The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

"The killer is the owner of this palace," Ravian said.

The entity’s smile vanished instantly.

Silence reigned for several seconds.

"The owner of the palace?" the entity repeated, as though it had somehow misheard him.

Ravian tilted his head slightly in confusion.

"Huh? How could the owner of the palace fail to recognize himself? Aren’t you, Nightmare, the master of this palace?"

The purple mist began to tremble.

"That isn’t—"

"I haven’t finished my answer yet," Ravian interrupted.

Ravian took a step forward, and for the first time since the entity’s appearance, the floor shifted beneath his foot, allowing him to move instead of holding him fixed in place.

The entity watched that step, and something resembling confusion surfaced in its violet eyes.

Ravian raised his hand and pointed directly at it.

"You—the Nightmare and master of this palace... you are the killer."

"No!"

The scream erupted simultaneously from dozens of mouths formed within the mist.

A long purple hand shot toward Ravian’s neck, while two masses of mist surged toward Mirai and Aldric to seal their mouths.

Ravian did not even glance at the hand approaching him.

Keeping his eyes fixed on the entity, he asked in a calm voice, "Mirai, Aldric... do you remember the Black Bell that rang before every nightfall?"

The force suppressing their voices loosened the moment Ravian invoked them as witnesses.

"Don’t answer him!" the entity screamed as its shifting face began convulsing violently, its expressions changing continuously without pause.

The mist came within inches of their faces.

"Yes!" Aldric answered.

"Yes!" Mirai said at the exact same moment.

Neither of them understood what was happening, but they could both sense that this moment was of tremendous importance and might determine the fate of everyone present.

The purple hand stopped just before it could close around Ravian’s neck.

The mist froze in front of Mirai’s and Aldric’s mouths, and the entity itself halted midway through its movement. Even the faces formed behind it remained suspended with their mouths open, yet no sound emerged from them.

New words appeared across the black mirror.

{An accusation has been detected during the final trial.}

{Number of living witnesses: 2.}

{The witness requirement has been fulfilled.}

Ravian’s smile widened, sending a chill down the spines of Mirai and Aldric as they watched.

"The rules. I’ve always wondered why they were designed this way," Ravian said.

"Every accusation required two living witnesses to confirm that the accused had communicated with the victim and had been the last person to communicate with them before their death."

The entity tried to flex its fingers, but its hand remained suspended before Ravian’s neck.

"And why did the final stage require three people rather than the Killer alone?" Ravian asked. "Then, one night, I noticed that the final meaningful communication before each killing wasn’t my own exchange with the victim."

Ravian’s gaze shifted toward the palace ceiling.

"Instead, it was the toll of the bell announcing the end of the day," Ravian continued. "Then I remembered you admitting earlier that you had lied to us, so I thought..."

"What if all of this is a lie?" Ravian asked, his eyes widening as he stared at the entity that had remained strangely calm throughout his explanation.

No—it seemed more as though something was preventing it from doing anything.

The laws.

"Why did you make a point of claiming that we were the first group to make it this far? Doesn’t that mean this entire process has been run before?" Ravian fired off one question after another, and with each one, the shock on Mirai’s and Aldric’s faces deepened.

"Then I realized something else," Ravian said. "I never actually killed any of the victims."

"Hell, I never even touched them. The mist came and finished them off right before my eyes, without the slightest hindrance."

"And guess what the final meaningful message the victims received before their deaths was?" Ravian asked his final question.

The entity’s violet eyes abruptly turned pitch-black, lending it an even more terrifying and inscrutable air.

"The final meaningful communication the victims received wasn’t mine..." Ravian said. "It was the announcement that night had fallen upon them."

As Ravian finished laying out his evidence, the purple hand reaching for his neck remained pinned in place, but the entity’s body began to swell, then shrink, before distorting and continuously assuming different shapes and forms. With every passing second, purple mist poured from its body in increasingly violent torrents.

"The bell is not communication," the entity’s distorted voice rasped from within the mist. "It is merely a signal marking the time."

"A signal carrying a meaning understood by everyone who hears it before they die," Ravian replied.

He pointed toward the mirror behind the entity.

"The first toll closed the accusation window and sealed the communication record. The second announced the approach of night, while the third announced that night had fully descended and the sentence would be carried out. None of them was an empty sound; each conveyed a different meaning."

Scenes from the previous nights appeared across the mirror’s surface, as though it were retelling the stories that had unfolded inside the palace.

Elena before her death.

Kaiden inside his locked room.

Sylvan on the third night.

In every scene, the Black Bell tolled after all communication between the participants had ended, and then night descended.

"Our rules prohibited any participant from speaking to, touching, or exchanging anything with another after the first toll. That meant that once the bell closed the victim-selection record and registered me as the final eligible participant, the bell itself continued communicating with them."

Ravian raised one finger.

"The second toll."

Then he raised another.

"And the third."

His crimson eyes shifted toward the entity.

"The bell was the last thing the victims heard before the sentence was carried out. It told them that night was complete and that the moment of their deaths had arrived."

The mist surrounding the entity shook violently.

"Wouldn’t that make the bell a means of communication..." Ravian said slowly, his eyes settling on the entity.

In an instant, it appeared a single step away from him without Ravian seeing how it had crossed the distance, its pitch-black eyes staring directly into his. Yet even confronted by the terrifying sight before him, Ravian did not hesitate as he finished his question.

"...killer?"

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