The deafening chaos of the Puzzle Box died away abruptly behind the lead heavy, gold trimmed doors of the rooms. Silarias stood motionless in the center of the chamber. His breathing was still rapid, a rhythmic recurrence in the deathly silence. The thick, humid vapor from the adjacent bathhouse condensed on the grotesque marble ornaments on the wall, making it appear as if the stone lizards were glistening with sweat. Everything that had happened today suddenly crashed over him like an avalanche. The brutal blows, the floor tearing open, and then… those faces. Aurelius. Kaelid. His head spun, leaving a bitter taste on his tongue.
He sighed deeply, a heavy, frustrated sigh, walked with dragging steps to the gigantic bed, and fell backward. The soft mattress barely gave way under his weight. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“What am I actually doing?” he muttered to the empty ceiling. “What kind of…”
He left the sentence hanging unfinished in the void. His fingers cramped into the sheets. Mmm… maybe try again.
Silarias inhaled deeply and sent his inner energy to the surface. A subtle, golden glow began to dance across his skin. His hair and mane came to life instantly; they started to ripple and crackle fiercely, as if an invisible storm were stoking the flames. The light reached up to the ceiling and cast dancing shadows over the walls. But just as the transformation tried to push through, the energy faltered. The golden flames abruptly stopped burning and, with a violent shock, flipped into a pitch black, viscous darkness. The blackness devoured the light in the room, spreading like an inkblot in water until it had swallowed all the corners of the chamber.
When Silarias opened his eyes, he was no longer lying down. He was standing.
His boots rested on a floor that wasn’t there. He found himself in an infinite, icy void, an absolute emptiness in which even his own breathing made no sound. The cold cut through his clothing, deep into his bones. Before he could turn around to look for a way out, he suddenly felt an immense, leaden weight descend upon his shoulder. A massive arm placed itself slowly and possessively around him. The presence was so suffocating that Silarias felt the urge to collapse to his knees. Right next to his ear, so close he could feel the icy breath, a deep, slow voice vibrated through the void:
“Look…”
The void tore open. A violent succession of flashes rammed into his consciousness, so hard that Silarias had to clench his teeth to keep from screaming.
In the first flash, he saw a gigantic, floating hourglass. The glass was filled with thick, seething blood that was trickling down at a murderous pace. With every drop that fell, Silarias felt a burning sensation in his own chest, as if active bites were being taken out of his life force. He saw flashes of himself, toiling and rotting from the inside out, while the world around him remained incomprehensibly peaceful. Only when the image shifted to collapsing mountains, burning cities, and total chaos that he himself was causing did the pain in his chest stop and power flow through his veins again. It was a suffocating realization that burned into his brain: the bearer has no choice. His entire existence is dedicated to the end times. If no destruction is sown, the curse eats him alive. It is destroy or be destroyed.
The flash shifted with the sound of breaking glass. Silarias saw the faces of the people he knew. Jeshua, Aurelius, even the brothers Karan and Arjan. But their familiar gazes melted away like burning wax. What remained was terrifying. He looked straight into their souls and saw no friendship there, but a pulsing, black slurry of deep ego, hidden sins, jealousy, and pure rot. Every mask of politeness or feigned smile was torn away with brutal force, leaving him to behold only the most disgusting, raw version of his companions. The looks of pure malice they directed at him in these visions made him gag, but the curse kept his eyes open and forced him to keep watching, to drown in the knowledge of who they truly were while he worked alongside them.
Before he could look away, the vision exploded into a deep, black night. Silarias saw himself standing in the center, but he had turned into a pulsing, invisible lighthouse transmitting a dark frequency into the cosmos. From the deepest shadows of the world, creatures began to crawl up. Monsters with claws of shadow, screeching entities, and evil gods all turned their heads toward him at the same time. Their hungry, glowing eyes fixed upon him. They were drawn like moths to the deadly light, blindly attracted by the apocalyptic energy seeping from his pores. There was no safe haven, no place to hide; wherever his feet touched the ground, the darkness would be at his heels.
The flashes stopped as suddenly as they had begun. Silarias stood breathing heavily, sweat on his forehead, back in the silent void. The heavy arm was still around his shoulder. But instead of his knees buckling under the terror of these three laws, a cold, icy grin slowly began to appear on his face. He stared straight ahead into the void. The world outside these walls was already corrupt to the core. The leaders, the systems, the whole thing was rotten to the bone. His own deepest goal was to wipe the world clean and purify it far beyond these walls.
“Then we shall cleanse the hourglass… and everyone’s blood!” Silarias whispered in a raw voice, while his eyes began to spark dangerously.
His path of total purification was the destruction the curse demanded. With that thought, he balled his fists and sent a shockwave of his own willpower through the void. The black darkness began to tear and waver under his mental pressure. The arm around his shoulder let go and dissolved into smoke. But just before the void collapsed completely and sent him back, one last, calm, and satisfied whisper resonated in the depths of his consciousness:
“Thank you…”
It was the unmistakable voice of Lucifer.
Silarias shot upright with a deep gasp, but his body did not move with him. He looked behind him and saw his own physical form still lying motionless on the large bed. His mind was completely disconnected; he was in a lucid, floating form. His spiritual body felt weightless and ethereal. Curiously, he took a step forward and walked right through the massive stone wall of his room without any resistance.
He began to wander through the secret, cold corridors of the complex, floating over the stone floors in search of Aurelius’s room. As he slid through walls and locked doors, he occasionally glanced inside at the other contestants. They were all fast asleep, snoring and exhausted from the battle, completely unaware of the spirit passing by their beds. Silarias shrugged and floated on, unmoved, until he entered a corridor where the atmosphere suddenly felt heavy and syrupy.
He approached a room that was sealed with thick, iron bars. Silarias cast a glance inside and froze in mid air.
There, in the middle of the bare room, sat that specific child the bandit had been so hysterical about. The child sat cross legged on the floor, head tilted to the side. His large, hollow eyes were not directed at the wall or the door, but fixed, unceasingly, on the seemingly invisible spiritual form of Silarias. The gaze cut right through Silarias.
Suddenly, the child began to grin broadly and enthusiastically waved both hands at the floating spirit.
Silarias felt an icy shiver run down his spiritual spine. His hair stood on end.
How the f can that kid see me?!
raced through his mind in pure panic. He took a startled step back.
The child’s enthusiasm vanished in a fraction of a second. The smile fell away, and his eyes widened so much that the whites gleamed in the dim light. The child sprang up and threw himself with a brutal smack, forehead first, against the thick glass and iron bars.
The entire corridor vibrated from the impact. The child didn’t stop; he went completely berserk and began throwing his body wildly against the walls and furniture. Hard, dull thuds echoed through the quarters as if heavy projectiles were hitting. The brutal, hysterical force the creature unleashed seemed intent on tearing the whole room apart.
“What the f…” Silarias stammered, as pure panic constricted his throat.
He turned around with a jerk and started running again, right through the walls and corridors, fleeing the madness of that creature. He flashed blindly through the layers of stone until he burst into Aurelius’s luxurious room with a jolt.
Aurelius was lying with his mouth half open, snoring loudly on the large bed. Silarias tried to get his breathing under control and looked at his sleeping friend. To test if he was truly invisible and intangible here, he floated right above Aurelius’s face. He began to pull the most idiotic, distorted, and crazy faces, stuck out his tongue, and waved his spiritual hands right in front of Aurelius’s nose. But Aurelius didn’t flinch; he just turned over onto his side with a grunt.
Silarias sighed with relief and turned to leave the room, but his spiritual foot accidentally touched a heavy, copper cup sitting on the edge of the table.
The cup flew off the table with a loud crash and bounced across the hard marble floor with a sharp metallic noise.
Silarias looked at the cup with wide eyes and then at his own hand.
Oh, wait a minute…
he realized with a broad grin.
I can influence physical objects if I focus.
His gaze fell immediately on a sharp, silver dinner knife lying next to a platter of cold meat. Silarias concentrated his spiritual energy on his fingers and gripped the handle. The knife rose slowly and seemingly on its own into the air, gleaming in the room’s sparse light. He floated with the weapon toward the wooden edge of the bed, right next to Aurelius’s pillow, and rammed the tip deep into the wood with a scraping sound.
The screeching sound cut through the room. Aurelius woke up with a loud snort. His eyes immediately spat fire and widened when he saw the knife hanging in the air by itself. His hand shot to his side like lightning to draw Aethergard, ready to hack the invisible intruder to pieces. But his arm froze halfway when he saw that the knife wasn’t attacking, but was carving letters into the hard wood with nervous, trembling movements.
Splinters flew everywhere as Silarias wrote quickly:
Sil here .. i dont have much time .. nyx and jane the rest are here tomorow .. maybe they come to look
Aurelius slowed his breathing, though confusion was still etched on his face. A broad, recognizable grin spread across his lips, and he leaned back against the pillows, relaxed.
“It’s fine… they really won’t recognize us with these ugly mugs, hahaha,” Aurelius whispered in a hoarse, sleepy voice. He looked mockingly at the crooked letters in the wood and shook his head. “But that you can write… I seriously thought you were way too stupid for that.”
He didn’t get any further. Before the insult had properly left his mouth, the knife made a brutal, sweeping movement through the air. With terrifying speed and utmost precision, the silver blade was driven straight down by Silarias, until it was rammed deep into the wood between Aurelius’s big toe and second toe with a loud, dull thud. The metal vibrated intensely, missing his skin by a millimeter.
“Hey!” Aurelius hissed with a stifled curse, pulling his foot back in shock.
With a violent jolt, Silarias opened his eyes in his own bed. His spiritual form had been thrown back into his physical body with a brutal slam. An intense, paralyzing fatigue pulled through all his muscles; this spiritual excursion had demanded much more of his energy than he had estimated. His eyelids felt like lead. Without even having the strength to kick off his boots, he sank deep into the mattress and drifted completely unconscious into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Meanwhile, in his own room, Aurelius sat bolt upright in bed with wide eyes. He had by now grabbed a gigantic chicken leg from the platter and was staring at the nervously scratched text on his table with his mouth stuffed full. The words were only just beginning to sink into his sleepy brain.
Nyx and Jane. Tomorrow.
His eyes widened to the size of saucers from pure shock. The pieces of meat almost flew out of his mouth as he choked.
“Tomorrow already?!” he managed to utter with his mouth stuffed.
Completely stressed, he jumped off the bed. With the greasy chicken leg still clutched firmly in one fist and a hunk of bread in the other, he began to run around the room like a madman. He ran in panic to the door, turned around, sprinted into the steaming bathhouse with the food in his hands to see if there was an exit, almost slipped on the wet marble tiles, and then stormed back into the bedroom wildly. Panic raced through his body at the thought that they might discover them.
Eventually, completely out of breath and exhausted from the aimless running, he collapsed backward onto the bed with a thud. With the greasy pieces of food still clutched convulsively in his fists and remnants around his mouth, he closed his eyes and immediately fell like a log into a deep sleep.