Chapter 189: The Chains

I groaned as consciousness slowly returned. My head throbbed, and for a few seconds, I couldn’t remember where I was. I opened my eyes and stared into darkness.

I tried to move my arms.

They didn’t budge.

My wrists were chained to the arms of a wooden chair. The chains were old and rusty, and they dug into my skin whenever I pulled against them. I shifted in the chair and immediately felt something around my neck.

A device?

I reached for it with my fingers and felt the cold metal casing wrapped tightly around my neck. I recognized it almost immediately. It was the same kind of device the guards had used on me when I was punished and sent into the Circle.

A spell suppression device... I tried to cast Shadow Leap but just like I thought, nothing happened. I tried again, focusing on the skill and forcing the system to respond, but there was no activation. The device was blocking it.

"Ah..." I groaned, rubbing my head against the back of the chair. "Fuck... where... ah..."

My vision gradually adjusted to the darkness.

I was in a small, filthy room. The walls were made of old stone and covered in grime, with a few dark stains of dried blood scattered across them. A wooden door stood directly in front of me, its surface scratched and worn from years of use. There wasn’t much furniture besides the chair I was sitting on and a small wooden table pushed against one of the walls.

The air smelled damp.

I looked down at the chains again and pulled against them.

"Ah... the chains..." I muttered. "Ugh..."

They rattled against the chair but didn’t give even a little.

I quickly opened my system map. The screen appeared in front of me, but instead of showing any familiar landmarks, it displayed only the inside of the room. There was no discovered location, no nearby road and no indication of where I was.

I had probably been unconscious during the entire journey here, so I hadn’t discovered anything on the way. As far as the system was concerned, this place was still completely unknown.

Great.

I was in the middle of nowhere, chained to a chair with a spell-suppressing device around my neck, and I had absolutely no idea where nowhere even was.

"Huh?"

The wooden door opened.

I looked up.

A figure stood in the doorway, their features hidden by the darkness. They slowly exhaled, stepped into the room and closed the door behind them.

"Who are you?" I asked, pulling against the chains again. "Where am I?"

The figure walked closer. As she entered the faint light coming from a small lantern on the wall, I recognized her. It was the same student I’d been chasing through the academy. Except she wasn’t dressed like a student anymore.

She wore a dark robe that reached nearly to the floor, with loose sleeves covering most of her arms. Black makeup surrounded her eyes, extending outward in rough, smudged lines that made her already pale face look even more unsettling. The makeup had been deliberately applied rather than simply messy, almost like some kind of ritualistic design.

She looked down at me.

"Ambly-blessed," she said. "Just what I needed."

"Who are you?"

"Oh, excuse me. The illusion thing. I forgot."

"What?"

She snapped her fingers.

A soft glow spread across her face, covering her features like a thin veil. Her appearance blurred for a moment before the glow faded away.

The student I’d been chasing was gone.

In her place stood a woman who looked to be somewhere in her mid-twenties. She still wore the black makeup around her eyes, but now I could see that one of her eyes was covered by an eyepatch. Her skin was unnaturally pale, and dark circles surrounded her remaining eye, giving her the exhausted appearance of someone who hadn’t slept properly in weeks.

She gave me a small bow. "Discu’s the name. Nice to meet you, Aceston Walker."

"Who are you?" I asked. "Why did you kidnap me?"

"Because, uh... I kinda need you?" she replied with a smile.

I stared at her. "You’re the..."

She raised an eyebrow.

"You’re the one who threw Pix into the Circle," I continued. "You searched for something in Pix’s room, didn’t you?"

"Yes. How did you know that?" Her expression brightened with genuine curiosity. "Wow."

"What’s your pla..."

"Chaos."

She answered so quickly that I barely got the question out.

Discu leaned forward until her face was only inches from mine, placing both hands against the arms of my chair and trapping my hands beneath them.

"A new start," she said, smiling. "Fresh. Like a blank piece of paper."

"What?"

Then I heard it again, the same voices I’d been hearing before. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they were much louder now, loud enough that the sound seemed to press against my skull. Pain shot through my head, and I gritted my teeth while waiting for it to pass.

"She is calling to you," Discu said. "I can tell."

"What?"

"You’ve probably been hearing Her calling for you. You awakened her simply by being here. That’s how I know. I could feel it in my bones."

"Shit..."

The voices gradually faded, and I released a breath of relief. Discu straightened and stepped away from me, reaching beneath her robe and pulling out a small blade. It was a dagger, technically, although it was barely longer than a butter knife and had a narrow, ritualistic shape rather than one designed for combat.

She leaned toward me and made a shallow cut across my palm.

Blood immediately welled from the wound and ran across the blade. The moment it touched the metal, the dagger absorbed it and began glowing with a sickly purple light.

Discu’s smile widened.

"Yes... a real Ambly-blessed," she said. "You shall awaken her."

"Awaken who?"

"Chaos."

"Ugh..."

The voices returned before I could say anything else.

This time they were overwhelming. Millions of voices seemed to speak simultaneously, all of them overlapping into one incomprehensible roar. I couldn’t separate a single word from the others. The sound drilled into my skull and made the headache behind my eyes intensify until I could barely keep them open.

"Chaos," Discu whispered, almost moaning the name. "Oh, gods. Look at her if you want to lose yourself."

"Chaos?" I asked, struggling to focus. "What the... what?"

The door opened.

A woman dressed in a black robe and wearing a dark mask entered the room. After taking a few steps, she dropped to one knee and held out a small wooden chest with both hands.

Discu turned toward her and took the chest.

She opened it and reached inside, carefully removing a small black orb nestled inside crimson velvet. The object was about the size of a clenched fist, perfectly smooth and so dark that it seemed to absorb the light around it.

Discu placed the orb on her palm. Then she pressed the ritual dagger against its surface. The orb gave off a faint pulse of light.

"Yes..." Discu whispered. "Chaos."

She pressed the blade against it again.

"Chaos, Chaos, Chaos!"

A thin crack appeared along the dagger.

The crack spread across the entire blade before the weapon suddenly broke apart. Pieces of metal fell from Discu’s hand and clattered against the floor.

At the same time, the orb began to glow.

The faint light quickly intensified, changing from a dim crimson shimmer into a deep red radiance that flooded the room. The walls, floor and ceiling were painted in the same bloody color, and I instinctively turned my head away because the brightness was painful to look at.

Then I felt the air change.

A heavy pressure pushed against my body, as if the atmosphere itself had suddenly become several times heavier. The wooden floor beneath my chair began vibrating, and the chains around my wrists rattled violently against the chair.

The vibration quickly became a violent shaking.

My entire chair began sliding across the floor. "Whoa!"

The chair tipped sideways. I hit the ground with it, my shoulder and the side of my head slamming against the cold stone floor.

"Ugh!"

The orb continued pulsing.

Each pulse sent a visible wave of crimson energy through the room. Dust lifted from the floor whenever one passed, while loose pieces of wood and stone bounced across the ground. The pressure became so strong that the woman who had brought the chest was forced backward. She stumbled toward the doorway, tried to catch herself against the wall and failed, hitting the corridor floor headfirst.

The next blast hit the room like a giant invisible hammer. I could actually see the air distort around it for a split second, forming a translucent wave that swept across the floor and slammed directly into my chair. The force ripped the chair off the ground and sent it flying backward. It crashed into the wall with enough force to shatter the wooden frame, and the chair broke apart beneath me as I was thrown onto the floor.