I Guard The Book That Slays Gods

Raiden instinctively kept his eyes wide open, afraid to blink lest his trauma from the dark dream repeat itself and the mansion vanish from sight.

His pace resonated with his heartbeat, unable to distinguish his thrills from his fear. Still, his head kept whipping backward, keeping tabs on the others behind him.

In no time, his expression took a dark shift, and his pace began to slow as they neared the mansion. He wished the sight before him was nothing but a fluke, but the closer he got, the clearer the reality became.

The mansion lay shattered in fragments; the roof had collapsed along with all the interior, leaving only one wall standing. Raiden halted before the wreckage, his heart pounding as he panted heavily, his fingers trembling in disbelief—this was also a dead end.

"Uh… for fuck's sake," Noelle muttered behind him, her voice etched with irritation, her hands repeatedly rubbing against her throat.

Raiden let out a sigh. Despite his doubts, he had genuinely believed this path would lead them to the Reader—but now he couldn't help but assume the Reader was no different from the Lost Child. Even so, this wasn't the end he'd hoped for.

He turned to the others, watching Speed hover in MK's materialized cube, trying to catch his breath, and the rest already showing signs of fatigue.

He exhaled deeply, his golden eyes shifting to theirs as Leo and Odard started picking their way through the shards on the ground.

"We have to keep moving," he muttered, his voice strained but controlled, not wanting it to break as he gestured toward Speed. "He needs our help."

"I think we're all in over our heads here," Chrono added hastily after Raiden spoke.

His words seemed to trigger the shift immediately, the scene melting away to leave them suspended in emptiness before they were deposited onto hot sand, squinting up at the harsh desert sun.

The desert heat hit Raiden like a physical blow, crimson spreading across his exposed skin as warmth flooded through him. He raised his face toward the sun, eyes narrowing in both pain and confusion.

The heavens stretched barren and cloudless above them, the sun swollen to an impossible size and steadily advancing, as if drawn by some invisible force.

A terrible thought crept into his mind: what if the pages had already been taken, and the Reader was as merciless as the Lost Child, watching their suffering with complete detachment?

"What makes this place different? Why is it still here when the rest disappeared?" Leo questioned, balancing carefully on the jagged pieces beneath him.

Raiden whipped around to look, finding the building completely intact, untouched by the transformation. He felt his mouth curve into a small smile, suspicion growing that the structure was somehow tied to the Reader.

But fear struck him like a blade to the chest, his hand shaking so badly he could barely control it. Still, he couldn't resist the urge to grasp at his chest, the pain nearly bringing him to his knees.

The realization hit him that he'd been feeling this way longer than he'd admitted, but his level of fear didn't match the severity of his symptoms. As he studied his trembling fingers, doubt crept in—could the Reader be controlling his body's reactions?

But even as confusion overwhelmed him, Ash moved past with casual indifference, stepping carefully toward the crystalline remains of the structure.

One by one, she hauled away the concrete fragments, throwing them carelessly to the side. Then she went completely still, studying something on the ground before her eyes found Raiden's.

[He's dead, Papa.] her voice echoed in Raiden's mind.

His jaw dropped in perplexity as awareness returned with jarring force, his focus shifting to Ash while his heart stumbled in his chest and every breath felt like it was being stolen from him.

Even as he stayed locked in place, Leo spotted the Reader's body below and hurriedly descended from the rubble above, his sudden movement and expression alerting the rest of the group.

Fear spread among them through silent glances, and he witnessed his teammates' first real moment of doubt about making it out alive, their hushed conversations bitter with hopelessness and frustration.

He recognized the feeling all too well—he faced the same uncertain fate—yet despite not being alone in this, he couldn't escape the crushing sense of responsibility. He had brought them into this nightmare.

He squeezed his hands into fists even as they quaked uncontrollably, his desperate situation stripping away his voice and capacity for movement. But he refused to witness another Dark Dream. He would persist and hunt for an answer that offered hope instead of despair.

For all his bravery, hopelessness had taken root in his core. He might conceal his turmoil with well-worn displays of strength, but privately he grasped the truth: he was utterly helpless, with no understanding of the consequences that followed an absolute ruler's death.

"Looks like FIRMO was ahead of us once more," Noelle murmured, settling beside Raiden as she regarded the rest of the group.

Raiden met her gaze wordlessly, his confidence wavering about finding anything FIRMO might have overlooked. Knowing they had Deathsight on their side, he couldn't help but fear the entire organization operated at that same terrifying level.

But the thought plagued him—could they genuinely defeat an elusive within their absolute territory? His thoughts grew disjointed as his gaze became erratic. What if the Huntress was behind this, sabotaging his chance to secure the pages?

He choked back his terror, struggling to regain his composure. Though he understood little about the Huntress, it was clear her vendetta was personal—she wouldn't harm anyone but him; all the evidence he'd gathered supported that belief.

Perhaps FIRMO wielded comparable power… or worse, other groups with even greater influence were pulling the strings—he reasoned, forcing himself to think of anything but the Huntress.

He felt moisture gathering in his nasal passage and immediately pressed his hand to his nose. An unsettling crawling sensation ran through his body as he watched blood drip into his cupped palm.

His mind scrambled desperately for answers, yet before any clear idea could take shape, the same sharp pain lanced through his chest again. He instinctively grabbed at his torso, leaving bloody handprints on his clothing.

"What is this?" he gasped, the overwhelming urge to collapse forcing him toward the ground. Fear no longer described what he was experiencing; it felt as though his heart was being shredded apart.

Before his legs could give way, Noelle gripped his shoulder firmly, her expression growing stern. "You have to be there for Ash in all this." Her attention shifted sharply to Ash's location. "She's so young… she's probably terrified."

Her luminous aura cracked like glass, her voice dropping to a whisper that promised violence. "Let anything happen to her, and you'll wish you hadn't."

His attention drifted to Ash, standing alone and gazing into the void. The realization struck him with startling clarity, eyes rounding in disbelief. What if he'd been carrying someone else's emotional burden? What if none of it was truly his?

[Everything is disappearing, Papa.] Ash's voice whispered inside his head, her blue eyes staring past him toward the distant horizon.

He jerked his gaze in that direction, feeling his very essence shatter within him. What he saw left him stunned and horrified. The desert was gradually fading away in the distance, melting into an indistinct nothingness.

More terrible yet, their environment changed again, depositing them before massive snowy mountains with the moon suspended behind them, drifting slower than the sun ever did, and radiating a cold so severe that Raiden's hair started crystallizing with frost.

Yet even now, the distant mountains were fading away into an empty void.