Novel Full Chapter 874: Strange man (2)
Chapter 874: Strange man (2)
“And you…” he said, the space between each word stretched just enough to unsettle.
The pause lingered. Too long.
Then—
“What the hell are you?”
Not who.
What.
The question cracked like a whip through the suspended quiet.
Lucavion didn’t react at first.
His weight shifted just slightly on his heels, a motion more reflex than posture. The others felt it—Elayne’s eyes narrowed, Caeden’s brow furrowed. Mireilla, for once, said nothing. Even Toven didn’t try to fill the silence.
Lucavion’s voice came low, calm, nearly amused.
“Does that line work on all your guests?”
The man’s smile didn’t widen. It deepened. Like a fissure splitting along his cheekbones—something not entirely meant for faces.
“No,” he said softly.
The man didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe.
Just stared.
One eye cloudy, the other glinting too sharply for this world.
His head tilted, birdlike, as if Lucavion were a crack in glass he was trying to read through.
“No,” he said again—softer this time, the word sinking like a stone into water. “Not a guest. Not even a trespasser.”
He stepped forward once. Barely a shift. The others tensed—but Lucavion didn’t move.
“Just what the hell are you?”
Lucavion’s lips tugged into a smirk, slow and crooked. His voice, when it came, carried no urgency.
“I think you’re confusing curiosity with obsession. Are you testing me? Or is this supposed to mean something?”
The man’s head jerked, a twitch more than a nod.
“No. Not a test.”
A long silence.
Then—
“Your energy…” His voice frayed slightly at the edge, like paper left too long in flame. “What is that imprint?”
Lucavion’s brow arched. “’Imprint’?”
The air around them tightened.
The man’s shape shimmered—just once, then again, like a ripple on a surface that shouldn’t bend.
Something was wrong.
His silhouette flickered. His arms jittered a half-second out of sync with his voice, like reality itself was failing to anchor him. His robes wavered, first mothwing, then shadow-thread, then something not cloth at all.
“You carry something…” the man rasped, one foot shuffling forward, even as his figure blurred. “Something wrong—old—”
The orbs above dimmed.
Elayne’s hand slipped toward her fan. Caeden had already shifted his stance. But Lucavion simply watched.
A low hum buzzed through the air.
“Abyss…” the man whispered, voice crumbling as the edges of his mouth began to distort. “Why… do you have the… imprint of the Abyss…?”
The last word cracked—glitched—like a record snapped in the middle of its note.
Lucavion’s smirk faded a fraction.
“…Abyss?” he repeated quietly. “You’ve got the wrong script, old man.”
But the man didn’t hear him.
Or if he did, he no longer cared.
His arm lifted—shaking—as if reaching through mist, fingers twitching toward Lucavion’s chest. Mana gathered at the tips, uneven and desperate, flickering in wild, uncontrolled arcs.
And then—
static
A sharp distortion split the space between them. His hand passed through nothing. The mana sizzled against the air, then collapsed into sparks that blinked out before they hit the ground.
The figure staggered.
His features warped now, face buckling inward, the seams of his form breaking apart like he was a projection stretched too thin.
“Can’t…” he croaked. “Not… stable…”
His voice fractured. Words came half-formed, half-lost.
“—not meant to—see—this deep—”
Lucavion took one step forward, eyes narrowing.
“What did you see?”
The man’s eye snapped toward him—what was left of it.
“You…” The syllables trembled like they were being yanked from another plane.
“You are… from…”
The ground shivered.
And then—
He was gone.
No scream. No flash. Just absence.
As if he’d been erased mid-breath.
The carriage behind them groaned. The lights returned—dimmer than before.
Silence.
Then—
“…Right,” Mireilla muttered. “So that’s normal.”
Toven let out a slow breath. “Okay. Nope. Nope. I vote we don’t talk about any of this. Ever.”
Caeden was the first to break the silence.
“Lucavion,” he said, low and steady, “you alright?”
Lucavion didn’t answer immediately. He let the question hang, then tilted his head back slightly and exhaled a short breath through his nose—half sigh, half laugh.
“Please,” he muttered with a crooked grin, “I’ve seen things scarier than him before I turned fifteen. That?” He flicked a hand toward the space where the man had vanished. “That was barely a medium-sized crisis.”
Elayne raised a single brow. “And you’ve never met him?”
Lucavion looked at her.
Flat. Calm.
“No.”
Toven narrowed his eyes. “You sure? Because the way he looked at you…”
“I’m sure,” Lucavion said. “Never seen his uneven face or mismatched shoes in my life.”
“Hmm…” Mireilla’s voice was suspiciously light. “Really?”
Lucavion didn’t smirk this time. His gaze sharpened just slightly.
“I don’t lie,” he said simply.
A beat passed.
That, oddly, settled the matter more than any denial could have. The way he said it—without defensiveness, without embellishment—left no room to prod.
Still, the silence that followed wasn’t empty.
They were all thinking the same thing. That word.
Abyss.
Toven crossed his arms. “So. Uh. That thing he said. About… the imprint. About the Abyss.” He gestured vaguely. “You got any… clue what that was about?”
Lucavion rolled his shoulders with the ease of someone too practiced at not caring.
“I shrug professionally,” he said. “So…”
He shrugged.
Toven blinked. “That’s it?”
“Would you rather I faint and cry for help?”
“Would be something.”
Lucavion gave a faint grin. “Sorry. You’ll have to settle for shrugs and mystery.”
Caeden gave him a long look, but didn’t press. Elayne, though quiet, kept watching him—not for weakness, but for cracks. There were none. At least not visible ones.
Mireilla shook her head and turned toward the door. “Right. Well. If another blurry prophet starts screaming about cosmic horrors, I call dibs on punching him first.”
Toven followed with a grumble. “If my room starts whispering, I’m sleeping outside.”
Elayne was the last to move, but her eyes lingered on Lucavion for just a second longer.
He met her stare without blinking.
And then—without a word—they stepped through the arch together.
Contonue as after they get out, they will partially view this epeirenc as stange adn detached from reality yet at the same time they will somehow see the truth in the man’s claims. Show them partially. Tehn they will soemhow start to believe that encoutner more.
The corridor beyond the arch shimmered like liquid glass before solidifying under their steps. At first, the floor felt normal—smooth stone, faintly warm from mana—but as they moved deeper, the architecture bent in ways the eye couldn’t quite follow.
A hallway that should’ve been straight bowed subtly outward, stretching wide, then narrowing again as if the building were breathing. Stained glass windows lined the walls, but the light they cast didn’t match the colors above. One shone lavender but painted the floor in crimson. Another showed a saint with outstretched wings, but the shadow it left was a horned figure crouching low.
Mireilla walked with her arms loosely crossed, eyes scanning the shifting structure around them. “This place is… weird.”
“No,” Caeden murmured, trailing a hand along the wall. “It’s layered.”
Elayne glanced back at the archway. “Did anyone else feel like we weren’t… entirely there? When that man was speaking?”
Toven rubbed the back of his neck. “Like a dream that someone else had and you just accidentally fell into.”
They turned the last corner, and just like that—
Normalcy.
The world snapped into place with unsettling ease. No more shimmering stone, no more bent light or whispering silence. The hallway straightened, its arches clean and symmetrical. The stained glass stilled—just colored panels now, mundane and unmoving.
Ahead, the dormitory courtyard came into full view.