Chapter 266: An Old Horror Film Setting…?

“Maybe I did.”

That earned a laugh from her, low and warm against my neck.

Her teeth grazed my collarbone, just a hint of pressure, and my hands tightened on her hips. The garden’s warmth wrapped around us like a blanket, soft and insistent, and for a moment I forgot entirely where we were.

Then the pavilion chimed.

Not loudly. Not urgently. Just a single, clear note, like a bell being struck once and left to ring. The sound hung in the air between us, delicate and insistent, and Evelina pulled back just enough to look at me.

“Hm…?”

[Rest chamber closing, please complete rest and head to the next chamber]

“Looks like we’ll have to continue this another time.” Evelina sighed as she gently, though reluctantly, pushed herself away from me and stepped down from the table. “The timing really couldn’t have been worse…”

“Then let’s clear this place as quickly as we can.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

The pavilion’s chime faded, and the garden’s warmth began to cool. Not abruptly, more like the sun slowly slipping behind a cloud, the golden light shifting to something paler, more neutral. A gentle reminder that our rest was over.

I bent down to pick up my boots, lacing them quickly while Evelina did the same with hers. She’d found them somewhere near the edge of the pavilion, somewhere she definitely didn’t originally place them, tucked beneath the chair she’d been sitting in, like the garden had set them aside for her.

“This place is strange,” she said, standing and testing her weight on her now-booted feet. “It gives us a break, heals us, provides refreshments…”

She glanced at the table where the tea and cakes had vanished.

“And then kicks us out.”

“At least it was useful.”

“It would be more useful if it didn’t interrupt us.”

The stone path beyond the pavilion had changed while we were… occupied. What had been a meandering walkway through flower beds now stretched straight and narrow, cutting directly toward a new structure at the garden’s edge. A tower, maybe, or a spire, its top disappeared into the painted sky, and its base was shrouded in shadow.

“This isn’t how we came in,” Evelina observed.

“No. The garden’s shifting us forward.”

“And if we’d tried to go back?”

I shrugged. “Probably wouldn’t let us.”

We started down the path together, our boots crunching softly on the gravel. The flowers on either side had lost some of their vibrancy, their colors muted now, their petals curling at the edges. Even the grass beneath our feet felt less lush, more ordinary.

The healing warmth faded with every step.

“Why didn’t you change your clothes with magic?”

“I don’t have an unlimited supply, Cael. Both clothes and magic, besides… It’ll likely get ruined again the moment we enter that thing. No point in changing now.”

“I like how you think.”

“You just like seeing me like this.”

***

We reached the base of the tower, all the warm colors from before now fully muted, as if the two of us were trapped in a black-and-white film. The tower itself looked rustic and dramatic, more like a backdrop than anything resembling a practical structure.

There wasn’t even an entrance.

“This looks like a lighthouse—just thinner and without the light. Actually, I think it’s better to call it a mass of stone than anything else, really.”

Evelina placed one hand on her hip, inspecting the tower’s white stone and the blackened sky above us, seemingly unbothered by the fact that all color in the world had faded.

“Let me brute-force it.”

I placed a palm against the tower’s stone.

“Careful it doesn’t fall toward us.”

“You already know I won’t do anything that would cause you harm.”

[Cursed Fireball]

BOOM!

The stone shattered, and without warning—without anything to signal the change—the tower and everything behind it somehow turned into a flat plane, like a cartoon. It was as if what we had been looking at the whole time had only been a painting.

And even stranger, the huge hole I had made led into a bizarre throne room, its colors still just as muted as before.

“Whoever made this place sure loves illusion magic,” she said.

“It’s stylistic. I kind of like it better than the Emperor’s tomb.”

“I have to agree with you. At least the trials are interesting, almost too interesting.”

Evelina said, stepping through the shattered opening. Her boots crunched on fragments of painted stone, the fake debris scattering across a floor that looked like polished obsidian.

“It almost worries me. Almost”

The throne room stretched before us, long and narrow, with pillars lining both sides that reached up into the darkness. At the far end, maybe a hundred feet away, a throne sat empty, carved from the same white stone as the tower, but shot through with veins of gold that caught the nonexistent light.

The only other color present in the place at all.

Not only that, but they were also no windows, no torches, no visible source of illumination at all.

And yet we could see everything perfectly.

“Muted colors,” I muttered, scanning the room. “No shadows either.”

Evelina glanced down at her feet. “You’re right. We’re not casting any.”

“Keep your guard up,” I said.

“Obviously.”

We walked toward the throne, our footsteps echoing too loudly in the silence. The pillars on either side were carved with scenes I couldn’t quite make out, figures in poses of battle or worship, their faces deliberately blank, their hands raised toward something that had been erased from the stone.

The throne grew closer.

And that’s when I noticed the second throne.

Smaller. Hidden in the shadow that wasn’t an actual shadow, more like a painting of a shadow, tucked into an alcove behind the main seat. This one wasn’t white stone or gold-veined marble. It was black, smooth, almost liquid-looking, and it seemed to pulse very faintly with every beat of my heart.

“There are two,” Evelina said quietly.

“There were always two,” a voice answered from behind.

We both spun, saw nothing, and looked back

A woman sat in the main throne now, though neither of us had seen her arrive. She was young with porcelain skin and hair the color of ash. Her eyes were the same gold as the veins in the white throne, and they held no warmth at all.

“Where are you two looking at? I’m right here…”

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