When the ground exploded beneath him, and the breath of the two lower floors surged upward like smoke from the mouth of a scorched corpse, Reis emerged into the second floor.
His body wasn't flung or tossed... It was as if he had surfaced, like the earth itself had expelled him, as if an invisible field had hurled him skyward. He rose shrouded in mana and dust, cloaked in choking smoke, like the cocoon of an invisible explosion.
The moment his feet touched the floor wasn't a landing. It was a tremor.
The entire floor shuddered—not because of his weight, but because of the force that came with him: the remnants of a field still pulsing, contracting, and swelling… as if his body carried a quake just waiting for a final command to unleash.
Reis paused.
He looked around.
He couldn't see far… but he felt everything.
The swirling dust gathered thickly around his breath, rich with the scent of ancient blood. The lights dangling from the ceiling flickered… and then died one by one, as though the floor itself had surrendered to the presence now standing upon it.
He listened.
But there was no silence.
There was a hum—something between metallic buzzing and a deep internal vibration. It was as if the floor was breathing from its core. As if something that hadn't yet revealed itself had just begun to awaken.
He turned.
His eyes moved to the walls—not the walls, the cells.
A flicker of realization.
He felt it.
He felt something changing.
The locks began to whine… no, they collapsed. They twisted inward, as though something had detonated inside them. One by one, the cell doors opened—not like doors, but like creatures shedding their chains.
And then he heard them.
Before he saw them.
The creatures were crawling.
Some dragged themselves with no limbs. Others dangled from the walls like crucified puppets nailed by invisible spikes. The deformities were unspeakable, and the eyes—if they had them—didn't see. They sensed. They moved as if tracking the pulse of mana in the air.
And they saw him.
All of them saw him.
Without signal. Without thought. Without will…
They charged.
Dozens—maybe hundreds—ran like beasts whose minds had been crushed. Their mouths gaping, saliva dribbling, mana crusted on their cracked claws.
But Reis didn't move.
He no longer saw them.
He was seeing them… yet not seeing them.
Because something inside him… was changing.
His field…
It expanded.
It wasn't a decision. It wasn't a reaction.
It was a breath.
Just one intake… and everything was pulled inward.
The very air, the walls, the particles of mana—even time itself—collapsed toward the point where he stood.
Then… it burst.
A soundless wave.
Its effect was absolute.
The monsters were lifted—not thrown, but torn apart. The air twisted, and then it ignited.
He didn't imagine the flames.
He summoned them.
A snap of his fingers—just that—and they burst to life.
Flames that weren't natural consumed the dust before consuming anything else. They fused with the vortex, becoming a ring of fire pulsing with smoke and sorrow. The second floor became an oven, spinning, searing, butchering everything inside without mercy.
But then…
Reis stopped.
He felt it.
The ground beneath him had begun to breathe.
No one else could hear it… but he could.
One step back. His eyes lowered slowly. And then everything froze.
The floor cracked.
And from within it emerged...
The Master of the Laboratory.
The first thing Reis saw was not a face—but shadows.
Shadows that moved. Tendrils that pulsed. A black fluid writhing around a form whose features could not be seen. Reis didn't know who he was… but he knew he was nothing like the creatures.
This being was above them.
Their ruler. Their origin.
He moved.
Everything about him advanced—the tendrils, the darkness, the mana… even the rage.
And in a single moment—without sound—he struck.
Tendrils shot out like spears from the shadows, hunting Reis from every direction. From the ceiling. From the floor. From memory itself.
But…
He wasn't alone.
A faint sound behind him.
Not a human sound.
But the roar of shredded wind.
Elin.
She entered like an arrow of light, into a spiral of annihilation. The air around her shivered, scattered, shattered. And she screamed—not as a call for help, but as a curse torn from a heart that had been broken a thousand times.
"Stop, you bastard!" she screamed, a blend of fury and betrayal, words steeped in a hate she had never known before. She wasn't warning him. She was damning him. Proclaiming with a voice cracked by sorrow that in this moment… she hated him.
Hated him for pulling away.
Hated him for making her believe she almost had him in her hands—only for him to vanish.
She advanced—not flying, but dragging herself through the explosion like a guided missile defying fate. Her eyes searched for him among the devouring shadows, amid fires that were no longer under control. She saw Reis—his crumbling form slumped in the corner—and she saw the darkness slithering toward him like a thousand-mouthed serpent.
But Reis… didn't look.
He didn't respond.
And he didn't move.
There was no desire to fight, no instinct to survive—not even a will to remain.
All that remained was… the gaze.
A gaze directed upward. Beyond the walls. Past the fractured metal ceiling.
There… was the door.
Not a door of steel, but of perception.
Without a move, without a word, he opened his field as if unveiling a portal to another realm. A dim field, flowing like a black scarf across a fictional tunnel, crept into the first floor.
And in that moment… he saw it.
He saw the first floor as if he stood there himself.
---
Lights failing.
The ground shaking, but no one knowing why.
Doctors running, clutching boxes and files and samples, colliding at exits. Some shouted, some sobbed, others were mute, gripping their terminals as if salvation were coded inside.
"The fourth floor collapsed!" someone yelled.
"No life signals! Is this a breach? Some kind of chain reaction?!"
Among them, metallic warnings echoed, doors slamming shut, elevators freezing mid-level, and others sprinting toward the massive iron gate that led to the surface.
But the guards didn't flinch.
"No one leaves without clearance."
"We're not prisoners! Open the gate or—"
"Those are top orders!"
"Orders?!" barked a bald doctor, flashing a red override badge. "Orders from who?! The ground is collapsing beneath us! Open the gate or I'll do it myself!"
But in the guards' eyes, fear gleamed—not fear of doctors… but of something else.
Something unspoken. Something not yet understood.
---
Reis… observed.
Every detail clear. Mana patterns in the walls, energy pulses within the bodies of those shouting, even the glowing files being moved.
But what caught his attention… wasn't who screamed.
It was who watched.
At the far right of the control room, behind semi-frosted glass, stood a lean man in a guard uniform. Shoulders squared, holding a transmitter, shouting into it.
"The third floor's dark. Mana reaction's off the charts. We have vibrations—this isn't an internal glitch—something's coming from below. I repeat: something is rising!"
His voice trembled—but didn't break.
His eyes wide, fixed on the screens. Fingers darting across panels, switching between cameras—but nothing showed. Only shadows, smoke, fissures, and unnatural surges of energy.
He shouted at the screen:
"Don't disable the second floor feed, you idiots!"
Then stopped.
Just for a moment.
Froze.
He stared into the monitor… then tilted his head slightly, as if he had seen something.
No shape.
No body.
No image in focus.
Just a flicker of two pitch-black eyes in the center of the storm.
He opened his mouth to scream—
But didn't realize…
Time had run out.
---
In that moment… Reis chose.
His field stretched like a blade—not to cut, but to replace.
He didn't move.
He didn't run.
He didn't even raise a hand.
He simply decided.
And in the instant of that decision, his field collapsed into a single point…
Then burst upward.
And he was gone.
---
On the first floor, in a dark corner between broken alarm systems and frozen security terminals…
A body dropped.
No crash. No thud.
Just silence.
Like a corpse laid down gently on a pillow of vapor.
It was Reis.
But not truly himself.
His body barely pulsed. Blood leaked from every crack—from his ears, his mouth, the whites of his eyes. The core inside his chest spun like a muted vortex, and everything within him… was unraveling.
No words.
No breath.
Only the ground below, drinking the essence of what he had been—mana pooling around him like the edge of an unseen storm.
---
The guard felt nothing.
Not even a blink of transfer. No ripple of mana.
Just one blink.
And when he opened his eyes…
He was there.
On the second floor.
But… what floor was this?
Slowly, he lifted his gaze.
The first thing that hit him was smoke. Thick. Suffocating. Bitter. Laced with a smell that wasn't just burning… but decay. Something rotten and blistered, like flesh left to fester before being set alight.
He looked around. Slowly. In disbelief.
The floor was cracked. The walls had melted under extreme heat. Segments of ceiling hung loose, some already fallen.
The entire floor looked like it had been coughed out of hell.
In every direction—corpses.
But not normal ones.
He saw severed limbs, inverted skulls, charred skin fused to steel as though they'd tried to escape but were consumed before they could move.
The creatures they feared releasing… were dead.
Burned. Mutated. Mangled.
It was as if fire and darkness had swept the floor clean.
"What… is this?" he whispered, almost unknowingly.
He raised a trembling hand, hovered it over his weapon—but didn't draw. There was no threat here.
And yet, he didn't feel safe.
Silence.
A heavy, bloated silence, soaked in old blood and forgotten screams.
Then… he felt it.
Cold.
As if the air had lost all warmth. As if life itself had drained out.
And then—something pierced him.
He gasped.
A slow, broken gasp, like his heart had just remembered it existed—only to be stabbed.
It wasn't a blade.
Not a bullet.
But something that slipped in from nowhere, slid through his back, coiled around his spine, and pulled his awareness with it.
He didn't see anything.
He only felt the cold… rising from his legs… to his chest… to his throat.
He raised his hand to touch the pain—
But it wouldn't obey.
His body no longer responded.
His eyes widened. His heart beat erratically—afraid without understanding why.
"Who…?" he tried to think. "Who's there…?!"
But no one was.
Just air.
Heavy air.
Then…
Fire.
From beneath. From behind. From above.
The flames slithered.
Not ordinary fire.
Black fire. Cursed.
It devoured him without a sound, without a scream, without resistance.
It gave him no time to understand, or beg, or forgive himself.
Only… burned.
His clothes melted.
His skin.
His bones.
Then what remained of his silence.
And just as a chunk of the scorched ceiling broke free—landing heavy upon his twitching frame—he hadn't even died yet.
One final whisper passed through him:
"What just… happened…?"
Then he vanished.
Not just as a body.
But as a thought.
As if the world had forgotten him entirely… the way a name disappears in a moment of fear.
---
And in the first-floor control room…
Reis lay motionless on the ground.
Silent.
Still.
Eyes shut. Body trembling in fragments. As though his heart only beat because it had once known how.
Black mana seeped faintly from his skin, but the field around him was quiet.
As if it was over.
As if everything that once burned inside him… had gone dark for now.
He slept.
But not the sleep of peace.
The sleep of a death that didn't quite happen.
And the room watched him in silence…
As if the laboratory itself was holding its breath.
Waiting.
For him to open his eyes.