The sealed room seemed to shudder.
From the shadows, Yue's voice echoed back—cold, triumphant, almost amused:
"Oh yesssssssssssssssssssss"
***
After some time, Yue and Kael sat side by side on the altar, both drowning in the aftermath of terrible life choices.
Kael had the sword resting on his lap—more like a crimson-hot katana than any elegant weapon.
He should be happy, right? Nope.
Instead, he was now the prime target for every lunatic who thought he was the villain in a story he didn't even audition for.
Yue sat beside him, probably should be relieved to finally be free from this place. But no—now she was shackled to a rank 1 magician.
A rank 1.
The kind who barely knows a fireball from a fancy light show.
They both stared at the dull glow of the altar like it was the only thing keeping them from strangling each other.
Kael opened his mouth, like he was about to say something wise or helpful.
But Yue cut him off with a tired glance. "Don't. It's not reversible."
Kael finally snapped, the tension breaking like a brittle bone.
"Just what the fuck did you do that every god and their followers are after you?"
Yue's eyes flashed. She snapped right back, voice sharp as broken glass.
"And how the hell does a rank 1 magician even cast a rank 5 binding spell? You wanna explain that?"
Both of them let out a frustrated humph, the tension lingering in the silence that followed.
After a moment, Kael's thoughts drifted elsewhere. He remembered Selene.
"So… what exactly is this place?"
Yue sighed deeply, the weight of years pressing into her voice.
"This is the Temple of Sacrifice."
Kael blinked, confused. "What?"
She glanced at him, eyes serious. "Even I don't know it all, but there are seven temples like this—one on each continent."
Kael's eyes widened. 'Seven continents?'
His world suddenly felt far larger—an entire realm of unknowns spreading before him.
He was in one of seven continents, in a vast empire, within a small kingdom—as a duke's son.
How truly insignificant he was.
He asked, "So… how do I escape this temple?"
Yue looked at him, her voice calm but serious.
"Just use the sword to open the door, then find the womb of the temple and escape."
Kael swallowed hard, quickly picking up the crimson katana. He crossed the narrow bridge, Yue floating silently beside him.
Kael quickly plunged the sword into the hole and stepped out of the sealed room.
He shouted, "C'mon, fucker!" toward the shadows where Adam should be.
But no one came.
Five minutes passed in silence.
Yue watched him, expression unreadable.
Kael coughed awkwardly. "I think he went back."
Suddenly, a deep, guttural roar echoed through the temple halls—the unmistakable sound of the Crimson Devourer.
Kael's eyes snapped wide.
Yue's voice was calm but heavy with warning.
"That's the guardian of this temple."
Kael quickly retraced the path he'd followed, rushing through the cracked wall and out of the cave.
He glanced over his shoulder, frustration clear.
"How the hell did you get here?"
She didn't answer.
He sighed, playing it cool. "Haaa, very mysterious."
Without waiting for a reply, Kael hurried toward the direction where he last saw Elara and the others sprinting for safety.
Soon, Kael spotted them.
He ducked behind a broken pillar and watched.
Barely ten students had survived.
Selene was among them—safe, but exhausted.
Adam was there too, and Elara, all looking like they had just crawled out of a nightmare.
A crimson devourer's corpse lay nearby, a grim testament to the battle they'd endured.
Kael sighed, relief washing over him. 'Selene is safe.'
Yue's voice broke the moment's quiet.
"You don't want to go there."
He shook his head firmly. "No."
Then, a slow, unsettling smile crept across his lips, dark and demonic.
"Let's wait for the surprise," he murmured, eyes gleaming with something far from innocent.
***
Adam was basking in his so-called heroic moments, spinning a carefully crafted lie that Kael was dead.
The way he told it, he'd single-handedly survived impossible odds and saved everyone—except, of course, the "poor unfortunate soul" who had perished.
Kael, apparently.
The crowd lapped it up, but Selene wasn't buying it for a second.
She watched Adam with thinly veiled skepticism, arms crossed, eyebrow raised so high it threatened to escape her forehead.
After some time, Elara stood up slowly, as if the very air weighed her down. Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the murmurs like a blade.
"Let's move."
The others groaned in protest—fatigue, fear, and the suffocating dread of what lay ahead clawing at their nerves.
Adam rubbed the back of his neck, his voice sharp with disbelief.
"Where the hell are we even going?"
Elara didn't look at him. She stared ahead, eyes fixed on the cold stone corridor.
"At first, we were scattered....," she said.
"But eventually, we all found each other. In this place, that doesn't happen by chance." She turned, slowly raising her hand to point at the towering door carved into the far wall.
The torchlight flickered violently as if recoiling from it.
"It means," she continued, "that there's only one way out."
Silence followed her words like a held breath. Someone gasped.
Another began muttering a prayer.
The door loomed like the mouth of something ancient, something that waited not to be opened, but fed.
Despite the pounding in their chests and the sour taste of fear on their tongues, they followed.
One step. Then another.
Soon, they reached the door.
No one spoke. They simply looked at one another—and began to push.
The stone groaned under their weight, ancient mechanisms grinding to life with a scream that echoed down the corridor like a dying wail.
Cold air hissed out from the darkness beyond, stale and thick with the scent of forgotten things.
One by one, they slipped inside.
The darkness swallowed them whole.
They pulled torches from brackets along the walls, their flames trembling as if they, too, feared where they were going.
Unseen behind them, a shadow moved.
Kael.
Silent, careful, he slipped through the narrowing gap just before the door slammed shut with a booming finality. Dust drifted from the ceiling like ash.
None noticed him—just another shadow in the dark.
Above the ground, unseen and unfelt by the others, Yue drifted effortlessly. Her ghostly form glowed faintly in the gloom, eyes scanning the space with a quiet, ancient familiarity.
"This… is the main hall of the temple."
"The final trial," she said softly. "The Blood Trial begins here."
No one could hear her.
No one but Kael.
And the temple.
Which had been waiting.