Chapter 214: Serandil
The stone door was cold.
The instant Ryan’s hand touched it, a chill seeped straight into his bones, as though he had grabbed a slab of frozen iron barehanded in the dead of winter. The surface of the stone was unnaturally smooth, without a single carving or ornament, worn by time and some unknown force into a jade-like softness—if one ignored the temperature, which was so low it nearly numbed his fingers.
The light leaking through the crack in the door was a warm golden color.
It was not bright. If anything, it was dim, hazy, like the last ray of sunset slipping through the gap in a heavy velvet curtain at dusk, warm enough to make a person want to draw closer without thinking.
Ryan’s hand remained on the door, but he did not push.
He stared at that thread of light, at the fuzzy edge it cast over the rough grain of the stone.
Allen’s sign had pointed here. Find the thing controlling the illusion.
The Illusion Spider was outside.
So what was behind this door? The one controlling it? Or... something else?
“Ryan?” Lillian’s voice came from behind him, hushed and uncertain. “Can this door... be opened?”
Rex also edged closer, his greatsword held across his chest as he scanned the walls on either side of the door and the darkness above it.
“There’s no keyhole, no handle. How are we supposed to open this thing? Smash it?”
Vera did not come closer. She stood a few steps back, her gray-green eyes narrowing slightly as they moved between the stone door and the light slipping through the crack.
“This light... is strange. It doesn’t feel like a magic lamp, and it doesn’t feel like natural light either.”
Ryan’s attention remained fixed on the door, on the icy touch beneath his palm and the warmth beyond it.
A strange urge—no, more like a pull carefully designed to entice—was seeping out of that light and tapping softly at the edge of his mind.
It was like a voice whispering: Push it open. Come in. The answer is inside.
He drew in a slow breath, the cold air filling his lungs and suppressing that restless stirring.
He could not act rashly.
But staying here was just as dangerous.
The nest behind them was not truly safe. That giant spider might wake at any moment, and Parker’s group might come from another route.
A decision had to be made.
He closed his eyes and let his awareness spread through the point where his palm touched the stone.
No Mana fluctuation. No sign of a mechanism. The stone door was as heavy as a mountain. There was no way they could break it by force.
Then what was the “key” to opening it?
How had Allen gotten through?
He had left a sign. He had definitely passed this place...
The moment Ryan focused his senses—
Something twitched.
Not in the physical sense, but in the realm of perception, like the sudden synchronized pulse of blood vessels, as though two sleeping hearts had awakened at once and resonated with the exact point where his palm touched the door.
It was the two crystals in his pack.
The dark-red dodecahedral crystal taken from the black monster, and the dark-green dodecahedral crystal dug out from the toad.
They shuddered to life like twin engines.
Then a force he could not resist seized him.
It was not pulling on his body.
It was pulling directly on his mind.
Ryan’s vision went black. Then came endless dizziness and weightlessness, as though he had been thrown into a violently spinning vortex.
Sight, hearing, touch—every sense he had of the outside world was severed, dragged away, and blurred in an instant.
Lillian’s startled cry, Rex’s sharp demand, Vera beginning a hurried spell—
All of it sounded as though it came through a thick curtain of water, fading almost immediately into nothing.
The last clear sensation he retained was the icy touch of the stone door beneath his palm.
Then even that vanished.
In its place was a world of pure white emptiness.
White.
No up or down. No left or right. No edges. No sound. No smell.
Only a soft white radiance so gentle it was almost frightening, filling everything his “vision” could reach.
Ryan felt as though he was standing within that white space, yet he had no sensation of solid ground beneath his feet. He was more like a wisp of something without weight.
Who am I? Where am I? What just happened?
After a brief stretch of confusion and blankness, the memories and self-awareness belonging to “Ryan Velt” emerged again, like reefs revealed after the tide receded.
The nest. The web. The stone door. His companions.
I was pulled somewhere? A mental world? An illusion? Those two crystals...
He tried moving his fingers. It felt sluggish, but he could indeed control this body of consciousness. Looking down, he found himself reduced to a half-transparent outline.
At that moment, a calm voice sounded directly inside his mind, as though the white space itself were speaking.
“Welcome, fortunate visitor.”
The voice was utterly composed. There was no hostility in it. If anything, it sounded like a host welcoming a guest into his home.
Ryan jerked his head up.
A figure appeared soundlessly within the white space, about ten paces away.
Long silver-white hair, like a waterfall woven from moonlight, flowed down his back, the ends nearly brushing his ankles.
Beneath that hair was a face both youthful and flawless, pale-skinned and exquisitely formed, every line of it seeming as though nature had sculpted it with the greatest care. He wore a white robe of ancient design, the hem stirring in a wind that did not exist, its fabric flowing with a pearl-like glow.
What drew the eye most, however, were his eyes.
They were a pure gold, like molten metal, like sunlight frozen into form—deep, tranquil, and yet somehow filled with the power to see through time and soul alike.
Long pointed ears emerged from between the silver hair, leaving no doubt as to what he was.
An Elf.
He simply stood there in silence, gazing at Ryan, the golden eyes reflecting Ryan’s half-transparent, wary consciousness-form.
“Who are you? What is this place? Where are my companions? Was it you who dragged me in here?”
Ryan heard his own voice echo through the white space, tighter than his usual cool tone.
What was stranger was that he had truly meant to say only the first two questions. The latter two had merely flashed through his mind, yet they had slipped out all the same.
Does this place force one’s inner thoughts into speech too?
Faced with Ryan’s string of demands, the silver-haired Elf smiled, a gentle smile that seemed capable of soothing any emotion.
“Please do not be alarmed, young visitor. This is the Chamber of Remembrance, a spiritual domain independent of the flow of time in the outside world. Your companions are safe. They remain outside the door and are unaware of what is happening here.” His voice resonated directly within Ryan’s consciousness. “As for myself... you may call me Serandil. In the ancient Elven tongue, it means Watcher of the Silver Leaves. I am the final custodian of this experimental station—or, if you prefer, of these ruins.”
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