Chapter 40: The Ghost Lady

Something about that thought kept nagging at Lumina, pulling her attention back toward the web of cracks spreading across the ceiling above Lucian.

Her focus sharpened, confusion bleeding into something closer to alarm. This domain could generate pressure, sure, but nothing that should have been strong enough to pin someone down this completely, this long.

It felt deliberate. Targeted. As though something in this place meant for Lucian, specifically, to suffer under it.

A thin mist began curling up around him without warning, rising slowly, wrapping around his frozen body.

"Lucian. Before you passed through that yellow door, were you always under this much pressure from the domain? Or is there something else about this place that’s felt wrong to you?"

The question caught him off guard. His answer caught Lumina off guard right back.

He told her plainly: he’d never felt pressure like this before, not once, not through any of the other doors he’d passed through.

As for anything strange, the only thing that came to mind was Miyu. Touching her had felt exactly like touching Lumina, cold, lifeless, a body with no blood moving through it, no heartbeat answering underneath his fingers.

He admitted, honestly, that it had genuinely startled him to learn Lumina herself was part of this memory too.

"Miyu? You’ve actually touched Miyu? Not the other woman, the one who’s supposed to be guarding this domain? Are you sure you haven’t mixed someone up, Lucian?"

"Another woman guarding this domain? What are you talking about? I’ve never met anyone like that. Didn’t I already tell you about the person I ran into back on that staircase?"

Both of them stood there, equally lost, the woman each of them was describing clearly not the same person at all.

"You should have met her before anyone else, the moment you first stepped into this domain, Lucian. She’s the only one who could have touched you physically at all. She’s the one holding back every Murk, every trace of dark mana here, keeping it from ever bleeding out into the real world."

Lucian genuinely had no memory of anyone like that. As far as he could recall, he’d never crossed paths with such a figure at all.

Still, doubt crept in. Could he really have walked past someone that important without ever noticing?

He’d been moving from door to door this whole time guided by Miyu, and by that strange thread running beneath his own feet.

"A strange thread? Wait, is that thread still there right now, under your feet?"

Something in the way Lumina asked that pulled Lucian’s attention downward, curiosity sparking through the crushing weight still pinning him in place.

He forced his hand to move, feeling along the ground around him despite how much it cost him, until his fingers brushed against something behind him, thin, fine, and unnervingly rigid.

There’s actually a thread tied to my leg? Wait, why does it feel wrong?

"I found it. There’s a thread near my foot, but this one feels like it’s carrying dark mana. It’s not like the other threads I’ve touched before."

Lumina watched him closely, watched his hand close around something clearly solid to him. To her own eyes, though, there was nothing there at all, just empty air, no thread, no trace of dark mana anywhere near him.

But the fact that Lucian could feel dark mana she couldn’t even see unsettled her enough to start scanning the space around him herself. At first, nothing stood out.

Except the gate. The same one the Omen had emerged from stood close by, and even Lumina could feel a faint pulse of dark mana bleeding off it now that she looked properly.

"A black gate, carrying dark mana?"

Something clicked into place behind her eyes. She spun toward Lucian, voice cracking with urgency.

"Lucian, watch out, this part of the memory has already been tampered with!"

The warning barely registered before the Omen, the same one that had torn through Rhaiven and Zoria only moments earlier, was suddenly standing directly in front of him.

Pinned in place, unable to move, Lucian had no way to answer as its spear leveled straight at his chest.

Then, from somewhere above his own head, a voice tore through the air, heavy and terrible, unmistakably feminine, and unnervingly close to Miyu’s own, if Miyu’s voice had aged decades in an instant.

"NO INTRUDERS ALLOWED."

The spear came down.

Lumina lunged, crimson fluid already surging from her hand, but there was no way she’d reach him in time.

Lucian braced for the strike, uncertain whether he’d survive it at all.

Then Sonata flared to life, the Kirana crystal blazing alongside it, and a shield of pure light snapped into existence around him an instant before the blow landed.

The spear crashed into that barrier instead, the impact shuddering through Lucian’s entire body, and something, some thread of dark mana, slipped past the shield entirely and forced its way up through his nose without warning.

The physical force of the attack had been stopped cold. What came next hadn’t been.

Lucian’s hand flew to his mouth.

COUGH!

Something came up with the cough, small and hard against his tongue, and for a moment he thought he’d coughed up one of his own teeth from the shock of the impact.

But the texture was wrong. Not enamel. Something round, brittle, already cracked clean through.

"ARGH, that thing actually dared to break something of mine."

Lumina’s voice cracked with fury from somewhere behind him. The small, shattered object in Lucian’s palm, he realized, had to be the same pill she’d once given him to swallow.

"Lucian, cut that thread and hold on! I’ll be back as fast as I can!"

Back.

It took Lucian a moment to understand what that meant. Lumina’s body had already begun fading out of the domain around him, and the memory itself lurched to a stop mid-motion.

The Murks. Kai and everyone fighting beside him. Even Miyu, cold and expressionless, all of it began flickering out of existence at once, the entire scene stuttering like a broken reel of film struggling to hold its own frames together, images catching, freezing, dissolving into static before vanishing entirely.

That left only Lucian, and the Omen, standing alone together in whatever remained of the space.

Strangely enough, the instant that shattered pill had left his body, everything felt lighter. He could move again, freely, the way he had before any of this had ever pinned him down.

Damn it, I don’t even know if I should thank this thing for that or not. I can move now, but where the hell am I supposed to run to?

He’d learned enough from that one attack already: his body wouldn’t survive a second direct hit from that spear, not without his bones giving out entirely.

He circled back to Lumina’s suspicion, that black thread she’d insisted was the true source of whatever hold this domain had over him. If he could cut it, maybe, just maybe, the Omen would stop hunting him at all.

He backed away several steps fast, giving himself room to draw his blade across whatever bound his ankle.

The Omen had already anticipated it.

THUD!

It closed the distance in an instant, appearing right beside him, spear driving in from the side hard enough to send him flying, slamming him straight back into the gate’s threshold. The shield from Sonata and Kirana caught him again, barely, the only thing standing between him and real damage.

"Gugh... this gap in strength is way too much."

♪ Go inside the black gate. ♪

A voice reached him then, one he half recognized, something between speech and song, guiding him the way a melody might.

Whoever it belonged to was telling him to walk straight into the black gate, into the very place the Omen had first been sealed inside.

Walking in there felt like walking straight into a trap. But staying out here meant staying exactly where the enraged Omen wanted him, and the domain around him was already coming apart at the seams, more cracks tearing open by the second.

♪ Don’t be an idiot. Do you really want to think this through while you’re about to get split in half? Get in here and listen to me ♪

"That’s the same rude voice I heard on that ghost staircase."

♪ Who are you calling a ghost, huh?! ♪

The argument barely had time to breathe before the Omen surged forward again, its massive frame bearing down on him with everything it had.

Is there really no other option here?

Lucian glanced sideways. What remained of the space he stood in had begun crumbling apart entirely, cracks spreading through every visible surface.

Only the black gate itself stood untouched.

He didn’t waste another second thinking it over. He threw himself through the doorway just as the Omen closed in behind him.

"Ghost lady. Help me out here, please!!"

His feet hit solid ground on the other side, dropping him into a space thick with darkness and fog, nothing violent or hostile about it at all, just a hollow, freezing emptiness pressing in from every direction.

Anyone relying on sight alone would have seen nothing of what this place actually was.

"Ghost lady... what is this place?"

♪ Don’t waste time worrying about what this room looks like. You need to find where the chain binding that Omen is anchored, and break it. ♪

"Break it? Wouldn’t that just set it loose to attack me even worse?"

♪ Just do what I’m telling you. Once you reach the center of it, you’ll understand what I mean. ♪

Everything the voice said sounded impossibly cryptic, but Lucian had run out of better options. He drew in a slow breath, both hands closing tight around the hilt of his white sword.

He forced himself to focus entirely on his hearing, chasing the faint drag of chain links through the fog.

Somewhere off to his right, the sound reached him, faint but unmistakable, the source of whatever bound the Omen in place.

He broke into a run without a second thought, cutting through the mist on instinct, trusting his ears alone to guide him.

Then he stopped cold.

Ahead of him stood a long black stone, wrapped tight in chains.

But it wasn’t the stone that froze him in place.

Atop it lay a woman, white-haired, bound in chain from head to foot, her condition impossible to make out from here, whether she was even still breathing at all.

"I need to get up there. Now."