"What?!" Alishem's gaze bore into Bark, not hiding his surprise. "How did you figure out a week had passed?!"

  Bark twisted his face into a mocking grin and shifted his gaze to Alishem:

  "I'm not that ancient… I have a phone," the Lord of Beasts replied sarcastically. "I was only in there for eighteen hours. Just the walk through that damned corridor took me about eight. You, Dan, will make it in about six. Then… he toyed with me for about five minutes…" a note of frustration slipped into Bark's voice, "…And I could barely crawl back, wounded. That's the whole arithmetic. For me, not even a day passed, but this world lost me for almost a week."

  Bark fell silent. His words hung in the air. Dan didn't react immediately. But his gaze froze for a moment, his breath hitching almost imperceptibly.

  "A week…" — the word echoed too loudly in his head.

  He had always been indifferent to time. Days, months, years, millennia—it all flowed the same for him. But now this thought seemed to catch on something inside. A strange, alien sensation, like a faint prick.

  "Why does this unsettle me?", flashed through his consciousness.

  His fingers slowly clenched, and he blinked briefly, reclaiming his habitual coldness. But Alishem noticed that delay, that barely perceptible pause, as if Dan had stumbled on a smooth road.

  "Time couldn't have frightened him… especially a mere week, it's nothing for an eternal being… and yet he tensed, as if he doesn't want to leave this world even for a minute", Alishem analyzed his brother's uncharacteristic behavior.

  "We'll be here," the Flaming Lord smiled.

  Dan nodded silently and turned towards the forest. As soon as he vanished among the thick branches and stepped onto the path leading to the Rift, Dan finally shed the seal that had restrained his Darkness. Each of his steps resonated with a hum, as if the earth itself felt the weight of who tread upon it. Branches trembled, leaves fell, grass lay flat under the pressure of the Darkness breaking free.

  His aura gradually grew, covering the forest in a gloom as thick as fog.

  Finally, a light flickered ahead. A purple, almost pink vortex of distorted energy tore through reality like an open wound.

  "A perfect circle," Dan said quietly, looking at the shimmering vortex. He approached it closely; tongues of alien mana erupted from the portal, like tentacles trying to coil around the Lord. Dan felt the power emanating from the depths of the Rift, and now, having decided to take the final step into another dimension, he suddenly froze.

  "A week…" again, the thought stormed through Dan's mind.

  "What is this feeling… it's as if I… I'm afraid to leave this World…", the Lord thought with surprise, looking at his foot frozen in the air, disobedient, as if unwilling to take that step.

  He clenched his fist so hard he felt the pressure himself.

  Step.

  "Hm… I don't feel the Master… a second ago I sensed a colossal surge of the Host's magical power, and now there isn't even a hint of his existence… but since I'm still here, it means you're alive, but where are you?"

  Rin shifted his attention to Seline, who was breathing softly in her sleep. For the first time in a long while, her face was relaxed, and it even seemed the pain had gone. She was sleeping peacefully, her breathing even. The soft light of the nightlight reflected in her hair, and the shadows of her eyelashes fell on her cheeks.

  At one point, the atmosphere changed sharply, as if a silent shockwave had swept across the entire planet.

  "What?" Rin immediately felt something was wrong. His calm face beneath the visor of his massive black helmet twisted in incomprehension the very next second. He understood that Darkness had swept over the Earth like a whirlwind, but it wasn't the familiar energy of his Host; something else, alien, and completely new in sensation washed over the ancient Guardian. "Master… what is happening…"

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  He turned to Seline. She stirred, frowned, as if she had felt it too. Her eyes slowly opened. The room was quiet. Too quiet.

  "Who's there?" the girl whispered through her sleep, trying to make out a familiar silhouette in the gloom.

  As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she realized no one was in the room.

  "Just a dream," she ran a hand over her face, sighed, and lay back down, pulling the blanket up to her chin, "just a dream…"

  "Could she have felt it too…?" Rin thought in astonishment.

  "What the hell?!" Bark roared, jumping to his feet.

  "That's his power…" Alishem said, frowning, "but something's not right… I clearly sensed the Darkness, but the feeling isn't the same as usual…"

  "That's what I'm saying!" Bark wouldn't calm down. "Something very evil, look, the hair on my arms is standing on end!"

  "Is it Mirin's power?" the Flaming Lord tried to find an explanation for what had happened.

  "No… not at all like what I felt in his presence, but he's definitely involved somehow…" Bark's voice expressed worry. He clearly felt his brother's Darkness but couldn't understand what it was mixed with.

  "Finally…" the voice was quiet, but it held satisfaction. It didn't belong to any of those who had sensed something amiss earlier.

  A man in a black coat stood on a hill, observing the forest where the Lord of Darkness had crossed the boundary between worlds a few moments earlier.

  "Everything went better than expected," a smile spread across the stranger's face. "They took the bait like little children…"

  He continued to look deep into the forest for a few more moments, then walked away, whistling something indistinct.

  "Now I can begin the search for the vessel…"

  Upon entering the portal, Dan immediately understood what Bark had been talking about.

  The air here was thick as liquid and so dense that every breath echoed with pain in his chest. Without magical power, one couldn't survive here for even a minute.

  The walls of the tunnel breathed as if not alive, but filled with power. Purple veins ran along them, as if alien mana flowed through the veins of this place. The light emanating from them didn't dispel the darkness but, on the contrary, made it deeper.

  They stretched into the distance, into infinity. No end was visible, even to the eyes of the Lord of Darkness.

  "need to move fast. Time flows differently here. More time has passed outside than I've been here", Dan stepped forward. His footsteps sounded muffled but confident. Behind him, black mana trailed like a wake—a dense plume leaving marks on the stones, like burns.

  He walked for a long time.

  A full day had passed on the other side of the portal. He had been walking for four hours, and the end of the tunnel was still not in sight.

  "Do you think he's found Mirin yet?" Alishem asked.

  "I doubt it. By my estimate, I walked for over eight hours before I saw the throne hall..." Bark recalled his journey into the rift, "...but given that it's Dan, I think he'll get there in about six hours."

  It was already getting dark. The sun was slowly sinking behind the mountains. Night was quietly thickening over the heads of the Lords, who humbly awaited Dan's return. Alishem lit a campfire. Bark looked at the night sky and muttered something under his breath.

  Almost six hours had passed since Dan began his journey, and now the throne hall unfolded before his eyes, so vast that Dan needed a moment to take it all in. The walls were similarly webbed with purple threads pulsating with energy; large stone pillars held up the ceiling, whose weight pressed down on the space even more. The Lord of Darkness narrowed his eyes. Deep in the hall stood a throne, as stone-cold as this place. But it was empty; Mirin was not upon it. Taking advantage of the hall's master's absence, Dan continued to survey the space. He wasn't amazed by what he saw, but the grandeur and grotesqueness couldn't help but evoke in the Lord of Darkness a feeling that he was not just in a Rift, but in something greater and more significant.

  The Lord's footsteps echoed hollowly through the white-stone hall. He could now clearly see the stone throne crowning the deserted room.

  "Everything is as Bark described… except the 'king' is missing…" Dan thought, getting closer and closer to the stone seat.

  Dan stopped. His magical energy spread across the cold floor like black mercury, covering the blue-purple veins through which the alien energy flowed.

  His gaze swept over the throne once more, over the pillars, over the walls.

  "Has the Lord of Darkness himself deigned to visit me?" a loud voice interrupted his survey. "Please forgive me, Your Majesty, the place is a bit untidy," a voice, bold and almost laughing, filled the space.

  "Mirin," uttered the Lord of Darkness.

  "Oho, you know who I am, I'm flattered. Did that little 'Beastie' survive? Did you save him?" Mirin said mockingly.

  "I believe I made it clear that Earth no longer requires the Creator's 'Will'," Dan said calmly but ominously, ignoring Mirin's questions.

  "How bold. The Creator said that among his 'children', there is one who doesn't observe manners before his greatness. Although... the one who ran from here with his tail between his legs a few hours ago wasn't particularly distinguished by high birth either," contempt slipped into Mirin's voice.

  "If he told you about me, did he mention that I am far more dangerous than the others?"

  The Lord of Darkness's question found no answer.

  "Apparently he did, since you're trying to hide. But it seems you overlooked one detail…", The Lord of Darkness's gaze sharply shifted to a pillar behind him, and in that same instant, a powerful pulse of black energy erupted from his aura at an incredible speed and obliterated the stone structure. White fragments of the pillar fell to the floor, raising clouds of dust, shattering the tomb-like silence of the majestic hall.

  "…I see everything."