Claire stood at the very edge of the twenty-seventh glass step, suspended in the middle of that endless abyss. Before her, the massive golden bell—the Emergency Bell—floated in the air, but death itself had blocked the path. Three ancient stone demons, silent for centuries, now stood before her like a terrifying storm. Old earth and the ash of hell crumbled from their bodies, and the burning red light in their eyes scorched Claire's very existence.
The atmosphere had grown so ghastly that the scent of centuries-old death seemed dissolved in the air. From far away, the echoes of the battle raging within the tower still whispered through the void, but here… here there was only the heavy breathing of those demons, rumbling like the eruption of a volcano.
