[The Plaza of the Twisted: The Butcher's Banquet]
We finally stood before the monolithic wooden doors of the primary administrative building. They stood there with an eerie, deceptive stillness, appearing as a false promise of sanctuary amidst this cursed, blood-soaked plaza.
But before the threshold… there was a void. A wrongness in the air.
The space between us and the door was not empty. I stopped abruptly, feeling the Eye of Sin contract with a sharp, premonitory throb. I didn't see a visible web; I didn't see complex arcane traps. I saw something far simpler, and infinitely more lethal.
"Stop," my voice emerged low and sharp, a jagged edge of a command. "Do not move an inch."
I reached down slowly, my fingers brushing the dirt until I found a small, jagged pebble. I tossed it forward, aimed at the center of the walkway.
The pebble never reached the other side.
Tnnnnnnn.
It vanished. There was no sound of impact, no spark of friction. It simply… ceased to exist.
There was a single chord. A razor-thin, obsidian thread stretched across the void, anchored directly in front of the door like a fundamental law of the universe. It didn't vibrate. It didn't seek. It didn't coil. It simply cut. It was an existential razor—anything that crossed its trajectory was erased from reality.
"Only one..." Dan whispered from behind me, his voice saturated with a sickly, ecstatic pleasure. "Smart. Simple. Pure. This is the Jan I know."
The remaining soldier—the last of the fodder—failed to comprehend the warning. Driven by a blind, panicky urge to reach the door, he took a singular, heavy step forward.
Tnnnnnnn.
His legs were severed at the ankles with a mechanical, soundless efficiency. His torso pitched forward before his brain could even register the agony. Then, as he instinctively tried to brace his fall with his hands, his body was bifurcated at the waist.
He didn't scream. He didn't have the time.
The last soldier recoiled, choking on his own terror, slamming into the stone wall and collapsing in a heap of hyperventilation. Ryo froze, his golden eyes dilated, his breath hitched in a throat tightened by the sheer, senseless brutality of the trap.
"Do not attempt to cross," I said, my voice carrying a lethal, hollow calm. "This string cannot be bypassed. It does not miss. It does not tire."
I took a singular step toward its path. I felt the air grow cold against my skin, as if the wire were sensing the warmth of my blood, hungry for a harvest.
"Ray..." Ryo said, his voice broken and small.
I didn't look back at him. My gaze was fixed on the invisible line of death.
"Dan," I commanded. "Take Ryo. Get ready."
Dan chuckled, a dark, rumbling sound. "Finally. A show worth the price of admission."
I slowly extended my right hand into the trajectory of the wire.
Tnnnnnnn.
My hand was severed at the wrist. There was no immediate spray of blood, only a searing, white-hot heat, followed by an eruption of thick, purple mana that billowed from the wound like acrid smoke.
The hand struck the marble floor... but the wire didn't move. It remained taut, indifferent, programmed only to consume what crossed its path.
Then, the Regeneration began. Bone sprouted like jagged ice. Nerves coiled like frenzied serpents. The pain was... different. It was deeper than the physical. It felt as though something was being violently harvested from the core of my being with every cell that returned to existence.
I ground my teeth together, the sound of enamel on enamel loud in the silence. This was not a gift. It was a debt. I reached out and tore my own regenerating hand away before the process could complete.
I hurled the half-formed limb directly into the path of the wire.
Tnnnnnnn.
The wire was occupied. It cut. It consumed. It was a machine that knew only the logic of the blade.
"NOW!" I roared.
Dan snatched Ryo, leaping half a step to the side—entirely outside the wire's immediate focus—and they surged through the door. They didn't cross the wire; they bypassed it during the micro-second it was busy erasing my discarded flesh.
I stood at the edge of the path, my body beginning to fail. My vision wavered. A heavy, monolithic ringing hammered against the inside of my skull. I felt something being uprooted from my soul... a memory? A sensation? My very sense of balance?
The regeneration started again, slower this time. More agonizing.
Dan's laughter echoed from within the hall, clear and piercing.
"Ray..." he said, his voice dripping with dark fascination. "You don't just regenerate... you are being drained. Magnificent. This makes killing you... a beautifully prolonged experience."
I took another step—not away from the wire, but into it.
It wasn't a crossing. It was a continuous, rhythmic execution.
The wire sliced through my shoulder... Then through my chest... Then through my waist... There was not a single micro-second where I was "whole."
My body was being constructed inside the cut, and the cutting was happening inside the construction. I didn't feel as though I were walking; I felt as though I were being dragged through the internal machinery of a slaughterhouse.
If the regeneration had faltered for the blink of an eye... there would have been nothing left of me to emerge on the other side.
I dragged my mangled, steaming form into the hall before the wire could claim another piece of my sanity. I fell to one knee, steam rising from my newly formed limbs as they hissed in the cold air of the interior.
I looked at Dan. He was smiling... not with fear, but with the raw, naked hunger of a hunter who had found a prey that refused to die quickly.
"I want to fight you," he said with a terrifying sincerity. "Not now. Not here. I want to watch you break, piece by agonizing piece."
I raised my head, the Red Eye flickering, momentarily dimming.
"Get in line," I said, my voice a jagged, cracked rasp.
"Jan is waiting."
[The Piano of Death]
In that heartbeat, the inner doors of the headquarters swung open with a deceptive, silent grace. An absolute, abyssal darkness swallowed the Great Hall, save for a singular, cold pillar of moonlight that lanced down through the apertures of the dome, illuminating a circle of light in the center.
A sound began to emerge from the gloom. It wasn't a scream. It wasn't a roar. It was the sound of a piano.
It was a melody—slow, tragic, and hauntingly beautiful, yet possessed of a rhythmic cruelty. The notes felt as though they were striking not at our ears, but at our very hearts, as if our heartbeats were the hammers hitting the strings.
And there, elevated upon a dais, seated behind a massive black piano crafted from gilded wood and ivory, was Jan.
His hair cascaded over his face, obscuring his features, and he wore pristine white gloves—spotted with small, fresh rubies of blood. He ceased his playing and raised his head, his eyes bulging and a pale, skeletal smile stretching across his lips.
"Welcome..." Jan said, his voice a soft, silken whisper that seemed to come from everywhere at once. "You are late. The movement was almost over, and I was beginning to fear I would have no fresh strings to finish my masterpiece."