No one knew precisely when they had crossed the threshold into this stratum. Days and nights possessed no jurisdiction here. There was only a perpetual, unvarying gray sky, a vast expanse shrouded in suffocating snow, and absolute silence.
Within this cold purgatory, Yui and Zalarosa lived for an entire month.
"This labyrinth is truly anomalous," Yui murmured, her breath pluming in the freezing air. "Every time we enter a new floor, time flows in a completely different manner compared to the last."
Zalarosa replied:
"Time is not the solitary element that fluctuates. The entire space alters—the sun, the sky, the environment in its entirety.... It is as if the labyrinth itself is a sentient entity, breathing, feeling, and constantly shifting."
Zalarosa's gaze hardened as she looked out over the bleak horizon. "This is, without a doubt, the most terrifying and mysterious labyrinth I have ever dared to enter in my life. I do not know where to go precisely... and who am I anymore? With every passing floor, I feel as if a piece of my core is being systematically stripped away. It feels as though every single atom in existence is staring into my depths, meticulously tracking my every movement."
They sought refuge during the dark hours inside an ancient, abandoned house, but Yui could rarely find the solace of peaceful sleep.
This specific floor they inhabited was the pinnacle of psychological horror.
It did not wage war upon their physical flesh; instead, it systematically assaulted their minds.
It was cold.
An unrelenting, piercing cold, draped in everlasting darkness, where the only sound was the haunting, rhythmic drone of insects. The isolation was profoundly terrifying; even if a million souls stood beside you, a bizarre, overwhelming sensation convinced you that you were utterly alone, suspended in a dark, infinite void.
One day, while Zalarosa was traversing the frozen wastes in search of sustenance, Yui's voice echoed from a distance:
"Zalarosa! Wait for me, I shall accompany you!"
Zalarosa turned her head toward her, offering a gentle, practiced smile, yet an unexplainable dread began to fester within her heart regarding Yui—an ambiguous, unsettling sensation she could not logically decipher.
Suppressing the instinct, she ignored the feeling, and they continued their march through the snow together, hunting for anything edible.
After some time, Yui spotted a small pond with heavily frozen edges. She came to a halt, announcing:
"I shall bathe for a short while." Then, with a serene, wide smile, she added in a calm voice: "My friend... do not breathe a word to anyone that I am here."
Zalarosa replied, her brow furrowing in confusion:
"Very well... but since when do you address me so formally as 'my friend'?"
She received no answer; Yui merely maintained that wide, unsettling, and silent grin.
Perplexed, Zalarosa shook off the unease, convincing herself that she was merely overthinking under the strain of the cold. Leaving Yui behind at the pond, she pressed forward alone to continue her search.
Suddenly...
A figure came sprinting from the heavy mist ahead, frantically waving her hand:
"Wait for me! I am coming with you!"
Zalarosa narrowed her eyes, straining to perceive the facial features through the dense, snowy fog... and then, she completely froze in her tracks.
It was Yui.
Slowly, Zalarosa took a calculated step backward. She stiffly turned her neck to glance back toward the direction of the pond...
The other Yui was still vividly present there, bathing, continuously repeating the exact same phrase in that identical, tranquil cadence:
"My friend... do not breathe a word to anyone that I am here."
The words echoed violently inside Zalarosa's skull, multiplying until she felt as if her head would literally fracture under the pressure. She snapped her gaze back to the front—
The Yui who had just run out of the fog was standing directly before her.
Hesitating for a torturous moment, Zalarosa finally made a desperate choice. She seized the hand of the Yui standing in front of her, dragging her silently behind a massive, snow-laden tree that overlooked the frozen pond. She whispered in a trembling, unstable voice:
"Yui... look over there."
She extended her finger, pointing toward the figure in the water.
The Yui beside her advanced slowly, her footsteps impossibly light, making no sound upon the snow. But suddenly...
The girl inside the pond ceased her endless repetition.
At that exact microsecond, the Yui standing beside Zalarosa halted all movement, becoming perfectly rigid.
Then...
Both entities turned their heads simultaneously.
Their eyes dilated to a horrific degree, glowing with an unnatural intensity within the dark, before speaking in perfect, terrifying unison:
"Did I not instruct you... not to breathe a word to anyone that I am here?"
Zalarosa collapsed heavily onto the snow, scrambling backward on her hands and knees in sheer, unadulterated panic. She opened her mouth to scream, to speak, but her tongue felt immensely heavy, completely paralyzed. Her legs refused to respond, utterly incapable of supporting her weight.
...
Suddenly, Zalarosa felt a light, delicate touch upon her shoulder, followed by a voice that perfectly mirrored Yui's cadence:
"Are you alright?"
Slowly, with agonizing dread, Zalarosa turned her head, terrified of what monstrosity might be lurking behind her. Her mind shattered at the sight.
Yui stood over her, a grotesque, impossibly wide grin splitting her face all the way to her ears, the flesh tearing and dripping with fresh blood. Her head was tilted to the right at an unnatural, broken angle, and her eyes burned with an artificial, blood-red luminescence.
"Did I not instruct you... not to breathe a word to anyone that I am here?"
Zalarosa violently slapped the entity's hand away, pushing herself up, and ran with every ounce of adrenaline left in her system, desiring nothing but absolute escape.
Yet...
After moments of breathless sprinting, she crossed the mist only to arrive at the exact same point where the nightmare began.
The cycle reset.
Zalarosa ventures out to find food.
Yui follows her.
The frozen pond.
The exact same dialogue.
The manifestation of the duplicate.
The horrific sequence repeated itself relentlessly, more than ten times, until Zalarosa was on the absolute brink of losing her sanity entirely. The psychological toll was so immense that she began frantically biting her nails, tearing them to the quick. The sound of her teeth grinding together vibrated through the absolute silence of the floor like a faint, sinister whisper.
But after what felt like an eternity...
A distant, muffled voice called out her name from afar.
She sprinted toward the sound with a frantic mixture of despair and desperate hope.
Finally... she broke free from the temporal loop.
However, something fundamental had been completely obliterated during that harrowing experience...
The absolute trust between her and Yui.
They now found themselves within the ruins of a sprawling city, half-buried beneath colossal glaciers of ice, rising every day with a solitary objective burning in their minds: to reach the final stratum of this labyrinth.
Every evening, cryptic entities covered in a strange, pitch-black snow would materialize in the distance. They stood motionless, observing them with deep, penetrating gazes, emitting raw, grating sounds that stretched their nerves to the absolute limit. Yet, with every agonizing confrontation, Yui and Zalarosa learned something profound about themselves... and the true nature of this floor.
They understood clearly now: this stratum did not seek to destroy the flesh; its primary design was the systematic annihilation of the mind.
But one day, the floor shifted from psychological warfare to direct aggression.
Zalarosa advanced through the dense snow, clad in a coat of heavily frozen leather, her brilliant blue eyes gleaming with focused serenity. She raised her right hand, and from the tips of her fingers, small fragments of ice materialized. They were not jagged shards, but perfectly smooth, spherical spheres, rotating around her at immense speed.
Then...
Zalarosa commanded: "Angle Fracture."
She gestured, and one of the rotating ice spheres extended rapidly, molding itself into the form of a rigid, crystallized whip. It launched forward with the sharp, lethal velocity of a sword's edge, striking a creeping shadow beast directly in its back... piercing completely through its core.
Yui called out from a distance: "You are still utilizing that bizarre nomenclature for your techniques."
Zalarosa smiled faintly, wiping the frost from her brow. "It is vastly superior to the original name I conceived for that strike... 'Spiraling Random Snow Torrent Strike.'"
They exchanged a brief smile, but an undercurrent of deep suspicion immediately clouded their eyes, a lingering scar from Zalarosa's encounter with the loop. They chose to ignore the tension, burying it beneath a facade of focus.
Yui sat near a campfire she had conjured directly from her palm, requiring no wood to sustain it. She bore no physical sword. Her right hand glowed with a slow, hypnotic warmth, the flames dancing across her palm as if playing an intricate game with her thoughts.
Yui thought to herself:
"Mother... I miss you deeply. How are you faring right now? I will return soon..... I truly wish I had never embarked on this wretched adventure with that foolish guild."
She stared up at the unyielding gray sky with profound sorrow, feeling a massive vacuum inside her chest, as if the oxygen had been entirely drained from her lungs.
Slowly, Zalarosa approached her side, gently reaching out to stroke her head with absolute tenderness. Yui's eyes widened in surprise as she looked up.
No words were spoken; they simply exchanged a long, meaningful gaze.
A gentle smile touched Yui's lips as tears began to well in her eyes. "Thank you..."
She could no longer suppress the emotional dam; the tears flowed down her pale cheeks with immense force. "Truly, thank you for remaining by my side through all of this. I honestly do not know what I would have done if you weren't here with me."
Zalarosa leaned in closer, gently wiping away the cascading tears with her thumb. "It is true that our trust may not be identical to what it once was... but the affection remains unchanged, Yui. I will stand by you until I see that genuine joy return to your face."
"I promise you... I will return you to your mother."
An intense urge to scream, to release all the compressed trauma inside her soul, washed over Yui, but she desperately choked it down.
Zalarosa let out a soft laugh, looking directly into her eyes. "Do not feel ashamed in front of me. Release everything locked inside your heart. I am here to listen."
Without a moment's further hesitation, Yui burst into heavy, racking sobs. She threw herself violently into Zalarosa's embrace, buried her face against her chest, and wept like a lost child who had finally found her mother after an agonizingly long separation.
As the days blended into one another, Yui began to unlock unique, intrinsic capabilities within her magical affinity:
[The First Breath of Flame]: A precise combat style that allows her to convert her exhaled breath into microscopic, volatile sparks that detonate violently the moment she claps her hands together.
[The Flame Core]: A specialized defensive technique that envelops her physical form in a slow-moving, concentrated layer of fire, instantly incinerating anything that dares to make physical contact.
[The Ignited Eye]: A single eye that activates to vividly reveal the raw energy source of any adversary, granting her the immediate knowledge of their absolute structural weakness.
Yui was not an omnipotent entity, but her sharp, calculating intellect transformed her destructive flames into highly sophisticated, precise instruments of war rather than mere tools of unguided devastation.
One evening, they were ambushed by creatures that did not walk upon the surface—instead, they slithered rapidly beneath the frozen earth.
Sensing the subtle, violent vibrations beneath the frost, Zalarosa leaped backward with blinding speed, screaming out:
"Watch out! The ground is compromised!"
The earth fractured violently, and a titanic beast resembling an armored, colossal centipede erupted from the snow, opening its massive jaws to swallow Zalarosa whole.
Mid-air, Zalarosa unsheathed her blade. She propelled herself toward the monster at blistering speed, driving her sword deep into its skull and pinning its massive frame securely to the earth.
Rushing over to Yui immediately, she yelled:
"Yui! Are you alright?!"
Yui communed with her inner thoughts:
"The beast wasn't even targeting me to begin with... why is she experiencing such immense panic?"
Aloud, Yui replied: "Yes, I am unharmed."
Zalarosa exhaled sharply. "You gave me a massive fright. Please, stay alert."
Zalarosa then thought to herself:
"Is she truly alright? I am absolutely certain the beast was tracking her essence, not mine."
Day 30
Yui began to sense a profound anomaly within the core of her flame.
Yui whispered under her breath: "...This fire... it is abnormally potent. Flame originates from wrath, and the greater the rage, the more devastating its output becomes... But why is it pulsing with such immense power right now? I am not experiencing any anger."
After a moment of cold realization, she deduced the underlying cause, and a look of absolute despair washed over her eyes. She desperately tried to push the revelation out of her mind.
Simultaneously, Zalarosa was carefully excavating a small trench nearby, revealing a startling discovery: a massive, highly sophisticated metropolis lay completely petrified and preserved deep beneath the glaciers.
Zalarosa muttered in awe: "...Perhaps this entire floor was once a thriving city... and it perished completely."
Yui added, staring into the dark trench:
"Or perhaps an entire ancient, advanced civilization was buried here by the labyrinth."
On their final night within this chilling stratum, the duo sat quietly before the conjured fire.
Yui spoke softly: "Zalarosa... let me recount a tale to you."
Zalarosa looked up at the unyielding gray canvas of the sky. "...Very well. Boredom has settled in entirely, and there is nothing else to occupy our minds.... It will be pleasant to listen to a story."
Yui began, her voice carrying a haunting, solemn weight:
"Once upon a time, in an ancient epoch whose name has been completely lost to time, humanity had reached the absolute zenith of its prosperity. The planet was entirely stable, organized, and perfectly governed. The Ten Sovereigns ruled over the globe, regulating its systems and advancing its civilizations.... It was widely proclaimed that these Sovereigns possessed such cataclysmic power that they were fully capable of obliterating entire stars at will."
"After centuries of unyielding peace, an entity from another world arrived. He was designated as The Intruder."
"When this entity descended, he bore a majestic crown upon his head, as if he were the predestined Monarch of this planet before he was even conceived. He immediately began to demand that the Ten Sovereigns surrender the absolute sovereignty of the heavens and the earth to serve as his rightful throne."
"Naturally, the Ten Sovereigns unanimously rejected his demands. In retaliation, The Intruder invoked a colossal, nightmare army composed of entities that history has failed to name to this very day—completely unknown anomalies, whose origin remains a total mystery. Leading this catastrophic vanguard were five specific individuals of immense, crushing power. Out of the five, history only managed to record the identity of one: Yor, the Commander of Time and Death."
"He was designated as the Commander of Death because he commanded the largest legion of executioners; he was the literal manifestation of the Reaper. And he was associated with Time because his execution style was so blindingly fast, passing through lives as swiftly as the relentless flow of time itself."
"The moment that vanguard arrived... a war of global annihilation commenced. Entire kingdoms and civilizations fell, erased cleanly from the annals of time, and history itself was utterly shattered."
"The planet plummeted into unmitigated chaos. The waters transmuted into thick blood, the atmosphere turned to toxic poison, the heavens morphed into a canopy of endless fire, and humans degenerated into feral beasts driven solely by hunger. Out of sheer starvation and absolute desperation, they began to consume their own flesh and drink the blood of one another. The war between The Intruder and the Ten Sovereigns raged on relentlessly for twenty agonizing years. In the end... the Ten Sovereigns fell. That dark period was permanently chronicled as The Black Epoch..... The End."
A heavy, suffocating silence descended upon the campfire.
Zalarosa spoke, her voice laced with deep intrigue: "That tale... I have heard variations of it before. But it is... profoundly bizarre. Who exactly is this Intruder? Where did he originate from? And most importantly... how could a singular entity possess the capability to overthrow all Ten Sovereigns? I find it impossible to believe they were truly defeated. It seems entirely implausible."
Yui nodded solemnly. "I share your sentiment. It is the most enigmatic tale I have ever heard in my existence. How could anyone possibly orchestrate their downfall?"
While they were completely lost in their thoughts and separate worlds...
A massive, spiral staircase forged of solid, pristine ice began to ascend from beneath the buried ruins of the frozen city, extending upward toward a brand-new floor.
They turned their heads simultaneously, staring at the path forward.
Yet, neither Yui nor Zalarosa made a single move to stand.
Because this floor, despite all the psychological torment and horrific trials they had endured... had become a temporary home. It was terrifying and agonizing, but they could not deny that they had grown accustomed to its rules. Navigating its familiar terrors would now be far easier than facing the unknown horrors of the next layer.
To be continued...