Altair glanced at the swirling black cloud filled with drifting eyeballs — a dreadful monster wearing human clothes, perhaps imitation… or a sick form of mockery, but it was shared by the rest of the Entities present in this masquerade of Monsters.
Under normal circumstances, no one would be foolish enough to draw attention from an entity, much less one of this magnitude…
Well… Altair was.
Given his limited options, he approached the Entity, idly watching the bloodstained staircase.
"Excuse me, sir, could you clarify what you meant earlier?"
The eyes shifted all at once — all of them eerily watching Altair.
The eyes were deeply unsettling, but Altair couldn't allow his fears to show on his face.
The eyes lingered on him for a while, as if studying him. Then, the black cloud swirled, and the entity gave Altair a courteous bow.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, young prince."
The black cloud spoke in a myriad of voices at the same time, but the content of his words was so absurd that Altair honestly found himself unable to answer before the entity continued.
"Forgive my senseless babbling to myself," countless voices meshed into one let out a spine-chilling chuckle, "all I was referring to was the reason for that highlander's death… speaking lies in his hall? The poor fool."
His hall? Whose hall is this? And prince??? If he was filled with questions before, now he has fully lost the plot.
Looking at his golden watch, he closed it and walked up to the attendant, after offering another bow to Altair, who still couldn't understand the monstrous entity, but couldn't let that show on his face.
"Until he next, young prince."
Then, the entity climbed the staircase unbothered by the trail of blood. Altair just stared at its back, his heart almost beating out of his chest.
What the hell is going on?
Surviving the deadly forest conjured by that Shepherd was one thing, but for some reason, this glamorous hall decorated by gold felt like a bigger threat… but his initial confusion made him look at something else.
The bloody staircase.
So Hunter is also dead now…
He didn't know exactly what to feel; he wasn't close to him, it was actually the opposite.
But now, he was truly all alone.
Surrounded by nothing but Fog Entities that could effortlessly trample him, he realized he was in dire need of information before he was inevitably called for.
Or maybe he would be lucky enough not to get called, but that felt like a laughably unlikely prospect.
Not putting his life on blind chance, he slowly made his way through the crowd of terrifying entities, attempting to extract any useful information from the attendants and even some of the guests.
He was careful and excessively polite — from what he could gather so far, this place functioned on a set of twisted yet disturbingly refined principles.
Alas, no matter who he asked or how he phrased his questions, the answer essentially was always the same:
"Never lie to him."
But that wasn't enough.
So, lacking in options, he decided to walk up to Lady Eleanor, who already had a playful smirk playing on the human side of her face when she saw him approach.
"Let me guess, you want to hear something more than, 'Never lie to him, ' don't you?"
Before he could have even asked, the strange entity who called herself Lady Eleanor already knew what he wanted to ask.
"If possible? Yes."
"There isn't much to tell; he is going to see through you right away. He never does anything without reason, but anger him and you will end up like them." With a stifled laugh, she pointed at the staircase.
It was another attendant, diligently cleaning up the bloody mess on the stairs.
His black suit drenched in red, blood oozing out of his no longer existing orifices.
Hunter.
Altair recognized him instantly. He knew that the things he heard were not empty warnings, but seeing Hunter like that pushed that warning even deeper into his consciousness.
Slipping up didn't just simply end with death; no, it was something worse.
"I understand."
"Good." The human side of her face winked playfully at him. "You will be fine then… Probably."
Another figure emerged on the stairs — the Fog Entity, its head a swirling black mist, descending leisurely while reaching for one of the silver trays, grabbing a glass of wine.
As the previous guest left the staircase, the faceless attendant approached Lady Eleanore, but instead of leading her up, his blank face turned to Altair.
"Esteemed guest, please follow me; his Majesty is waiting. We shouldn't make him wait any longer."
Already anticipating his turn, Altair was prepared.
"Gladly."
The faceless attendant politely bowed, gesturing towards the golden staircase where the faceless body of Hunter was still cleaning up his own blood.
"Break a leg." This time, it was the wraith part of Lady Eleanor's face that was the one laughing delightfully; her 'human face' was somber.
From the side, the black cloud raised his glass, his eyes gazing at Altair while floating in the cloud.
Are they taunting me?
Stepping onto the red carpet, Altair heard a faint squelch; the fabric was still soaked in Hunter's blood.
Steadily ascending on the golden staircase, he was met with an even grander hall than the one that the guests stood in.
Stone pillars inlaid with gold stood throughout the massive hall, the red carpet stretching up to the throne at the far end. Its color was that of tarnished bronze — or rust.
On the throne, a tall figure sat in a comfortable position, wearing the same rust-colored jagged crown. He wore an elegant black cape, hanging loosely from his left shoulder; the rest of his spotless white suit was made of fine silk, and there wasn't even a speck of blood on it, even though Hunter's blood clearly spilled in his direction.
His tarnished crown sat atop his head… or at least it appeared that way at first glance.
But it wasn't.
It was etched into his head… he didn't wear the crown; it was a part of him.
But strangely, the king appeared mostly human, not counting the fact that a rusted crown was embedded in his skull. His facial features couldn't be called handsome, but one couldn't simply look away from him. His deep, grey eyes had a deeply unsettling allure…
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't tear his eyes away — the king's gaze was overwhelming, suffocating even. It felt as if he were being pulled into the depths of the Dead Waters themselves.
After a couple of seconds that felt like whole minutes for Altair, the king spoke up in such a chilling voice that Altair felt like his knees would buckle.
"Welcome to the second world, Highlander." He gently rapped the seat of his throne a couple of times before his eyes turned somewhat chilly.
"I believe an introduction is in order."
Make a single wrong move, tell a single lie, and he was to end up like Hunter. He couldn't lie… so he had to admit a painful memory, a reminder of who he no longer was.
Trying to calm his rapidly beating heart, Altair gracefully bowed.
He felt a knot in his throat when he was about to introduce himself…
"Greetings, your majesty, my name is Caelen Hall from the flying city of Nostra."
Even if his siblings called him by his original name, it still felt foreign to him, as if it didn't truly belong to him, but it did.
The king rested his head against his right hand, leaning lazily on the throne. But as moments passed, his expression only grew colder.
The same suffocating feeling once again overcame Altair's body.
But this time… it was unbearable.
As if he were sinking to the very bottom of the Dead Waters, the crushing pressure closing in from all sides, threatening to implode him from within.
"You speak the truth, but even this truth of yours is nothing but falsehoods stacked on top of each other."
In that moment, Altair felt his death approaching… in the presence of this entity, he was a mere ant. If the entity were to decide to kill him here and there, he was all but powerless to stop it.
Yet, that wasn't his biggest concern.
"I wasn't lying."
He really wasn't, for the first time in a long time, he said his name out loud… and he was accused of lying?
"I never lied." His tone was no longer polite, but that didn't mean that it became cold and emotionless either.
"Fascinating."
He heard the king murmur to himself, the same suffocating feeling slightly letting up, but only a little.
"Wear a mask for long enough and you won't recognize your face. But that's not exactly the case for you, is it?"
"No, no. Why would it be?" Every word uttered by the king made his skin crawl.
"Caelen? Altair? You have no idea either. Wearing all those masks erased your real face long ago."
"I asked you to speak the truth, but after a life of lies, even your truth rings hollow."
"But you aren't despairing… no, you are trying, but there is nothing behind those eyes. You think you want to live, so you made a makeshift reason to fight for it. But even you don't believe it."
Suddenly, he felt the urge to check his pocket for Deon's droplet, but it was no longer there.
Instead, the entity was leisurely flicking it upwards like a coin before catching it playfully.
"He was gone the moment he signed that deal, and amazingly, you managed to go with the narrative that he was cheering you on from the grave… wow, amazing really."
The king couldn't help but give a standing ovation, mocking or not; it no longer mattered to Altair.
Who is he to tell me who I am or who I'm not?
Ever since a long time, Cale felt something other than the occasional chills… it was closer to an actual emotion.
Anger… and bitterness.
Stepping closer to Altair, the towering figure of the entity loomed several heads above him, yet Altair still met those suffocatingly deep gray eyes.
Did that crown penetrate your skull too deeply? I am who I am.
He resisted the urge to grit his teeth as the hollow king knelt in front of him, now both of them on the same level. "So… what do you think is going to happen to you now, liar?"
"Nothing. Nothing will happen to me."
"Hoh? And why do you think that is?" The grey eyes of the king glinted.
"Because you wouldn't have brought me here in the first place. That crack in the shepherd's domain, that couldn't have possibly led to here. Yet you made it so. When the person appearing here wasn't the one you expected, you made an example out of him."
"You had to make it so that I get here all the same. That Wolf could have killed me, but it didn't. I wasn't strong enough to survive the Dead Waters either. I was supposed to die there, too. But I didn't."
"You brought me all the way here. You won't kill me." He tried to hold it back, but his spite was apparent.
The ruler facing Altair didn't say a word for a while.
Go on, kill me, just don't make me stare more at that creepy mug of yours.
Altair was bracing himself for that same suffocating feeling, but it never came.
The king just stared at him; his expression was unchanging.
Before he suddenly burst into laughter.
Eh? Did that crown really push that deep?
"Such ill-fitting masks you wore… but this one? I like this one."
"Well then, Altair, Caelen, or whatever… You didn't even know what name to use. Let me at least tell you mine."
As he spoke, the air around him splintered—thin, spiderweb-like cracks of white spreading outward, slowly breaking apart until a rift began to form in the center of the throne room.
Without working up a sweat, the towering figure opened a crack in front of him.
"My name is Gilran, King of Hollows. And you, my nameless friend, are given a choice."
Before Altair could even register what was happening, the crack enveloped his body as well.
All he felt was a sharp pain in his chest before his world was enveloped by light.