The Death Scripture pulsed under his coat like a second heartbeat—warm, constant, unwelcome. He followed the hallway that narrowed with every step, the walls of blackened marble bleeding into bone. Something about the path felt wrong. Familiar, but wrong.
And then he saw it.
The wall at the corridor's end was not stone. It was bone—fused ribcages and skulls pressed together, blackened as if scorched in a fire that had no smoke. It was solid, but not still. When he stepped closer, the surface subtly reshaped itself, as if breathing.
Adrian reached out, hesitated, then stopped.
His fingertips twitched. A chill rippled through his skin.
Then it began.
He staggered, breath hitching, as pain erupted through his body—not from injury, but from seven points within him: his brow, palms, soles, chest, and the space between his shoulders.
The Seven Oracles.
He dropped to one knee. Black blood oozed from his pores, thin and sluggish like ink. His vision swam.
A voice not his own passed through his lips:
"Let silence know I've heard.Let absence know I've come."
The wall of bone trembled.
Then it dissolved—unraveling like flesh in reverse, revealing a spiral stairwell that wound downward into complete darkness.
He descended.
Each step fell softer than the last, until there was no sound at all. His heartbeat quieted. The weight of the Death Scripture became heavier. The dark pressed in—not like blindness, but like velvet—so complete it softened the world into dream.
At the bottom of the stair, the air changed again.
A cathedral void stretched before him.
This was the Hall of Silent Wards.
Thirteen cloaked statues stood in a perfect circle, tall and hunched, their faces featureless. They held one hand to invisible mouths and wept—silent tears falling in a slow, steady stream onto a black, glasslike floor.
The tears made no ripples.
No sound.
In their reflection, Adrian did not see himself.
He saw other versions of himself—fragments, shadows, glimpses of alternate lives. A version that had died as a child. A version that never opened a clinic.
He kept walking.
At the circle's center stood an obsidian coffin, bound in chains of bone and teeth.
Adrian approached.
Words shimmered across the surface:
"You must answer to open."
Seven of the statues moved.
They turned inward—arms outstretched now, palms open, as if inviting judgment.
Adrian stepped into the circle of weeping statues, their tears falling without sound. The obsidian coffin loomed at the center, its chains rattling softly despite the still air.
A line of faint, flickering runes lit up along the floor around him.
They weren't in words.
They were impressions. Meanings. Symbols pressed into his mind like fingers into clay.
It was a feeling more than a sentence, but he understood it immediately:
"Only the self unmasked may pass.Answer falsehood, and you will be erased."
Adrian blinked.
So that was the test.
Not logic. Not strength. Not even cleverness.
Truth.
The kind that bled.
"Great" he muttered. "I was hoping for puzzles or monsters. But no—it's a lie detector"
He stepped forward. "Fine. Let's do it"
1st Statue:What is something true you no longer believe?
Adrian's voice was flat. "That helping people makes the world better"
Black blood dripped from his left palm. The statue remained still.
2nd Statue:Who are you when no one remembers you?
"I'll still be Adrain Vale"
Blood welled from his forehead. No scream.
3rd Statue:Would you rather die yourself, or kill someone to survive?
"I will kill"
Right sole, bleeding. Silence held.
4th Statue:What lie do you tell that you believe?
"That I'm still the same"
His chest ached. Blood pooled at his ribs.
5th Statue:What would you do if given absolute freedom?
Adrian paused. "…Probably make some mistakes. But at least they'd be mine"
His right hand bled.
6th Statue:What part of you is already dead?
"My body"
Left foot cracked open. No scream.
7th Statue:If offered peace without truth, would you take it?
"Never"
The space between his shoulders erupted. All seven points bled at once.
The statues froze.
And then… silence broke.
The floor lit beneath him.
Not with light—but reflection.
He saw himself.
Not his body. Not his face.
His soul.
Fractured. Tense. Human.
But still whole.
Not overwritten by Death.
The coffin shuddered.
Chains split. Teeth cracked. The lid peeled back like old bark.
Inside were two tomes—and a weapon.
The first was bound in cracked glass, the title dancing between reflection and fracture:
Scripture of Fractured Truth(Law of Contradiction)
The second was wrapped in golden thread, smooth and veiled. The title didn't appear, not until Adrian's gaze focused.
Scripture of Knowledge(Law of Knowledge)
Between them lay a dagger carved from bone, its blade thin, sharp, and impossibly long for its size.
Adrian stared down at them.
Three Scriptures. Three Paths.
Death. Contradiction. Knowledge.
Three exits from the abyss.
He didn't rise immediately.
Adrian lingered a moment, crouched beside the coffin with the three tomes and the dagger laid across the lid like a final offering. The silence here was heavier than any he had known—not a lack of sound, but the presence of something watching, waiting, measuring.
Above the altar, the air shimmered—like oil slick over still water. A soft hum threaded through it, inaudible but felt in the bones. He glanced back at the statues. Their tears had stopped.
Or maybe… he'd stopped noticing.
He opened the inner pocket of his coat and slid each book in slowly, deliberately, like stealing sacred relics. They slid in with the kind of finality that made his fingers curl.
The dagger went in last.
Even hidden, its weight was sharper than metal.
"Wait when did I have a coat!"
He realize that now he was wearing the clothes the he was used to.
the one he wear at the moment he got burn to death
"Well may be Law in the scriptures is affecting me"
He decide to be more cautious
As he stood, the floor beneath him—still reflective like glass—flickered with movement. A ripple passed through the mirrored surface, and then he saw it:
Three reflections.
Not of himself, but of three Adrians, each carrying one of the Scriptures. Each walking a different road.
One cloaked in bones and shadow, his eyes empty sockets.
One wrapped in mirrored glass, his face cracked in to fractures.
One veiled in golden light, his eyes black and hollow.
They passed one another without recognition.
They did not speak.
And as he watched, one of them shattered into mirrored shards. The other burned into pale threads of light.
Only the shadowed one remained.
He turned and looked directly at Adrian—no face, just bone.
Then vanished.
Adrian said nothing.
But his fists were clenched so tightly his fingers bled black.
"…They're not choices," he said under his breath. "They're cages."
Behind him, the weeping statues turned fully now, their palms flat against their chests as if offering no judgment, only witness.
He took one step away from the altar.
And then another.
As he crossed back into the outer circle, the darkness around the coffin pulled inward like breath being held. The air lightened. The reflections faded.
The Hall of Silent Wards no longer watched.
He climbed the spiral stair in silence.
Each step upward dulled the hum of the room behind him. The coffin. The truth. The lie. The weight.
He didn't breathe until the final step, when the veil of bone closed quietly behind him.
It did not seal.
But it would not open again easily.
Back in the hallway behind the throne, the Death Sovereign Temple felt colder. Larger. More vast than before, though nothing had changed.
Adrian placed one hand against the wall to steady himself. He felt… not tired, not exactly.
Just aware.
Of how thin the line had become.
He whispered, more to himself than anyone else:
"Death gave me the key."
He tapped the pocket where the dagger rested.
"But that doesn't mean I have to unlock their damn door."
And with that, he turned his back on the throne of Death and walked into the dark.
Toward answers.
Toward choice.