The air grew progressively colder as Kairo walked deeper into the sanctum, losing all sense of time. The vast catalog tiers fell away behind him, replaced by a narrow, descending flight of seamless obsidian steps.
At the base of the staircase sat an isolated stone pedestal.
Suspended directly above it was a vacant book rest, glowing with a soft, ethereal white radiance. Encircling the pedestal was a floating ring of neon-blue water, suspended in mid-air, flowing silently in a perfect, frictionless loop without dropping a single bead onto the stone. The fluid emitted a crisp scent of ozone and deep-ocean brine.
Kairo exhaled a slow, quiet breath, his eyes wide in genuine awe. "I didn't know we had such a beautiful place..."
The moment the words left his lips, the library responded.
A low, resonant pulse rippled through the architecture. The deep-blue marble floor beneath his boots began to shift, the dark stone dissolving into a shimmering, fluid reflection that mirrored an endless neon ocean. The building was reacting—recognizing the bloodline authority flowing through his veins, accepting him as its prince.
Kairo looked up. The high-vaulted ceiling no longer held mere shadow; it now reflected the luminous tide below, glittering with thousands of tiny, starlike specks of blue mana that drifted like falling snow. The surrounding walls harmonized instantly, their dark marble veining shifting into an exquisite, royal-blue and ivory weave.
Kairo shook his head, pulling his gaze away from the breathtaking sight. He clenched his fists, his expression hardening.
Focus, he reminded himself, his amber eyes sharpening into a cold, dangerous glare. I came here for answers. To find the culprit.
He thought of his father's heavy, protective gaze. Father was only soft on me because he feared I would die or suffer again. But I don't care... Even if I break, as long as I drag the culprit out into the light, I will kill him with my own hands.
Meanwhile, near the perimeter of the outer hall—the area touted as the safest refuge in the subterranean complex—Akio paced near the base of one of the four mysterious blue gates.
He stopped, tilting his head toward the lead male guard. "Hey there... why are there doors hidden back here too?"
The guard chuckled under his visor. "Curious, kid? Watch this." He stepped toward the stone recess and unlatched a heavy iron latch, swinging the heavy outer panel open.
Daichi's eyes narrowed instantly, his body tensing. "Wait... what? Is there something else back there?"
Liana leaned forward, her breath catching as she waited with wide, expectant eyes.
The moment the door opened an inch, a pale, clawed hand shot out from the dark, grabbing the male guard's boot.
"Your leg!" the female guard shrieked, reaching for her blade in sheer panic.
Suddenly, the male guard burst into a loud, booming laugh, pulling his foot back to reveal an empty mechanism. "Gotcha! Just a simple spring-latch trick to test your reactions!"
Akio doubled over, cracking up in wild, hysterical laughter that echoed hollowly off the marble walls. "Haha! Thank you! Thank you for agreeing to that—I haven't laughed like that all day!"
Daichi stepped forward, his face pale with cold irritation. "Hey! This place is dangerous. Do you really think that's funny?!"
Liana crossed her arms, shivering slightly. "Yeah... do you actually think that's funny?"
Akio's laughter cut off instantly.
He stood up straight, his shoulders dropping as his head tilted at an unnatural angle. The light in his eyes vanished, replaced by an empty, unblinking stare that fixed directly on Daichi and Liana. A chilling, vacant grin slowly spread across his face.
Liana took an involuntary step back, her skin crawling. "Hey... stop it. You're scaring me, Akio."
Daichi immediately shifted his weight, placing himself squarely in front of Liana, his hand dropping to the focus ring at his belt. Wait... what is happening to Akio? Why is he acting like this?
"Liana, I'm escorting you out of here right now," Daichi whispered, his eyes never leaving Akio. "Let's leave Kairo to his search. This is the safest sector in the kingdom—nothing will harm him inside. But we need to move."
Before Daichi could finish his sentence, Akio lunged forward with terrifying, inhuman speed, his fingers curved like talons.
The female guard reacted instantly, stepping into his path and catching Akio by the collar of his tunic. "What are you doing, son of—"
She stopped mid-sentence.
A quiet, wet drip-drip-drip sounded against the polished marble floor.
The guard looked down in shock. A dark, crimson pool was spreading beneath her chest plates. It wasn't Akio's blood.
It was her own.
A sharp, agonizing shriek shattered the heavy silence of the rotunda. The female sentinel collapsed onto her knees, her gauntleted hands clutching her abdomen as a dark, warm crimson pool seeped through the overlaps of her steel plate, dripping rhythmically onto the polished deep-blue marble.
Her husband abandoned his post in an instant. Dropping to his knees beside her, his hands flared with a fierce, brilliant emerald light as high-tier mending mana surged into her torn flesh.
The woman gasped, her pale lips trembling as the raw pain receded into a dull throb. "Hey... don't worry about me..."
The male guard lifted his head, his face contorted in absolute fury. A golden combat aura erupted around his armored frame, sending a violent shockwave through the static air, cracking the floorboards beneath his sabatons. "How dare you do this to my wife!" he roared, launching his massive frame forward like a launched siege bolt. "You will pay for this!"
Akio didn't even draw a weapon. With terrifying, unnatural fluidity, his body swayed inches out of the path of the guard's strike, the air whistling past his cheek as he dodged effortlessly.
"Oh?" Fake Akio sneered, his voice carrying an eerie, double-layered resonance that vibrated in the teeth. He glanced past the guard's shoulder, his yellowed, vacant eyes locking directly onto Daichi. "Hey, coward... don't you want to hear where the real Akio is?"
Daichi froze, his boots skidding to a halt on the slick marble. The blood drained from his face, leaving his skin as pale as chalk.
"Liana, run!" Daichi shouted over his shoulder, his voice tight with sudden, suffocating panic. "Get out of here! I'll catch up with you later!"
Liana hesitated, her boots rooted to the stone, her eyes wide with terror. "Daichi! What are you doing?!"
"JUST RUN!" Daichi screamed, the raw panic in his voice cutting through her shock.
Liana bit her lip until it bled, turned on her heel, and sprinted up the spiraling marble staircase as fast as her legs could carry her, her frantic footsteps fading into the high arches above.
Daichi snapped his gaze back to the fray, his lungs burning. "What happened to Akio?!"
The male sentinel lashed out with a brutal series of strikes, each blow breaking the sound barrier with deafening sonic cracks that shook dust from the high ironwood shelves. The atmospheric pressure spiked so violently that Daichi was forced to hastily weave a dampening ward over his ears to keep his eardrums from rupturing.
Yet, even through the muffled quiet of his spell, the entity possessing Akio's form projected its voice directly into Daichi's mind—clear, sharp, and dripping with malicious delight.
"While you were arguing with him in the woods... while you hurt his pride and called him weak... he slipped while recklessly riding his horse through the rain," the clone mocked, easily dodging a heavy broadsword sweep. "And then... I killed him."
Daichi's heart slammed into his ribs like a sledgehammer. A wave of nauseating guilt rushed through his veins, cold and suffocating.
"Wait... what?!" Daichi choked out, taking a staggered step backward. "No... you're lying! You're lying!"
"Oh, sorry," Fake Akio purred, his grin widening until the corners of his mouth bled slightly. "I haven't killed him yet... but he'll die any second now."
With a single, effortless backhand infused with black, heavy momentum, the entity struck the armored guard square in the chest. Steel crumpled like parchment. The sentinel was launched fifty feet across the hall, crashing violently against the marble wall beside his wife before slumping into a lifeless heap.
Fake Akio turned back toward Daichi, taking a slow, deliberate step forward.
Suddenly, the boy's limbs snapped backward with a series of sickening, wet crunches. First his fingers bent unnatural angles, then his elbows snapped, his knee joints inverted, and finally his spine twisted with a horrific CRACK. The body collapsed into a mangled pile of broken bone and torn flesh on the blue marble floor.
From deep within the mangled throat, a voice—the real Akio's voice—screamed out in raw, unadulterated agony, a sound so guttural and heart-wrenching it tore through Daichi's chest.
Daichi covered his ears, weeping openly as he backed away. "No... no! It's a trick! How can I believe it's really him?!"
Before the thought could settle, black mana threads burst from the shattered bones. With nauseating precision, the limbs snapped back into place, the flesh stitched itself whole, and the body stood straight up as if nothing had ever happened.
Akio's true eyes flickered open through tears of agony, staring directly at Daichi. "Run away from me, Daichi..." he gasped, his voice raspy and broken. "Let him kill me... just run..."
Fake Akio snapped his head back, his eyes flaring a bright, sickening yellow once more as he reclaimed control. "See? Would a fake version of him say that to you?"
Daichi gritted his teeth, his jaw trembling. "No... you're trying to lure me in!"
"Yeah," Fake Akio sneered, taking another step. "Run away and let him die. He's just your weak, pathetic, idiot friend anyway, isn't he?"
"DON'T YOU DARE SPEAK ILL OF HIM!" Daichi roared, drawing his focus ring as magic flared around his hands.
Behind the clone, both wounded guards forced themselves to their feet, their eyes burning with suicidal resolve as they launched a desperate, combined assault from behind.
At that exact instant, the yellow light vanished from Akio's eyes. His expression melted back into that of a terrified, defenseless boy.
The two heavy steel gauntlets struck the helpless Akio square in the back.
The impact sent Akio flying across the hall, skidding across the slick marble to land directly at Daichi's feet, coughing up blood as he screamed in blinding, unbearable pain.
Daichi fell to his knees beside his broken friend, his mind buckling under the horror. The sheer psychological shock broke the lock on his suppressed memories.
A violent, blinding white flash erupted behind Daichi's eyes.
The riverbank. The cold rain. The severed head of Kairo rolling into his lap, screaming through torn vocal cords: Run away from me, Daichi!
Now, sitting beside Akio's bleeding form, the exact same words echoed in absolute harmony: Run away from me, Daichi...
The fog in Daichi's mind dissolved completely. The suppressed memory block shattered into a million pieces, revealing the face of the figure standing in the shadows behind the temporal loop—the true mastermind who had orchestrating their torment from the very beginning.
Daichi stared blankly ahead, his eyes wide with absolute, horrifying realization, his voice reduced to a hollow, trembling whisper.
"Wait... no way..." Daichi breathed, his soul turning to ice. "Is that... is that really you?"