Then it spoke.
"The marked one…"
Another priest continued.
"The abandoned vessel…"
A third raised its hourglass.
"The child chosen by the Endless Dark…"
Professor Adermat's expression collapsed instantly.
True fear crossed his face.
Not concern.
Not surprise.
Fear.
Raw and genuine.
Miriam noticed it immediately.
"…Professor?"
He didn't answer.
His eyes remained fixed on me.
Specifically—
on the black mist leaking from my hands.
The priests raised their arms again.
And suddenly—
The chamber screamed.
Not metaphorically.
The walls themselves emitted a deafening metallic shriek as every gear inside them began rotating at impossible speed.
The pendulum swung for the first time.
Slowly.
One side.
Then the other.
And every swing distorted reality further.
THOOM.
The first swing shattered several portals completely.
The creatures near them exploded into piles of flesh and broken bones instantly.
Their bodies aged millions of years in seconds before collapsing into black dust.
THOOM.
The second swing accelerated the remaining creatures.
They became faster.
More violent.
Their bodies mutated further under unstable temporal pressure.
One beast suddenly grew three additional heads mid-charge.
Another split open vertically, revealing rows of rotating teeth inside its torso.
A third creature's flesh peeled backward while it continued running, exposing muscles that twitched independently beneath transparent skin.
"Here they come!" Kimberly shouted.
The creatures charged all at once.
The chamber descended into absolute carnage.
Xia Jing moved first.
Wind exploded beneath her feet as she launched herself forward like artillery fire.
Her blade flashed through the air—
—and five heads flew upward simultaneously.
Black blood erupted from the necks like broken fountains.
She twisted midair and drove her sword downward into another creature's skull.
The impact split the entire body apart.
Organs burst across the floor.
One eyeball rolled near my feet.
Still twitching.
Minho intercepted another beast head-on.
The creature lunged with jaws wide open—
—and Minho grabbed both sides of its mouth with his bare hands.
Muscles bulged violently across his arms.
Veins darkened beneath his skin.
Then—
he pulled.
The creature split open from jaw to stomach.
Bones cracked apart.
Ribs snapped outward.
Its internal organs spilled onto Minho's chest in steaming clumps of black fluid.
Minho breathed heavily.
Then grinned.
"Okay…"
He threw the corpse aside.
"THAT was satisfying."
Airi fired from behind.
Laser bursts pierced through creature after creature with surgical precision.
Heads exploded.
Limbs vaporized.
One beam sliced through a beast's abdomen, causing glowing organs to spill out before detonating across the floor.
The smell became unbearable.
Burned flesh.
Rotting blood.
Boiled marrow.
The chamber reeked like a slaughterhouse abandoned for centuries.
Then Kimberly lost control.
Blue flames erupted violently around her body.
Too violently.
The fire expanded in all directions like a living explosion.
Several creatures vanished instantly inside the inferno.
Their flesh melted directly off their skeletons.
Their bones blackened—
then exploded into ash.
One beast stumbled out of the flames half alive.
Its skin had melted completely from its face.
Its exposed jaw twitched while one remaining eyeball dangled from melted nerves.
Kimberly smiled.
Then incinerated it completely with another blast.
"She's overusing her core," Miriam muttered.
But Kimberly kept laughing.
The fire reflected wildly in her eyes now.
Not excitement.
Madness.
The same madness the sanctuary had forced onto all of us during the loops.
Only now…
we were embracing it willingly.
A sudden impact shook the chamber.
One of the priests extended both arms.
Golden rings expanded outward.
Everything they touched began decaying.
The floor aged into ruin instantly.
Stone crumbled apart.
Several creature corpses decomposed into dust mid-motion.
And then the wave reached Minho.
His skin wrinkled instantly.
Hair whitened.
His breathing collapsed.
He dropped to one knee, suddenly decades older.
"MINHO!"
Adermat reacted immediately.
He snapped both hands forward.
Silver clocks appeared around Minho's body and reversed violently.
Time rewound through his flesh.
Wrinkles vanished.
Bones straightened.
Color returned to his face.
Minho gasped violently as his age restored itself.
But the professor staggered afterward.
Blood poured from his mouth now.
Using temporal correction repeatedly was destroying him.
The priests noticed.
And smiled.
One of them raised its hourglass toward Adermat.
Another toward me.
And another toward the pendulum itself.
The pendulum suddenly stopped moving.
Dead center.
The entire chamber froze silent.
Every creature.
Every flame.
Every particle of dust.
Everything stopped.
Except me.
My breathing became louder.
The black mist spread farther beneath my feet.
The priests tilted their heads simultaneously.
Confused.
Then—
the thing above the chamber moved again.
This time closer.
Much closer.
The darkness split apart slightly.
And I finally saw part of its face.
Not fully.
Just enough.
Enough to understand one horrifying truth.
That thing…
was smiling at me.
Then all the clocks in the chamber began ticking backward at once.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Every clock inside the chamber began moving backward.
The sound crawled directly into my skull.
Not loud.
Worse.
Intimate.
Like someone whispering inside my brain.
The priests lowered their heads simultaneously.
The enormous thing above the chamber continued smiling through the darkness.
And suddenly—
I understood something instinctively.
The sanctuary was no longer testing us.
It was observing me.
The black mist spreading beneath my feet thickened.
The floor underneath started rotting.
Not physically.
Existentially.
The white stone darkened into something ancient and starless, as if the concept of light itself was being erased around me.
Alya tightened her grip on my arm.
"Dark…"
Her voice shook slightly now.
She felt it too.
Everyone did.
The temperature in the chamber dropped violently.
Frost spread across the gears on the walls.
But the black mist continued moving—
warm.
Alive.
Breathing.
One of the priests suddenly screamed.
Not in pain.
In terror.
Its hood snapped toward me violently.
"HE IS AWAKENING TOO EARLY—"
The sentence cut off abruptly.
Because the priest's body suddenly folded inward.
Its flesh compressed unnaturally.
Bones cracked.
Organs burst through crimson robes.
The body collapsed into a sphere of mangled meat and shattered bone no larger than a human head.
Blood exploded across the floor.
Everyone froze.
Even the remaining priests stepped backward.
I stared at the corpse.
I hadn't touched him.
I hadn't moved.
But the mist around my feet pulsed once—
like a heartbeat.
And the priest died.
"…Dark?"
Minho's voice sounded distant.
Uncertain.
Afraid.
That hurt more than it should have.
The chamber trembled again.
Then the pendulum moved.
Not swinging this time.
Turning.
The entire six-meter crystal structure slowly rotated vertically while cracks spread across its surface.
The black-and-gold liquid inside churned violently now.
Like something trapped inside was trying to claw its way out.
The silver threads connected to it tightened.
Then—
snapped.
Thousands of them.
All at once.
The sound resembled nerves being torn out of a living body.
The darkness above the chamber split apart further.
And the avatar descended.
Not fully.
Only partially.
But even that nearly shattered my sanity.
Massive black tendrils emerged first.
Each one larger than buildings.
Covered in rotating clocks embedded directly into pulsating flesh.
The clocks had human eyes inside them.
Blinking.
Watching.
Some cried blood.
Others rotated backward so fast their sockets tore apart.
One tentacle slammed against the chamber floor.
The impact vaporized dozens of creatures instantly.
Their bodies exploded into red mist and fragmented bones.
Another tendril dragged itself across the ceiling.
Wherever it touched—
time distorted.
Stone aged into ruin.
Then reversed into pristine white again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Like reality itself was malfunctioning around the creature.
Airi lowered her camera completely.
"…That's not an avatar…"
Her voice barely came out.
"That's a nightmare pretending to be a god."
The thing moved again.
The chamber groaned beneath its existence.
Then all the mouths hidden inside the darkness spoke simultaneously.
Not words.
A sound.
A low cosmic howl that made blood pour from everyone's ears instantly.
I dropped to one knee.
Pain exploded through my skull.
Kimberly screamed while clutching her head.
Minho vomited blood onto the floor.
Alya collapsed beside me trembling violently.
Even Miriam looked horrified now.
Professor Adermat's glasses shattered from the pressure alone.
But me?
I heard something else inside the howl.
A voice hidden beneath the noise.
Ancient.
Endless.
"Come closer."
My pupils dilated instantly.
The mist around me surged harder.
The creature above reacted immediately.
Its countless eyes focused on me.
Hungry.
Expectant.
Then the priests attacked.
All four remaining priests raised their hourglasses together.
Golden temporal rings erupted across the chamber.
But this time—
they weren't aimed at us.
They were aimed at the avatar.
"Matusalem!"
the priests shouted together.
"Suppress the Dark One before he fully awakens!"
The avatar answered immediately.
A colossal tendril descended toward me.
Fast.
Too fast.
The air detonated from the pressure alone.
The floor beneath me shattered apart before the tendril even touched it.
Alya screamed my name.
Minho started running toward me.
But neither could reach me in time.
The tendril crashed downward—
—and something inside me finally snapped.
The black mist exploded outward.
Violently.
Hungrily.
Like a starving beast finally unleashed.
Darkness swallowed the chamber instantly.
Not shadow.
Not absence of light.
Something deeper.
Something alive.
The tendril collided with the mist—
—and disappeared.
Not destroyed.
Consumed.
Completely erased.
No explosion.
No remains.
It simply ceased existing.
Silence filled the chamber.
Absolute silence.
The avatar stopped moving.
The priests froze in horror.
Even the pendulum itself stopped rotating.
The mist slowly moved around me like living smoke.
Protective.
Affectionate.
Possessive.
Then I heard it again.
The voice inside me.
Closer now.
Almost gentle.
"Good…"
My heart stopped for a second.
Because this time—
I answered it instinctively.
"…What are you?"
The chamber shook violently the moment I spoke those words.
And for the very first time—
the darkness answered back with laughter.
The laughter did not sound human.
It sounded ancient.
Like something buried beneath reality itself had finally remembered how to feel joy.
The entire chamber trembled under it.
Not from sound—
from presence.
The white walls cracked apart in long jagged fractures while gears burst from inside them like exposed organs.
Some melted.
Others rotated uncontrollably until they snapped loose from the walls and flew through the air like circular blades.
One sliced directly through a temporal beast attempting to rise behind Kimberly.
The creature's upper half slid off its lower body.
Black intestines spilled across the floor in steaming coils.
Its organs twitched for several seconds before finally dying.
Kim stared at the corpse.
Then slowly looked back at me.
And for the first time since meeting her—
she looked uncertain.
The black mist continued expanding outward from my body.
Not quickly.
Patiently.
Like ink spreading through water.
Every creature touched by it reacted the same way.
Panic.
Pure animal panic.
They screamed.
Not battle cries.
Not roars.
Fear.
One reptilian beast tried to crawl away after the mist touched its tail—
but the flesh simply vanished on contact.
No wound.
No blood.
Existence itself disappeared piece by piece.
The creature dragged itself forward desperately while its lower body dissolved into nothingness behind it.
Its claws scraped uselessly against the floor.
Then its torso vanished too.
Then its head.
Gone.
Erased.
"No…"
One of the priests stumbled backward.
Its voice trembled violently now.
"That power was sealed…"
Another priest grabbed him immediately.
"Impossible. The Dark God has not returned yet."
The third priest slowly pointed at me.
And beneath his hood—
I saw fear twisting through the void where a face should have been.
"Then why is his vessel already awake?"
A migraine exploded through my skull again.
Images flashed violently inside my head.
A black ocean beneath endless stars.
A throne made from corpses frozen in shadow.
A giant silhouette sitting above reality itself.
Watching worlds die one by one.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
And beneath the throne—
countless kneeling figures covered in black mist.
Crying.
Praying.
Bleeding from empty eye sockets.
I staggered.
Alya caught me before I collapsed.
"Dark!"
Her hands shook while holding me.
I could barely hear her.
The voice inside me was louder now.
Closer.
Warmer.
"You remember…"
"I don't…" I whispered weakly.
The laughter returned.
Soft.
Amused.
"Not yet."
The avatar above the chamber suddenly shrieked.
Not from rage.
Pain.
The black mist surrounding the destroyed tendril had started spreading upward through the rest of its body.
Slowly consuming it.
The gigantic creature thrashed violently inside the void above.
Its tentacles smashed against the chamber walls.
Entire sections of white stone collapsed instantly.
Silver threads snapped everywhere.
Temporal energy erupted wildly across the room.
One wave struck a dying creature nearby—
and instantly aged it thousands of years.
Its flesh rotted off.
Its skeleton crumbled.
Then even the dust decayed into nothing.
Another wave reversed time around several corpses.
Broken creatures began reforming backward.
Blood returned into wounds.
Bones reassembled.
Heads reattached themselves.
And suddenly—
dozens of dead beasts rose again screaming.
"Oh COME ON!"
Kimberly shouted.
Blue fire exploded from her arms once more.
She launched herself directly into the resurrected creatures without hesitation.
Flames covered her body like armor.
A beast lunged toward her—
Kim grabbed its jaw midair and unleashed fire directly into its mouth.
Its head detonated instantly.
Burning flesh rained across the floor.
Another creature tackled her from the side.
Its claws ripped through her shoulder.
Blood sprayed across the chamber.
Kimberly grinned through the pain.
Then burned the creature alive while it was still attached to her.
Its skin melted first.
Then muscle.
Then organs.
Until only a blackened skeleton remained clawing weakly against her body before collapsing apart.
"She's insane…"
Airi muttered while firing lasers through the incoming swarm.
Her beams pierced through skulls and abdomens with surgical precision.
One creature lost half its face yet continued charging blindly.
Airi grimaced.
Then vaporized the rest of its head completely.
Meanwhile—
Xia Jing had become something terrifying.
She no longer fought like a person.
She moved like a natural disaster.
Wind spiraled around her body violently as she carved through creature after creature.
Limbs flew through the air.
Heads spun across the chamber floor.
Black blood painted the walls behind her.
At one point she landed directly atop a beast's back—
then drove her sword downward hard enough to split the creature entirely open beneath her feet.
Its organs burst outward around her like a crimson flower.
And she smiled.
God help me—
she actually smiled.
Miriam noticed it too.
"She's losing herself in combat again…"
Miriam raised both hands.
Hundreds of black spikes erupted from the floor simultaneously.
The charging creatures were impaled instantly.
Bodies tore apart mid-motion.
Some were skewered through the mouth.
Others through the stomach or skull.
One beast continued twitching while suspended on a spike through its spine.
Miriam clenched her fist.
The spikes closed inward.
The creature exploded into chunks of flesh.
But the priests finally moved again.
And this time—
they stopped targeting the group.
They targeted me directly.
All four raised their hourglasses together.
Golden rings surrounded my body instantly.
I felt time distort around me.
Forward.
Backward.
Forward again.
My skin aged.
Then healed.
My bones weakened.
Then restored.
Blood vessels ruptured beneath my flesh before instantly repairing themselves.
Agony tore through every cell in my body simultaneously.
I screamed.
And the thing inside me answered.
The black mist erupted outward violently.
The temporal rings shattered instantly.
Every clock inside the chamber exploded at once.
Glass rained from the ceiling.
The priests recoiled in horror.
One of them grabbed its own head desperately.
Black mist had begun leaking from beneath its hood.
It screamed.
Its body convulsed violently.
Then its entire left arm disappeared.
Not severed.
Not destroyed.
Gone.
Erased from reality itself.
The priest collapsed shrieking.
The others backed away from me instinctively.
And above us—
the avatar of Matusalem began retreating deeper into the void.
Afraid.
It was afraid of me.
That realization terrified me more than anything else so far.
Because if something like THAT feared whatever lived inside me…
then what the hell was I becoming?
The realization hollowed me out from the inside.
Matusalem's avatar—
that impossible thing hanging above the chamber—
was retreating.
Not strategizing.
Not repositioning.
Retreating.
From me.
The black mist continued spiraling around my body in slow waves.
Almost protectively.
The chamber had become unrecognizable now.
The once-white walls were cracked open from floor to ceiling.
Broken gears twitched inside exposed machinery like dying organs.
Temporal distortions pulsed everywhere.
Entire sections of the room glitched between different states of existence.
One wall rapidly alternated between pristine marble and ancient ruin.
Another repeatedly bled black liquid before resetting again.
The floor beneath my feet cracked apart with every heartbeat.
Or maybe—
every heartbeat of the thing inside me.
The priests gathered together near the far end of the chamber.
Their robes trembled violently.
One of them clutched the stump where his arm used to exist.
No blood came out.
Only darkness.
Pure blackness leaked from the wound like smoke escaping a dying fire.
And it terrified them.
Because they understood something I didn't.
That arm wasn't destroyed.
It had been removed from reality itself.
Professor Adermat slowly stepped in front of the others.
Protectively.
Instinctively.
His hands trembled.
"Dark…"
His voice cracked.
"…listen to me carefully."
I looked at him.
And his expression worsened immediately.
Because for a second—
he hesitated to meet my eyes.
"The LC of Darkness…"
He swallowed hard.
"…is not considered forbidden because it's evil."
The chamber groaned loudly around us.
The avatar above shifted deeper into the void.
Watching.
Waiting.
Adermat continued.
"It's forbidden because it breaks balance itself."
The remaining priests suddenly screamed together.
"DO NOT SPEAK OF THE VOID KING!"
Their hourglasses shattered simultaneously.
Golden temporal energy exploded outward in violent waves.
The chamber bent unnaturally.
Reality twisted.
And suddenly—
time fractured completely.
I saw multiple versions of the room overlapping each other.
Kimberly burning alive.
Minho crushed beneath collapsing walls.
Airi with empty eye sockets crying blood.
Xia Jing cutting herself apart with her own sword.
Miriam impaled through the chest.
Alya dying over and over and over again beside me.
Thousands of deaths.
Thousands of timelines.
Thousands of failures.
All existing simultaneously.
I couldn't breathe.
The visions forced themselves into my skull like knives.
I grabbed my head and screamed.
The voice inside me whispered calmly.
"Look closer."
The visions slowed.
And I realized something horrifying.
These weren't illusions.
They were possibilities.
Possible futures.
Every outcome Matusalem had seen.
Every timeline where we failed.
Then I saw something worse.
Myself.
One version of me stood alone atop a mountain of corpses.
Black mist covered the sky.
Entire cities burned beneath endless darkness.
Another version sat upon a throne made of shattered clocks and bones.
Its eyes were completely black.
Its smile looked inhuman.
Another—
another was holding Alya's severed head while laughing hysterically.
"No…"
My stomach twisted violently.
"That's not me…"
The voice answered instantly.
"Not yet."
The chamber detonated.
A massive tendril suddenly burst downward from above.
This one larger than the others.
Covered in hundreds of rotating eyes.
It slammed directly toward me.
But Xia Jing intercepted it first.
She moved faster than I'd ever seen before.
Wind exploded behind her like jet propulsion.
She spun midair—
and her sword collided against the tendril with enough force to split the air itself.
A deafening metallic scream erupted through the chamber.
The tendril split open halfway.
Black-and-gold fluid sprayed everywhere.
The liquid hit the floor—
and time destabilized around every drop.
Some areas accelerated decades instantly.
Others reversed seconds repeatedly.
One dead creature nearby kept reviving and dying in an endless loop.
Screaming every single time.
Xia landed hard beside me.
Breathing heavily.
Blood streamed from her nose now.
Her hands trembled violently around the sword.
She'd pushed herself too far again.
But she still smirked.
"…Told you…"
She wiped blood from her mouth.
"…I'd cut down gods if I had to."
The tendril above suddenly regenerated.
Faster this time.
Too fast.
The wound sealed shut almost instantly.
Then the eyes across it focused directly on Xia.
Hungry.
"MOVE!" I screamed.
The tendril descended again.
Xia tried to dodge—
but her body failed her.
The side effects hit all at once.
Her knees buckled.
Her vision blurred.
Too slow.
Way too slow.
The tendril pierced straight through her abdomen.
Everything stopped.
Xia's eyes widened silently.
Blood burst from her mouth.
The impact lifted her several feet off the ground.
The tendril slowly retracted—
dragging her body upward with it.
Her blood rained onto the chamber floor beneath her.
Bright red against white stone.
"XIA!"
Minho's scream echoed violently.
Airi froze completely.
Kimberly's flames exploded out of control.
Miriam's pupils shrank.
Even Alya looked horrified.
The tendril tightened around Xia's body.
Bones cracked audibly.
One arm bent the wrong direction.
Blood poured down the massive appendage in streams.
Xia tried to grip her sword—
but her fingers barely moved now.
The eyes embedded in the tendril rotated toward her face one by one.
Watching her suffer.
Studying her pain.
Something inside me snapped.
Not emotionally.
Primal.
Ancient.
Violent.
The black mist around me exploded outward with enough force to shake the entire sanctuary.
Every remaining priest collapsed instantly.
The avatar above recoiled violently.
And for the first time—
I felt hatred from the thing inside me.
Not human hatred.
Something deeper.
Older.
The hatred of a predator whose property had been touched.
The voice spoke again.
But now—
it sounded furious.
"MINE."
The word did not echo through the chamber.
It echoed through reality.
"MINE."
The voice wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
Every living thing inside the sanctuary reacted instantly.
The remaining creatures collapsed onto the floor screaming.
Not from pain.
Submission.
Their bodies convulsed violently as if their instincts recognized something older than survival itself.
Something absolute.
The tendril impaling Xia Jing froze midair.
All the eyes embedded within it widened simultaneously.
Hundreds of pupils contracted toward me at once.
Fear.
Pure fear.
Then the black mist moved.
Not flowing.
Attacking.
It erupted upward like a tidal wave swallowing the chamber ceiling whole.
The tendril tried to retreat—
too late.
The darkness consumed half of it instantly.
Not cutting.
Not burning.
Erasing.
Entire sections vanished from existence without resistance.
The eyes disappeared first.
Then flesh.
Then bone-like structures hidden beneath the surface.
Gone.
As if they had never existed.
The avatar shrieked.
The sound shattered every remaining clock in the sanctuary.
Glass exploded outward.
Temporal energy surged violently across the chamber.
The ceiling fractured open above us.
For a brief second—
I saw the thing hiding beyond the portal more clearly.
And I immediately wished I hadn't.
It wasn't a creature.
It was a mass of time itself.
An ocean of writhing tendrils, broken clocks, screaming faces, and endless eyes stitched together into one impossible existence.
Entire human bodies protruded halfway from its flesh.
Frozen.
Still alive.
Their mouths moved soundlessly.
Begging.
Praying.
Crying.
Some had clearly been trapped there for centuries.
Others looked freshly absorbed.
One of them opened its eyes—
and screamed directly at me.
"DON'T LET IT SEE YOU—"
A tendril immediately wrapped around the body.
The scream cut off with a wet crunch.
Blood sprayed into the darkness.
The body disappeared back into the mass.
My stomach twisted violently.
The thing inside me laughed softly again.
"Pathetic imitation."
The avatar heard it too.
And panicked.
The gigantic creature began retreating upward into the portal violently now.
The priests screamed in desperation.
"LORD MATUSALEM!"
"DO NOT ABANDON US!"
The avatar ignored them completely.
One priest dropped to his knees.
Another began crying beneath his hood.
Because their god—
their eternal god—
was running away.
Meanwhile—
Xia was still dying.
Her body collapsed from the severed tendril and hit the floor hard.
Blood spread rapidly beneath her.
Too much blood.
Way too much.
The hole through her abdomen was massive.
I could see shattered ribs.
Torn muscle.
Fragments of organs.
Her breathing came out wet and uneven now.
Every inhale bubbled blood from her mouth.
Alya immediately rushed toward her.
Green healing energy exploded from her hands.
But even Alya's expression faltered.
The damage was catastrophic.
"Stay with me!"
Alya shouted desperately.
Xia tried to respond.
Only blood came out.
Something inside my chest twisted painfully.
Not the darkness.
Me.
For the first time since this nightmare started—
I felt terrified of losing someone again.
Minho dropped beside Xia next.
His hands shook violently while trying to stop the bleeding.
"It's okay…"
His voice cracked.
"You're okay…"
He was lying.
And he knew it.
Kimberly looked furious enough to explode.
Blue flames leaked uncontrollably from her arms.
The floor around her melted from sheer heat.
Airi stood completely frozen nearby.
Camera hanging uselessly at her side.
Her eyes were wide.
Shaking.
Because this was different from before.
This wasn't a loop anymore.
If Xia died now—
she stayed dead.
Miriam slowly looked toward me.
And I hated what I saw in her eyes.
Not fear.
Calculation.
She was beginning to understand what I really was becoming.
The priests suddenly attacked again.
Desperate.
One raised both hands toward me.
A gigantic temporal sigil erupted beneath my feet.
Golden chains made of rotating clock hands burst upward around my body.
The priest screamed through trembling breaths.
"BE SEALED!"
Time collapsed inward around me.
I felt my body freeze.
My thoughts slowed.
Even the black mist hesitated for a fraction of a second.
The priests saw it.
Hope returned to their faces.
Big mistake.
The voice inside me spoke calmly.
Almost disappointed.
"Still trying to bind eternity with time?"
The darkness exploded outward again.
The temporal chains shattered instantly.
Fragments of frozen time scattered through the air like broken glass.
Where the fragments landed—
reality malfunctioned.
One priest aged into dust instantly.
Another reversed into a screaming child beneath the robes before collapsing into nothing.
The last two tried to flee.
The black mist caught them mid-step.
Their bodies froze.
Then slowly began disappearing from the feet upward.
They screamed.
God—
they screamed horribly.
Not because they were dying.
Because they could feel themselves being forgotten.
One priest clawed desperately at the floor while his legs vanished.
"PLEASE—"
His voice suddenly distorted.
Like reality itself no longer recognized him.
The other priest reached toward the portal above.
Toward the god abandoning him.
"MATUSALEM— SAVE—"
His mouth disappeared first.
Then his face.
Then the rest of him dissolved into black particles.
Silence followed.
The sanctuary stopped moving.
No creatures remained alive.
No priests remained standing.
Only us.
And the enormous portal slowly closing above.
Then—
the black mist around me suddenly surged toward the portal on its own.
Hungry.
Violent.
Possessive.
The thing inside me whispered one final sentence.
A sentence that made my blood run cold.
"Now… let's show this false god what real darkness looks like."
The portal above the chamber trembled violently.
Not from instability.
From fear.
The black mist pouring from my body surged upward like an endless tide, devouring the air itself as it climbed toward Matusalem's retreating form.
The sanctuary groaned around us.
Massive fractures spread across the walls.
Silver temporal threads snapped one after another.
Every broken thread released flashes of distorted time.
For brief moments—
I saw different versions of the chamber overlapping reality.
Dead timelines.
Broken timelines.
Timelines where all of us had died.
Timelines where only I remained.
Timelines where something wearing my face stood alone beneath a black sky.
But the thing inside me ignored them all.
It only cared about the god fleeing above us.
The avatar of Matusalem began forcing the portal shut.
Its countless tendrils dragged themselves backward into the abyss frantically.
Entire chunks of its massive body disappeared into darkness.
The screaming faces trapped within its flesh cried louder now.
Desperate.
Terrified.
One face pressed itself outward from the creature's body hard enough to tear skin-like matter around it.
An old woman.
Eyes missing.
Jaw broken.
Still alive.
"PLEASE KILL IT—"
A tendril wrapped around her skull instantly.
Her head imploded.
Blood and fragments of bone vanished back into the mass.
My breathing became uneven again.
Not from fear.
From rage.
Pure rage.
The voice inside me whispered softly.
Almost affectionately.
"Do you hate it?"
"Yes…"
The answer came out before I could stop it.
The darkness reacted instantly.
The mist around me thickened violently.
The floor beneath my feet disappeared into shadow.
Not covered—
replaced.
Professor Adermat staggered backward.
"No…"
His face had gone pale.
"…he's synchronizing with it."
Miriam slowly tightened her grip on one of her spikes.
Not to attack me.
Out of instinct.
Her eyes never left the darkness surrounding my body.
Because it wasn't behaving like energy anymore.
It looked alive.
Above us—
Matusalem finally retaliated.
A gigantic eye opened inside the portal.
Larger than the sanctuary itself.
Its iris rotated like an enormous clock mechanism.
Thousands of symbols moved within it endlessly.
The moment it focused on me—
time stopped.
Completely.
Everyone froze instantly.
Kimberly's flames halted mid-motion.
Drops of blood hung motionless in the air.
Even the collapsing debris stopped falling.
Only two things could still move.
Me.
And the darkness.
The voice inside me laughed quietly.
"Finally."
The eye twitched.
It recognized the voice.
Then Matusalem spoke directly into my mind.
Its voice sounded ancient.
Broken.
Like millions of overlapping whispers stitched together unnaturally.
"You should not exist."
Pain exploded behind my eyes.
Visions flooded my skull again.
I saw civilizations erased by darkness.
Worlds collapsing into black oceans.
Gods kneeling before a throne hidden inside the void.
And sitting atop it—
something enormous.
Watching me.
Waiting for me.
I dropped to one knee.
Blood streamed from my nose.
The eye above began rotating faster.
The chamber started aging around us.
Walls crumbled into dust.
Metal rusted instantly.
Stone decayed.
The sanctuary itself was being accelerated toward death.
Then the darkness moved on its own again.
A massive tendril of black mist erupted upward from my shadow and collided directly against the gigantic eye.
The impact shattered reality.
Cracks spread through the air itself.
Literal cracks.
Like the world was glass.
Darkness spread through the fractures while temporal energy leaked out from the other side.
The eye shrieked.
Not emotionally.
Biologically.
A wounded cosmic animal.
The black tendril pierced directly into the center of the eye.
Golden fluid exploded outward everywhere.
The liquid touched suspended debris—
and instantly aged it into dust.
Other drops reversed objects into raw material.
Entire sections of reality began glitching uncontrollably.
Then—
the darkness started eating the eye alive.
The giant iris convulsed violently while black corruption spread through it vein by vein.
Matusalem screamed inside my head.
"STOP HIM!"
Him.
Not it.
Him.
The thing inside me answered for the first time directly.
And the moment it spoke—
I felt every instinct in my body scream.
Because the voice no longer sounded like mine at all.
It sounded colossal.
Infinite.
A being wearing human language like an imperfect disguise.
"You built your throne upon borrowed eternity."
The darkness tightened around the eye.
The portal destabilized instantly.
"And now…"
The eye began collapsing inward.
The screaming faces inside the avatar started tearing themselves apart trying to escape.
"I have come to collect the debt."
The eye exploded.
A shockwave tore through the sanctuary.
Time resumed violently.
Everyone was thrown backward across the chamber.
The portal above shattered into fragments of golden light.
And for one horrifying second—
something looked back at us from the void beyond.
Not Matusalem.
Something deeper.
Something smiling.
Then the portal collapsed completely.
Silence consumed the chamber.
The black mist slowly returned to my body through my hands and chest.
The moment it disappeared—
the crushing pressure vanished too.
I staggered backward breathing heavily.
My entire body hurt.
Every muscle trembled uncontrollably.
The chamber around us was ruined now.
The pendulum had completely shattered.
The temporal threads were gone.
The sanctuary was dying.
And then—
Xia coughed weakly behind me.
Everyone turned instantly.
Alya's healing had finally stabilized her.
Barely.
Xia lay against the broken floor pale as death, covered in blood, breathing shallowly.
But alive.
Still alive.
Minho nearly collapsed from relief beside her.
Kimberly sat down hard against a wall laughing shakily.
Airi looked seconds away from crying.
Even Miriam released a slow breath.
Professor Adermat, however—
was staring only at me.
Horrified.
Not by what I had done.
By what had answered me back.
I looked down at my trembling hands.
And for the first time—
I realized something terrifying.
The darkness hadn't awakened because I touched the pendulum.
The pendulum had awakened because it sensed the darkness inside me.