The door creaked open just slightly, no footsteps sounded, and no breath was wasted.

The clone moved silently across the darkened room, the silver vial still clutched in her fingers like something sacred. The other girls lay curled in their own corners — a few murmurs, a faint twitch of a tail, the rise and fall of steady sleep.

But Kumiko slept alone, her pale hair pooled across the pillow, brows faintly furrowed even now. Her breathing was soft… but uneven.

The clone knelt beside the bed.

She opened the vial without ceremony, then reached out and gently tilted the main body’s chin with two fingers. Her touch was perfect — exact — like it always was.

Kumiko swallowed instinctively. Even half-asleep, her body trusted her own hands.

The clone gave her the last of the potion, drop by drop.

When it was done, she sat still beside the bed for a long moment.

She looked down at Kumiko — the real one. The one dreaming behind her walls, holding her fears tight inside.

Her hand brushed back a strand of hair. Her fingers trembled, just slightly.

“I wasn’t supposed to have these feelings…”

She whispered, even though no one could hear. “I wasn’t made to care.”

Her voice caught, just once.

“But we do. All of us. Every shard, every thought she splits into the world… every one of us loves him.”

She looked toward the window.

“We didn’t mean to. In the beginning, it was just duty. Curiosity. Control. But now… we all just want to see him smile.”

The room was growing colder.

Her edges began to shimmer.

She placed the empty vial down gently beside the pillow, then leaned forward one last time, pressing her forehead lightly against the real Kumiko’s.

“You’ll tell him… one day,” she murmured. “Just make sure it’s from you.”

Her hands faded first.

Then her arms.

Then the rest.

And by the time the wind stirred the curtain beside the bed, the clone was gone.

—

The main hall doors groaned open just as the first edge of sunlight peeled over the horizon.

Nikolai stepped into the crisp air without a coat as Leona hurriedly grabbed one and wrapped it around his shoulders.

The wind was sharp, but clean and comfortably fresh.

The kind that burned your lungs with the sensation of when you eat a strong mint.

Behind him, the estate shimmered in the morning sun and silence.

The roof cast long shadows across the gardens and gravel paths. The stone under Nikolai’s feet still held the chill of night. Leona followed at a pace behind. She didn’t ask where they were going. She didn’t need to.

They crossed the outer terrace and moved beyond the paved walk, toward the edge of the long ridge that looked east. Beyond the grounds, a vast drop rolled into a valley blanketed in low fog. And behind them, tall, immovable — the mountain stood like a frozen sentinel, its peak untouched by sun or storm.

The light was just beginning to rise behind the mansion now, long golden slivers crawling across the grass.

He didn’t speak.

Neither did Leona.

A flock of birds broke out from a nearby grove, slicing through the pale sky, their cries sharp against the silence.

Nikolai watched them go.

He stopped.

“Leona… it’s going to become dangerous right?”

Then, finally:

“Send word to Ivan, my father,” he said. “Private. Make sure it only reaches him.”

Leona nodded. “About the Nosferatu, My Lord?”

“No,” Nikolai said. “About the alliances beneath the surface. I want to know who’s stayed silent too long. I want to know who’s pretending.”

Leona’s lips curled into the ghost of a smile.

The tail of the maid fluffed up as her lips curled into a mischievous smirk, her eyes narrowed into a grim yet beautiful face. “Are we going on a hunt, My Lord?”

“I’ll leave that to your imagination.”

—

He didn’t say goodbye.

After the overlook and his final command, Nikolai walked straight down to the old vehicle shed tucked beneath the east wing. One of the older black cars waited, clean, fuelled, and armoured. No driver. He didn’t need one.

He took the wheel himself.

‘It reminds me of my M9… but with armour and a cool digital front panel.’

He grabbed the keys from the half-sleeping guard while shaking his head and opened the doors with a click. The low hiss as the doors opened vertically like an angel’s wings before slipping inside, and enjoying the cool, crisp leather seats.

“Damn… this must be another car that dad and grandfather prepared for me.”

A perfectly adjusted seat, and his long legs bent slightly. He gripped the thick steering wheel, its grooves almost chiselled to suit the thickness of his fingers.

Vroom!

“Wow!”

Unlike his other cars, this wasn’t a hybrid… it was an old fuel-run model, the hum of the engine howling through the sealed cave. Excitement and delight filled Nikolai as he stepped on the accelerator and shot towards the secondary exit.

The engine howled.

Nikolai’s grin widened as the reinforced vehicle blasted through the side road tunnels, deep under the edge of the city. The old veins beneath the S-Kingdom still held secret paths, roads paved with silence and forgotten designs.

The digital HUD shimmered across the glass. Heat-signs minimal. Magical scans… blank.

He took a hard corner, tires screeching slightly on the curve. He didn’t slow down.

He knew where he was going.

A detour through a sealed cargo zone brought him to a rusted overpass, then a hidden tunnel — the digital lock cracked open for him without a code.

The system still remembered Volkov’s blood.

Minutes later, he parked inside a shadowed chamber beneath what looked like an abandoned storage facility. Nothing special.

Just broken crates. Dust. A single concrete staircase at the back.

He stepped out of the car and slammed the door with a clean click. The engine cut like it had never existed.

No one spoke.

No one waited.

He approached the staircase and placed one palm against the rust-stained wall.

The illusion peeled away.

The dust dissolved like smoke.

And the cracked, concrete space was gone.

In its place: stone arches. Dark walls covered in old sigils pulsing faint blue. The air turned thick, not from heat or cold, but weight. Pressure. History.

A massive arena loomed ahead, round and buried in silence. No seats. No audience.

This wasn’t a public place.

A huge blue sphere hovered in the centre of the plaza, hundreds of ghostly images walking around… this was the Nexus. Each patriarch had access to a special entrance only for their clan, and that was how they arrived without danger.

“I wish I had brought Selene or Risa…” He remembered the dates with the pair before striding towards the cool, blue orb that floated in the air.

‘Though the arena might be fun… I should enter the tower, any strength is beneficial.’

The cold portal accepted him with open arms the moment his hands pushed inside, rotating in the darkness, Nikolai felt at ease. ‘This is nostalgic now…’ Too used to the constant fighting and conflict between his clan and others, coming here took Nikolai back… back to who he was a few months ago, a year ago.

When he came here with Selene the first time…

As if reading his memories, he found himself in the Djinn world. The scent of curry, spices and delicious exotic dishes sizzling on the roadside. Loud voices and words that he couldn’t quite understand, people using their soul force to play with trinkets and make a living wage.

‘This is where I met the madame.’

Nikolai didn’t rush and spent the morning tracing the stalls and places he visited with Selene, her face coming to mind as he finally reached the tower.

“I’ve not been here seriously for a while…”

His eyes widened as he remembered something interesting, his lips curling into a smile.

“The girls and Sarah seem to have been almost living here.”

Thanks to pushing himself in the past few months, he reached the 50th floor, but after that, he couldn’t bring the others anymore.

A sudden change happened, and the ghouls guarding the door to the destroyed tower. The monsters became more static, but dangerous and violent, and a warning echoed the moment he stepped inside.

A musky scent of copper blood and rusted weapons filled his nose. “This still happens…”

[Danger of Death – Enter at great Peril]

The blue glowing screen was like a digital sign for a restaurant or bar in the slum district, but the neon lights carried a subtle sense of beauty.

The sign flickered once.

Then again.

Like it was waiting for his permission.

Nikolai stepped forward.

The moment his foot crossed the boundary, the world twisted.

No flash.

No sound.

Just a sickening weightless pull, like something had yanked his soul sideways through a narrow slit.

And then—silence.

He stood in a corridor made of darkened stone and steel. The ceiling arched overhead, so high it vanished into shadow. Soft blue flames lined the walls, but they gave off no heat.

His boots echoed with each step.

The air tasted wrong. Metallic. Old blood and ash.

He reached for his belt, fingers brushing the hilt of the short-forged weapon the Madame once gifted him.

“Still sharp,” he muttered.

A low hum filled the air.

Then a voice.

But not a speaker. Not magic.

His own voice.

Whispered back at him from the dark:

“How many will you bury to become what you desire?”

He froze.

The light behind him vanished.

Only forward remained.

A new sign appeared—burned into the air ahead of him.

[Trial of the Mirrored Soul]

— You may not exit until you have defeated your reflection. —

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep