Time stretched into thick amber before the blade of death.
Erika could feel, with unbearable clarity, the sharp currents of air carved by the spinning razor-disc of the mutilated Golem behind him, licking at his back. The screeching shriek of grinding, broken metal seemed to drill directly into his ear canals, scraping against his very brain. Each rotation carried a mechanical, dogged intent to kill, growing closer, closer… He could almost imagine the horrific sensation of those jagged blades biting into his flesh, tearing through bone.
Yet, at the very limit—when the shriek threatened to synchronize with his heartbeat and shred his last shred of reason—
The sound began to weaken.
Not fading into the distance, but slowing, like an ancient clockwork running down. The shriek decayed from a piercing high frequency to a dull moan, then to sporadic, feeble creaks.
This change in sound brought no relief. Instead, it sapped the last vestige of courage that sheer terror had wound tight inside him. Because it meant his life and death no longer depended on that heap of scrap, but rested entirely in the cold, steady hand pressed against his face—and the unfathomable will of its owner.
Skree… creak… clunk.
After a few last, labored turns, the blade-wheel ground to a complete halt.
The cold metal edge likely hovered a hair's breadth from the fabric over his lower back. Every muscle in Erika's body spasmed painfully. Sweat-soaked cloth clung to his skin with bone-chilling cold. He knew with absolute certainty that a margin thinner than a strand of hair was all that separated him from being bisected, his entrails spilling out.
He was alive.
His heart hammered wildly in the dead silence, pounding against his ribs so loudly he could hear it. His lungs greedily sucked in air thick with dust and tension, yet could not fill the hollow exhaustion of survival.
But alive, here in the Black Tower, beneath Quinn's palm, did not necessarily mean hope. It might only mean a prolonged interrogation, a delayed sentence—or the beginning of some longer torment. Quinn's act—seemingly a rescue, yet infused with absolute control and icy accusation—was a tangle Erika could not unravel. Why keep them? Why allow their exploration? Why intervene now? To deal with them personally—or for some other purpose?
Then, the pressure of the hand on his face shifted minutely. It was no longer pure restraint, but more like positioning him for a conversation. Quinn's voice came again through the fissure at point-blank range, its tone peculiarly calm—no roar, no threat, no discernible emotion. It sounded like the statement of a simple fact. Or a neutral reminder.
"Do not regret it."
The words fell like a stone into still water.
They did not say don't be afraid, or don't run again, nor did they directly judge his actions. They pointed inward—toward choice, and consequence.
Was it a warning that regretting his attempt to flee was futile? A reminder that future choices would have to be borne without remorse? Or was Quinn, through those words, reflecting some heavy, personal experience with regret himself?
Erika remained frozen—his face held in that cold hand, death's stilled blade behind him, the enigmatic wizard and the unfathomable Tower before him. Alive, yet with no path in sight. Saved, yet dropped into a deeper cage.
Quinn's calm chilled him more deeply than rage ever could, leaving him adrift in a profound, icy disorientation.
The words felt like a brand—not seared into flesh, but struck into the fragile core of his mind, which had only just begun to grasp at the idea of active choice, before being instantly crushed by absolute power.
Had there ever truly been a choice at all?Then how could one even begin to not regret?
Witnessing Erika pinned by Quinn's single hand, the blade-wheel frozen inches from his back, Loren's guilt overwhelmed his fear. He scrambled up from the ground, his voice broken and halting from exhaustion and panic, yet he spoke out first.
"Th-this… it wasn't his fault!" Loren pointed at Erika, then frantically at himself. "It was me! I insisted on opening the fissure! Erika only followed because he was worried about me! If you must punish someone—punish me!"
His words dissolved into a pleading tremor. His face was ghost-pale.
Quinn did not even look at him.
As Loren spoke—ragged, desperate, trying to shoulder the blame—Quinn's hand on Erika's face did not move. His other hand merely flicked through the air, casual and precise.
No incantation.No light.
Loren was seized by an invisible force. Every word died in his throat. He was lifted off the ground, flung in a short arc, and hurled directly into the still-pulsing pale fissure behind him. He had no time even to cry out before the writhing light swallowed him whole.
The fissure snapped shut at once—vanishing as though it had never existed—leaving behind only a faint ripple of disturbed energy.
Now, in the lower vault of discarded things, only Erika remained.
The stilled blade-wheel behind him.The hand on his face.And Quinn—close enough to touch, yet separated by an entire world.
"At first, you hate it."
Quinn's voice came again, still calm, yet each word pierced Erika's mind like an ice-tempered needle. The hand on his face did not relax; its cold, unwavering steadiness became even more pronounced.
Hate?Hate what?
This Tower?The Mark?The inescapable pursuit?
Or… the broken Golem behind him?
Cold sweat poured from Erika's skin, mixing with grime, leaving him clammy and shaking. His heart, after its frantic pounding, sank into a painful, oxygen-starved flutter. And yet—within this crushing pressure, this razor-thin margin between life and death, he found himself unable not to listen.
As if the words themselves carried undeniable authority.
"Then, you get used to it."
Used to fear?To running?To placing his fate in stronger hands?
To being so suppressed that even anger and questioning dissolved into silent tremors—like now?
With bitter clarity, Erika realized he understood.
From the destruction of his border village, to the suffocating discipline of the Sanctum, to this moment—had he not been forced, again and again, to get used to it? To grow numb? To maintain a warped calm even with a blade at his throat?
Quinn's gray eyes seemed to pierce straight through his thoughts. Beneath that placid gaze lay bottomless comprehension.
"After long enough, you can't live without it."
The words fell like a judge's gavel.
Can't live without what?
The Mark—power entwined with chains?The Black Tower—a refuge that was also a prison?Or… the wizard before him, who controlled his life and death, who offered riddles instead of mercy?
When what you hate becomes the only thing keeping you alive—when the cage of habit defines the limits of perception—dependency becomes a disease more tenacious than death.
"Of this," Quinn said softly, his lips barely moving, "you and I are already well aware."
He knew. He had always known.
From Erika's instinctive hunger for fragment-energy.From the fear-twisted posture in the bedroom.From his contradictory urge to flee, yet his reliance on Loren's authority.
Quinn had seen through it all.
Then he spoke the words that sounded like both a curse and a key:
"Overcome it—and you may leave."
It.
What was it?
The Golem?The Tower's rules?The Mark's shackles?Or the growing certainty that he couldn't live without any of it?
A surge of absurdity, rage, and raw survival instinct finally burst past Erika's throat. The trembling stopped. In its place came a hoarse, cornered challenge.
"Why don't you just do it yourself?" he rasped."Why… toy with me like this?"
With Quinn's power, killing him, freeing him, or simply telling him what to do would be effortless. Why engineer this knife-edge trial of life and death? Why cloak cruelty in riddles?
Was this not the most vicious amusement of the powerful over the powerless?
For the first time, something flickered across Quinn's face—not anger, but a fleeting trace of distant, weary mockery.
It vanished at once.
He did not answer.
The hand on Erika's face released without warning.
Erika staggered as his legs buckled, barely keeping his footing. Cold numbness lingered where the hand had been.
Quinn was already turning away.
As if Erika's anger, his questions, his very existence, had lost relevance. He walked toward the space where Loren had vanished, posture straight, pace unhurried.
As his figure began to dissolve into a newly forming pale ripple in the air, his final words drifted back like a sigh:
"You've come this far… persevere a little longer."
Flat.Unreadable.
Then Quinn was gone.The space settled.As if he had never been there at all.
You've come this far… persevere a little longer.
The words echoed through the emptiness of Erika's mind.
Mockery?Acknowledgment?Or a warning—that this road had always been long, and stopping now would mean nothing?
SCREEEEE—HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM—!!!
The sound exploded behind him.
Erika spun around.
The mutilated Golem's single eye flared dark red. Unstable energy gathered in its shattered mouth. Its twin razor-arms, once frozen, now screamed into motion—accelerating into a frenzy.
Two blurs of lethal silver light tore the air apart as they lunged forward in a savage, scissoring onslaught, aimed at Erika—shaken, exhausted, and stripped of Quinn's suppression.
Overcome it.
Or die.
What Quinn left behind was neither amusement nor answers.
It was a naked ultimatum—one that demanded proof in blood and breath.
Erika's legs still trembled. His face was numb.
But in his eyes, the last fragment of something truly his own—scraped raw by terror and despair—contracted into cold, needle-sharp focus amid the shrieking blades.
He had to think.He had to move.He had to—
survive this first.