Panic spread through the wooden hall.

  Rein didn’t waste a second.

  He lunged for the iron ring set into the floor and wrenched it upward with a sharp grunt. The wooden hatch shrieked as it scraped against the planks, heavy and stubborn—but thankfully, unlocked.

  The door swung open.

  A stone staircase spiraled downward into darkness. Damp air surged up from below, cold and stale, carrying with it a faint, acrid trace of sulfur.

  BOOM!

  A violent impact slammed into the cabin’s front door. The entire structure shuddered. Dust rained down from the ceiling beams.

  Everyone flinched at the same time.

  Mira and Boris rushed toward Rein, who stood at the edge of the open shaft.

  “Rein—what the hell is happening?!” Mira’s voice trembled, her face drained of color.

  He didn’t answer her right away. Instead, he turned to Boris, who was still in shock.

  “You hurt?”

  Boris touched the shallow cut on his cheek where glass had grazed him. His eyes were unfocused, still replaying the near miss.

  “I—I’m fine. But this… this is insane.”

  “Earlier,” Rein murmured, lowering his voice, “your Eye of the Beholder couldn’t see anything, could they?”

  Boris stiffened.

  “How did you know I used that spell?”

  “If I were you,” Rein replied flatly, “I wouldn’t walk into a forest at night without checking.”

  Boris exhaled sharply, running a hand through his silver hair.

  “Yeah. I had it active until just now. But all I saw was that damn white fog. Nothing else. It was like the mist itself was blocking my vision.”

  “Then maybe…” Mira hugged her arms tightly. “Maybe it really is Killian. Lycans are fast. Strong enough to wipe out an entire party bare-handed. And we already lost Curt…”

  Rein pressed his lips together, eyes narrowing.

  Wait.

  Why Curt?

  Why ignore Boris—who was standing right beside him?

  Random—or deliberate?

  Rein glanced back at Boris, who was still breathing hard.

  Did it mistake Curt for the battle mage and dismiss Boris as a caster?

  But both of them were large. From the outside, there was no way to tell for sure.

  Unless…

  Unless whatever was out there had deliberately removed the group’s strongest “claws” first—making the next hunt easier.

  If that’s the case.

  This wasn’t a wild beast.

  And worse—it knows us.

  For the first time, Rein found himself desperately hoping his own hypothesis was wrong.

  Across the room, Marten and Kellen were dragging the long dining table toward the front door, bracing it in place with frantic movements.

  They then hurried back toward Dana and Jalara, who stood shivering near the fireplace as the flames dwindled.

  “What do we do, Kellen?!” Jalara demanded, her voice cracking. The pride of a great house heir had vanished completely, replaced by raw survival instinct. “It’s going to break in!”

  Dana looked at him pleadingly. “Should we… should we hide in the basement first?”

  Kellen hesitated, visibly torn. “I—I was thinking the same thing, but—”

  “Hide in some pitch-black hole underground?” Jalara snapped. “Have you lost your minds?!”

  “We should contact DVM—call the professors! And Curt—he might still be alive! We can’t just leave him out there!”

  “Going outside right now is suicide,” Marten shot back.

  Kellen, who had been silently biting his lip, finally spoke. His voice was controlled, but only just.

  “I… I already tried to get help.”

  Everyone turned to him at once.

  “A moment ago, I sent out our messenger familiar,” Kellen added quickly, swallowing. “A communication bird assigned to the club. It should’ve flown straight to the DVM zone and sent a distress signal within minutes.”

  Boris froze.

  His mind flashed back to the large blackbird perched on the roof when they arrived.

  “Did it respond?”

  Kellen shook his head slowly. His monocle trembled with the motion.

  “No. Nothing. No return signal. It’s like… like the connection was severed mid-flight.”

  Rein frowned.

  “The mist?”

  Kellen nodded reluctantly.

  “I think so. Messenger familiars rely directly on mana. If that mist can block detection spells… then taking them out wouldn’t be hard.”

  Boris let out a hollow chuckle.

  “That explains why my Eyes couldn’t see a damn thing.”

  Someone felt so suffocated that they instinctively started breathing through their mouth.

  Mira hugged herself tighter.

  “So that means… we can’t contact anyone at all, right now?”

  As club president, Kellen forced himself to speak, trying to salvage some control.

  “Listen. There are a lot of us. Even if it’s a Lycan, if it comes inside, it’ll have to face seven mages at once.” He paused, then looked toward the special guest standing apart from the group.

  “And… we’re lucky. We have Rein here.”

  Rein, who had been listening quietly, shook his head.

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  Lucky for you, unlucky for me.

  “If I were alone,” Rein said aloud, cutting through Kellen’s misplaced confidence, “I might agree with you.”

  Then, bluntly:

  “But I won’t be able to protect everyone.”

  The room fell into suffocating silence.

  CRASH!

  Another window shattered—this time from the opposite wall.

  Something black flew over Dana’s head and hit the floor with a dull, wet thud—right at Jalara’s feet.

  She screamed.

  When the lamplight hit it, everyone saw—

  It was Curt’s head.

  Terror had frozen his face, and his wide eyes still reflected the horror of his last moment. Blood streaked from the window all the way to the tips of Jalara’s shoes.

  Dana collapsed onto the floor, sobbing incoherently.

  Kellen and Marten stood stunned, utterly speechless.

  As for Jalara—every trace of defiance shattered instantly.

  She spun around and bolted toward Rein’s group—faster than any of them had ever seen her move—and practically dove into the basement hatch without waiting for anyone else.

  Rein kept one hand braced against the heavy wooden door, scanning the room with a tight frown before issuing sharp commands.

  “Boris. Take Mira down first. Slow. Careful. We don’t know what’s down there.”

  Boris nodded immediately. He snapped his fingers, summoning a bright Flare to light the way, and the two of them hurried down the stone steps after Jalara.

  Moments later, Marten helped Dana to her feet and rushed after them, their footsteps echoing down the stairwell.

  Kellen followed last.

  Before descending, he paused and looked back at Rein.

  He didn’t say a word.

  An apology—silent and terrified.

  Rein gave him a quick nod—telling him to go.

  The moment most of them disappeared down the stairs, a knife-cold gust tore into the cabin.

  Oil lamps fluttered—then went out one by one. The fireplace, which had burned so brightly just minutes ago, shrank until only a thin, sickly blue glow remained.

  It wasn’t just wind.

  The light was being eaten—slowly.

  A strange white mist began to pour through the cracks in the windows and the gaps under the door. It didn’t drift with the air. It crawled—slowly, deliberately—along the floor, up the walls, even across the ceiling, the way something living might move while hunting.

  LIZ… what is that?

  [LIZ: Careful, Rein. That’s not mist. It’s a formless mana entity—dense, predatory. Old Aetherian records call them “Veilshade.”]

  The interface trembled, as if even her system disliked the word.

  [LIZ: They were believed extinct for centuries.]

  Then the chat flashed a muted amber warning.

  [LIZ: And… judging by the mana flow rate, they’re starving.]

  Rein’s blue eyes stayed fixed on the mist. It began twisting into a distorted shape that almost resembled—

  Great. His mouth twitched with tired bitterness.

  So on top of an intelligent Lycan that wants to take our heads… we’ve got a hungry mist that’s mad it didn’t get invited to dinner.

  He let out a long, unimpressed breath and backed down into the darkness, the last one to descend.

  The hatch above slammed shut with a heavy thunk. Metal clanged—loud in the confined shaft.

  Rein snatched the hanging chain-hook and locked it in place, securing the door as tightly as he could.

  He stared up at the thin wood for a moment.

  He didn’t know if the things upstairs were smart enough to figure out a latch—nor how long it would take them to simply tear through it.

  But right now, silence was the only thing he wanted.

  He moved down the freezing stone steps to rejoin the others.

  At first, the basement was dim, lit only by the wavering orange of Boris’s Flare.

  Then Kellen came closer carrying an oil lantern. The pale yellow glow widened the room—and the truth of the place finally came into view.

  A square chamber built from rough-cut stone. Moisture clung to every wall, beading in droplets that ran through dark algae stains. The air stank of mold and old damp—and beneath it, that same faint sulfur bite that turned the stomach.

  Against one wall sat a row of old wooden cabinets.

  Inside were glass jars packed tight—strange monster organs suspended in cloudy liquid. Some pieces seemed to shift, just barely, when the light touched them… as if refusing to admit they were dead.

  The long table on the other side was buried under paper—documents and leather-bound books that had gone yellow and brittle, smothered in dust and webs as if they had been left to rot for years.

  Rein scanned the room quickly—then something clicked in his head.

  The basement’s size made sense.

  It matched the cabin’s exterior almost perfectly. No, impossible extra space.

  This room isn’t under the Spatial Expansion, he realized, narrowing his eyes. It’s the only part of the cabin still anchored to normal structure.

  Which meant whatever laws were bending upstairs…

  …might not apply down here.

  Or something down here was actively shielding it.

  “Where’s the book, Kellen?”

  His voice was calm—but there was no room in it for debate.

  Kellen blinked, confusion mixing with terror. His hand shook around the lantern, making the light wobble.

  “Why? Do you think the thing upstairs connects to that book?”

  Rein didn’t answer. He let his gaze sweep over the table—over the decayed stacks—until it stopped.

  One volume stood out.

  A cover of pure black leather, glossy in a way nothing else in the room was. It rested alone on a carved wooden reading stand etched with unfamiliar, unsettling patterns.

  “…That one,” Rein murmured.

  He didn’t wait for permission. He walked straight towards it.

  The others followed behind him, drawn by fear as much as curiosity.

  But before his fingertips could touch the black cover—

  BOOM.

  A heavy impact thundered from the wooden ceiling above.

  The entire cabin shuddered. Thick dust fell in sheets, drifting down in time with slow, deliberate footsteps.

  It was pacing.

  Circling.

  Testing the space for weakness.

  Dana nearly screamed—but Jalara snapped a hand over her mouth. Mira clamped both hands over her own lips so hard her face went red.

  At the back of the room, Boris’s brow furrowed so deeply it looked carved. He shifted into a ready stance—preparing for the worst—then forced his voice low.

  In the held-breath silence, his whisper rang out painfully loud.

  “Does anyone… have a staff?”

  Marten and Kellen exchanged a frantic glance.

  No one answered.

  Boris let out a short, humorless breath. “Of course.”

  “A scholars’ club,” he muttered. “Figures.”

  He steadied himself, forcing his voice flat as the pounding overhead grew more frequent.

  “Rein… that hatch won’t hold much longer. Whatever you’re going to do, do it now—before it’s too late.”

  Rein didn’t respond.

  He stood utterly still, eyes locked on the black book.

  His hand hovered inches from it, suspended in the air.

  Wait.

  Too familiar.

  Cabin. Teenagers. Basement. Creepy book.

  We all know how this ends.

  Jalara, standing close enough to see his hesitation, finally snapped.

  Fear burned through her pride and came out the other side as fury.

  “What are you waiting for?!” she hissed. “If all this happened because Kellen and Dana used that thing—”

  Her lip curled.

  “—then we destroy it. End of story.”

  Rein felt it—the moment his instincts screamed that he was stepping into someone’s script.

  His pause lasted only seconds.

  Jalara didn’t give him more.

  With an angry flick of her finger, she cast a basic spark spell—the kind used to light candles.

  “Flicker.”

  Ffft.

  A small orange flame licked across the glossy black cover.

  The instant it touched—

  A shriek detonated through the room.

  High. Violent. Wrong.

  It tore straight into the skull, bypassing the ears like a blade driven through thought itself. Everyone collapsed, clutching their heads, hands pressed to their ears as if they could physically stop the sound.

  Rein gritted his teeth until they ached and forced his eyes open through the pain.

  The black book twisted—its shape warping, melting, as though reality itself was rejecting it—and then the surrounding space began to fracture.

  Cracks spread through the air—like the room itself was breaking apart.

  Rein watched as chunks of the stone floor unzipped from reality, tumbling into an abyss where gravity had no name. Then, in a strobe-light flash of impossible speed, the world stitched itself back together, leaving only a searing ache behind his eyes and the metallic tang of ozone on his tongue.

  How long it lasted, Rein couldn’t tell. Time had become a smear.

  When the shriek finally faded, the world returned in a silence so deep he could hear his own heartbeat.

  Rein was on one knee.

  He lifted his head slowly in the dark, breath shallow, and snapped his fingers.

  “Flare.”

  A pale flame bloomed—

  And what it revealed made him go still.

  He was alone.

  Everyone was gone.

  These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.

  Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.

  Creatures

  A rare, formless mana entity recorded in ancient Aetherian archives. Believed extinct for centuries, Veilshades are dense, predatory creatures composed entirely of magic. They behave like sentient mist—crawling across surfaces deliberately, devouring light and distorting detection spells.

  A physically real, unexpanded space beneath the Enigma Society’s spatially distorted cabin. Unlike the upper floors, which are affected by spatial expansion magic, the basement adheres to normal physical dimensions and constraints. This implies that either the space is shielded from expansion, or it is the true anchor point of the original building. It houses mysterious occult research materials, jars of magical organs, and a single black book that becomes central to the chapter’s climax.

  A magical creature—specifically a communication bird—used for relaying messages between locations. Kellen, the club president, attempts to dispatch their familiar to alert the Department of Variant Magic (DVM) but fails. The magical mist aboveground appears to sever or interfere with mana-based communication links, suggesting that the enemy can jam magical signals.

  A spell used by Boris to perceive hidden elements within an area, especially in darkness or fog. Despite its advanced detection ability, the spell fails to reveal anything within the white mist outside the cabin—indicating that the Veilshade or a related magical interference is deliberately blocking magical perception.

  A basic beginner-level fire spell, commonly used to light candles or lamps. Cast by Jalara in an impulsive attempt to destroy the cursed book. Despite its simplicity, its use as a trigger unleashes devastating magical feedback—indicating the book’s supernatural defense mechanisms.

  An eerie, leather-bound tome resting on a carved wooden stand in the basement. Glossy black, it stands out as a cursed or arcane object.

  When Jalara tries to destroy it using a basic fire spell (“Flicker”), the book emits a psychic scream that fractures space-time. Cracks appear in the room’s physical structure, and Rein experiences sensory distortion and temporal confusion—after which he finds himself alone.