"The Cosmos is forged as the law of this world…" Copper's voice echoed low, melding with the whispering stone walls of the cavernous room, as if not he speaking, but the wall recounting a memory slumbering for tens of thousands of years.
"Creation… erected the stars and living beings." His metal-gloved hand gently brushed a carving, where a radiant halo in the darkness drew millions of straight lines like falling stars.
"Emotion… granted them souls...for them to know love, to know anger, to know pain and sacrifice." A different carving, cracked and faded, depicting kneeling figures, hands over hearts, surrounded by countless flame-like symbols.
"And the Deep's Peace…" Copper paused. His finger hovered before an almost-erased carving...just a faint slash carved by a claw.
"…Just silently observing. Creating nothing, bestowing nothing. Only… harvesting."
"Silently collecting the lost souls to itself."
Ren shivered involuntarily.
He gazed upon the fragmented images. The more he looked, the more something felt off.
These carvings… they were not mere symbols. They lived. They remembered. And in that silence, Ren felt an unnamed gaze following him through every etched line.
"Do you… really believe this?" Ren asked, his voice hoarse.
"It doesn't matter if I believe." Copper replied without looking at him. "The point is… these things exist… whether you believe or not."
"But… when created beings first began to possess greed," Copper's voice continued, not loud, not hurried, yet each syllable resonated as if reverberating through the stone walls.
"When they began to forget who created them… when their upturned gaze was no longer in gratitude, but to compare, to challenge, to claim…"
He placed a hand on another section of the wall, a depiction of small humanoids gathered at the feet of radiant, towering entities.
Another carving showed them raising weapons, surging in waves to assault the light from the heavens.
"When being alive ceased to satisfy them… and they began to demand the right to give life.Not content with being illuminated… they sought to be the only flame."
Copper moved to another wall. His steps fell heavy, as though bearing the sigh of a history long asleep.
"Three out of the four Deific Beings departed this world." His voice echoed in that darkened chamber, carrying the tone of an ancient indictment.
"Not out of anger, but out of disappointment. Not out of weakness, but by choice."
On the stone before them were three colossal, empty silhouettes, shrouded in mist-like veils, faceless, nameless forms, fading from the world to make room for something else below.
"They left behind bodies...divine corpses without souls, presiding over a decaying sky. They are no longer grantors, but warnings uttered in silence."
Ren grew silent. To his eyes, those images were no longer mere carvings. They breathed, as though the room itself was whispering the history of an unwritten era.
"And the fourth…" Copper's voice dropped to a whisper, as if afraid that speaking it aloud would summon that entity.
"…did not leave. Did not speak. Did not save. Only stood there...from the depths, opening wide to receive what was left…Shattered souls. Lost desires. Forgotten cries."
Ren swallowed hard. On the stone wall was a black shape, no definite form, just a profound darkness distinct from the rest of the carvings. Yet from it… emanated a chill to the bone.
"It has no name. No form. No voice. It is simply the abyss… always present behind those who think they are moving forward."
Copper paused mid-sentence.
His gaze moved toward Ren, slowly, like something trembled deep inside, something he wasn't sure he should reveal.
Then… the look vanished. He turned away and returned to the rough stone wall, carved with the faint vestiges of history.
"The ignorant beings…" His voice softly rose, no longer mocking, but solemn, as cold as an edict.
"…the ones who dared to sit on the divine throne. Dared to gaze directly upon the power meant only to be revered."
Ren fell silent. He studied the next carving: a figure seated upon a stone throne in mid-air.
Light converged upon it from four directions, not pure anymore. The beams carried a tainted darkness.
Copper continued.
"They touched that power. They thought they had conquered fate itself, that nothing could terrify them anymore.
…But at that moment… the last thing left in them was taken."
He pointed to a carving at the edge, a collection of distorted bodies, faces erased, chained within a circle of light, from whose hearts rose strands connecting to a black entity outside the scene.
"Souls… They lost their souls."
His voice fell lower...even near a whisper, each word striking Ren's heart like tapping on a locked door.
"Immortal. Yes. They are immortal… But they cannot dream. Cannot weep. Cannot die.They only exist. Numb.
Cursed to dwell eternally within their own bodies...like machines sneering at the laws of life and death."
A brief shiver ran down Ren's spine.
These weren't drawings anymore. This was… a warning. A real past or a future fast approaching.
He took a small, involuntary step back.
But Copper still stood there, back straight, hand pressed against the stone wall as if he were connected to it.
"Some things… can't be possessed. Because the price of holding them… is yourself, and all your descendants…"
Ren could hear his own heartbeat pounding uneasily in his chest. The questions were now forgotten. He simply listened, silent, to the words Copper was about to say.
"…There are things not meant to be understood, Ren," Copper said, his voice barely a whisper, almost dissolving into the cold stone. "They're meant to be feared."
His hand left the wall, as though releasing a fragment of memory that couldn't be spoken aloud.
Copper slowly turned. His eyes gleamed pitch black, not the eyes of a human anymore, but of an abyss that devoured every remaining light in this suffocating room.
"They didn't leave behind treasures," he said, his voice so low it nearly became part of the stone. "Nor advanced technology, nor divine knowledge. The only thing that remained… was a crack."
He lifted his gaze, not toward Ren, but through him, as if staring at a place that didn't belong to reality.
"A crack… between this world… and something else."
The last word was spoken softly, yet to Ren, it echoed like the tolling of a forbidden ritual's bell.
"Something else"… The phrase didn't feel like an object or an entity. It felt like… kinship. Like a place that breathes.
Ren shuddered again, this time at the terrifying thoughts beginning to drown the last of his reason.
Copper inhaled deeply, then exhaled as though letting go of a burden far too heavy.
When he looked at Ren again, his gaze had lost its usual composure. In his eyes was a faint fracture, as if even his own eyes had once witnessed something that should not be seen.
"We have to leave," he said...quiet, but firm. "That door… won't hold much longer."
Ren turned. At first, he felt nothing. But just a few seconds later, a soft tremor spread along the ground. He looked toward the metal door.
A sound. Very faint. Like the creak of rusted hinges.
Then louder.
A single thud.
Then another.
Each strike, like the beating of a heart. Not his own, but something behind that door.
…A low groan rippled through the stone wall, like the earth itself was gasping for air.
Ren snapped his head back...and this time, he felt it clearly: each tremor traveling through the ground, up through the soles of his feet, and into his chest, like a second heartbeat that wasn't his.
The door was shaking.
Gone was the gentle glow of the magical engravings. In its place, dark crimson light began seeping from the cracks, like bleeding ink.
With every pulse, the door was pounded from the other side. The metal bent, as if being twisted by a force not of this world.
Ren stepped back.
Copper didn't hesitate. He surged forward, swift and cold, as though all emotion had just been extinguished.
His armored hand grabbed Ren by the collar and yanked him toward a narrow passage hidden behind the stone wall.
"Go," his voice dropped, no more cryptic undertones, no teasing, no delay. "If we stay… we won't just die."
Ren hesitated for a breath, but didn't resist. In Copper's eyes was something that made every question meaningless, pure urgency, beyond words.
He glanced back.
The metal door hadn't collapsed yet, but… it trembled with each slow, heavy thump like a drum buried deep underground. The glowing lines on its surface were cracking, bleeding sparks like magical blood from an ancient wound.
It was only then that Ren truly understood…
The door wasn't meant to stop the bone horde. But whatever this was, it hadn't been part of any of that.
And now, the door would soon stop working.
"Dying in the game means losing your life," Copper said, not looking back. "But if it touches you… you'll no longer be yourself. Even if you survive… it won't be living."
Ren gritted his teeth..and nodded. There was no other choice.
The two of them rushed into the corridor behind, leaving behind the cracking door and the bone-chilling echoes that seemed to come from somewhere never named in the system.