Within the dim underground tomb, in the sealed and limited space, Misha—who had infiltrated her own family crypt—was locked in a close-quarters clash with the black-cloaked intruder. In the aftermath of their battle, the mysterious figure’s use of wind-based abilities stunned both Misha and Dorothy, who was observing from afar. But the black-cloaked man gave Misha no time to be surprised—his next assault came instantly.
Not giving her a moment to breathe, he pointed his finger at Misha and unleashed several compressed air blades. Though these wind blades were invisible, Misha, with her heightened sensitivity to air flow, instantly sensed the incoming danger. She likewise extended her hand and fired an air cannon toward her attacker. The invisible projectile shot through the tomb and collided with the unseen wind blades. The cannon dispersed, but the wind blades were knocked off course, veering away and slamming into the tomb’s stone pillars and rocky walls.
Seeing that his attack failed, the man didn’t pause—he immediately launched his next move. With a sweeping motion and a spin, he whipped up a violent whirlwind around him and sent a fierce gust toward Misha, seemingly trying to suppress her entirely with wind and follow up with another attack.
Unintimidated, Misha countered with a gust of her own. The two opposing air currents collided at the center of the tomb, crashing into each other before surging out in all directions. The violent air turbulence, now out of either combatant’s control, swept across the tomb, stirring up years’ worth of accumulated dust. The already dim tomb became even harder to see, and even Misha, with her night vision, struggled to make out her surroundings. She raised her guard.
Faced with the dust storm, the two took different approaches. Misha blew a small gust around herself to clear the immediate area, preserving her visibility and preventing ambushes. The man, meanwhile, pulled a sigil from his clothes, wrapped it around a gold coin, and threw it forward. As the coin’s gleam faded, the sigil burned to ash midair. In its place, a flash of brilliant light burst forth—a glowing orb of white light floated above the tomb, illuminating everything like a suspended spotlight. The visibility in the tomb shot up. Now, the black-cloaked man could make out Misha’s silhouette even through the lingering dust.
“What…? That’s a lighting sigil! What is he planning?”
Seeing the sudden illumination, Misha raised her vigilance. While on guard, she hurled several wind blades at his shadowed form revealed by the light, taking the chance to strike while his position was exposed.
But to Misha’s surprise, the man didn’t dodge in the usual sense. Instead, his entire body crouched down—and then, like an ice sculpture melting, he dissolved into a pool of shadow. The inky black mass spread rapidly along the floor, slithering outward.
Through the haze, Misha couldn’t see the transformation clearly—it looked to her as if the man had suddenly vanished underground.
Startled by his disappearance, Misha fixed her gaze on the floor, ready for him to erupt from below. But instead of an ambush from beneath, she saw something else.
A shadow—a pure black form under the tomb’s hanging lights—slithered out from the mist before her. It hugged the ground and twisted like a snake as it darted rapidly toward her.
The independently moving shadow closed in fast. Misha’s eyes widened, and she immediately unleashed several wind blades at the serpent-like silhouette. But the shadow twisted and warped like putty, evading each attack. The blades only left sharp cuts on the stone floor. When the shadow reached her, it abruptly expanded like spilled ink, forming a pool of darkness. From that pool, the black-cloaked man suddenly sprang forth, lunging at Misha with a dagger in hand—he was less than a meter away.
In the face of this sudden strike, Misha’s expression hardened. She stomped down hard with one foot, and at the instant her heel struck the ground, a compressed burst of air pressure exploded outward. A shockwave blasted out from beneath her, throwing the attacker’s charge off balance. Taking this moment, Misha counterattacked with a swift upward slash.
Her sword cut clean through the black-cloaked man, slicing him in two at the waist.
But just as Misha believed the fight was over, a shocking sight followed.
The figure she’d split apart twisted midair into two blobs of black shadow and vanished. No blood. No corpse.
Misha was stunned, her wide eyes filled with disbelief.
“What?”
“Behind you—watch out!”
The voice of “Detective” echoed once more in her mind. Immediately turning, Misha spotted another serpent-like shadow darting through the dust behind her. From that shadow, another black-cloaked man emerged, lunging at her with a dagger.
The distance was too short for Misha to retaliate with wind powers. As she twisted around, she thrust out her hand and grabbed the incoming dagger with her left hand. The Shadow-enchanted blade tore through her glove and cut into her skin—but her Stone-infused flesh held firm. Though blood seeped out, her fingers gripped the weapon tightly.
Having neutralized the strike, Misha raised her sword-wielding right hand and slashed at the enemy at close range. At this distance, he had no way to dodge.
But just as her blade was about to strike his face—
It stopped.
The edge hovered centimeters from his expressionless mask, frozen mid-air.
No matter how hard Misha pushed, the blade wouldn’t move forward at all.
She was immobilized—as though bound by some invisible force. She couldn’t move a muscle. And yet, there was no rope, no spell circle, no visible restraint—nothing external holding her in place. It was as if she were being possessed by an overwhelming ghostly presence.
Yet no spiritual entity had appeared.
“This is…”
With her eyes wide open, Misha was only able to move her gaze. And then—she saw something even more horrifying.
On the floor, lit faintly by the overhead lamp, her own shadow began to warp.
Dark cords—shadow ropes—extended from the shadow of the black-cloaked man. They reached across the floor and entwined with Misha’s shadow, wrapping tightly around it. His shadow moved differently from his body, performing its own strange gestures. The ropes it cast weren’t anchored to any physical object.
And because Misha’s shadow was bound—her body was too.
The restraints applied to her shadow were somehow transmitted directly to her physical form.
“This… is the Spirit Projection Path?!”
Seeing this scene, Misha murmured in disbelief. Meanwhile, the black-cloaked man—having successfully restrained her—seemed ready to speak, but instead, he simply released the dagger Misha had grabbed. From within his cloak, he drew another blade. After imbuing it with powerful Shadow enchantment, he stabbed the dagger directly toward Misha’s throat. With the boost from third-stage Shadow, her second-stage Stone defense wouldn’t hold for long.
In the reflection of Misha’s widened pupils, the dagger—charged with Shadow spirituality—rushed toward her, seemingly about to pierce her throat. Her life was on the verge of ending… and just then, a reversal arrived.
Suddenly, a thick, fragrant haze dispersed over Misha’s body. Where it passed, her form became translucent—like a ghost, yet more dreamlike, covered in shifting, iridescent hues.
It was dream-form transformation. From afar, Dorothy had noticed Misha’s dire situation and took immediate action, using Shadow and Revelation spiritualities to activate the Dreamscale Censer. Misha’s body transformed into a dream-form, temporarily shedding her material form and becoming a creature of the Dreamscape, a phantasmal being within the real world.
And dream-forms cast no shadows.
Light couldn’t generate shadows without a solid form. So at the very moment Misha became a dream-form, her shadow vanished—rendering the shadow-bindings that restrained her completely ineffective.
Freed from the black-cloaked man’s shadow bindings, Misha immediately dodged. Though she lost a small portion of her dream-form to the enchanted dagger’s cut, she narrowly avoided the fatal blow. Her dreamlike form floated swiftly to the man’s rear flank. There, Dorothy reversed the transformation, returning Misha to her solid self—just in time for her to counterattack.
With a sweep of her sword, Misha summoned a gust of wind that forced the man to cover his eyes. Taking that chance, she stepped forward and swung her blade at him. The black-cloaked man quickly recovered and flung out several shadow ropes again, trying to bind her as before. But Misha had learned her lesson. Reacting swiftly, she sent a wind blade across the floor, slicing through the incoming shadow restraints. Though the maneuver cost her a beat in her attack rhythm, it prevented her from being captured again.
Perhaps after seeing her transformation into a dream-form, the man judged that he couldn’t kill her. He must have decided it was no longer worth it to stay tangled with her. At the moment Misha’s offensive faltered, he didn’t strike again or try to defend—but instead turned and bolted for the tomb’s exit.
Seeing this, Misha quickly slashed through the last of the shadow ropes and gave chase.
“You’re not getting away!”
As the man fled, Misha gathered her spirituality into her blade, preparing to launch a wind blade at him. But just as her sword lifted, the man turned and threw something back at her—a pendant.
It was the ancient pendant he had stolen from Ampere’s coffin.
He threw it directly between them—right into the path of her attack. If Misha released her wind blade at full power, she would undoubtedly destroy the artifact.
Faced with this dilemma, Misha had no choice but to veer her strike at the last moment, sending the wind blade off to the side where it sliced into the stone walls. She then rushed forward two steps and caught the pendant in her hand.
Taking advantage of this hesitation, the man melded into the shadows again—his entire body dissolving into a serpentine shadow and slithering toward the crypt’s exit, vanishing into the darkness.
Misha secured the pendant and immediately gave chase. But when she reached the corridor, she was stunned by what she saw.
From the far end of the tunnel, a sudden flash of fire erupted, followed by a deafening boom and tremor.
BOOM!
With a thunderous explosion, a massive shockwave blasted down the tunnel and swept into the tomb. Standing at the tunnel mouth, Misha staggered from the blast. Regaining her footing, she looked ahead and realized she could feel fresh air blowing in from outside the crypt.
“He… he blew open the sealed gate?!”
“Not quite,” Dorothy replied from afar.
“He blasted the wall next to the gate. The gate itself is made of Frost Netherstone—far harder to destroy. The wall, on the other hand, likely had only a small amount of Frost Netherstone bricks. He must’ve planted the explosives in advance when he infiltrated the funeral procession.”
Dorothy then added urgently.
“That explosion has already alerted your family’s Beyonders and the Serenity Bureau. Get out—now! Or it’ll be too late!”
Misha froze briefly at Dorothy’s words. Then she snapped to action. Summoning air currents beneath her feet, she lifted off and flew swiftly down the tunnel.
At its end, beside the damaged gate, was the man-made breach. Using the path he carved out, Misha shot out of the underground tomb. Along the way, she passed several unconscious tomb guardians—clearly taken out earlier by the black-cloaked man.
Next, she burst through the Loyal Guardian Chapel, managing to escape before her family or colleagues could arrive. She raced into the forest, dashing between thick trees, putting the Devonshire crypt behind her.
And as she flew, she reflected on the man she had just faced.
“Who… was he really? Why could he use so many Shadow-path abilities? Blood Shade, Storm Path… even the Spirit Projection Path that’s supposed to be exclusive to the Osotlis royal line... Isn’t the Eight-Spired Nest supposed to only use Blood Shade?”
As she asked these questions internally, Dorothy remained silent, deep in thought. She, too, was carefully analyzing the origin of that mysterious man. And at this moment, a theory was beginning to take shape in her mind.
“Perhaps… we’ve just run into an old friend…”
Dorothy murmured.
Her thoughts drifted back to over half a year ago—at the New Year’s banquet where Duke Barrett was assassinated. It was then that she first saw the true power of the Eight-Spired Nest’s strongest operative in Pritt.
The one known as the Murder Fiend—Night Demon.