Is this the cliff’s edge?

Little Baiyat trembled head to toe, like a leaf in a storm, part child’s fear, part horror at a world that had slipped its leash.

Devourers crowded the dark like wolves in a den, big and small, some newborn-slender, some hulking like boulders in flood.

Black eggs studded the walls and floor like sinister barnacles, a hive of night embedded in stone.

Not far off lay a lake, neither small nor vast, a sheet of ink the size of his hometown, breathing wisps of black vapor like fog at dawn.

Could this be their nest? He saw a Devourer push from a broken egg, a mouth like a pit yawning through the crack.

Glug-glug—bubbles rose on the black lake, and another egg bobbed up like a drowned moon.

Eggs drifted everywhere like dark buoys, and the lake looked like a cradle for the Devourers.

His knees knocked so hard he could barely step, like a drum that only beats for death.

Then he noticed it—silence like frost. The monsters didn’t move at all.

Packed tight as a bramble thicket, they hung in stillness, each a statue caught mid-bite, mid-scratch, as if time itself had braked.

Relief splashed through him like cold water, and only then did thought return like a lantern relit.

He didn’t first think of escape, or why they’d frozen. He thought, with a jolt, How did I get here?

The place felt deep underground, a cavern gut, with green-glowing gems set in the rock like cat eyes among the eggs.

He’d fled on the surface, wind in his ears like arrows, and yet he’d ended in a buried world he didn’t recall entering.

He could sketch his route in smudges, but he had no memory of any green-lit passage, no bead of light on that thread.

It felt like he’d run until danger thinned like mist, stopped, and only then found the abyss beneath his feet.

Not normal. Not normal at all. The thought crawled like a cold centipede up his spine.

Still, with no jaws snapping at his throat, his strung-tight heart loosened like a bow unstrung.

A whisper brushed his ear, faint as a gnat’s buzz, drifting and circling like a lost moth.

He looked around, tense as a bowstring, but saw no living thing, only stone and stillness like winter fields.

Before the Demon King Academy, he’d have fainted like a chick in thunder. A year there had taught him ghosts were spirits with rules.

To see them, you needed the right tools, like a key for a locked door. He had no such key.

The whisper thinned with each heartbeat, a wick burning down, and he sensed it would gutter out soon.

Whoever spoke was fading, like a tide pulling back from a starved shore.

He forced himself calm, like pressing snow to a burn. He didn’t want strange entanglements.

He wanted out, to find those three no-good seniors, finish the job, and stride back to the Academy like sunshine after rain.

But the place was a maze, paths branching like roots, and he had no idea where the exit hid.

He chose to follow the whisper, a thread in the dark, hoping it led to a living mouth that knew the way.

Alone in a labyrinth was a blind swim in black water. A voice meant a chance, slim as a hair, but still a rope.

He wasn’t top-tier before those seniors, but among his year he stood firm like a young pine.

He wasn’t gambling blind; he weighed the risk like stones in a hand. A weak voice meant a weak threat, and he could run.

He followed the failing murmur, steps steady as a metronome, while the monsters he passed grew burly as war drums.

Some wore strange totems like scars carved in hide, and some leaked black miasma like smoke from a smothered fire.

Just looking at them pressed on his chest like a mountain, strength rolling off them like heat off desert rock.

They weren’t the juggling props Jast had swatted aside. If those were ants, these were rabid dogs, all teeth and fever.

Thank the heavens these dogs were frozen mid-snap, or even ten thousand lives would have been tinder in their jaws.

Curiosity tugged him forward like a hook. What force froze such horrors, and what waited at the end of this frozen river?

Could it be like Senior Xiazuo said—a thing that eats space, a beast that gnaws the sky like bread?

He hesitated, doubt spreading like ink. If they could eat space, could one eat time, biting the clock to pieces?

He swallowed, throat dry as sand, and clenched his fists like stones. A true warrior faces a bleak life head-on.

He strode on, face set with a tragic calm, like a traveler stepping onto a wind-swept bridge.

Closer. Closer. A thin sheen of crystal veiled the monsters, and crystal crusted the ground and walls like winter rime.

He edged near one encased beast and flinched—the tongue twitched, slow as a worm, under the crystal skin.

So they weren’t truly time-stopped. The deeper he went, the thicker the crystal shell, layered like ice on an ancient river.

From early grunts to monsters that stole his breath by presence alone, even thick crystal couldn’t still a tongue’s shiver.

They were too strong, he guessed, like storms that buckled roofs. Time’s halt couldn’t hold them, so someone used crystal to lock them in.

Crystal spread ahead like a white desert, but he knew it wasn’t ice, not the kind that melts under a palm.

The cavern opened up, wide as a cathedral, shadows hanging like banners from a black ceiling.

A giant skull floated ahead, a moon of bone, wrapped in crystal like glassed lightning.

Through the crystal, he glimpsed a ritual ground, black stone inscribed with red sigils that crawled like blood-vines.

The patterns pulsed with wicked power, and every glance sent dizziness through him like a whirlpool’s pull.

Thankfully, the crystal’s veil dimmed that pull, like gauze softening a flame, and kept his mind from slipping.

He tapped his forehead to clear it, a knuckle knock like a bell, and looked away from the ground before it dragged him under.

Among this sea of monsters, one being stood apart like a lantern in fog.

Inside the skull’s gaping maw, a girl in black-and-white robes hung bound by black vines, like a wren tangled in thorns.

Her eyes were closed, and the vines around her were crystal-sheathed, hard as frost on iron.

Light pulsed from her in waves, quiet as breath, and each pulse steadied the crystal like a hand smoothing wet clay.

Could she be the source that keeps the seals from cracking? The thought lit him like a struck match.

He knew the trapped monsters still lived; a tongue’s twitch had told him they strained like wolves in snares.

Breaking out was only a matter of time, a slow winch pulling a gate. And she was tightening the bolts, again and again.

He fixed his gaze on the girl, heart beating like a drum at dawn. Those are priestess robes.

Black and white. The Mystic Priestess—of the Void.