The return was not a waking, but a seizure inside a foreign body.
Zhu Zhi gasped, slamming against the floor of polished, dark rock. Every single muscle fiber in this borrowed, uncooperative vessel was screaming with a uniform intensity, a raw, primal distortion far exceeding any physical pain he'd ever known.
The source was a deep, fundamental wrongness, like the sound of grinding tectonic plates echoing in his inner ear. This was the chaotic, metallic cold clinging to his core—the toxic residue of an unnamed corruption.
He was lying on his back. The heavy air was thick with salt, ozone, and the choking, mineral scent of deep, cold earth. Above him, the ceiling was a suffocating dome of Obsidian-Infused Silver Stone, composed of perfectly seamless, subtly convex blocks of dark material that aggressively swallowed light and sound.
The frigid stone seemed to hum with an unnatural, silent frequency, a faint, metallic vibration that resonated in his teeth. Along the curved edges where the floor met the walls, a faint, crystalline layer of fine, silver-gray dust had settled, pristine and undisturbed.
A pressure behind his eyes intensified—the final, brutal psychic surge of the body's former occupant: frantic hands, the blinding rush of power, and a pulsing metallic object drinking the light, consuming all existence around it.
He tried to recall his own memories, the essence of Zhu Zhi. He searched for the image of his childhood apartment, the face of his mother, the mundane facts of his last job—any anchor to his true self. But his past was a void.
His memories were not gone, but foggy, existing behind a dense, psychic curtain.
He mustered enough strength to stand up, bracing one shoulder against the slick, cold wall. His back arched, and he steadied himself on trembling arms.
The immediate, horrifying clarity of the foreign body's memories surfaced: betrayal, academic obsession, and self-destructive fear. A name, tied to the fear, surfaced with the clarity of a wound: Julius Croft.
Simultaneously, a chorus of dry, rustling whispers tore through the space behind his skull: Shhh... the secret is claimed... the secret is claimed...
His trembling fingers batted uselessly in the absolute dark until they closed around a cold, smooth object. It was dense and heavier than it looked. He forced it up, closer to his face.
This was the obsidian mirror. It was a dense piece of polished Obsidian Stone, about the size and thickness of an old paperback. One side was meticulously carved with faint, swirling patterns that looked like compressed nebulae and distant constellations.
The reverse side, which now faced him, was polished to a flawless, reflective sheen that was not silver, but a deep, metallic quicksilver. It was capable of reflecting light with unnatural intensity even in the gloom, and felt far older than the hand that now gripped it.
He angled the quicksilver surface, catching the faintest hint of reflected ambient light from the distant passage. The man staring back had a sharp jawline, deep-set eyes wide with terror, and an expression of pure, ravaged intensity. It was the face of Julius Croft.
"Have I transmigrated, Zhu Zhi?" he muttered to himself, the question a low, ragged sound, his voice hoarse, thick with disbelief and the raw pain of a life violently displaced.
He felt lost, stripped of everything, wearing a life that wasn't his own. "It's true. I'm wearing a dead man's skin. Zhu Zhi muttered to himself before focusing on the solvable problem.
Survival first. Focus on the solvable problem: the dark."
He found a heavy, bronze torch lying on the ground beside him. The bronze was tarnished green in streaks of verdigris, the wood handle smooth from age. He dragged himself to the nearest wall, scraping the torch's wick against the minuscule, barely visible ember still clinging to a neighboring wick.
The flame caught, sputtering into life with a soft whoosh, immediately consuming the last light of the ember. The weak, yellow light cast a moving circle of illumination.
Guided by the weak light and desperate survival instinct, he moved deeper.
The passage was a masterpiece of ancient, oppressive engineering. The walls were subtly concave.
Each massive block of Obsidian Stone was perfectly joined, lacking any visible mortar lines. He ran his hand along the wall; the surface was cool, almost slick, but adorned with faint, geometric patterns—circles intersecting squares—that seemed to vanish if he focused on them directly, a subtle, visual tyranny that immediately induced unease.
The floor beneath him was equally polished, showing faint, spiraling patterns in its dark grain that subtly shifted and seemed to tug at his balance, creating a mild, persistent vertigo.
The ceiling mirrored the floor's curvature, pressing down.
He walked for an extended, agonizing amount of time. The passage twisted immediately into a tight helix, spiraling sharply and continuously downwards. The constant visual distortion began to wear at his sanity. The physical strain was immense.
His legs ached with the weight of the effort, and his breath came in short, ragged gasps.
The structure began a subtle, unnerving change. The dark Obsidian Stone gradually gave way to a paler, bone-colored marble, intricately veined with black and dull bronze.
The new marble walls were intensely colder, radiating a damp chill that was separate from the psychic coldness.
He checked his coat pocket, his hand clamping around a heavy brass key—a physical, real anchor.
Finally, after what his weary mind calculated to be a terrifyingly long descent, the oppressive walls gave way.
The passage opened abruptly into a vast, circular chamber.