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418 lines
7.7 KiB
Markdown
418 lines
7.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Chapter 309: A Horrifying Scene"
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slug: "ch-309"
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novel: "Dimensional Keeper: All My Skills Are at Level 100"
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number: 309
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views: 0
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likes: 0
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wordCount: 1246
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createdAt: "2026-04-13"
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---
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"My leg? What's wrong with my leg?"
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The red-haired youth's voice trembled as he jerked his head down.
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He hadn't felt anything.
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Not a sting. Not a cut.
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Just—silence.
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Then he saw it.
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And something inside him snapped.
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His legs—his flesh—had already rotted away.
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The skin was gone.
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The muscle was gone.
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All that remained were wet, blood-slick bones standing where his legs used to be.
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And still—his body hadn't caught up.
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His mind was frozen.
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Stuck between panic and denial.
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The blood and pus that oozed from his ruined limbs—
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sank into the ground silently.
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The dark-gray stone of the Mourning Depths
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drank the fluid like thirsting soil.
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And then—
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it changed.
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Beneath him, the ground turned a deep, hellish crimson.
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As if the blood itself awakened something buried beneath.
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"AhhhhhhHH!"
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He screamed.
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This time, it was human.
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A sound of someone who just realized they weren't dying—they were being unmade.
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He fell backwards, collapsing to the stone floor in a frantic sprawl.
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And as soon as his hands touched the ground—
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They began to rot.
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Instantly.
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Skin sloughing off like wet cloth.
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Flesh liquefying, sliding off bone like hot wax.
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His fingers dissolved.
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His wrists followed.
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Then the blood started bubbling.
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Dark. Thick. Sickly sweet in its stench.
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"No… no… no…"
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He gasped and gurgled.
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Hands clawing at air, eyes wide and unblinking, as chunks of his body dropped off with every motion.
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He tried to crawl away.
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But with every inch, he left behind bloody trails of half-melted muscle and shredded organs.
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His thighs turned to pulp.
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His waist slumped, barely held together by torn sinew.
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And yet—he was still alive.
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Still aware.
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The smell was unbearable.
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It wasn't just death—
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it was corruption made manifest.
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"SAVE ME! SAVE ME!!"
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Finally, he remembered.
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Old Man Grey.
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The guide. The only one who might know something—anything.
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He reached out a rotting, skeletal hand, palm out, shaking with terror, dripping blood and strings of meat.
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"Please! Help me!!"
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But Old Man Grey—stepped back.
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Twice.
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Eyes wide.
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Face pale.
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Voice hoarse.
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"No one approach him!"
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His words cut like a whip.
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And no one disobeyed.
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Not because of respect.
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But because they were already backing away.
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Kacha!
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His bones cracked—not with force, but with a sound like ancient wood splintering in a storm.
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His legs collapsed inward.
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The femurs—once proud, strong—crumbled into fine gray dust, as if they'd aged ten thousand years in seconds.
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And it didn't stop there.
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The rot was no longer just a physical thing.
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It had entered the marrow.
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It had seeped into time.
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His spine curved, caving in.
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Shoulders sagged.
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Every joint popped and cracked and then shattered, like glass under pressure.
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Then—his hair paled.
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Not slowly—not gradually—
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But in two breaths, it turned into dry, brittle hay, the kind that would crumble at a touch.
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His face…
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Once youthful and proud—became tight, wrinkled, and hollow.
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Skin turned to bark.
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Eyes sank, vanishing into deep, black pits.
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His cheeks hollowed out like a mummy pulled from its tomb.
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He reached out.
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His left arm stretched, trembling—not toward a person.
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Not toward salvation.
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But toward nothing.
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A meaningless, pitiful reach—as if trying to grasp existence itself before it slipped through his fingers.
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A groan slipped from his throat—low, wet, full of despair.
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And then—
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Crack.
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His arm shattered, breaking into dust and chunks, raining onto the blood-soaked stones.
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The last thing anyone saw—was his torso melting, his ribcage folding in, his organs liquefying, turning into a thick, black-red syrup.
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His whole body collapsed into a puddle of blood, rot, and gore.
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Slosh.
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It all slumped down.
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A heap of viscous, stinking fluid, where a man once stood.
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Even that didn't last long.
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The ground drank it in.
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Every drop.
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Every shred.
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And the bones?
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What remained of them—
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turned to ash.
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A moment later—nothing remained.
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No bones.
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No body.
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No clothing.
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No trace.
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Just a small pile of red ash, barely enough to fill a hand.
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That was all.
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Everything else—
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His pride, his fear, his ambition, his voice—
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Had been erased.
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No one moved.
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No one breathed.
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They just stood there—frozen—staring at the crimson ashes where the red-haired youth had vanished.
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Not died.
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Vanished.
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Like a page torn from existence.
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Even the most ruthless among them—those who had killed in cold blood, who had crushed enemies, who had spilled blood for glory—
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They said nothing.
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Because this wasn't battle.
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This wasn't poison.
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This wasn't a fatal wound.
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This was decay. Erasure.
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A slow, grotesque unraveling of life… that none of them could stop.
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Or even understand.
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Even Max—with his calm mind, steady heart, and will like tempered steel—
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Felt it.
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A sharp chill, climbing from his lower back, shooting upward along his spine like a spear of ice aimed straight at the heavens.
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His fists clenched.
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Not out of fear.
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But instinct.
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That was not a natural death.
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It was a message.
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Old Man Grey, who had seen horrors most couldn't dream of, stood with a trembling breath stuck in his throat.
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He swallowed hard.
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A bead of sweat rolled down his weathered cheek and dripped to the blood-red stone below.
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He had survived dozens of expeditions into the Mourning Depths.
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He had seen bodies explode from within.
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People driven mad by cursed echoes.
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Men who aged a century in a minute.
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But this—
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This kind of death?
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He had never seen it.
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The wind no longer blew.
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The infernal mist around them… felt heavier.
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Thicker.
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As if the Mourning Depths itself
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was waiting.
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Watching.
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Tasting their fear.
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No one dared to speak.
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No one dared to exhale too loudly.
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Weapons remained unsheathed.
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Eyes scanned every inch of fog.
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Max stood still—
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Body tensed, breath shallow.
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His senses—usually sharp as blades, capable of detecting a flicker of killing intent from hundreds of meters—felt numb.
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He hadn't seen it.
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Hadn't sensed it.
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Hadn't felt a thing.
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And yet…
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He'd just watched someone die in the most horrifying way imaginable.
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He had come ready.
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Mentally. Physically.
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Prepared for battle—
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For swords and claws.
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For explosions of mana and deadly strikes in the fog.
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He thought the danger came from the infernal beings—that if one died in the Mourning Depths, it would be in combat, struggling against some abomination twisted by infernal energy.
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But now—
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He had seen a death with no attacker.
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No claws.
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No curse.
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No warning.
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Just… decay.
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Rot that crept silently through the soul, and devoured everything.
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And that, to Max—was more terrifying than any monster.
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Because the scariest thing in this world was never the strongest.
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It was the unknown.
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Ghosts? Gods?
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Those were titles.
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Names.
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Geniuses like them had long since stopped fearing superstition. Even the so-called "gods" were just mortals who stood too high. Ghosts? Just another class. Another trick.
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But this?
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This had no name.
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No shape.
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No origin.
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And that made it impossible to prepare for.
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In that moment—
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Max understood something chilling.
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They weren't geniuses here.
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Not now.
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Not in the face of this place.
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They were mortals again.
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Walking through a cursed night, surrounded by shadows that didn't speak, didn't move, but watched.
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The kind of fear that crept into the chest, settled in the spine, and made a man question if even blinking too loud might get him killed.
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They had only crossed 5,000 miles.
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Still 3,500 to go before reaching the 1,500-mile zone.
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This wasn't even the deep end.
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This was the edge.
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And already—
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Something unexplainable had claimed a life. |