If you want to read more about my works or just to support me then here is my patreon:
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4.
____
If you liked this one. Cheek also my other stories:
[ Shadow Monarch in Hogwarts].
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4.
________________________________________________________________________________
Third POV:
Akai didn't breathe.
That presence behind him—heavy, suffocating, ancient—pressed against his back like a blade resting on his spine. He could feel it in every nerve, every hair on his arms, every tiny muscle in his neck that wanted to tense up but couldn't because he had locked himself completely still. The warmth of whatever stood behind him seeped through his clothes, not hot but not cold either. Something in between. Something that felt like standing too close to a fire that had been burning for a very long time.
His heart hammered against his ribs. Each beat felt louder than the last, pounding in his ears like a drum counting down to something he didn't want to face.
Slowly…
Very slowly…
He turned his head.
Just enough to see.
His eyes moved a fraction of an inch at a time, afraid of what they might find, afraid of what might happen if he looked too fast. The muscles in his neck screamed from the tension, but he ignored them. His breathing stopped completely now, his lungs frozen mid-breath, waiting for whatever came next.
And then—
His eyes widened.
"OHHH…"
His voice cracked.
The sound came out strange, broken, nothing like his usual tone. It was higher than normal, thinner, carrying the kind of shock that stripped away every layer of control he had built.
"…my fucking life."
Because what stood behind him—
Was no longer what he had seen before.
The 24 knights…
…were no longer statues.
They had moved.
His brain struggled to catch up with what his eyes were telling him. He blinked once. Twice. Three times. But the image didn't change. The massive armored figures that had been frozen in perfect rows, their hands resting on swords planted in the stone, their empty visors staring straight ahead at nothing—
They were facing him now.
Every single one of them.
The hall that once felt silent and frozen in time now pulsed with a terrifying, unnatural presence. The air itself seemed different—thicker, heavier, charged with something that made his skin crawl. The armored figures that had stood still now shifted, their massive forms turning in perfect, synchronized motion. Not one after the other. All at once. Like they shared a single mind.
CLANK…
Metal groaned.
The sound was deep, resonant, vibrating through the floor and up into his bones. It wasn't the sound of old metal moving for the first time in centuries. It was the sound of something waking up. Something that had been waiting.
CLANG…
Armor plates adjusted.
He could hear them settling into place, shifting against each other, finding positions that hadn't been used in a very long time. The noise echoed off the walls, off the pillars, off the ceiling high above, until it felt like the whole hall was filled with the sound of metal breathing.
THUD.
One step forward—heavy enough to shake the ground beneath Akai's feet.
The vibration traveled up through his shoes, through his ankles, through his knees. He felt it in his teeth. In his skull. In the bones of his chest.
Then another.
THUD.
And another.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
All twenty-four of them.
Their heads tilted downward, slowly, deliberately—until every single hollow visor was aimed directly at him.
The motion was smooth. Too smooth. Metal shouldn't move like that. Metal shouldn't bend and turn with the kind of fluid grace that belonged to living things, not constructs of stone and steel. But these things moved like they had never been still at all. Like the stillness had been a choice, not a limitation.
Darkness filled those visors.
No eyes.
No face.
Just… void.
But Akai could feel it.
They were looking at him.
Not just looking. Watching. Studying. Taking him apart piece by piece with nothing but empty darkness where their eyes should have been. He could feel the weight of twenty-four pairs of invisible gazes pressing against him from all sides, from every angle, from places he couldn't even see.
Judging him.
Measuring him.
Deciding something he couldn't read.
A low, suffocating pressure filled the hall, like the air itself had thickened into something alive. His chest felt tight. His throat felt tight. Every breath required effort, like he was sucking air through a cloth. The faint glow from the engravings dimmed slightly, as if even the light feared what had just awakened.
Their hands tightened around their swords.
The motion was subtle. Just a small shift of metal fingers against metal hilts. But in the silence of the hall, the sound was deafening. A soft creak of metal gripping metal. A low grind of surfaces rubbing together.
SCRAAAAAPE…
One by one, the blades were pulled free from the stone floor.
The sound echoed endlessly.
Slow.
Heavy.
Unavoidable.
Each blade came out with a noise that scraped across his ears like nails on a chalkboard, but deeper, louder, more terrible. Stone fragments fell from the spots where the swords had been embedded, tiny pieces of rock that hit the polished floor with sounds like rain on glass.
Akai took a step back without realizing it.
His foot moved on its own, retreating from the approaching wall of metal and darkness. His balance wavered for a moment before he caught himself, arms spreading slightly to steady his body.
"HOLLY… MOTHER… FUCKING… SHIT."
His voice barely held together.
The words came out in pieces, broken apart by the sheer weight of what he was seeing. Twenty-four armored giants, each one taller than any person had any right to be, each one holding a sword that looked like it could cut through stone like butter, all of them moving toward him with the slow, inevitable pace of a tide coming in.
This wasn't like before.
This wasn't chaos.
This wasn't brute strength.
This was something else.
Something… ancient.
Something that had been waiting.
The knights didn't rush. They didn't charge. They walked. Steady. Measured. Their footsteps synchronized perfectly, twenty-four pairs of metal boots hitting the stone floor at the exact same moment, over and over and over.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The sound was hypnotic. Mesmerizing. Akai felt his thoughts slowing down, felt his panic being replaced by something colder, something that recognized the kind of danger he was in.
DING.
The sound cut through the suffocating tension—
But this time…
It was different.
The screen that appeared before Akai's eyes wasn't blue.
It was red.
Deep.
Violent.
Pulsing like a warning written in blood.
The red light from the screen cast strange colors across the hall, mixing with the faint glow of the engravings, making everything look like it had been dipped in something wet and dangerous. The air itself seemed to react to it, growing colder, sharper, like the temperature had dropped several degrees in an instant.
[WARNING: SPECIAL PUNISHMENT TRIAL INITIATED]
[Trial Type: Throne Guardian Protocol]
Akai's eyes flicked rapidly across the screen as the text continued to unfold. His mind raced, trying to process the words while also keeping track of the knights still advancing toward him. His gaze jumped from the screen to the armored figures and back again, splitting his attention between two equally important things.
[Objective: Defeat the 24 Guardians of the Throne]
[Condition: Survive and overcome all guardians to unlock…]
The text paused for a fraction of a second.
Then—
[Final Trial Quest]
Akai blinked.
The word sat in his mind, heavy and confusing. Final. That meant end. That meant last. That meant after this, there was nothing else.
"…Wait…"
His voice dropped, confusion cutting through the fear.
"…this isn't even the main quest then???"
His eyebrows pulled together, his forehead creasing. He had been walking through darkness for hours, following a light, expecting to find an exit or an answer or something that made sense. Instead, he had found a hall, a throne, and twenty-four moving statues that wanted to kill him. And apparently, this was just the beginning of the end, not the end itself.
DING.
Another notification appeared instantly.
Cold.
Unfeeling.
[System Message]
Good luck, User: Akai.
The words were simple. Short. Almost dismissive. Like the system didn't care whether he lived or died, but felt obligated to say something before he tried.
Below it—
The timer.
Still ticking.
[62:12:03]
62:12:02
62:12:01
Akai's jaw tightened.
His teeth pressed together so hard he could feel the pressure in his temples. His hands curled into fists at his sides, fingernails digging into his palms hard enough to leave marks.
"…Yeah…" he muttered under his breath. "…very funny."
His voice was flat. Dry. The kind of tone that came from someone who had run out of fear and was running on pure, stubborn anger now.
He barely had time to process it—
Before—
BOOOOOOM!!!
A blur of steel and force exploded into him from the side.
One of the knights moved—faster than something that size had any right to move.
Akai didn't see it coming. His eyes caught a flash of movement, a dark shape that had been twenty feet away a moment ago and was suddenly right next to him. There was no time to dodge. No time to think. No time to do anything except feel the impact as something the size of a small car slammed into his ribs.
Akai's body lifted off the ground instantly.
His feet left the floor. His arms flew outward. His stomach dropped like he had fallen off a cliff. For a moment that felt like forever, he hung in the air, weightless, suspended between the force that had hit him and the wall that was waiting to catch him.
The impact came a split second later—
CRAAAAASH!!!
His back slammed into the far wall with bone-rattling force.
The breath exploded out of his lungs in a single, violent rush. His head snapped backward, smacking against the stone, sending white sparks across his vision. Pain shot through his spine, his shoulders, his ribs—every part of him that had made contact with the unyielding surface.
Cracks spread across the stone like a spiderweb, branching outward from the point where his body had hit. Tiny fragments of rock rained down around him, bouncing off his shoulders, his head, his arms. Dust erupted into the air, choking, blinding, filling his nose and mouth and eyes with fine gray powder.
Pain exploded through him.
Again.
And again.
And again.
His ribs screamed. His back screamed. His head pounded with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat. Every nerve in his body was on fire, sending signals of agony to a brain that was struggling to stay conscious.
His vision blurred.
The world became shapes and colors without meaning. The red glow of the warning screen mixed with the gray of the dust and the dark metal of the moving knights. He couldn't tell where one ended and another began.
His breath vanished.
His chest heaved, trying to pull in air, but nothing came. His lungs felt empty, collapsed, useless. Panic started to creep in at the edges of his mind, the primal fear of not being able to breathe mixing with the very real fear of what was coming next.
And the last thing he saw—
Through the dust and the ringing in his ears—
Was all twenty-four knights…
…starting to move.
They weren't walking slowly anymore. Their pace had changed. Grown faster. More urgent. The synchronized footsteps came quicker now, a steady rhythm that sounded like a war drum counting down to his death.
THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.
Their swords gleamed in the faint light, edges sharp enough to split hairs, tips aimed in his direction like accusations.
Akai tried to move.
His body didn't respond.
His arms stayed limp at his sides. His legs refused to push him up. All he could do was press his back against the cracked wall, feel the dust settling on his face, and watch as twenty-four sets of empty visors locked onto him with a hunger that needed no eyes to show.
The hall grew darker.
The engravings on the throne pulsed faster.
And the guardians kept coming.
---
[ End of Chapter 17 ].
To Be Continued...
______________________________
If you want to read more about my works or just to support me then here is my patreon:
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4 .
___
If you liked this one. Cheek also my other stories:
[ Shadow Monarch in Hogwarts].
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4 .
Thank you all for reading...