She stepped forward. One step,
A misshapen behemoth roared. She flicked her short blade like a moonlit dart; it punched through steel plate and horned scales. A dim, sallow glow bled from the wound, spreading like mold. In seconds the beast sagged into a black, viscous slurry that stank like spoiled night.
One step,
With a single stride she crossed near fifty meters, reclaimed her blade, and sheared through another grotesque form. Malice hissed from a rotting gash; its lungs corroded in tandem. Even despair couldn’t find a voice.
One step,
“I’d say this place is—”
The pitch-black underworld seemed to catch a shaft of light from above, washing her ink-dark bob and the blood-dripping edge in a cold sheen.
“An Opera Hall!”
As if a hundred choirs lifted the same hymn; as if a hundred cellists poured out their hearts; as if a hundred trumpeters blew until stars rang; as if a hundred pianos cascaded through movements—actors upon actors playing lives that weren’t theirs.
One step,
Sound fractured; color unraveled. People still played and sang, but each in a different opera—Hamlet’s revenge, Lancelot’s betrayal, Faust’s fall, Dracula’s hate, Helen’s sorrow. Layer on layer, negative tides surged in—now a brook whispering low, now a furious sea howling loud.
A thousand throats struck the most primal sound a soul can fear.
One step,
At once, all was still.
Like a theater after the last bow—midnight’s hall drenched in Shadow, rows of seats lonely and facing a stage with no chorus.
The underground lay hushed. Every sound was veiled by Shadow, then snatched by something in the dark, carried off screaming.
No life remained but hers.
After a long beat, another girl stepped from a shadowed corner.
“Vega, why didn’t you save me two? My saws are thirsty.”
“Work more. Talk less.”
“Our master isn’t here. No need to put on the proper act.”
A short blade hung at Berenz’s nose—no throw, no flight; as if that spot had always been its home.
“Your ‘Opera Hall’ snaps open too fast, too strong. Nothing living walks out. Such a waste. At least do it like my ‘Amusement Park’—slow, bit by bit. Peel the skin. Carve the meat piece by piece. Oh, and don’t touch their hearts or lungs; leave the organs intact. You can flip through them. Listen, listen to the screams thinning out—ahh, gorgeous. I’m drooling just thinking about it.”
Berenz brushed the blade aside with a poisonous grin. The upturned corners of her mouth showed sharp teeth. Vega’s knife didn’t scare her.
“Berenz, we didn’t come to play.”
“I know, I know. Vega the loyal maid won’t delay for fun. But Berenz the blood-thirsty needs blood to drink. I want to kill. I want to be drenched. My body’s so empty—it needs filling. It must.”
“If you know we’re on a mission from our master, how about you rein in your mania, ‘Berenz the Mad’?”
“And turn weak like you? You’ve nearly thrown away your vicious bent, ‘Vega the Vicious’.”
“I do control it. I only release the bent when it’s needed.”
“Control? Hilarious. Children of the Ocean of Darkness, controlling themselves? The more orderly, the more ‘good’ we act, the further we drift from source, the weaker we become.”
Crimson light swelled in Berenz’s eyes; her expression spiraled wilder. Part of her true body sank into the Ocean of Darkness. In her pupils you could glimpse colors of chaos too black to name.
“No. I mean when power isn’t needed—forget it. You won’t get it. You’re already in ‘Madness’. Just remember our master’s task.”
Vega saw Berenz’s eyes blaze like flame and shook her head, helpless.
“Of course. I’ll go kill a few beasts. No objection?”
“Just remember—throw their souls into the Ocean of Darkness.”
“Roger. You focus on cracking the seal and heading down, almighty maid.”
Berenz drew two saw-blades from beneath her skirt—not the tidy morning size, but nauseating, twisted forms. To look was a stain on the mind. One glance and you understood the will to frenzy they stood for.
They were like magic arms—weak, yet closer to the Ocean of Darkness. “Ravenous.”
She hurled herself at the beasts just arriving. The saws hit like meteors; the ground bucked in a local quake.
A shockwave broke the sound barrier. It slammed the walls with a thunder-boom. The cracked earth didn’t even lift before the gale drove it back down. All you could see was a vast crater with Berenz at its heart.
“Huh? So weak? Not enough, not enough. Struggle. Wail, you bastards!”
Another strike reshaped the terrain. The already ruined bodies smeared into red-dark pulp.
“Berenz, easy. Our master and his friends are upstairs. If you overdo it, they’ll start suspecting.”
“Yeah, yeah. Nag, nag.”
Berenz flipped Vega the finger and continued her Slaughter. Vega turned toward a door guarded by a crowd of behemoths.
“Fine. I’ll teach her a lesson when the fit passes.”
She sighed, set both hands on the bronze giant of a gate, its face bound in chains, and felt the slow drift of inert magic inside, weighing ways to break it.
“Roughly here. It routes there. The seal from upper layer to here feels off—wait. Someone touched the seal! This magic reeks of killing intent…”
She spun, shouting to Berenz drowning in Slaughter:
“It’s magic from the domain of Slaughter! Berenz, watch it—Nan Lu or Liebich might already be here!”
“Huh? What?”
Berenz was sunk too deep in blood to pull free. Her blurred mind missed the danger landing.
In the shadowed maze, a vicious blade-light slashed from her right shoulder to left flank, nearly cleaving her in two.
The woman’s black hair was tied in a ponytail; her red qipao, trimmed with gold and split to the waist, blazed with heroic edge. She gripped a crescent glaive, raised just past her head. Her voice cut clean, samurai-steadfast:
“I am Nan Lu. As a warrior, your vigilance is lacking. Your self-respect is lacking.”
Berenz only smiled wider through the wound. Blood spilled from her mouth, staining her teeth, sharpening the feral.
“Nan Lu the battle-hungry—perfect. I’ve been starving for a worthy kill. I’ll make you my blood-offering today!”
Vega thought deeper. A thin unease crept through her.
“Nan Lu… Why are you here? Why ambush us?”
A hundred years of rivalry had taught her the other wasn’t a reckless brute.
“You know you can’t beat the two of us with just your ‘wraith of ancient battlefields’. Why come to die?”
Nan Lu gave a contemptuous smile, drew the glaive back, and ran at Vega and Berenz, dragging the crescent like a fallen moon.
