The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

They continued down the corridor, speaking to one another in voices barely louder than whispers.

Before they reached the end of the corridor, pale mirage mist suddenly condensed in the air before them.

Ravian stopped in place, and Mirai nearly collided with his back before retreating a step. Threads of mist gathered above the carpet and rose until words settled in midair before each of them, though neither could see the other’s notifications.

{All mandatory duties within Evernight Palace have been suspended until the end of the game.}

{Participants will no longer be required to perform their assigned roles from this point onward.}

{All mirage servants, guests, and external elements have been withdrawn from the palace.}

{The game is now confined entirely to the remaining participants.}

{There will be no external intervention until the game ends.}

Ravian read the lines once, then read them again slowly, searching for any word that might conceal a hidden meaning or an exception that had not been stated explicitly.

He found nothing.

The nightmare had granted them no reprieve, offered them no assistance, and established no rule preventing the Traitor from hunting them. It had merely removed everything no longer necessary and transformed the entire palace into an enclosed arena containing nothing but hunters and prey.

"So that’s why everyone disappeared..." Mirai murmured as she stared at the words.

"This doesn’t work in our favor," Ravian said without taking his eyes off the mist. "It wants to ensure that nothing remains inside the palace to separate us... It simply wants entertainment."

The words then vanished, and the mist silently dispersed without the nightmare uttering a single sound in response to Ravian’s remark.

They looked at one another for a moment as though they had reached the same decision, then continued on their way.

They searched the rooms closest to the servants’ wing first, then headed toward the western staircase and the corridor leading to the meeting rooms. Mirai opened the doors one after another as quickly as she could, while Ravian watched the corridors behind them and closed each door again once they had confirmed that the room was empty.

They did not find Aldric.

Nor did they find Bran or Garrick, leaving the Traitor’s identity unknown.

They passed the dining room, proceeded through a long corridor decorated with portraits of people neither of them recognized, and crossed a side foyer that had once been used to receive the palace’s guests. Everywhere they went, the same silence awaited them.

As time passed, the complete absence of anyone else began to trouble Ravian more and more.

Shouldn’t the Traitor have been searching desperately for him by now? Why, then, was everything so quiet?

Either he was waiting...

Or he had already found what he wanted, which should have been impossible because Ravian was still here, completely unharmed.

They continued walking for several more minutes through the seemingly endless palace until something strange happened.

At the next intersection, Ravian suddenly raised his hand, and Mirai stopped behind him without asking a question.

There was a patch of blood along the edge of the carpet ahead.

It was not a solitary drop, but the beginning of a dark trail that extended along the corridor before turning around the corner. Ravian approached it slowly and bent down slightly without touching it. The blood was still glistening, and broad drag marks branched out from the trail, crushing and distorting the carpet’s fibers.

No wounded person had walked through here...

A body had been dragged across the floor.

Mirai’s eyes followed the trail toward its end, and what little color remained in her face disappeared.

"Aldric..."

"We don’t know that yet," Ravian said immediately, though his tone carried little genuine conviction.

They followed the blood trail without rushing. Ravian checked every door and corner along the way, while Mirai’s breaths grew shorter as the trail became thicker. Eventually, it led them to the main hall where the participants had previously gathered around the long table.

The hall’s double doors stood wide open.

The blood trail ended at the entrance.

From their position in the corridor, they could see the table that had witnessed their previous accusations and discussions, along with the chairs still standing exactly where they had left them. Yet something else had been placed within the empty space before the table, directly in the center of the hall, where it would be impossible for anyone approaching the entrance not to see it.

Aldric.

He lay on the floor in the middle of a vast pool of his own blood, with both arms and both feet severed, leaving him helpless and drenched in crimson. His head hung to one side, and for a moment, he resembled a mutilated corpse that had been abandoned there as a message to whoever found him.

Mirai gasped and surged forward.

Ravian extended an arm in front of her, preventing her from crossing the threshold.

"Stop."

"That’s Aldric!"

"I know." Ravian did not raise his voice, but his gaze moved rapidly between the curtains, the side doors, and the upper gallery overlooking the hall. "And that is precisely why you shouldn’t approach him."

Aldric’s chest moved faintly, so weakly that the motion was barely visible.

He was alive.

The moment Ravian noticed, the situation became both clearer and more dangerous. The Traitor had not failed to kill Aldric; he had deliberately kept him alive, moved him from wherever the attack had taken place, and positioned him in the most exposed hall in the palace—a place designed to ensure that the first person to approach the entrance would see him.

"This is a trap," Ravian said.

Mirai continued staring at Aldric. Her lips trembled for a moment, but she did not retreat.

"I know."

Ravian shifted his gaze toward her.

Mirai gently moved his arm out of her way, then looked directly into his eyes.

"But we need him for the plan to succeed, and we can’t leave him like this," she said quietly. Despite the fear plainly visible in her eyes, her resolve did not falter this time. "Trust me, Rayan."

Then she stepped into the hall.

Ravian did not immediately follow her.

He remained at the entrance for one more second, watching every place where the Traitor might be hiding and calculating the distance between himself and the nearest exit. Ever since they left the room, he had kept an emergency escape plan of his own prepared—one whose full details he had not shared with Mirai and which he had no intention of using unless the Traitor appeared before he was ready.

It was not a perfect plan.

But it might buy him the time he needed to remain alive.

Ravian entered the hall after Mirai, though he did not approach Aldric as closely as she did. He maintained several steps of distance between them, his eyes moving without pause as Mirai headed toward the body lying before the table.

’This is bad,’ Ravian thought tensely. ’The Traitor found Aldric before we did. This is the worst possible scenario.’

The fact that Aldric was still alive confirmed one thing.

The Traitor had not placed him there because he intended to kill him. He had completely incapacitated Aldric and left him in the hall to lure someone else into the open.

There were only two possible targets for that trap: Ravian, whom the Traitor needed to kill first to prevent the Killer’s victory, or Mirai, whose identity as the Mage the Traitor might have discovered and whom he might now intend to deprive of any chance to escape before beginning the final stage of his massacre.

The real question was no longer whether the hall was a trap.

It was who the trap had been set for.

’Me or Mirai?’ Ravian thought.

’Or both?’

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