Evan had hoped he could draw out a bit of that life energy without having to physically access the place, something that would have saved him from unnecessary trouble.

But it seemed he had underestimated the place.

’Oh come on, give me a break already.’

He felt an enormous weight descend upon him, or rather, upon his soul. It was suffocating, pressing down so heavily that the air left his lungs before he even realized it was happening. Not a physical pressure. Something deeper than that, something that bypassed the body entirely and went straight for whatever lay beneath it.

From the trembling castle, a violet mist began to rise. It swirled and coiled upward in slow, deliberate spirals, and just as he found himself wondering what it was, it took shape, a creature, enormous and formless at its edges, with two vast hollow voids where eyes should have been, staring directly at him across whatever distance separated them.

He couldn’t make sense of the being’s form. It didn’t seem to follow any logic he recognized, not beast, not human, not anything he had a name for. But that gaze alone was enough to send a spike of extreme danger through every instinct he had, sharper and clearer than anything he’d felt before.

The gaze seemed to perceive his presence, and the moment it did, the creature opened its mouth and roared toward him.

He didn’t know why, but in that instant his mind seemed to lock up entirely. The simple thought of withdrawing his consciousness from that place dissolved before he could act on it, replaced by a searing pain that struck him full force.

It lasted less than a second. But the agony was absolute, the kind that doesn’t build gradually but arrives all at once, filling every corner of awareness with nothing else. And just as he felt certain he was about to die, his vision distorted, and the system’s voice rang through his mind.

[Ding! Extreme danger detected.]

[You have been targeted by the Guardian of the Lost City of the Dead.]

[Safety protocol activated....]

The moment those notifications sounded, his consciousness, which had been unraveling at the edges, snapped back. His eyes flew open.

He was in the cave again. Except he was no longer sitting cross-legged on the stone floor. He was flat on his back, staring up at the rock ceiling.

His head throbbed. His cheeks burned with something that felt like fresh wounds. He moved cautiously, and his whole body ached in protest, the kind of pain that sank into his bones, as though his body had been smashed from within.

When he reached up to touch his cheek, his fingers came back wet.

Blood.

Just as he thought he had escaped whatever that thing was, his body suddenly stiffened.

Every muscle locked at once, without warning.

’And now what the hell is happening?’ The panic arrived fast and unbidden as a burning sensation ignited somewhere in his core and began spreading outward, slow and methodical, reaching further with every passing second.

Across his skin, violet marks began to appear, blooming from his veins, branching outward in jagged lines that expanded at an alarming rate. And the more they spread, the worse the pain became, sharpening from a dull burn into something that made it hard to think.

[Ding! You have been poisoned.]

[Analysis in progress...]

[Ding! You have been struck by the Death’s Embrace.]

’The hell is that name? Death’s Embrace? Am I going to die?’

The panic was fully real now. He had gone from the frying pan to the fire in seconds, and in the middle of it all, he still wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, only that he was running out of time, and that lying there waiting was not an option.

’No, I didn’t escape that damned place just to die like this.’

He forced his thoughts to steady. One thing at a time.

He immediately thought of what to do, and the answer came to him: his life energy. By nature, it was beneficial to his body, and extremely effective for healing, could it also detoxify this strange poison?

He reached for his bloodline, found the thin thread of access available to him, and without wasting another moment began circulating it through his body as forcefully as he could manage, pushing it into every corner the poison had already reached, trying to overwhelm it.

The system responded almost instantly.

[Ding! Your body is trying to resist the poison.]

[You have failed.]

’What?’

He almost wanted to shout, but even that was difficult now. Still, he had no intention of giving up.

For a brief moment, just a flicker, he felt as though the spread had paused. The violet marks stopped expanding. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t anywhere near enough. But it told him the approach wasn’t wrong.

So he kept going.

[Ding! Your body is trying to resist the poison.]

[You have failed.]

[Ding! Your body is trying to resist the poison.]

[You have failed.]

[Ding! Your body is trying to resist the poison.]

[You have failed.]

...

He lost track of how much time passed. The silent battle raging inside him continued, attempt after attempt, each one met with the same result, each failure followed immediately by another try. His consciousness grew thinner at the edges. The pain was a constant backdrop now, something he had stopped reacting to and simply endured.

Until—

[Ding! Your body is resisting the poison.]

[Ding! Your body has developed a resistance to this poison.]

The moment that last notification landed, his mind, which had been dimming steadily, flickered back.

And with it came warmth.

Not the burning kind. Something entirely different, gentle and spreading, moving through him the way heat moves through cold stone, slow but thorough, reaching places the pain had occupied and quietly displacing it.

He let himself sink into the sensation as he felt his body stop fighting the poison and begin, instead, to absorb it. To consume it, the way a flame consumes what it touches and grows stronger for it.

He was too exhausted to fully register what that meant.

The only thing he wanted was rest.

His consciousness grew smaller and quieter, narrowing down to a single point, until the pain finally released its hold on him and he felt nothing at all.

[Ding! The Guardian of the Lost City of the Dead is surprised.]

[Ding! It is no longer angry.]

[Ding! You have obtained the approval of the Guardian of the Lost City of the Dead.]

More system notifications rang out into the silence of the cave.

But Evan, already unconscious, had no way of hearing them.

While Evan’s battle against the poison continued, deep within his soul another change was taking place, subtle and hidden, something he would not have been able to perceive immediately, not even under normal conditions.

Inside his Soul Sea, the outer area had begun to crack, while a strange violet mist had started seeping in, spreading slowly across the space like something that had been waiting for exactly this moment. The Soul Sea trembled violently, as though it could collapse at any second.

It was then that the faint sphere of light, the one that had remained there unchanged, without any sign of life, ever since it first appeared, suddenly reacted.

It flickered several times before beginning to distort and expand. As it did, a voice echoed through the space, calm and gentle, almost melodic.

"To think he actually tried to steal from that guy directly... it’s a miracle he didn’t die on the spot."

As the voice faded, a fluctuation of energy began rising from the sphere. It stretched and elongated, and from it different shapes began to emerge, first a vague humanoid outline, then something more defined.

The form grew slender and curved until a sinuous figure appeared, clothed in absolutely nothing save for a thin weave of golden light that wrapped around her entirely, embracing every line of her silhouette and giving the impression of a regal garment.

Her features sharpened gradually. An angelic face emerged, alabaster skin, smooth and almost luminous, framed by golden hair that caught the ambient light of the soul sea as though it had its own source. And then her eyes opened: deep emerald, clear and still, the kind that seemed capable of looking straight through whatever they settled on.

She drifted for a moment before descending slowly, like a feather finding the ground, and landed gently on the floor of the Soul Sea.

The moment she did, her eyes opened fully and swept the space around her. Almost immediately, a powerful wave of golden energy rose from her in all directions, invisible but present, expanding outward like a sphere, reaching every corner of the soul sea in an instant.

The violet mist recoiled on contact, as if it had a will of its own, pulling back and retreating as if searching for a way to escape. But there was nowhere left to go.

The wave of energy pressed in from every direction, and the moment the mist was fully caught within it, it began to dissolve, thinning, fading, until within seconds it had vanished completely.

The soul sea went still. The cracks that had formed along its edges began to close, sealing themselves slowly until the space looked exactly as it had before, calm, undisturbed, as though nothing had happened at all.

Everything as it was. Everything except her.

The woman stood motionless in the silence, her expression unreadable, her gaze fixed on something hidden within that space, something only she could see.

"I wasn’t wrong," she murmured to herself, as though confirming something she hadn’t been entirely certain of until this moment. "It really is you."