On the third underground level, inside the "Hall of Silence," the air was thick with the pungent, sour smell of old parchment and saltpeter.
Ryan was secured to a heavy torture chair, the steel shackles biting deep into his flesh, yet the expression on his face remained as cold as a block of ice.
Across the long table, Klaus's face was livid as he slammed a thick stack of case files onto the surface.
“The residual mental fluctuations match! The fibers left at the scene match!” A cruel light gleamed in Klaus's single eye. “Ryan, the chain of evidence is complete. How are you going to talk your way out of this?”
Ryan didn't even lift his eyelids.
“Captain Klaus,” Ryan spoke hoarsely, his tone terrifyingly calm. “If you truly believed the chain of evidence was complete, you wouldn't be the only one standing here interrogating me. The Trier family's private guards would have torn me to shreds by now. You're in such a rush to have me sign a confession simply because... you only had someone plant those physical clues at the scene an hour ago, didn't you?”
The corner of Klaus's eye twitched violently.
He was indeed anxious.
With Charles dead, the Trier family had exerted crushing pressure on the Suppression Bureau. Meanwhile, the academy's Academic Committee had secretly issued an injunction, strictly forbidding them from performing a "soul extraction" on Ryan. Various factions, like a pack of sharks smelling blood, had surrounded this small interrogation room, blocking it completely.
“Clap, clap, clap.”
A slow, rhythmic applause echoed from a dark corner of the interrogation room.
Professor Adrian stepped slowly out of the shadows. His wise, deep grey eyes behind his monocle swept coldly over Klaus before finally settling on Ryan.
“Step down, Klaus. Your crude methods are an insult to the intellect of St. Blaise.”
Klaus's face shifted. “Professor Adrian! What about the Trier family...”
“Let them wait,” Professor Adrian interrupted, his voice icy. “Tonight, the Academic Committee will personally transfer Ryan to the 'Special Seminar Room' on the fourth underground level. His brain, his soul nodes, and his secrets—the committee will dissect and study them all, layer by layer.”
Adrian leaned in close to Ryan and whispered in a voice only the two of them could hear:
“Ryan... do you want to live?”
...
Dead silence filled the dungeon, broken only by the rhythmic dripping of seeping water.
Ryan leaned against the cold, damp stone wall, the magic-suppressing shackles on his wrists radiating a bone-chilling cold.
He recalled a conversation he had with Chris in Moth Port a long time ago.
“What do you think is the meaning of the 【Moth】? Is it a mask to impersonate others? Or wings to shroud the secrets of heaven?”
Ryan had not answered back then.
“No. The true meaning of the Moth is death.”
“Before any moth breaks from its cocoon, it must completely dissolve into a puddle of foul fluid inside, consuming its own old body. True rebirth is never just shedding skin; it is changing one's very destiny. Only when the old self returns entirely to oblivion can the new self soar in the blind spots of the world.”
Changing destiny... Ryan closed his eyes in the darkness, the corners of his mouth curving slightly.
The Suppression Bureau wanted a scapegoat, the Trier family demanded blood, Professor Adrian wanted him for research, and he himself... needed the identity of "Ryan" to vanish from this world completely!
...
Late at night, at 1:10 AM. In the dim corridor outside the dungeon, the crisp clicking of high heels on the damp flagstones suddenly echoed.
The night guard, seemingly forced into hypnosis by some mental spell, slumped silently onto the desk. A slender, tall figure slowly came to a halt outside the iron bars, pulling down her black lace veil to reveal an exquisitely beautiful yet exceptionally dangerous face.
—Violet.
As the greatest beneficiary of Charles's death, she was currently dressed in a long black mourning gown, with a white rose symbolizing mourning pinned to her chest. Yet, a sarcastic and elegant smile played on her lips.
“This is hardly the place to catch up, Junior Ryan,” Violet said, looking down at Ryan, who sat in the shadows, through the thick iron bars.
Ryan opened his eyes, his tone completely flat. “Senior Violet. Charles is dead, the Trier family's influence is being purged, and your seat on the Academic Committee is secure. Having won a complete victory, why did you risk coming to this death row in the dead of night? Just to gloat over my miserable state?”
Violet gently waved the folding fan in her hand and smiled.
“Gloat over your miserable state? No, I came to admire my masterpiece. You see, I told you long ago that in this breeding ground, you cannot trust anyone.”
Ryan looked up, his pitch-black eyes gleaming coldly in the dark night. “Including you?”
“Especially me,” Violet laughed like a venomous snake baring its fangs. “The linen fibers in the Suppression Bureau's possession were provided to Klaus by me. If I didn't lock down your death sentence, how would Professor Adrian have been in such a rush to step forward and protect you? And if he didn't protect you, how could I use the Trier family's fury to drag the old monsters of Adrian's faction completely into the abyss?”
Violet leaned closer to the iron bars, her breath sweet but her voice utterly freezing:
“Ryan, you did wonderfully. You were a perfect chess piece. Adrian will transfer you to the fourth underground level at 2:30 tonight, and the Trier family's assassins will ambush you along the way. When the time comes, you will die in the chaotic crossfire, Adrian will be charged with harboring a high-profile criminal, and my family... will achieve absolute victory.”
This was a top-secret, inescapable trap.
Violet had calculated everyone—including the Academic Committee professors and the Trier family—into this blood-soaked chessboard. And Ryan was merely the discarded piece, destined to be hacked to pieces by all sides after being squeezed dry of all value.
Violet snapped her folding fan shut, looking at Ryan as if he were already a corpse, and sighed.
“Tomorrow, they will announce that you were 'shot dead on the spot during an attempted escape while being transferred.' I'm sorry, Junior Ryan, but your extraordinary path ends here.”
Having spoken, Violet withdrew her hand and prepared to turn and leave.
“Violet.”
In the darkness, Ryan suddenly spoke. His voice was hoarse, devoid of any emotional fluctuation.
Violet's footsteps paused imperceptibly. “Yes?”
“Have you ever wondered?”
“Wondered what?”
Ryan sat deep in the shadows, still not standing up, nor did he look at her. A sliver of pale moonlight filtered through the window, illuminating half of his face. His pitch-black pupils were as still as a pool of stagnant water.
“What if one day...”
Ryan slowly closed his eyes, his voice flat and somewhat ethereal.
“...the chess piece no longer wants to play?”
“What happens to the chessboard then?”
Violet froze.
Standing outside the iron bars, she looked at the commoner youth hidden in the darkness. For some reason, a bone-chilling shiver suddenly crept up her spine without warning. It felt as though she had overlooked something fatal at that very moment.
Violet's brow furrowed slightly. She instinctively wanted to say something, but looking at the figure in the death cell who was no longer making a sound, she ultimately remained silent.
She pulled down her black veil, turned, and left the corridor.
Ryan leaned against the black stone wall, quietly watching the empty corridor outside.
He lowered his head and looked at the steel magic-suppressing shackles binding his hands.
Ryan slowly closed his eyes.
Deep within his consciousness, the magnificent, colossal lamp representing the Second Stage of the 【Lantern】 still hovered in the void, radiating a blinding and icy pure white glow.
Ryan extended an invisible mental tentacle and, without a shred of hesitation, plunged it violently into the core of the giant lamp.
Crack.
A shattering sound exploded deep in his mind. Instantly, the giant lamp was covered in countless spiderweb-like cracks, its pure golden glow collapsing and disintegrating rapidly. The violent backlash felt like a dull knife frantically twisting in his brain. Ryan's body spasmed violently but subtly, and dark red blood slowly trickled from the corner of his mouth.
The golden glow faded.
Deep within the ruins, a grey current that had been dormant at the base of his channels quietly surged upward. This current was cold and viscous. It crawled through his blood vessels, yet instead of triggering the alarm of the magic-suppressing shackles, it acted like an invisible layer of mucus, silently filling and drowning out the runic circuits inside the cuffs.
His perception declined sharply. The world, which had been exceptionally clear, began to grow blurry and grey, as if viewed through a yellowed, worn-out filter.
The guards outside the cell were still asleep under the sleep spell left by Violet, their breathing heavy and dull.
Ryan opened his eyes.
He raised his right hand. Under the nourishment of the grey mist, the fingernail of his right index finger hardened and extended rapidly, its edge sharpened like a boning knife.
He opened his mouth, biting down on the coarse linen on the inside of his collar. Then, his right hand swept down, and the sharpened fingernail pierced straight through the flesh of his left chest with a wet squelch.
The moment the nail severed the main artery beneath his heart.
Ryan's vision suddenly went pitch black.
Amidst the chaotic and intense agony, he suddenly recalled a scene from long ago, deep in the Wood. The man who looked exactly like him stood beneath a dark tree, smiling at him, his voice as light as a wisp of smoke:
“A moth does not flee.”
“A moth only dies once.”
Blood gushed out, instantly soaking his worn robe and snaking across the cold stone floor.
Ryan's eyes bulged slightly from lack of oxygen, veins popping on his forehead, but he bit down hard on the cloth collar, refusing to make a single sound. His vision rapidly darkened, and the violent pounding of his heart slowed from frantic to weak, before finally settling into absolute silence.
His body temperature plummeted, his pupils dilated, and his limbs stiffened.
Thud.
Devoid of any support, the corpse crashed heavily onto the stone floor, covered in mud and drying blood.
An unknown amount of time passed.
Inside the silent, waterlogged dungeon, the clump of dark red flesh on the chest of the long-dead corpse suddenly throbbed violently.
It was as if something was slowly breathing at the position of the heart.
Then.
A second time.
A third time.
Squelch—
The chest of the stiff corpse suddenly tore open from the inside, pulling apart to both sides!
A wet, greyish-dark arthropod limb, covered in mucus and dark blood, slowly extended from the gap between the torn ribs. The barbs on the limb trembled slightly as they gripped the cold stone floor.
Soon followed by a second, then a third.
A wet insect, about the size of a palm with four thin, gauze-like wings, squeezed its way out of the cold human shell. The shriveled human skin weathered and grew brittle rapidly in the air, resembling an empty husk drained of all moisture.
The nocturnal secret moth perched upon its former "corpse."
Its four wet, thin wings vibrated at high frequency, shaking off the blood and mucus. It cast a glance back at the torn human skin, then took flight gracefully, squeezing through the gaps in the iron bars of the cell.
On the corridor ceiling, the Suppression Bureau's high-grade mental probe radiated a faint green glow, closely monitoring the entire hallway.
When the secret moth passed directly beneath the light, the probe showed no reaction—to the runes' perception, the thing flying past was nothing more than a speck of ancient dust drifting in the wind.
The secret moth landed on the edge of a heavily rusted cast-iron drain in the corner.
Below lay the foul underground water network, filled with the stench of black mud and industrial waste. Without the slightest hesitation, it folded its four wings and slid directly down the damp, pungent pipe.
Muffled vibrations echoed from above the pipes from time to time.
It was 2:30 AM.
Explosions and angry roars filtered through the thick stone walls; the entire St. Blaise Academy was thrown into utter chaos. The transfer convoy had been ambushed, and the shrill whistles of the Suppression Bureau tore through the night sky. Yet, all of this had been left far behind.
3:00 AM.
In the black market of the Lower End, inside the abandoned basement of the "old blacksmith shop."
The dim light of an oil lamp flickered in the draft. The hidden compartment had already been opened, and the oilcloth bundle inside was held in a slender hand.
A man in a trench coat sat by the table, motionless for a long time.
His black top hat was pressed low, obscuring half of his face.
A faint rustling sound came from the vent.
A palm-sized, wet black insect dropped from the pipe, landing on the trench-coated man's shoulder. It then dissolved like melting snow into a cloud of grey mist, silently surging deep into his body through his ears and the pores of his skin.
The flame of the oil lamp flickered.
The man in the trench coat sat by the table, his body remaining stiff until, at a certain moment, his eyelids suddenly twitched.
It was like a person who had slept for an eternity finally opening their eyes.
He looked down at his hands. They were pale and unfamiliar, with a lingering numbness at his fingertips as if he had just broken from a cocoon, yet the texture of his palms felt incredibly familiar.
He raised his hand, gently touching his left chest.
There, a powerful heart beat steadily, radiating a warm body temperature.
After a long silence.
The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly, his voice as hoarse as if he hadn't spoken in ages:
“So... I can still survive.”
“Yes. Welcome back. Let's welcome a beautiful tomorrow together.”
Outside the window, faint morning light pierced through the heavy haze of the foggy city.
From the direction of St. Blaise Academy, the faint tolling of alarm bells echoed, chaotic and hurried. It seemed someone had finally discovered that the corpse in the water cell was not only dead, but had also evaporated completely in an incomprehensible manner.
Ryan listened for a moment, then withdrew his gaze.
He tucked the steamship ticket to the New World and his fake identification documents into the inner pocket of his trench coat. Standing up, he pressed down the brim of his hat, pushed open the back door of the old blacksmith shop, and silently vanished into the lingering morning mist.
Rate on N.U.
