Chapter 229: Silence And Darkness
Darkness.
That was all Akira could see in that instant when the walls closed on her.
It was the complete kind of darkness that had no gradation. Unlike what one would expect of the night, no shapes appeared before her, meaning there was no light in the room for her to see by.
Surprisingly, she didn’t feel the walls crush her in place. It was as if the last walls had disappeared.
Akira landed on her feet but stumbled forward, one hand dropping to the floor to catch herself.
She could feel wet stone beneath her palm, both most importantly, the floor was rough, uneven, and slightly damp.
A frown appeared on her face as she wondered just how water was here. From what she’d seen in the Undercity, it didn’t have any water sources. Just empty buildings and the streets that housed them.
So where was she?
She straightened slowly.
"Lukas," she called.
Her voice went out and kept going, the echo returning to her from a distance that told her the space around her was large. Very large. The sound came back from multiple directions, bouncing off surfaces she couldn’t see, overlapping with itself before fading.
Nobody answered.
"Melody? Karrakas?"
The same thing happened.
She already knew.
The building closing had separated her from the group, and wherever she’d ended up, it wasn’t a section of the Undercity that had been mapped or walked before. If it was, Karrakas would have told them of it.
Karrakas had told them what he knew of the Undercity, the documented paths, and their familiar patrol routes. This place didn’t match anything he’d told them.
Even the air felt different here. It was wet and musty, like a room that hadn’t been opened in a very long time.
After a moment of thinking, she began moving, slow and careful, each foot placed in front of the other and testing the surface before committing her weight.
The floor was uneven, the stone rising and dipping in irregular patterns that made confident movement impossible.
Then she saw it.
Light, far ahead. It was faint and distant, looking like the kind of glow that existed at the edge of visibility rather than illuminating anything around it.
She turned towards it and kept walking.
Her armor was already active, the dark plates covering her body, while [Temptation] sat in her right hand, ready for any attack. But both would not be enough here.
She reached up with her left hand and pressed the [Kairos Fillet] to her forehead.
It melded into place immediately.
Her mana pool wasn’t built to sustain it indefinitely, but this was not the moment to be careful with mana. She needed every advantage the headband could give her, and she needed it now.
She kept walking towards the light, and surprisingly, the light stayed where it was.
It didn’t get any closer or brighter. In fact, there was no way to tell the shape or source of the light.
All she could see was just the same faint glow sitting at the edge of what her eyes could reach, indifferent to the distance she was covering.
She walked for what felt like several minutes, maintaining a slow but steady pace, [Temptation] loose in her grip.
The light didn’t move, but her footsteps did.
She noticed it gradually. How the echo of each step returned from further away than it had before. The process was gradual, and she almost missed it.
But her senses, honed from her time in the Sisterhood, caught it.
She noticed the way the sound of her footsteps traveled away from her and came back later each time.
This could only mean that the space around her was growing. Or she was moving deeper into wherever she was. She couldn’t tell which.
In the darkness, her mind couldn’t help but drift to the others. Lukas, Melody, Karrakas, stuck on the other side of two buildings that had closed between them like teeth.
Were they looking for a way through to her? Had the Undercity shifted again and buried the route entirely? Were they fighting their way towards her or had the dungeon pushed them in the opposite direction?
She had no way of knowing.
She brought her focus back to the light ahead and kept walking.
Then the light went out.
One moment it was there, and the next it was gone, the darkness snapping back to complete and total in an instant, as if whatever had been producing the light had simply ceased to exist.
Akira stopped.
Her heart began hammering against her ribs as she stood absolutely still in the dark and listened.
Something scratched in the dark.
The sound was faint and irregular, coming from no fixed direction.
She turned her head slowly, trying to locate the source, but the echo of the vast space around her scattered the sound before it could give her anything useful.
It could have been close. It could have been far. And it could have been coming from the walls, the floor, or somewhere above her head.
She stood there and listened.
The scratching continued for what felt close to a minute, then faded without explanation, leaving the same complete silence it had come from.
Then the light returned.
It appeared exactly where it had been before, the same faint glow at the same apparent distance, as if it had never gone out.
Akira exhaled slowly.
She started moving again, but faster this time. Whatever had caused the light to disappear once could do it again, and she had no intention of being in the middle of this open darkness when it did.
After what felt like hours of walking, the light finally grew, becoming marginally brighter with each passing minute.
Then she got close enough to make out what it actually was.
The light came from a small hole in the stone ahead of her, pentagonal in shape, and no wider than her fist.
She covered the remaining distance at a run and dropped to one knee in front of it.
She pressed her eye to the hole and looked through.
Her eyes widened at what she saw.
