They kept walking.
Each footstep, each dry breath, each glance over the shoulder repeated like a cursed, haunted melody that would never reach its end.
Every passing second felt as heavy as stone pressing down on their chests. As if time in this place no longer flowed, but had turned into some cold, viscous liquid dripping straight into their will, like spiritual acid eroding every last shard of hope.
Ren had lost count of how many times he gripped his sword's hilt, not to prepare for battle, but just to be sure he still existed.
Not out of fear of monsters. But out of fear… of being slowly crushed by an endless, absolute silence.
They had stopped talking.
Not because there was nothing left to say.
But because… both of them were afraid. That if they opened their mouths, what came out wouldn't be words anymore… but a scream. A scream of panic that had been buried too long inside the heart.
And so, each moment passing in the labyrinth became a kind of silent torture.
It could forge a person into steel…
But it could also crush a fragile soul with nothing but stillness and inertia.
And neither of them… knew for sure which one they were becoming.
Only stiff legs kept moving, driven by some blind instinct.
Only the faint light from glowing moss clinging to the stone ceiling of this hopeless maze remained,
feeble as a sliver of hope too weak to even be called hope.
Still, they walked.
Not because they wanted to survive.
But as if… they were being forced to survive, just to one day witness something even more terrifying than death.
After what felt like an eternity, the narrow corridor finally began to change.
The path started to widen, first by inches, then by meters, until the space around them expanded in an eerie, unnatural way.
It was no longer a tunnel… but a massive hall, towering and wide, so vast their footsteps echoed into emptiness without ever returning.
Ren looked up. He couldn't see the ceiling. Only darkness, thick and dense like a curtain suspended above, hiding everything overhead.
But what sent chills down his spine were the pillars. Dozens, hundreds of black stone columns rising like the spine of some ancient beast.
They stood tall and unbroken, unmarred by time. Each one so large it would take four or five grown men to wrap their arms around it.
"This… isn't ordinary stone," Copper muttered, eyes glinting with doubt. He reached out and touched the surface of a pillar, ice cold, smooth… and somehow breathing.
Ren frowned. This feeling… it was familiar.
He remembered.
This type of stone was the same material used to build the Black Iron Palace, the mysterious structure at the heart of the Town of Beginnings.
"No way…" Ren whispered.
They looked around. Nothing moved.
No wind.
No third set of footsteps.
No clattering bones.
No growling.
No blood.
No fighting.
Only… emptiness.
They kept walking. Farther. Much farther.
But strangely, not a single monster appeared.
No shadows flickered by.
No trace of life.
An absolute silence blanketed everything—so absolute that it began to make them uneasy.
"Ren." Copper spoke softly, his voice dropping low.
"Yeah?"
"Do you feel… like something's off?"
Ren nodded. "I'm starting to wish I could hear something. Anything."
The silence, it turned out, was more terrifying than screams.
It pressed in, stretched endlessly, like an invisible weight bearing down on every cell in their bodies.
Ren tightened his grip on the sword. Even though nothing had appeared, his heart kept urging him to stay on guard. Something was waiting. Something… was holding its breath alongside them.
And then, as if to answer that instinct...
A sound screeched through the air.
Like metal slicing the wind..piercing and cold down to the bone.
Before either of them could react—before they could even turn around, from the right, a massive, pitch-black scythe tore through the air like lightning.
Fast.
Too fast.
So fast the glint on its blade lasted only a blink before the darkness swallowed it again.
Ren didn't even have time to draw his sword.
Copper didn't have time to activate a single command.
It came straight for their throats.
A death blow.
No warning signs.
Shhhhk!
A wave of freezing air blasted past Ren's face, locking his body in place.
And then…
BOOM!
A deafening clash rang out, like thunder muffled inside a sealed chest.
The scythe… stopped.
Just a hand's breadth from their necks, it froze in midair, trembling, then jerked backward, repelled by something invisible.
A wall.
Not stone.
Not a defensive skill.
But… a wall of light.
Thin as silk, nearly invisible…
Yet it stopped that fatal strike.
Copper exhaled hard, sweat glistening at his temple. He turned to Ren, eyes wide.
"That…"
Ren didn't answer. He just stared straight ahead, toward the shifting darkness.
Something had just passed by....Like a cold gust of wind carrying a faint, chilling rattle.
And from deep within that pitch-black space, the thing that attacked them… was coming back.
Slowly.
With rhythm.
Like it was toying with prey already caught.
They immediately backed away from the place where the attack landed, each footstep balanced on the razor's edge between life and death.
Ren turned his head, eyes widening at what was emerging from the pitch-black void.
A floating shape.
No legs.
Barely moving.
Yet the pressure it exuded was enough to choke the air from their lungs.
A gigantic skeleton.
No. A reaper.
Its entire body was cloaked in a tattered black robe, as if scorched by time and the flames of hell. The inside of the cloak was a deep, dried blood red, like coagulated gore that had lingered for centuries.
A scythe.
A massive scythe, nearly the length of its body, so sharp it seemed capable of slicing even the darkness in half. A weapon that should only exist in nightmares.
Its face, if one could call it that was a deep, hollow void. No flesh. Just two bulging, crimson eyes, glowing so fiercely it couldn't be just a lighting effect.
It was staring at them.
Unblinking.
Emotionless.
A system prompt flickered violently in the air:
Fatal Scythe – Lv.90[Boss Type: Ancient Reaper]
Ren felt a chill race down his spine.
There was no HP bar.
No damage indicators.
No behavior descriptions.
Only presence.
And yet, strangely, the creature didn't advance.
It merely hovered there, suspended in the darkness like a nightmare unfinished. Motionless. Not coming closer. Not retreating. As if… bound by some unseen border within the territory it ruled.
A forbidden zone.
A warning.
Ren swallowed hard. He could almost hear his heartbeat pounding in his head like a death drum.
"We're... not allowed to cross into its domain," Copper whispered, voice hoarse.
They could only take one step back, then another.
Not daring to turn their backs.
Because they knew...
That thing was still watching.
Unwilling to risk stepping further into the reaper's territory, the two turned around immediately, trying to retrace their path.
Even though the darkness swallowed everything behind them, they ran, desperately, hoping they hadn't gone too far to make it back.
But then…
The ground beneath them trembled.
A faint vibration at first, then stronger.
Ren froze for half a second, his instincts reacting faster than thought. He turned sharply, eyes wide.
From the corridor ahead came the dry clatter of bones against stone.The thunder of marching.
And then they appeared.
Not just one. Not ten.
An entire horde. A flood of skeletal soldiers surged through the passages like a dam had burst, twisted, broken skeletons wielding rusted weapons, their glowing red eyes lighting up the darkness.
Copper cursed.
"Shit… they've caught up!"
Ren gripped his sword tighter, mind spinning for an escape route.
But there was none.
Behind them… Fatal Scythe still stood, silent as a wraith guarding the gates of hell.
Ahead… the skeleton horde blocked every hallway.
To the sides… black stone. Smooth walls. No openings.
No more paths.
"We're cornered," Copper said, his voice low and tightly held.
Ren panted, each heartbeat crushing his lungs.
They had been too slow.
There was no choice now...
Either leave their lives to fate…or fight for a way out.
Ren raised his sword into a ready stance, and then...
BOOM.
The ground shook...
Not just from footsteps this time.
A tremor exploded outward, like something was rising from beneath the earth.The black stone walls groaned as if screaming.
Several skeletons ahead froze, then were suddenly flung aside like straw in a storm.
"What the hell is…?!"
Ren couldn't finish his sentence.
The floor split open.
And from the fissure, something massive and serpentine slithered out, coiling in the flickering light of the dungeon.
It had no flesh
Its entire body was made of human bones.
Hundreds...maybe thousands of skeletons fused together by some dark energy.
Each vertebra linked to the next in a grotesque structure that crawled and scraped with a creaking sound like a symphony from hell.
Its head was a gigantic skull.
With three eye sockets blazing red like smoldering furnaces.
Its jaw, filled with jagged teeth, clacked open, revealing layer upon layer of grinding bones like spinning saws.
The skeletal soldiers were devoured.
Not a metaphor.
Literally devoured.
The bone centipede consumed its own kind
Crunching their frames with the razor-sharp protrusions jutting from its own body.
Copper's face turned pale. "This thing… wasn't in the beta…"
Ren said nothing.
There was nothing to say.
His eyes widened as the monster coiled.
Its long, winding form twisting like a cyclone of bone, sweeping across the corridor in a single, devastating motion.
And then…
It saw them.
All three eye sockets lit up like hellfire.
Its massive skull tilted down.
It released a horrific roar, half-human, half-demon...echoing through the stone like the fractured voice of death itself.
"Run," Copper whispered.
But his voice now…Wasn't a command.
It was a prayer.
But where could they even run?