“…..!”
Anne stared in Sylas’s direction with wide eyes. Holding onto Lazarus with one hand as he struggled under his grasp, his hands flying as he tried to reach for him but to no avail, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
He was supposed to be dead.
She saw it with her own eyes. The gaping hole in his chest, and his breath leaving his body.
Anne had heard, long ago, of rare items and forbidden substances said to grant revival from death itself. One of the most famous was Mortum’s blood. The direct blood of the God of Immortality.
Is it possible…?
‘No, there’s no way. If he did have something like that, he’d already be gone by now.’
The collectors weren’t things that they could afford to provoke.
It had to be something else.
Something—
“…..Ah!?”
Anne’s expression changed drastically as Sylas’s eyes started to change. Gradually, they started to turn a familiar white color, and her heart sank as Lazarus appeared to struggle even further under his grip.
She wanted to move, but couldn’t.
Her eyes were fixed on Sylas.
Finally, she started to understand the situation, and her heart sank deep into her stomach.
‘A hollowed…’
Sylas.
He was a hollowed.
“Ah.”
“Ah.”
A weird sound came out of Sylas’s mouth as his head started to contort and twist. It twitched a couple of times before settling back to normal, his gaze slowly lowering to meet hers.
“Anne.”
“Anne.”
His voice was like a quiet whisper. One that appeared to be mixed with twenty other voices. Male and female, young and old, soft and guttural… dozens of voices layered into one. The unnatural harmony sent a shiver down Anne’s spine, raising every hair on her body.
Lazarus continued to struggle beneath Sylas’s grip, which only tightened with each passing second.
His face was pale, and his struggles only grew with time.
He was starting to get desperate.
Anne wanted to help, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t afford to help, as her entire body tensed as she looked at Sylas.
She was trying to make sense of the situation.
When…?
Since when was he one? From the start…? Or did he get taken over by them at one point?
Hollowed weren’t rare to see. They did tend to appear from time to time. People who had their minds taken over by the voices of the past.
There were times when she had seen several hollowed in the past.
But never… never in her life did she meet one this strong. This was an extremely big crisis. Especially since hollowed fed on people in order to become stronger.
They fed on people and turned them into voices.
This was why most hollowed were hunted down when found. They were like parasites. Extremely dangerous.
…And the fact that Sylas was one and yet no one had noticed the entire time made things even creepier.
This situation was a lot more complicated than anticipated.
“What are you thinking so much about? There’s no need for you to think much. Just quietly accept the situation and come to me.”
“What are you thinking so much about? There’s no need for you to think much. Just quietly accept the situation and come to me.”
Sylas’s voice whispered once again, pulling her attention towards him.
“…I have been waiting for so long for this moment. I had been planning for so long, and I expected to take longer, but then he showed up.”
“…I have been waiting for so long for this moment. I had been planning for so long, and I expected to take longer, but then he showed up.”
Sylas lowered his head to stare at Lazarus, his lips slowly pulling as his white eyes flickered.
“He was the last ingredient I had been missing for so long, and the moment we found him, we knew that I couldn’t wait any longer. We pushed everything forward and lured the two of you here. Only with the two of you present can we finally ascend.”
“He was the last ingredient I had been missing for so long…”
Anne’s face paled upon hearing Sylas’s words.
This was planned all along? To advance…?
‘Wait, advance!?’
Her entire body froze upon hearing those words. If he were to advance, just how strong would he become?
This…
‘I can’t let this happen! This might be extremely bad!’
If he were to be allowed to advance, he would become an extremely terrifying existence within the Mirror Dimension. Only a few would be able to stop him, but as a continuously growing creature, it wouldn’t be long before it rose to a point where only the primordial ones or the gods could do something about it.
Anne’s eyes sharpened as she looked around.
She needed to find a way out of this place.
‘He did say that I’m an ingredient. In that case, so long as he doesn’t get me, I’ll be able to delay his plan for a bit. I’ll relay everything to the Temple. They might get the Goddess to interfere directly…’
Though she thought this, she didn’t actually have much faith in her plan.
It looked like Sylas had planned this situation extremely well, and she also didn’t have much faith in the Goddess doing anything.
She, alongside the remaining Gods, was extremely indifferent to the world.
They had also not shown up in hundreds of years.
Anne clenched her teeth, her eyes darting around even more frantically.
‘How do I? How do I…? How do I—’
That was when it happened.
In the midst of her thoughts, and just as Sylas was about to open his mouth, a change occurred in Lazarus’s direction.
He suddenly stopped struggling. Almost as though he had never struggled to begin with.
Then…
His body began to change slowly. His hair faded to a lifeless gray, and his cheeks hollowed, sinking into his skull. The change came abruptly, startling both Anne and Sylas as they looked in Lazarus’s direction.
But the most striking change wasn’t even his appearance change.
No, it was his eyes…
They slowly started to turn white.
White?
Anne paused, and that was when she noticed it.
The figure standing right behind Sylas, his hand outstretched and placed onto the back of his neck.
Lazarus floated calmly in the water as he squeezed Sylas’s head.
‘…Fear.’
He mumbled in his mind as he channeled his emotive magic.
He poured everything into his hands.
He wanted to completely incapacitate Sylas. He was confident his emotive magic was strong enough to do that.
But…
“Kekek.”
“Kekek.”
The expected reaction never occurred. Instead, he was greeted by a mocking laugh as Sylas slowly turned his head, and his white eyes stared directly at him.
“As expected. I didn’t choose wrong. You were the right person all along.”
“As expected. I didn’t choose wrong. You were the right person all along.”
Lazarus’s expression remained stoic as he met Sylas’s gaze. He was calm in spite of the situation as he slowly pulled his hand away and nodded.
‘Right, he must be after my emotive magic.’
He had more or less guessed this during their first meeting, especially when he touched his hand.
Lazarus recalled feeling something strange as he placed an emotive tag on him. Or at least tried to. Very clearly, the tag didn’t set into his body.
At first, Lazarus was confused, but now it all made sense.
Sylas…
Or more like, the hollowed.
They had no emotions. They were just an empty canvas of lingering memories.
The situation became clearer to him the moment he met the first hollowed, and he started to put the pieces together.
‘My previous guess about this being a trap wasn’t wrong. Sylas purposely lured me into this place in order to use me as an ‘ingredient’ to advance further. The timing of which everything started also coincides with everything I’ve found out.’
Lazarus’s eyes remained calm as he scanned Sylas.
There was not an ounce of fear in his face despite his emotive magic not working.
Why was that?
Anne thought as she looked at him. Was this some sort of facade of his?
But looking at him, it felt deeper than that.
She didn’t have to wait long for an answer. The moment Lazarus lifted his hand from Sylas’s head, Sylas struck, his arm slicing through the water, aiming straight for Lazarus, who stood perfectly still.
“…..!”
Anne’s face changed when she saw Sylas’s hand grasping Lazarus’s neck.
He didn’t even attempt to run away as Sylas’s lips pulled into a sinister smile.
“We got you…”
“We got you…”
But his smile didn’t last for long as Lazarus’s body faded, replaced by one of the hollowed from before.
Appearing right below, Lazarus calmly looked at Sylas.
“…You won’t be able to catch me.”
One of the skills granted to him by the Hive-mind was the ability to swap places with anything that had a coral attached to them.
The ability consumed a lot of mana and mental power.
Therefore, he could only use it a couple of times.
But that was more than enough for him to simply run away.
Lazarus locked eyes with Sylas, their gazes holding for a long, heavy moment. But then, a slow, sinister smile crept across Sylas’s lips as he shifted his focus toward the altar below.
Lazarus’s brows furrowed tightly at the sight.
He started to have a bad feeling about the situation.
But contrary to his expectations, Sylas raised both hands, seemingly in a gesture of surrender.
“Very well done.”
“Very well done.”
His voice whispered in the water.
“…You managed to trick us. Very good job.”
“…You managed to trick us. Very good job.”
Sylas nodded his head slowly before turning his attention towards Anne. His eyes locked with hers for a brief moment until he smiled.
And then—
Swoosh!
He disappeared from the spot.
“Uh?”
“….?”
The sudden turn of events completely caught the two off guard as they stared blankly in the direction of where Sylas had previously been standing.
Did he…
Did he just run away?
This was the first thought that ran through their mind.
A subtle tremor pulsed beneath them, barely perceptible, like a breath from something old and ancient.
But they felt it.
Both heads snapped toward the altar in the distance, where a sickly green light had begun to seep through the cracks.
Then, the surface split.
Cra Crack!
Slowly, unnaturally, the smooth stone of the altar peeled open, not like machinery, but like flesh parting unwillingly. A wet, glistening eye emerged from the darkness within… It was massive and horrifying.
The moment its pupil surfaced, the world stopped.
Time itself fractured.
The water froze in place, bubbles caught mid-rise, hair suspended like threads of glass. Sound died. Motion died. Even thoughts grew sluggish.
Only the eye moved.
And it was staring directly at them.
Both stared back, their bodies frozen in place as they recognized the eye.
That eye…
It belonged to none other than Xa’ruhl.
The great primordial one.
