Interesting
The boy scrambled backward, boots slipping on stone.
The figure closed the distance in a blink.
"Okay, okay—" His breath came fast. "Bad idea. I get it. Terrible idea!"
The figure's boot caught him in the ribs.
He lifted. Flew. Kissed stone hard enough to crack teeth.
Air exploded from his lungs. He rolled, gasping, tried to rise—
The boot came down on his chest.
Once. Twice. Again.
Leather tore. His chest plate buckled, straps snapping as metal peeled away and clattered across the floor.
He couldn't breathe. Couldn't scream.
The figure's hand closed around his throat and lifted.
His boots left the ground. Blood flowed freely from his mouth, hot and copper-tasting, dripping down his chin.
"C'mon—" he choked, voice barely there, eyes watering. "Don't you have—any other—fighting style?"
The grip tightened.
"Always—by the throat?"
The figure said nothing.
A fist drove into his stomach. Bone cracked—a sound like green wood snapping. He convulsed, mouth opening, no sound coming out.
Another punch. His ribs gave.
Another. His vision whited.
The figure's fist rose toward his face—slow, deliberate, final.
Then stopped.
Seconds passed.
The fist remained raised. Motionless.
"What—" the word barely a whisper, no voice behind it. "—stopped?"
Then he felt it.
Pressure.
Not physical. Deeper. *Inside.*
Something pulling at the edges of his soul, peeling back layers he didn't know existed, searching, probing, *reading* the pattern etched beneath flesh and bone.
His eyes went wide.
*You've got to be kidding...*
His chest heaved—not from pain, from something far worse.
The figure tilted its head.
"Mmmm."
The sound emerged distorted, thoughtful.
"Interesting."
The boy's face twisted. Not pain. Not fear.
*Unease.*
Raw, primal, the kind that came from being seen in ways no one should be seen. Exposed. Dissected. Understood.
The hand opened.
He dropped.
His legs hit the ground but couldn't hold him. He crumpled like a puppet with strings cut, collapsing onto his side, chest heaving, blood pooling beneath his cheek.
The figure stepped past him.
Stopped.
Turned back.
When it spoke, the voice shattered reality itself—neither human nor monster, neither male nor female. A sound that *shouldn't* exist, filtered through something that refused categorization.
"Let's see what you became."
The words hung in the air, heavy, patient.
The figure walked to the pit's edge—the same darkness that had swallowed the Phantom Vine moments ago. Where Level 2 monsters spawned in the writhing chaos below.
No hesitation.
One step.
Gone.
The cloak snapped once in the void.
Then nothing.
---
Silence settled over the chamber like ash.
The boy lay on cold stone, each breath a knife in his ribs, blood threading from his mouth. His vision swam, darkness creeping at the edges.
Behind him, Raska groaned weakly. Elara's breathing came shallow, ragged.
Still alive.
All of them.
*Why?*
His fingers twitched against stone, trying to push himself up. His arms gave out.
The chamber tilted.
His vision tunneled—edges going black, sounds muffling to cotton.
"Interesting."
The word echoed somewhere far away.
His eyes slipped closed.
Darkness swallowed his vision.
---