The chamber was silent.
Not the silence of emptiness, but the silence of something looming, something vast and irreversible. The sigil pulsed beneath them, its shifting light casting elongated shadows on the cold stone. It did not wait. It did not hesitate. It simply existed, an eternal mechanism indifferent to those who stood before it.
Frid knelt first.
Without hesitation, without question, he lowered himself before Eo. His faceless gaze tilted upward, unreadable, but his body language spoke volumes. This was not submission. It was something far deeper.
Caelum stood for a moment longer. He was not a fool—he understood what this was. A crossroads. A point of no return. His fingers curled, tension running through his frame, but he did not step away.
Instead, he followed.
He knelt.
Two figures before their master. One devoid of self. One seeking something more.
Eo watched them. He was not pleased, nor was he dissatisfied. He simply observed.
And then, he spoke.
“Are you willing to become something beyond human?”
Frid inhaled sharply. Caelum’s jaw clenched.
The words did not demand, nor did they persuade. They simply were. A truth laid bare.
Frid did not hesitate. “Yes.” His voice was steady, but there was something beneath it—something raw, something desperate. Not for strength. Not for power. For eternity.
Caelum, however, did not answer immediately.
He had sought power for as long as he could remember. Not for eternity, not for immortality—but for reclamation. For the noble name that had been stripped from him, for the position he had lost.
And yet…
He thought of the wolf.
Those molten gold eyes that had seen him. That had looked into his very being and acknowledged him as prey—no, as something unfinished.
Something lesser.
Slowly, Caelum exhaled.
Then, he lifted his gaze to meet Eo’s.
“…Yes.”
The air shifted.
The sigil beneath them pulsed brighter, reacting—not to their words, but to their resolve. It did not care for hesitation, nor for shallow ambition. It cared only for willingness.
Eo raised a hand.
The sigil responded.
The chamber trembled as unseen forces stirred, drawn by the will of the one who had created this system. The living formation rippled outward, threads of light detaching from its structure, weaving through the air like strands of silk.
They descended upon Frid and Caelum without mercy.
Pain ignited.
Frid did not flinch. He welcomed it. His body convulsed, but he did not resist. His faceless countenance tilted upward, drinking in the agony as though it were the final confirmation of his path.
Caelum gritted his teeth. He had expected pain—he had lived through worse. But this was not normal. It was not like wounds inflicted by sword or magic. It was not like torture, nor like the crushing weight of defeat.
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This pain was systematic.
Precise.
It tore apart his human limitations—not to break, not to shatter, but to reshape.
The sigil carved into their very being.
Not flesh. Not bone. Something deeper. Something that had no name in human understanding.
Frid trembled. His hands clenched into fists, nails digging into his palms as whispers slithered past his lips.
“…Agatha… Do you see…?”
Caelum gasped as his nerves ignited with something beyond fire. Beyond anything he had ever known. He forced himself to keep his eyes open, to witness what was happening to him.
The sigil did not merely grant power.
It transformed.
The room darkened as the ritual reached its peak, shadows stretching, warping, watching.
Eo observed without expression.
This was not mercy. This was not a gift.
It was a process.
A refinement.
The moment stretched—pain, transformation, the sheer weight of change pressing down upon the two who had chosen this path.
And then—
Silence.
The sigil dimmed.
Frid exhaled, his form still kneeling, but different. His presence felt altered, as though the very fabric of his being had been rewritten. He flexed his fingers slowly, testing, feeling.
Caelum panted, his heart pounding. Something shifted beneath his skin, unseen but undeniably there. His body felt foreign—and yet more his own than ever before.
Eo stepped forward.
The flickering light of the sigil cast shadows across his face as he looked down upon them.
“Rise.”
Frid obeyed without hesitation. Caelum followed, his movements sharp, controlled.
Eo did not speak further. He did not need to.
They had chosen.
They had been transformed.
And now, the world above would feel the weight of their existence.
As Eo quietly observed the two, his gaze shifted slightly to the side without moving his head. Then, he spoke to the kneeling pair.
"Your first task awaits. Clean it up."
Frid and Caelum exchanged a brief glance, bowed their heads in submission, and disappeared from sight.
--
The night stretched endlessly over the city, draped in an eerie, unnatural silence. Two figures moved through its emptiness—neither seen nor heard, their very existence an absence.
Yeba and Vienna.
The hidden daggers of the Holy Church.
Not recorded, not known, not spoken of. Even within the highest ranks, they did not exist. Only the Saintess knew their names, and only she could command them.
And now, she had.
The order was clear—investigate the anomaly. Eliminate the source if necessary.
Yeba’s movements were precise, each step controlled, each breath measured. His magic remained fully suppressed, undetectable even to those skilled in tracking mana fluctuations. Beside him, Vienna was equally still, blending into the void between the streets. They were not merely using stealth magic.
They were absent.
They advanced without hesitation, weaving through the city’s veins, approaching the outskirts where the disturbance had begun. The Holy Church’s alarms had only flared briefly before being utterly cut off, the silence that followed more disturbing than the warning itself.
They should have already sensed the source of the anomaly by now. But they hadn't.
Vienna’s fingers twitched. A thin film of sweat formed at the base of her neck, a response she hadn’t experienced in years.
Something wasn’t right.
And then—
It came.
A faint ripple.
A weight in the air.
Something vast. Something unseen.
Something watching.
Vienna halted. Yeba did as well, though he had sensed it a second earlier.
Neither spoke. Neither moved.
Because they both knew—something was in the dark.
Something they could not grasp.
It wasn’t the source of the anomaly they had been sent to investigate. No. This was something else. A creature lurking in the depths of the forest ahead, concealed beyond the reach of even their heightened perception.
Vienna’s heartbeat quickened.
Not in fear.
In alarm.
Because whatever it was—it was aware of them.
Yet, even as Archmages, as hunters who had spent years tracking and eliminating beings far beyond human, they could not pin down its exact location. Its aura flickered, shifting, slipping through the gaps of their awareness as if it did not fully exist within this world.
And that was what disturbed them most.
Yeba’s gaze remained fixed on the treeline. The forest ahead was dense, the canopy thick enough to shroud even the moonlight. Shadows stretched unnaturally between the trunks, layered and overlapping like something alive.
They had planned to pass directly through.
But now—
No.
No risks.
If even they could not fully perceive the creature hidden within, then stepping into its territory blind would be suicidal.
Vienna exhaled slowly, subtly shifting her trajectory. Yeba followed without a word.
A quiet retreat.
No abrupt movements. No panic.
They would not show weakness.
Instead of passing through the forest, they altered their course—heading directly toward the open grounds near the Magical Academy.
It was a detour, a longer route.
But it was better than walking blind into the jaws of whatever lurked in the dark.
Behind them, deep in the forest’s embrace, a pair of eyes flickered—molten gold, rimmed with the faintest glow like a blood. Watching. Waiting.
The Black Wolf Fenrir remained in the shadows, unbothered.
It had no interest in them.
