Chapter 198

Chapter 198: Chapter 198

"Consider it done," the second said, beginning to channel magic into the mirror. Dark energy coalesced, forming images that shifted too quickly to follow—glimpses of sleeping faces, twisted landscapes, nightmare scenarios playing out in rapid succession. "By tomorrow night, your thorn will be removed. Permanently. And our debt will be settled. After this, we’re even. No more favors. No more appeals to old friendship."

"Agreed," the first figure said. "After this, our business is concluded. We can go back to pretending we never knew each other."

The two figures stood in silence as dark energy continued building in the chamber, causing the temperature to drop and frost to form on the broken windows. Then, without further words, the taller figure turned and walked back to where their portal had deposited them. Space rippled, and they stepped through, disappearing with controlled urgency.

The second figure remained for several minutes longer, watching the images swirl in the obsidian mirror. Their hand moved in complex patterns, weaving the targeting spell with precision born of centuries of practice. "Dream assassination," they murmured to themselves. "Haven’t done this since the war, since the night raids on enemy commanders. Let’s see if I’ve still got the touch after all these years."

The mirror pulsed once, twice, then stabilized. A single image formed in its depths—a young hobgoblin with iridescent scales and mismatched eyes, sleeping peacefully between two women in a modest building.

"Target acquired," the figure said with professional detachment. "Sleep well tonight, Demon lord Satou . It’ll be your last peaceful rest."

Then they too disappeared into shadow, leaving the place empty once more. The obsidian mirror continued pulsing with dark energy, its spell already reaching across miles to touch the mind of a sleeping demon lord who had no idea what was coming.

Satou woke slowly, consciousness returning in fragments. His first thought was confusion—the bed felt wrong. Too hard. Too cold. The scent was off too, lacking the familiar mix of wood smoke and herbs that permeated his settlement.

He opened his eyes and immediately knew something was very wrong.

He was standing in the middle of his settlement’s main square, but it looked... distorted. The buildings were there, but their proportions were wrong—walls that should have been straight curved at impossible angles, windows were too large or too small, and the entire scene had a fuzzy quality around the edges, like looking at the world through murky water.

"What the..." Satou muttered, looking down at himself. He was fully dressed, Void Fang at his hip, but he had no memory of getting up or getting dressed. The last thing he remembered was falling asleep between Lyra and Jessica after... after their intimate evening together. The memory should have been warm, comforting. Instead, it felt distant, as if it had happened weeks ago instead of hours.

He took a step forward, and the ground rippled beneath his feet like water. When he looked down, the cobblestones were melting, reforming, melting again in an endless cycle that made his stomach turn.

"Lyra?" he called out. "Jessica?"

No response. The settlement was eerily quiet—no sounds of daily activity, no conversations, no children playing. Just silence broken only by his own breathing and the strange, wet sound of melting stone.

Satou began walking toward his administrative building where Lyra usually worked. As he moved, he noticed more wrongness. The shadows moved independently of their light sources. Buildings breathed, their walls expanding and contracting like living lungs. The sky above was wrong—swirling masses of color that hurt to look at directly, colors that shouldn’t exist.

He pushed open the door to the administrative building, and the wrongness intensified. The interior was a maze of corridors that shouldn’t exist in a building this size. Doors lined the walls, hundreds of them, each one slightly different. The floor tilted at an angle that made walking difficult, and gravity seemed to pull in multiple directions at once.

"This isn’t right," Satou said aloud, his tactical mind trying to make sense of what he was seeing. "None of this is right. Buildings don’t work like this. Physics don’t work like this."

A door to his left opened, and Lyra stepped out. Relief flooded through Satou for a moment—until he saw her face.

It was blank. Completely blank. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Just smooth skin where features should have been. She walked toward him with jerky, puppet-like movements, her arms reaching out.

"Lyra?" Satou backed away, his hand instinctively moving to Void Fang’s hilt. "What happened to you?"

The blank-faced Lyra didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond without a mouth. She just kept approaching, her movements becoming more aggressive, more threatening.

Satou turned and ran, pushing through another door, finding himself suddenly outside again but in a different part of the settlement. More blank-faced people wandered the streets—goblins, orcs, humans, all with smooth, featureless faces. They turned toward him when he appeared, and began moving in his direction with that same unsettling puppet motion.

"This is wrong. This is all wrong," Satou repeated, his heart pounding. He tried to think rationally. What was the last thing he remembered clearly? Falling asleep. Being exhausted but content after spending time with Lyra and Jessica. Then... nothing. Just waking up here in this nightmare version of his home.

A scream cut through the air—high, agonized, and distinctly feminine. Jessica’s voice.

"JESSICA!" Satou ran toward the sound, his enhanced speed carrying him quickly through the twisted streets. He found her in what should have been the medical facility, but the building had transformed into something grotesque—walls made of pulsing flesh, floors of bone, windows that looked like weeping eyes.

Jessica was there, but she was being pulled into the walls themselves. The flesh had wrapped around her arms and legs, dragging her slowly into itself while she screamed and struggled.

"Satou! Help me! Please! It hurts! Make it stop!"

Satou drew Void Fang, the reality-cutting blade manifesting with its familiar wrongness. He slashed at the fleshy walls holding Jessica, and the weapon cut through them easily. But as soon as one tendril was severed, two more erupted to take its place. The building was fighting him, actively trying to consume Jessica while preventing his rescue attempt.