The sterile white walls of the recovery center groaned as they were overwritten by the rotted, gray wood of the 'Paper Mansion.' The smell of expensive antiseptic was replaced by the sickly sweet scent of funerary incense.
"Damn it! Open fire!" Director Kim roared.
The Association guards, elite B-rankers, didn't hesitate. Their mana-rifles barked, sending streaks of golden light toward the Paper-Bound Thralls. But the bullets didn't pierce flesh. They hit the white paper masks and simply slid off, as if the targets were made of frictionless wax.
"They aren't physical!" Kang-woo shouted, grabbing the black key. "They're constructs of the 'Ink'!"
The Abyssal Knight-Commander, wreathed in solidified ink and flickering gray fire, stepped in front of Kang-woo. It didn't use a shield. It swung its spear in a wide, horizontal arc.
[Skill: 'Ink-Slay' activated.]
The spear trailed a blade of gray fire that sliced through the first wave of Thralls. Where the fire touched the paper, the masks turned black and dissolved into soot. The Thralls collapsed instantly, their empty uniforms falling to the floor like discarded laundry.
"Kim! Get your men to the reactor core!" Kang-woo commanded. "Yeon-hee isn't here to kill us. She's here to turn this facility into a beacon!"
"A beacon for what?" Kim spat, crushing a Thrall's neck with his bare, glowing hand.
"The King's second audit," Kang-woo replied, his silver eyes scanning the shifting reality of the room. "She's using the Association's own mana to call back the Citadel."
From the ceiling, a swarm of thousands of paper butterflies descended. They didn't attack the guards. They flew straight for the ventilation shafts, their wings vibrating with a high-pitched, metallic hum.
[Warning: Dimensional Synchronization in progress: 12%...]
"Seol-ah," Kang-woo muttered.
He didn't wait for Kim's response. He ran toward the separate wing where Seol-ah was being held. Every step he took away from her felt like a physical weight pulling on his heart—the 'Life-Debt Bond' was screaming at the distance.
Viper's Sense flared.
A paper butterfly, larger than the others and dripping with crimson ink, landed on the wall in front of him. It shifted and grew, the paper folding and expanding until it took the form of Yeon-hee. She leaned against the rotted doorframe of the hallway, her amber eyes mocking.
"Leaving so soon, little Butcher?" she sang. "The party hasn't even reached the main course."
"Move, Yeon-hee," Kang-woo hissed, the black fire around the Knight-Commander intensifying. "Or I'll harvest every scrap of paper in this building."
"You could try," she tilted her head, her finger-bone hairpin glowing. "But the Investigator is already 'sharing' her mana with the mansion. She's a very generous girl, isn't she?"
Kang-woo's blood turned to ice. He looked at his status screen.
[Warning: Creditor's Mana is being drained by an external source.][Life-Link Stability: 68% and falling.]
"You're using her as a battery?" Kang-woo lunged.
Yeon-hee didn't dodge. She burst into a cloud of razor-sharp paper shards. Kang-woo swung his dagger, but he only sliced through empty air. The shards swirled around him, cutting through his hospital gown and skin.
[Health: 38%]
"The King wants his Heart back, but I want the Paradox," Yeon-hee's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "If she dies, you die. And if you die, the 'Gray Mana' stays here... with me."
The Knight-Commander roared, its spear stabbing at the shadows, but the Paper Mansion was Yeon-hee's domain. Every wall was a trap, every shadow a mouth.
Kang-woo stopped moving. He closed his eyes.
If I fight the mansion, I lose. I have to fight the Ink.
He jammed the 'Key to the Sunken Throne' into his own palm, letting the black wood drink his blood.
"Sovereign's Ledger... Revoke!"
[Skill: 'The Sovereign's Ledger' (Overdrive) activated.][Condition: All 'Ink' within the domain is now under Audit.]
The gray wood of the mansion began to bleed black. The paper shards circling him slowed down, their crimson ink turning into the dull, heavy black of Kang-woo's mana.
"What—?" Yeon-hee's voice lost its playful tone.
"This ink doesn't belong to you," Kang-woo growled, his silver eyes flashing with a void-like intensity. "It belongs to the Throne. And I have the key."
He wrenched his hand upward. The black ink from the walls and the butterflies was forcibly sucked toward the key, forming a massive, swirling vortex in the center of the hallway.
The reality of the Association facility began to snap back into place. The marble walls returned, cracking under the strain of the transition.
"Argh!"
Yeon-hee materialized at the end of the hall, her black hanbok torn, her porcelain skin cracked like an old vase. She clutched her chest, her amber eyes filled with a mixture of fury and realization.
"You... you're burning your own soul to override my domain?"
"I don't have a soul to burn," Kang-woo said, his voice dropping into the hollow resonance of the Sovereign. "I only have debt."
He didn't finish her. He didn't have time. He ran past the stunned Yeon-hee, bursting into Seol-ah's room.
Seol-ah was suspended in the air, thousands of paper butterflies pinned to her skin like leeches, draining the silver-gold light from her body.
"Seol-ah!"
Kang-woo jumped, his Knight-Commander swinging its spear to incinerate the butterflies. He caught her as she fell, her body limp and cold.
[Life-Link Stability: 22%][Critical: The Creditor is entering 'Mana Exhaustion' coma.]
Seol-ah's eyes opened a crack. They weren't silver. They were dull, a fading gray. "Kang-woo... the... the floor..."
Kang-woo looked down.
The floor of the room hadn't returned to marble. It was a swirling pit of violet fire.
The Citadel wasn't coming from the sky this time. It was coming from below.
A massive, skeletal hand—the size of the entire room—erupted from the pit, gripping the edges of the floor.
[Final Warning: The King has arrived.]