The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

Inside Room 710.

Mirai was already awake when the White Bell rang.

She sat on the edge of her bed with the master key ring resting in her lap, her back straight and her eyes fixed on the door. She had not slept for more than a few scattered minutes throughout the night. Every faint sound from beyond the walls had brought her back to full alertness, yet nothing had approached her room before dawn.

Pale mirage mist gathered before her as the bell’s echo faded.

{The number of participants is: 4.}

The keys shifted in Mirai’s hand with a faint metallic chime even as Mirai herself froze in place.

Her expression did not change immediately, but her fingers slowly tightened around the ring as her pupils abruptly contracted in shock.

Six participants had entered the third night.

Only four had made it to morning.

’Two people died?!’ The realization struck Mirai, and panic instantly surfaced in her eyes.

Before she could begin determining how that could have happened, more words formed within the mist.

{A hidden tool has been found.}

{The Traitor’s Tool has been activated.}

{Its bearer has murdered an innocent participant with their own hands.}

Mirai’s fingers stopped moving, her gaze fixed on the lines before her.

The remaining lines appeared one after another, explaining that the bearer was no longer bound by the prohibition against direct murder, could kill anyone within Evernight Palace—including the Killer—and could escape only by becoming the palace’s sole survivor.

For the first time since receiving her role, the composure on Mirai’s face cracked.

Not dramatically. She did not scream or leap from the bed in panic. Her lips merely parted, and her eyes widened considerably. She could not react; the shock prevented her from even drawing breath for several seconds.

One of the two deaths had been caused by the newly revealed Traitor.

The other had most likely been caused by the Killer.

Beyond her door, only three other participants remained.

One of them was the Killer.

Another was the Traitor.

And the third was the only person she might still be able to trust.

Mirai lowered her gaze to the master key ring.

’How?’ The question crossed her mind, but no clear answer came.

The situation had already been difficult enough with the Killer alone. Now there was a Traitor capable of killing them without being bound by the old timing or rules.

Until that morning, the locked doors had been the closest thing they possessed to safety. They had sealed the copper pipes, blocked the ventilation openings, recorded every exchange of keys, and forbidden all forms of communication between the first and third tolls of the Black Bell.

Every precaution had been built on the same assumption: no participant could simply raise a weapon and slaughter another.

Now that assumption was worthless.

Worse, the White Bell had already opened the accusation window, and it would close with the Black Bell’s first toll. Any accusation still required two living witnesses, which meant that remaining alone inside her room was not merely useless—it was surrender.

If another participant died while the Killer remained alive, the number would fall to three and the Killer would win.

If the Traitor found and killed the Killer first, everyone else’s path to victory would disappear.

And if the Traitor reached Mirai before either of those things happened...

Mirai looked toward the door.

For several seconds, neither she nor the key ring moved.

Then she rose from the bed, her trembling body barely able to support itself.

...

In another participant’s room, Aldric stared at the same notifications without blinking.

An open ledger lay on the desk before him. Six names remained uncrossed on its final page, exactly as they had when he had retired to his room the previous night.

Now the mist claimed that only four of those names still belonged to the living, while two of them were already dead...

Over the course of three nights, they had lost five people, even with a Mage capable of protecting three participants, including themselves. And this was the result.

’Pure madness.’

It was the only phrase Aldric could use to describe the situation.

Aldric read every line once, then read them again.

Unlike Mirai, his expression did not crack; it only hardened.

’The prohibition against direct aggression was the foundation of every precaution we made.’

The sealed openings, the witnessed exchanges, the room inspections, and the division of duties—every measure they had established had been designed to control communication and prevent the Killer from choosing another victim without leaving evidence.

None of them had prepared for a participant who could take up a weapon and kill someone with their own hands.

Aldric placed one hand over the open ledger and slowly closed it.

There were four survivors.

The Killer needed the number of survivors to fall to three, including himself, to win.

The Traitor needed to become the only one left.

That transformed the next death into the decisive move of the entire nightmare.

The Traitor could not afford to kill an ordinary participant while the Killer remained alive, because doing so would reduce the number of survivors to three and hand victory to the Killer. Therefore, the Traitor had to identify and kill the Killer first.

The Killer, meanwhile, needed only one final victim.

And the innocent participants had to expose the Killer before either of them succeeded.

Aldric’s eyes shifted toward his locked door.

’So this is what you wanted.’

The nightmare had not introduced the Traitor’s Tool merely to give one participant another path to survival.

It had introduced the tool to destroy the last refuge available to all of them.

Their rooms.

If they stayed inside, the accusation window would close without any progress, their mandatory duties would remain undone, and the Killer would be free to prepare one final death for the coming night. Sooner or later, the Traitor would also begin searching the rooms one by one.

If they emerged, they would enter a palace containing both a hidden Killer and an armed murderer who no longer feared the rules.

There was no safe choice.

That was the point.

’It is forcing us to open the doors,’ Aldric thought, rubbing his forehead wearily.

Then Aldric rose and headed toward the door of his room.

...

Elsewhere in Evernight Palace, inside a room whose number could not be seen, someone stood beneath the colorless morning light.

Blood covered the figure from head to toe.

It had soaked their clothes, clung to their hair, and covered their face so completely that almost none of their original features remained visible. Thick drops gathered at their fingertips before falling steadily onto the carpet.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

A black-steel axe rested in each hand.

The polished blades might once have gleamed beneath the morning light, but fresh blood now coated their edges and ran down their dark surfaces. More blood covered the handles where the figure’s fingers gripped them, making it impossible to tell where the weapons ended and the stained hands began.

Something lay behind the figure near the side of the bed.

It did not move.

The mirage notifications floated in the air, but the figure paid them little attention. Their gaze remained fixed on the open doorway, waiting for a sound from the corridor beyond it.

None came.

Slowly, a smile spread across the blood-covered face.

It was not the relieved smile of someone who had found another path to survival, nor the desperate smile of someone who had accepted a horrifying necessity.

It was the smile of someone who had finally been given permission to do what they wanted.

"Aren’t you guys coming out to play with me?" the figure called into the silent corridor. "Morning has already come."

No one answered.

The sinister smile widened even further.

...

Inside Room 709, Ravian stood before his door.

His hand settled on the handle.

Inside Room 710, Mirai inserted one of the master keys into the lock on her door.

She needed to learn who had died, discover which of the three people outside her room was the Killer, and gather enough evidence to accuse him before the first toll of the Black Bell.

Waiting would only allow the Killer to win or the Traitor to reach her first.

Her fingers turned the key.

In another room, Aldric tucked the closed ledger beneath one arm and approached his door.

He reached for the lock.

Click.

The door to Room 709 opened.

Click.

Mirai’s door opened a moment later.

Click.

Aldric stepped out of his room.

At almost the same moment, in a certain corridor elsewhere in Evernight Palace, the blood-covered Traitor began to walk.

Both black-steel axes hung at their sides, their heavy heads dragging across the floor behind them.

The blades tore through the palace’s expensive carpet wherever they passed, carving two ragged trails through the fabric until their sharpened edges reached the stone tiles beneath it.

Screeeech.

The blood-slick steel scraped against the tiles with every step, sending a long, grating sound through the corridor.

Screeeech.

Three participants had opened their doors in search of a way to survive.

And somewhere within the palace, the fourth was already coming to play—to play their role to perfection.

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