He deactivated his perception and walked quickly over to the designated spot. The ground here consisted of dust-choked golden sand packed tightly against the bedrock. He gripped the wooden handle of his battered shovel and drove the steel blade directly into the earth.
The physical labor provided a welcome, grounding distraction from his spiraling thoughts regarding his past life and his potential murderers. He dug with methodical, heavy strikes. The steel scraped loudly against hidden rocks and compacted sediment.
He hauled large piles of the golden dirt out of the expanding hole and tossed them carelessly aside. Sweat beaded heavily on his forehead and soaked the tight collar of his shirt. His muscles burned with fresh exertion, but he focused entirely on the repetitive rhythm of the work.
After several minutes of intense digging, the texture of the soil changed drastically. Dark, cold water began filling the bottom of the pit, turning the golden sand into a thick, heavy muck that clung stubbornly to the shovel blade. He drove the tool down again, expecting to hit a solid layer of stone. The blade did not hit anything at all.
Suddenly, the entire structural foundation located directly beneath his feet crumbled away without any warning.
The ground simply ceased to exist. Lucid dropped the heavy shovel as gravity seized him violently. He plunged straight down into the pitch-black cylindrical shaft. The sudden rush of cold air roared past his ears, deafening him completely. The damp, rocky walls of the tunnel blurred into a singular dark streak as his body accelerated toward the unknown depths.
Alice yelled a sharp warning directly into his mind, but the internal sound was completely drowned out by the physical roar of his rapid descent and the pounding of his own heart.
He tumbled helplessly through the dark space, flailing his arms in a desperate attempt to slow his momentum. He forced his eyes open, trying to orient himself in the terrifying freefall. He looked straight up toward the receding opening of the tunnel.
The bright ambient light of the fake city framed the jagged edges of the hole he had just dug. A figure stood at the very edge of the crumbling golden sand, silhouetted perfectly against the bright light.
He recognized the small frame and the distinct shape of the headwear immediately. It was the girl with the cap. She was looking down at him with an utterly unreadable expression on her face.
She simply watched him fall into the abyss without making a single move to help or hinder him. It was that intensely irritating woman who constantly appeared during his worst moments, observing his misery like a casual spectator at a sporting event.
He felt a massive surge of adrenaline mix with raw, unfiltered irritation. He threw his arms out, trying to grab the sheer walls to arrest his fall, but his fingers found zero purchase on the slick stone. He looked back up at the rapidly shrinking silhouette of the mysterious girl.
"Stop following me, you absolute freak!" Lucid cursed at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing wildly up the narrow, damp shaft.
His angry shout faded quickly into the rushing wind. The light from the upper opening vanished completely as the tunnel curved sharply to the left. The ambient temperature plummeted instantly, chilling the sweat on his skin. A heavy, unnatural darkness consumed his vision entirely as he continued tumbling endlessly downward into the hidden depths of the domain.
'This is an incredibly frustrating way to die,' Lucid thought bitterly, bracing his body for an impact that he could not see coming.
***
Pilt stood in a space completely devoid of substance. The grand marble architecture of the fallen city had vanished entirely, replaced by a suffocating, infinite blankness. There were no walls to mark a perimeter.
There was no ceiling to contain the atmosphere. The distinct horizon line did not exist.
The only physical element remaining in this sensory vacuum was the shallow pool of liquid gold gathering beneath his expensive leather shoes. The fluid felt incredibly heavy and entirely stagnant, soaking into his ruined hems with a cold, metallic weight.
He gathered his scattered wits and adjusted his ruined lapels.
Mercyros had apparently allowed him to stand upright. The crushing divine gravity that had previously pressed him against the masonry had lifted, leaving a cold, hollow numbness inside his chest. Pilt focused his racing mind on the raw, practical mechanics of survival.
In the vicious corporate world of the scattered realms, a sudden, unexplained change of venue usually indicated that a highly hostile buyout was currently underway.
He breathed in the sterile air of the empty domain. The atmosphere lacked the familiar metallic tang of the lower industrial markets. It also lacked the perfumed rot of high society. It was an absolute, terrifying vacuum designed to strip away mortal confidence.
Figures began to materialize from the static void directly in front of him. They wore heavy, matching purple robes that dragged carelessly through the golden moisture on the unseen floor.
They filled the empty space precisely where the magnificent stone columns of the previous illusion had stood just moments before. Their eyes burned with a sickening, excessive glow of raw Fate Essence.
Pilt observed their synchronized movements with cold, calculating detachment. They did not look like a devoted religious congregation. They looked exactly like a ruthless board of directors preparing to violently liquidate an underperforming asset.
One specific figure stepped forward from the purple mass to take the absolute forefront. This individual possessed striking, vibrant purple hair and alarmingly fair skin.
The purple-haired woman raised a pale hand toward the empty ceiling. A sudden, violent rupture formed in the empty air directly beside her shoulder.
A cluster of grotesque, fleshy appendages erupted from the unseen tear in reality.
The thick limbs pulsed with a sickly, rhythmic life of their own, exuding a foul ambient heat that disturbed the cold void.
The appendages reached downward and grabbed an unconscious woman by her left arm. The unnatural limbs hoisted Mira into the air, letting her fragile body hang loosely as if she were a butchered slab of meat waiting for processing.
Pilt felt a sudden, violent spike of pure, unfiltered anger ignite in his gut at the sight of her suspended form. His jaw tightened until his teeth ground together.
His muscles locked. He wanted to rip those grotesque, pulsing appendages apart piece by piece with his bare hands.
He wanted to drown the entire purple congregation in their own blood. He forced himself to exhale slowly, pushing the raw violence down into his stomach.
'There are no absolute problems in this world,' Pilt recited silently in his mind, anchoring himself to his core philosophy. 'There are only delayed solutions.'
He locked his burning fury safely behind a polished mask of cold, hard focus. A viable solution would present itself eventually.
It always did when capital was involved. He just needed to find the proper leverage.
The lead figure lowered her heavy purple hood.
She revealed a face of undeniable, pristine beauty, though it was utterly ruined by a massive, violent laceration across her right cheek.
The soft flesh had been torn away completely, exposing the stark white outlines of her jawbone and teeth underneath.
Fresh blood leaked from the jagged edges of the open wound. She stepped forward again, closing the distance toward the towering deity.
Her head suddenly dropped low, and thick droplets of dark red blood splashed directly into the golden puddle at her feet. The organic fluid stained the divine liquid with a crude, mortal impurity.
Another grotesque limb formed from the sickly, pulsing mass hovering in the air. The new appendage wrapped tightly around Mira's waist to further secure the unconscious captive.
"You are not alone," Mercyros stated, his massive voice vibrating through the featureless void. "The more the merrier."
"Forgive my current state," the purple-haired woman said, her voice raspy and heavily strained by obvious physical pain. "I had a rather unpleasant run in with someone recently."
As the wounded woman spoke, the unconscious captive suspended in the air twitched slightly.
Pilt noticed the tiny, involuntary movement immediately.
His eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he smoothed his expression back into absolute, chilling indifference. Mira was currently alive.
That was the only variable that truly mattered to his internal ledger at this exact moment. He began running complex calculations, figuring out exactly how many bones he would need to break to extract his associate safely from the grotesque fleshy vice.
Mercyros looked down at the bleeding intruder. His glowing eyes registered zero empathy.
"So to cause a structural collapse of this massive magnitude, how much of yourself must you have sacrificed to briefly destabilize my permanent domain? You paid a steep price. Blood from a stone."
The woman did not elaborate on her specific injuries or her destructive methods. She simply stood straight, ignoring the blood dripping from her exposed jaw, and stared defiantly at the towering deity.