“Hm? Not the Abyss?” The woman stared at the face inches from hers, dazed like a moth stunned by lamplight.

Edlyn opened her eyes. Cold slid through her gaze. “So you’re the hand behind the curtain.”

“...Not dead?” The woman sounded startled, voice thin as frost.

“Relax. It aches like a thorn in bone, but I’m not dying.” Edlyn clenched her fists, knuckles pale moons.

Black armor of the Demon King surged from nothing, shadows layering over her skin like poured ink.

She hacked away the tentacles binding her, one by one, then let them harden into true plates, night-steel shielding her slim frame.

“Then who are you? To spin a world that can bind someone at my level, you’re no gentle goddess.” Edlyn crossed her arms, gaze a teasing blade.

“I should be asking who you are.” The woman set her hands on her hips, posture sharp as a spear.

The writhing hair-tentacles calmed, storm settling to a quiet sea, shrinking until they were only the width of normal strands.

“...Huh? You don’t know me?” Edlyn blinked, like a bird pausing mid-flight. Had Father not laid the groundwork?

“Why should I? Are you famous?” Hands still crossed, chin high—a flag of pride in dry wind.

“Tch.” Edlyn frowned, head tilted, thoughts swarming like bees.

“Hey, brat, you still haven’t said who you are.” The woman’s eyes hunted like a hawk, as if she could swallow Edlyn whole.

“You reek of the Abyss from head to heel.”

She pinched her nose, disgust rough as sand. “Hey. What’s your link to the Abyss?”

She hesitated, gaze measuring Edlyn. “A fragment of him, maybe?”

Either way, she wouldn’t believe that unknowable thing had lovers or children.

“Think whatever you like.” Edlyn’s mouth curled. “Now tell me how I leave.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?” Curiosity tilted in the woman’s eyes like a cat’s ear.

“Let me out,” Edlyn said, brow drawn tight. “Why give me that blank, foggy stare?”

“Kid. Even if you’re an avatar of the Abyss, you leave here only as a corpse.” Her brow knotted like ice-cracked bark.

“Unless he comes himself, no one escapes this place.” Her voice laid down stone.

“What? Don’t play me. I don’t have time for your nonsense!” Edlyn raised her small fists, sparks in a storm.

“Wait. No—your scent...” The woman stepped closer and sniffed, soft as a moth brushing glass.

Edlyn recoiled, disgust flaring first. “Hey. What do you think you’re doing? Gross.”

“...Human? A human scent?” Shock flashed like lightning across her face.

“What, is that so strange?” Edlyn frowned, clouds gathering.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “No. The breath of the Abyss, fused with a human’s?”

“What are you...” Her brow tightened. After a long silence, she sighed, like wind slipping through graves. “Another thing that breaks the laws.”

Edlyn arched a brow. “Hey, what did you just say?”

“Kid, tell me what you are,” the woman said, voice a tight bowstring.

Edlyn cocked her head and tapped the light breastplate. “I am Edlyn Bruyarl, king of the Demon Race.”

“Demon Race?” Her frown held, stone unturned.

“Tch. Talking to a bumpkin is pointless. Enough.” Edlyn shrugged, sleeves fluttering like wings. “Stop asking. Tell me how to leave.”

“I told you—it’s impossible.” The woman flicked her hand, patience frayed like old cloth in rain.

Her mind was a nest full of this Abyss-stitched puzzle.

“Hey, I can’t stay here.” Edlyn grabbed her wrist, urgency quick as a heartbeat.

“You have a way, right? Isn’t this your made world?” Edlyn pushed, voice a wedge.

The woman let out a self-mocking laugh. “Ha. As if. I’m like you—locked in here.”

“Eh?” Edlyn startled, a spring shocked open.

“I can’t even remember how long I’ve been sealed.” Her gaze dimmed, a winter sun behind clouds.

“Sealed?” Edlyn tilted her head, question like a sparrow at the sill.

The woman pointed at the cavern around them, a hollowed geode of stone and shadow. “I found this chamber by wading the mire for ages.”

She walked to a stone seat and hugged her knees. “Back then... I followed the Abyss, from the far dark of the cosmos to this place.”

“Hey, I don’t want a story.” Edlyn frowned, emotion first, action next. “I’m not a kid. Don’t—”

“We were so happy then,” the woman continued, voice drifting like incense through a temple.

“Hey! I said I don’t want a story. Hey—” Edlyn tried to cut in, words tossed like pebbles.

“Yet in the end...”

“Seriously?!” Edlyn swore, temper sparking.

...

No one knew how long she talked. Edlyn had already curled up nearby and fallen asleep, breaths even as a sleeping cat in sun.

Snapped back, the woman saw Edlyn dozing and boiled, anger rising like steam.

Her long hair flared into bundled tentacles. They wrapped Edlyn, coils cold as river eels.

In her dream, Edlyn sat in Eli’s arms eating cake, when a cord yanked her throat. She almost choked to death, sweetness turned to ash.

“Mm—! An assassin!” Edlyn jolted upright, panic first, motion next.

She clawed the loop off her neck, fingers a blur.

“Who! Who dares assassinate me!” She patted around for Ashir, found nothing, and her guard shot up like a blade.

She saw the woman, hair storming like a crown of thorns. Memory flowed back, the scene knitting.

“So, you done talking?” Edlyn scratched her head, turning her white hair into a bird’s nest, messy clouds.

“Filthy,” the woman muttered, eyes full of disdain, like a cold pond.

“If not for the Abyss, we’d have lived free and easy by now.” She sighed, grief thick as smoke. “I hate him. We did so much, and what then? He pressed us one by one into this Inferno.”

“What? What happened?” Edlyn hurried the words, heart hammering.

“Heh. It’s a long tale.” She looked up at the roof, gave a bitter laugh, smile like a chipped mask.

Edlyn covered her ears, bracing for more, when a chill swept over her like shadow frost.

She looked up fast, senses flaring like a stag.

Eight stone pillars around them spat sudden blue light, lancing toward the woman.

“Watch out!” Edlyn shouted, a bell in wind.

The woman seemed blind to it. She lifted her head and let the eight beams drive into her mind like nails into ice.

“Hey!” Edlyn froze, stunned, a deer in glare.

The woman’s speech stopped. Her face twisted, struggling, fighting something unseen, like a net drawn tight.

Then she blew out like a punctured bellows and toppled, eyes rolled white.

Edlyn rushed to check her, wary eyes flicking to the eight pillars, breath held like a string.

They stood quiet now, as if nothing had happened, old trees in a windless grove.

The woman on the floor snapped her eyes open and stared at Edlyn, a wolf’s stare.

“Are you okay?” Edlyn asked quickly, voice a hand extended.

“...You carry the Abyss’s breath. He sent you here to be our vent,” the woman said. Her tone bent strange. Her black hair flushed toward violet, dusk bleeding into night.

She didn’t seem to hear Edlyn at all. She muttered to herself, “Ah. I won’t let you die. I’ll savor you. Slowly. Heh, heh...”

She cackled. Her hair, a nest of vipers, whipped at Edlyn, hiss rising.

“Uwah!” Edlyn cried, springing aside, a swallow dodging arrows. “Damn it. Locked up too long turned her sick.”

Countless tentacles speared for her. She had no weapon, only magic to scatter them for moments, like wind tossing leaves.

The woman’s power towered past the Demonic Lord she was right now, a mountain over a hill.

So Edlyn’s spells barely bit, sparks on rain.

The Demonic Lord ran ragged, sprinting the cavern edge, dodging strike after strike, feet tapping stone like drumbeats.

“Damn. At this rate... I’m done.” Edlyn vaulted, catching a stalactite on the ceiling, slipping past a stabbing lash, heart thrumming.

A tentacle grazed the stalactite and shrank, as if touching its bane, frost to flame.

Edlyn glanced down, caught it, eyes brightening like dawn. She grinned, sly as a fox. “Heh. Heh-heh. You’re dead meat.”

She kept moving, hopping pillar to pillar, letting strikes miss by hairs, steps thread-light.

She made them smash the stalactites on purpose, breaking stone teeth.

Seven loops around the woman later, the broken jags of stone ringed her, forming a cage like a jaw.

Edlyn stood atop one jag, looking down at the nest of serpentine tentacles. She swallowed, a pebble falling. “Hoo... stubborn thing.”

The woman in the center lifted her head, found Edlyn, and raised her left hand, pointing like a spear. “Abyss! You think a substitute will help? I won’t forgive you! I won’t!”

She roared. Her tentacles churned like a maelstrom, foam of shadow.

Edlyn frowned. She drew sigils on both palms again. Blood gathered into blades, moon-red. She watched the raging woman with tight focus, breath held.

Hesitation first, then a thought crossed her mind like a shooting star, quick and bright.

She tossed the left-hand blood blade at the woman.

Stripped of Edlyn’s power, it collapsed midair into a sheet of blood and splashed across the woman’s face, a tide of rust.

Under Edlyn’s control, it threaded a path through the flailing tentacles and landed true, needle to vein.

“Ah!” The woman’s face corroded with blooming black, beauty wrinkling into char and ruin, a rose burned.

“No! No—don’t—ahhh!” She clutched her face and howled, wind tearing through ruins.

Edlyn’s pretty face paled. Around them, the tentacles raved harder, then slumped to the floor, dead as kelp on sand.

Edlyn held the remaining blood blade and walked up slowly. She leveled it at the woman’s brow, a poised thorn.

White light fell over Edlyn like moonwash. She looked at the woman, brow bent, and stepped in to embrace her. “If I get the chance, I’ll let you out.”

The woman startled, eyes lifting to Edlyn in shock, like a doe in dawn. Moments later, Edlyn vanished from that place, a candle winked out.

The ruined-faced woman kneeled, blank as a shell on shore.

“...Really?”

...

After a wash of dizziness, Edlyn saw her guide again. He held a crystal ball and smiled, glow trapped like starlight.

“What does ‘face myself’ mean?” Edlyn asked, head up, voice steady.

The man fell silent, breath a held reed.

Edlyn pressed him. “Say it. I’ll find out anyway. Your answer won’t stop me moving on.”

He thought, then sighed. “Fine. I’ll tell you. She was your prototype.”

“What?” Edlyn bristled, hackles up. “Say that again!”

“No—my meaning is, the Abyss used her body and soul as the template to craft Pandora.”

“Now you’re the fusion of Pandora and Edlyn.” He paused. “That place held only Pandora.”

“Does that count as facing me?” Edlyn frowned, storm behind eyes.

“No. Of course not.” He smiled, a thin crescent. “You cheesed that trial. Next one will teach you what ‘face yourself’ really is.”

“...Fine.” Edlyn’s mood dipped, a leaf falling.