[The Beginning: The Player and the Grave]
Jan did not stop playing. His fingers danced across the ivory keys with a terrifying, liquid fluidity. We stood in the nave of the Great Hall, a space entombed in shadows that were broken only by the cold columns of moonlight lancing down from the shattered dome.
"Did you enjoy the outdoor exhibit?" Jan asked without turning, his voice echoing between the high, vaulted walls like a ghost. "Those were merely… sketches. Now, the true performance begins."
Suddenly, with a singular, violent strike upon the keys, a gargantuan Trnnnn! erupted. The steel wires filling the ceiling vibrated with a deafening hum, and the corpses discarded in the corners began to stir. They did not rise like the undead through their own muscles; they were "jerked" violently upward from above.
Hundreds of bodies—Baron's soldiers, the district's inhabitants, and even our comrades who had fallen at the gates—suddenly stood upright. The threads were hammered into their joints, their necks, and even their eyelids. They had been transformed into "human marionettes" in a sadistic play directed by the Maestro from his high perch.
"Exquisite!" Dan roared, lunging forward with a maniacal laugh. He had not even drawn his weapon yet; he used his bare hands to dismantle any corpse that dared approach him. I watched as he plucked the head from a female soldier who was being jerked toward his throat, then hurled the skull like a projectile into another group of puppets.
Dan fought with a primal savagery, but I knew… he wasn't unleashing his full power. He was "playing." He was tearing limbs and savoring the sound of threads ripping through flesh, as if waiting for the main course—Jan—to truly satiate his hunger.
Ryo, however, was in a state of lethal shock. The "Blade of Dawn" in his hand radiated a gilded brilliance, severing threads and corpses with a regal precision. He fought to protect my flank, his eyes tracking the movement of the wires that fell from the ceiling like a black, metallic rain.
"Don't look at their faces, Ryo!" I barked as I clove a corpse in two that was trying to stab me with a dagger tied to a wire. "They are mere tools now… Cut the strings first!"
My Red Eye flared to its absolute limit. Thanks to the "Eye of Sin," I didn't see the corpses; I saw the "Energy Grid" that Jan was manipulating from above. Every movement he made on the piano sent precise vibrations through the wires to control a specific limb.
Jan looked down at us from his high balcony, smiling coldly as he watched our blood stain his marble floor. "The Ghost… you truly are entertaining," Jan said, increasing the tempo of his playing. "You move as if you can read my thoughts… but can you keep pace with a thousand corpses at once?"
The threads lanced toward me like arrows. A wire coiled around my wrist, tightening with enough force to nearly dislocate the joint. I didn't hesitate; I let the wire shred my skin and bite into the bone, utilizing the "Frenzy Regeneration" to remain anchored. I severed the wire with my blade and surged toward the stairs leading to Jan, but the corpses piled up like mountains to bar our path.
"I'm tired of these dolls!" Dan suddenly bellowed. His aura shifted; the earth around him began to crack under the pressure of his energy. He seized ten wires that were trying to bind him, and instead of cutting them, he pulled back with a raw, barbaric strength that caused Jan to stumble over the piano for a micro-second.
Dan was pulling the steel wires with his bare hands, blood dripping from his palms due to the razor-sharp steel, yet he was laughing. "Jan! Come down and face me like a man, or I will bring this entire headquarters down on your cursed head!"
Dan began to pulverize the corpses with terrifying speed, turning them into dust and minced meat in seconds. It was a filthy, bloody, and majestic combat. Ryo covered him with sweeps of light that severed any thread attempting to encircle Dan. We moved as a single machine, purging the hall.
After minutes that felt like hours, the hall fell still. The plaza was covered in mounds of shredded flesh and severed threads that resembled a destroyed spider's web. We stood amidst the slaughterhouse, gasping for air, while Dan wiped the blood from his face with a look of suppressed, volcanic rage.
The music stopped abruptly. A terrifying silence reigned, more powerful than the sound of combat. Jan rose slowly from behind the piano and brushed the dust of battle from his pristine white gloves. He looked at us with bulging eyes, his smile widening to reveal a limitless insanity.
"Well done..." Jan said, clapping his hands with a cold, hollow sound. "You have cleared the stage of the failed actors. But do not think for a moment that you have won."
Jan walked to the edge of the balcony and produced a long golden thread from his sleeve, slowly winding it around his finger. "Those corpses… they were merely a warm-up for my fingers. Tonight, O Ghost… and O Heart-Thief… it has only just begun. You are now in my kingdom, and in my kingdom… the strings do not stop playing until the last vein in your hearts is severed."
Jan gestured downward, and suddenly, the walls themselves began to sprout massive wires. The headquarters began to vibrate as if a living entity were awakening from a long slumber.
"Prepare yourselves..." I whispered to Ryo and Dan, tightening my grip on the hilt of "Sin." "The Butcher is about to begin his true slaughter now."
[The Beginning: The Cursed Golden Strings]
A brief silence followed the shredding of the human puppets, but it was a silence charged with the electricity of death. Jan stood on his balcony, watching us with bulging eyes devoid of any human spark. Suddenly, with a theatrical flourish, he extended his hands toward the stone walls surrounding us.
"You have spoiled my simple melodies..." Jan whispered, his voice resonating through the hall. "Now... I shall play for you with the 'Strings of the Apex.' Dance... dance... I want to see the dance of death!"
Screeeeeech!
Suddenly, the massive marble walls split as if they were thin parchment. From within, thick golden threads emerged, glowing with a sickly brilliance. They were not ordinary strings; they moved with a velocity that made the air shriek, and upon contact with the stone pillars, they clove through them like paper. Massive blocks of stone crashed around us, and dust began to fill the air as those golden chords intersected in space to form a "Labyrinth of Blades."
[The Dance of Death: Bleeding Beneath the Spotlight]
The assault began. The golden strings lunged from every direction—from the ceiling, the floor, and from behind the shattered statues. They moved in complex geometric patterns, forcing us into impossible acrobatic feats just to stay alive.
I saw Dan lunge forward; he wasn't fleeing, he was attacking the void. Suddenly, a golden wire launched from a blind spot and struck his left shoulder. Tchaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!
The wire transfixed the muscle and bone, emerging from the other side to anchor itself in the ground. I expected Dan to stop, to scream, or even to recoil. But he did exactly the opposite. He didn't even attempt to remove the wire; instead, he continued to run and leap, blood spraying from his wounded shoulder to dye his white clothes a savage crimson. He was laughing—a maniacal laugh that blended with the sound of his own flesh tearing.
"This is the pain I love!" Dan roared as he twisted in mid-air to avoid another wire that nearly bifurcated his waist. "Jan! Is this all you have? I want more!"
Ryo, meanwhile, was fighting with desperation. The Blade of Dawn in his hand drew semicircles of light to parry the wires, but the speed of the golden strings was surpassing his endurance. I saw exhaustion clouding his features, and the wires began to graze his royal armor everywhere.
A cold fury swept through my being. I looked at the exhausted Ryo, at the reckless Dan who was dismantling his own body, and then raised my gaze toward Jan, who was clapping his hands, intoxicated by the sight of our blood.
In that heartbeat, something shifted deep within me. It was no longer just about the "Frenzy Regeneration"; it was a response to the suppressed call of "Sin" inside my soul.
My eyes slowly turned to a deep, abyssal red, and a thick, searing steam began to pour from my pores. My Red Eye flared with such intensity that it illuminated the darkness around us, and the blade of "Sin" began to vibrate frantically, transforming into a dark crimson glow resembling frozen blood.
I had transcended the limits of humanity.
I launched myself toward the golden strings. I was no longer dodging them; I was erasing them. My crimson blade collided with the golden chords, producing explosions of mana that shook the hall to its foundations.
Krakkkk! Krakkkk!
The golden strings were terrifyingly strong, but "Sin" was devouring them. I moved like a crimson flash amidst the golden forest, severing every chord that approached Ryo or Dan. Every strike of mine left behind a trail of unquenchable red fire.
Jan stopped laughing abruptly. His eyes widened in shock as he saw his "sacred" strings falling like straw beneath my blade. He gripped the edge of the balcony so hard the marble crumbled beneath his fingers.
"Stop! Damn you, Ghost!" Jan screamed in a voice filled with hatred and lunacy. "Do you even know what you are destroying? These strings… I fashioned them from the intestines and nerves of royal corpses! I spent years treating them with sorcery and blood to make them unbreakable! How dare you desecrate my art with your filth?"
I did not answer him. My mind was in a state of absolute, singular focus. With a final, circular strike, I unleashed a wave of dark crimson energy that swept across the entire hall.
Shsssssssssst!
Every golden string was severed at once, falling to the floor like pieces of cheap trinkets. A sudden, heavy silence followed. We stood amidst the wreckage; Dan was panting, covered in blood, Ryo was leaning on his sword for support, and I… I stood directly beneath the balcony, the crimson aura still evaporating from my frame.
[The True Master of the Stage]
Jan looked down at us in a long, brooding silence. He was no longer angry in the usual sense; his calm was far more terrifying than his madness. He began to move with slow, methodical precision.
He raised his hands and tied his long, cascading hair back with a leather band, revealing a pale face scarred by fine, surgical lines. Then, with absolute coldness, he began to peel off his blood-stained white gloves.
His hands beneath the gloves were horrific; the fingers were unnaturally long, covered in a layer of hardened skin that resembled scales, and his nails were as sharp as needles.
Jan leaped from the high balcony. He did not fly; he descended with a lightness as if he were a feather, straightening into a standing posture directly before us. His body was lean but taut as a bowstring, and his eyes burned with the desire for dissection.
"You have proven to be a difficult audience..." Jan said, cracking his neck with an audible sound. "But the true performance hasn't even begun. The strings were merely decor. Now… I need to show you what it means to be the Master of the Stage. I shall dissect your souls while looking directly into your eyes."
Jan raised his bare hands, and a viscous black mana began to emerge from his fingertips—a mana whose filth I had never felt before.
"Prepare yourself, Ryo… and get ready, Dan," I whispered, raising the blade of "Sin" to my eye level. "This time… the Butcher will not fight with wires… he will fight with his hands."