Chapter 55: Run
The Faceless nearest to the clearing reacted before anyone else did. As though answering an order that had never been spoken, they stepped aside in perfect synchronization, their movements so precise that they resembled reflections rather than living creatures. A narrow corridor opened through their ranks, stretching into the darkness between the ancient trees.
Silence settled over the battlefield.
Even the wind seemed reluctant to cross the path that had just been created.
From within that corridor...ِa figure slowly revealed itself.
Malrik felt his fingers tighten around the Crimson Gale Spear.
The creature was enormous, standing close to four meters tall, but its size wasn’t what made it terrifying. If anything, it looked impossibly light, its elongated frame lacking the massive musculature one would expect from such a monster.
Yet every step carried an indescribable weight.
It wasn’t the weight of its body.
It was the weight of its presence.
The surrounding Faceless instinctively lowered their heads as it passed between them, not out of discipline, but reverence. They behaved less like soldiers welcoming a commander and more like lesser creatures standing before something that existed on an entirely different plane.
Its body resembled polished obsidian.
Not merely black, It was the kind of darkness that devoured light.
Four slender arms hung naturally at its sides.
Each ended in unnaturally long fingers, the claws tapering into razor-thin points that gleamed whenever the light briefly caught their edges. Despite their lethal appearance, the hands remained relaxed, almost elegant, swaying gently with each measured step.
The arms extended farther than they should.
Its neck rose with unnatural grace, carrying a head that possessed no face at all.
Instead...Three flawless black masks drifted around it in slow, silent orbits.
Each moved independently.
One lingered toward Malrik.
Another remained fixed on Lily.
The last watched the Spider Queen.
None possessed eyes.
None possessed a mouth.
Yet Malrik couldn’t shake the sensation that every heartbeat, every breath, every twitch of mana within his body was being examined with impossible precision.
It wasn’t merely observing them.
It was measuring them.
Judging them.
As if deciding whether they were worthy of becoming part of something... greater.
Across the clearing, the Spider Queen subtly shifted her footing, every one of her legs planting more firmly against the earth.
Neither of them had ever reacted like this before.
Malrik instinctively glanced toward Lily.
She hadn’t taken her eyes off the creature since it appeared.
The playful smile that so often accompanied her confidence was gone, replaced by an expression he had never seen before.
She wasn’t afraid.
Lily wasn’t the type to fear anyone.
But she was paying attention. The kind of attention reserved for an opponent capable of killing her if she made even the smallest mistake.
The creature finally came to a halt. A dozen meters separated the two sides.
Neither moved.
The forest itself seemed to hold its breath.
For a single heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the creature’s obsidian skin began to ripple with an eerie grace, as though its flesh had forgotten it was ever meant to remain solid. Waves of liquid darkness spread across its towering frame, swallowing every trace of its original form as muscles, bones, and armor dissolved into a silent abyss.
Even the three black masks that had floated around its head since its arrival slowly drifted inward, disappearing beneath the living darkness one after another until nothing remained of the monster but a towering silhouette of shifting black.
The darkness did not explode or surge. Instead, it folded inward upon itself. Gradually, smooth pale skin emerged from beneath the black mass, followed by graceful shoulders and long, slender arms whose elegant proportions felt unnervingly familiar.
Crimson hair spilled over that flawless figure like flowing silk, and a pair of beautifully curved horns slowly pushed through the scarlet strands, completing a face that Malrik recognized the instant it appeared.
His breathing faltered.
"...Lilith?"
It had stolen her face.
At first glance, it looked exactly like Lily.
The flowing crimson hair, the elegantly curved horns, and the leathery wings folded behind its back had all been recreated with frightening precision. Had Malrik not witnessed the transformation with his own eyes, he might have believed the real Lily was standing before him.
But the illusion lasted only a heartbeat.
The resemblance was only skin deep.
Lily’s beauty had always been alive, her every smile laced with arrogance, confidence, and cruel amusement. This creature possessed none of that. Its flawless face was utterly devoid of expression, while its crimson eyes were nothing more than empty voids, staring back at the world with absolute indifference.
In that moment, the imitation became far more disturbing than the original.
Then the rest of its body came into view.
Eight obsidian spider legs unfolded beneath the humanoid torso, their razor-sharp tips sinking silently into the earth. Dark chitin fused seamlessly with Lily’s stolen upper body, creating a grotesque fusion that looked impossibly natural.
Unlike the Spider Queen’s elegant movements, every motion of this creature was cold, precise, and purely predatory.
Lily’s expression hardened.
"...I was hoping I was wrong."
"What is it?" Malrik asked.
"That isn’t an ordinary Faceless anymore."
Her gaze never left the creature.
"Its progression has gone far beyond that of an ordinary Faceless. One more step... and it’ll reach the Fallen Rank."
Malrik’s heartbeat skipped.
A Fallen Rank...an existence capable of contending with Ascended humans.
The Spider Queen lowered her body, emerald runes spreading across her obsidian shell, while Fenrir’s fur bristled as a deep growl rumbled continuously from his chest.
Without taking her eyes off the creature, Lily spoke.
"Master.....Get ready to run."
He frowned.
"Run?"
"If it only copied our appearances...We could win."
"But if it has begun copying our abilities..."
She didn’t finish.
She didn’t need to.
At that exact moment, one of the creature’s four arms swept calmly through the air.
The ground answered.
A violent tremor tore through the clearing before the earth burst apart. Five enormous black flowers erupted from the shattered soil, their twisted petals slowly unfolding as clouds of dark spores spread into the air.
Malrik recognized them instantly.
"The Queen’s Flowers..."
"But weaker," Lily said immediately. "An incomplete imitation... yet still more than enough to kill you."
Her wings snapped open.
"Run!"
Malrik was already swinging up onto Fenrir’s back, the whole host breaking into a full run the instant his weight settled.
The flowers needed time to bloom — several seconds at least — and those seconds were the only thing standing between them and whatever came next.
They used every one of them.
The flowers detonated behind them right on schedule, black spores rolling outward, swallowing the clearing whole in a haze thick enough to erase everything they’d left behind.
For a moment, it looked like the trick had worked.
Then the creature was simply there — not emerging from the cloud, not tracking through it, just present, closing on them from an angle none of them had been watching at all.
The flowers...they were never the real attack.
Malrik’s eyes widened.
"We were fooled..."
The explosion had been nothing more than a distraction. The flowers had stolen their attention, while the fog concealed the creature’s true approach.
"This..." His voice tightened. "...this is the real attack!"
Realization came too late.
The hybrid lunged, its obsidian claws—identical to the Spider Queen’s—ripping through the air as they closed in on Malrik’s throat before he could even raise his spear.
Then, a crimson blur flashed between them.
Lilith.
She intercepted the strike at the very last instant, forcing the claws away from his throat.
The killing blow was diverted, carving only a shallow line across his shoulder as the impact hurled her several meters across the battlefield.
Malrik barely escaped death, but instead of relief, a chilling sense of unease settled over him. Something wasn’t right.
He instinctively turned toward the hybrid creature.
The creature should have pressed the attack. Instead, it remained perfectly still, as though the wound across Malrik’s shoulder no longer held any importance. Its attention had never been on the strike itself.
It had been on him.
On his eyes.
The instant their gazes met, an icy sensation pierced the depths of his mind.
Malrik’s expression changed.
"...No."
The world dissolved.
"...."
When Malrik opened his eyes again, the battlefield had vanished without a trace. He found himself standing inside a cramped apartment whose damp walls were stained with mold, while rainwater dripped steadily through a crack in the ceiling into a rusted bucket in the corner.
The stale smell of moisture, dust, and cheap food filled the room, so familiar that it made his heart skip a beat.
His breathing gradually became heavier as his gaze swept across every corner of the apartment. Nothing was out of place. Every crack in the wall, every piece of worn furniture, every discarded bottle remained exactly as he remembered them. It hadn’t changed.
It was his old apartment.
Almost instinctively, he lowered his head.
The elegant clothes of House Vesperion were gone, replaced by a faded gray hoodie hanging loosely over a frail body. His hands trembled as he slowly raised them before his eyes. The skin was rough and scarred, the fingers calloused from years of hardship.
He knew those hands.
He had spent years staring at them.
"...Leon."
His old body and his heart nearly stopped.
"...No"