The transition from the howling, razor-sharp blizzard of the Dead Ridges to the interior of the ancient archway was jarringly absolute.
One moment, Alden was fighting against winds strong enough to peel flesh from bone. The next, he stepped into a vacuum of perfect, stagnant silence.
The air inside the ruin was stale, smelling faintly of ozone and ancient dust. The architecture mirrored the subterranean dragon tomb he had plummeted into days ago—towering, sweeping arches of pale, luminescent white stone that cast a faint, ghostly glow over the smooth, glass-like floor.
Alden stood a few paces inside the entrance, his single crimson eye scanning the cavernous hall. His hand rested lightly on the hilt of Vajra.
Crunch… step.
The girl walked in right behind him.
The moment she crossed the threshold, the violent shivering that had been wracking her fragile frame entirely ceased. She pulled the heavy dwarven blanket a little tighter around her shoulders, her jet-black hair slightly damp from the melting snow.
Alden watched her out of the corner of his eye, expecting her to collapse in relief, or perhaps demand a fire, or complain about the ominous, suffocating atmosphere of the dead ruin.
She did none of those things.
She simply walked over to a nearby shattered stone pillar, leaned her back against it, and crossed her arms. Her luminescent violet eyes tracked Alden's every movement. She didn't speak. She didn't ask questions. She just stood there, an unnaturally calm, silent spectator in a place that practically reeked of ancient death.
'She's definitely not a normal stray,' Alden mused internally, his suspicion mounting.
'But right now, her silence is the best thing she could possibly offer me.'
He turned his attention back to the massive hall.
At the far end of the chamber stood a colossal set of heavy stone doors, completely devoid of handles or keyholes. Etched into the floor, leading from where Alden stood all the way to those doors, was an intricate, massive runic array consisting of three distinct, concentric rings.
[DING!]
The pristine chime of [THE SUPREME LUCK SYSTEM] echoed in Alden's mind, shattering the ancient silence.
The dark, gold-laced interface materialized in the air before him.
[Hidden Domain Discovered: The Sanctum of the Soul Sovereign.]
[Analyzing Domain Architecture…]
[Notice: This Domain is a multi-layered spiritual crucible. Physical strength and raw mana capacity are rendered obsolete within these walls.]
[Trial Initiated: The Three Ascensions of the Soul.]
[Current Stage: 1/3 — The Weight of the Ethereal Blade.]
Alden read the prompts, his brow furrowing beneath his matte-black mask.
"Physical strength rendered obsolete," Alden whispered into the quiet hall.
That was a terrifying proposition. His entire survival strategy over the last month had hinged on his Nephalem bloodline's ability to instantly heal catastrophic physical trauma, paired with his A-Rank physical density.
Before he could even fully process the warning, the first concentric ring on the floor violently flared to life, glowing with a sickly, pale-green light.
SWISH!~
There was no sound of a physical object moving. There was no displacement of air.
Alden suddenly gasped, his spine snapping rigidly straight.
A horrific, blinding agony erupted directly in the center of his chest. It felt exactly like a jagged, rusted hook had just been violently slammed into his sternum and yanked upward.
BAM!
Alden was thrown backward, crashing heavily onto the glass-like floor. He clutched his chest, his crimson eye wide with shock.
He looked down. There was no blood. His black trench coat wasn't torn. His physical flesh was completely, utterly untouched.
But the pain was astronomical. It was a deep, existential violation that bypassed his nerve endings and struck directly at the core of his identity. It felt exactly like Liam von Ravel's torture in the Black Cell.
'A Soul Attack,' Alden realized, panic flaring in his chest as memories of the Inquisition's dissection table threatened to drown his focus.
SWISH! SWISH!
Two more invisible, ethereal blades struck him. One pierced his right shoulder, the other impaled his left knee.
"GAAAH!" Alden roared, his body convulsing on the floor.
He instinctively tried to channel his Chaos core. He flooded his physical body with dark-gold energy, attempting to create an explosive, destructive armor around his skin to vaporize the incoming attacks.
The dark-gold mana flared.
SWISH!~
Another invisible blade phased right through the chaotic explosion without even slowing down, sinking deep into Alden's abdomen.
The system hadn't lied. Physical and elemental defenses were completely useless here. Chaos mana devoured matter and natural laws, but these blades weren't made of matter. They were concentrated manifestations of spiritual malice, designed to test the absolute resilience and control of a person's soul.
And Alden's soul was a mess.
It had been torn from his original world, shoved into Alden von Astra's body, ripped apart by an SS-Rank Leech, and violently restructured by a mythical bloodline. His spiritual boundaries were jagged, leaking, and incredibly fragile.
Alden coughed, a phantom sensation of blood filling his throat, though his physical body was entirely fine. He was being spiritually bled to death.
He forced his head up, his trembling gaze darting toward the girl.
He expected to see her writhing in agony on the floor. If these attacks were filling the room, a fragile, mana-depleted noble girl should have been instantly erased.
But she wasn't.
She was still leaning against the shattered pillar.
Alden watched in pure, unadulterated disbelief as one of the pale-green, ethereal blades shot directly toward the girl's head.
The girl didn't dodge. She didn't even blink her luminescent violet eyes.
The moment the invisible blade made contact with her, it didn't pierce her. It shattered. The attack broke into a dozen harmless, pale-green fragments that rained down around her boots, entirely unable to penetrate the absolute, terrifyingly dense spiritual fortress that was her soul.
She looked down at Alden, her expression devoid of pity, fear, or surprise. She was merely observing him, like a scholar watching a rat in a maze.
'Who the hell is she?' Alden thought, his vision blurring from the spiritual agony.
But he didn't have time to dwell on it.
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
More blades were forming in the air above the first runic ring.
Alden gritted his teeth, forcing himself into a seated, cross-legged position on the cold floor. He let his hands fall limply to his knees.
'Physical defense is useless. Element defense is useless,' Alden analyzed, desperately forcing the panic out of his mind. 'The puzzle isn't about blocking the attacks. It's about realizing what the soul actually is.'
He remembered the ancient tome he had consumed the night before. The Manual of the Abyssal Weaver.
The Void-Dwellers hadn't just created the technique to weave hostile mana. They had created it to weave the volatile, abstract energies of existence itself.
Alden closed his single crimson eye.
He ignored the searing, phantom pain of the ethereal blades currently lodged in his spirit. He looked inward, sinking his consciousness deep past his physical muscles, past his racing heart, and past the spinning abyss of his Chaos core.
He looked at his own soul.
It was a jagged, ugly thing. It looked like a shattered mirror that had been hastily glued back together, leaking chaotic dark-gold light through the cracks. It was no wonder the ethereal blades were tearing him apart; his spiritual defenses were full of holes.
'Don't fight the pain,' Alden commanded himself, shifting his breathing into the precise, rhythmic cadence of the Abyssal Weaver technique. 'Control the shape.'
He didn't reach for his mana. He reached out with his pure, unadulterated willpower.
Using the Weaver technique, Alden mentally grabbed the frayed, leaking edges of his own soul.
SWISH!
Another blade struck him.
Alden flinched, but he didn't break his concentration. He pulled the frayed spiritual threads together. He began to weave.
He took the jagged, broken fragments of his identity—the fear from the Black Cell, the isolation of his past life, the terrifying, overwhelming majesty of the Nephalem bloodline—and he forcefully, aggressively compressed them.
He stopped letting his soul act like a fragile, expanded balloon waiting to be popped. He condensed it. He folded the spiritual layers over and over again, using the Weaver technique to stitch the cracks shut, increasing the density of his spiritual presence by an astronomical margin.
The phantom pain began to recede.
Outside his mind, the cavernous hall hummed.
SWISH! SWISH!
Two massive, pale-green ethereal blades shot directly at Alden's masked face.
Alden didn't move.
CLANG! CLANG!
The sound was sharp, like glass striking solid steel.
The ethereal blades hit Alden right between the eyes and violently shattered into a shower of harmless green sparks. They couldn't pierce him anymore. His soul was no longer a fractured target; it was a condensed, impenetrable singularity of pure, absolute intent.
Alden slowly opened his glowing crimson right eye.
The pale-green light of the first concentric ring on the floor flickered, then completely died out.
The heavy, oppressive spiritual gravity that had been suffocating the room instantly evaporated.
[DING!]
[Stage 1 Completed: The Weight of the Ethereal Blade.]
[Assessment: The Host has successfully comprehended the basic manipulation and condensation of the Spiritual Vessel.]
[Reward: Soul Density permanently increased by 200%.]
Alden exhaled a long, steady breath, uncrossing his legs and standing up. He felt incredibly light. The lingering, phantom aches from Liam's torture, which had plagued the back of his mind for weeks, were completely gone. His spirit was finally, truly whole.
He rolled his shoulders, the heavy black trench coat shifting around his lean frame.
He turned his head, looking toward the shattered pillar near the entrance.
The girl with the jet-black hair was still standing there. She hadn't moved an inch.
As Alden's glowing red eye locked onto her, the girl simply tilted her head, a faint, almost imperceptible smirk of approval touching her pale lips. She didn't offer a word of congratulation. She just raised a slender, elegant hand, gesturing lazily toward the second concentric ring on the floor.
Alden stared at her for a long moment, his eye narrowing behind the matte-black mask.
'She didn't just survive the soul attack,' Alden realized, a cold, sharp thrill of caution sliding down his spine.
'She completely ignored it. Her soul density is already off the charts.'
He didn't say anything. He just turned his back on her, stepping over the deactivated first ring, and walked directly toward the second stage of the trial.
Whatever she was, she was a spectator for now. And Alden had a domain to conquer.