The Silencer stands at the doorway, her slender figure cloaked in black, her white porcelain mask reflecting the flickering torchlight. There is no magical aura. No palpable intent to kill. Only a cold, absolute presence.

Tarek Mornhall stands between the assassin and Velka, who is hiding behind a bookshelf. His heavy crossbow is aimed straight at The Silencer's chest.

"You've made a grave mistake coming here," growls Tarek, his single eye narrowing.

The Silencer does not respond. She merely tilts her head slightly. Then she moves.

Her movement is beyond belief. Not human, but like smoke carried by wind. In the blink of an eye, she has crossed the room. Tarek fires his arrow, but the target is gone. The arrow embeds itself in the stone wall.

The Silencer appears beside Tarek. A black dagger flashes toward his neck.

Tarek, though surprised, is a veteran. He twists his body, using his crossbow as an emergency shield. The dagger screeches against metal, but Tarek manages to kick The Silencer back.

From her hiding place, Velka watches in horror. This is not a fight. This is a hunt. Tarek is the prey.

The Silencer does not attack again. Instead, she hurls three small metal disks to the floor. The disks do not explode. They release thick, dense black smoke that quickly fills the laboratory. The smoke not only obscures vision but also dampens all sound.

"Velka, don't move! Don't make a sound!" Tarek shouts, but his voice sounds muffled and distant.

Suffocating silence envelops them. Velka holds her breath, her heart pounding so loudly she fears the assassin can hear it.

Suddenly, from within the smoke, a dagger streaks toward Tarek's head. Tarek fires back in the direction of the attack, but he knows he's only shooting at a shadow.

Velka knows they cannot win like this. She is a Nocturne. She may not be able to fight, but she will not die as a passive victim. Her eyes scan the bookshelves behind her. Her mother's laboratory. Filled with chemicals.

As The Silencer emerges from the smoke, attacking Tarek from his blind side, Velka acts. She grabs two large jars from the shelf. One contains yellow sulfur powder, the other flammable metal dust.

"TAREK, DIVE!" she shouts.

She hurls both jars into the center of the room, into the midst of the battle. The jars shatter, releasing a thick cloud of chemical dust into the air, mixing with the black smoke.

Tarek, who has just parried another attack and taken a deep gash in his arm, understands Velka's intent. He replaces his arrow with a fire-tipped one he keeps for emergencies. He fires it straight into the center of the dust cloud.

The result is hellfire.

A deafening explosion erupts within the enclosed space. BOOOOM! Ancient bookshelves burst into flames. Valuable journals and parchments vanish into the fire. The blast hurls Tarek and Velka against the back wall, while The Silencer, closest to the explosion's core, is thrown into the corridor outside.

"WE NEED TO GO!" Tarek shouts, dragging the stunned Velka. Fire spreads rapidly.

"THE EVIDENCE! MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL!" Velka cries desperately.

"NO TIME! WE'LL DIE HERE!"

They run through the fire. Velka remembers something she read in her mother's journal. About an emergency exit. "The wall behind the fireplace! There's a mechanism there!"

They reach the old fireplace in the laboratory's corner. Velka presses a loose brick in a specific pattern. With a rumble, the back of the fireplace shifts, revealing a dark descending tunnel.

As they are about to leap in, The Silencer emerges from the flames again, her cloak slightly singed but her movements still deadly.

She does not attempt to stop them both. She has only one target. She hurls something, a small black object spinning through the air, straight at Velka.

A Shard of the Existence Devourer.

Tarek sees it. He recognizes the horrifying anti-life aura of the object. He makes a decision in a split second.

He shoves Velka with all his might into the tunnel. "GO!"

Velka tumbles into darkness. Tarek turns to face the shard, trying to parry it with his remaining arm.

The black shard embeds itself in his shoulder.

Velka, landing on the steps below, hears a scream. A scream she will never forget as long as she lives. Not a scream of physical pain. It is a scream of a soul being torn apart, of being erased from existence.

Then, silence.

The secret door above slides shut. She is alone in the darkness. The evidence they sought has been consumed by fire. And her protector... he has sacrificed himself in the most horrifying way.

While Velka wages war against foes of flesh and shadow, Nihil battles an enemy within himself.

He sits cross-legged on the cold floor of his sterile room. Before him lie theoretical diagrams from Elara Moonveil. The concept is simple yet impossible: using destructive power to build defenses. Using the Void to strengthen existence.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, beginning the most difficult battle of his life.

He dives into his consciousness. Into his internal landscape. There, he sees it clearly. On one side, a fragile yet stubborn point of light—Heze's consciousness. On the other, an endless churning black sea—the Void. And between them, a massive, crumbling crystal wall—the Shackles of Nihility.

Void Sync at 9.6% means the black sea is almost swallowing everything.

Following Elara's instructions, Nihil does not try to fight the sea. That is madness. He focuses on the cracked crystal wall. He tries to channel his essence, his will, the concept of himself as Heze, to patch one of the smallest cracks.

[Initiating Process: Conceptual Stabilization.]

As he does, the black sea roars.

He does not fight it with strength. He fights it with temptation. Whispers that were once faint now become clear voices in his mind.

"Why struggle? See how weary you are. Being Heze is painful. Let go. Become one with us. There is no pain in True Silence. No fear. Only peace."

Visions flood his mind. Visions of dead galaxies, of the end of time, of the perfect beauty of total nothingness.

"No," Nihil hisses in the real world, his teeth chattering.

He tries to focus, to patch the crack. But the sea pushes back with unimaginable force.

He is violently jolted from his meditation. He coughs violently, spewing blood onto the floor. His head feels like it's splitting in two.

[VOID SYNC CONTROL FAILED. CONCEPTUAL BACKLASH OCCURRED.]

[Void Sync: 9.6% -> 9.7%]

[WARNING: APPROACHING 10% THRESHOLD. LEVEL 2 DEPTH 'CRACK' WILL FORCE OPEN. STABILITY NOT GUARANTEED.]

The system issues a warning. He has failed. And his failure brings him closer to destruction.

He almost gives up. Perhaps the fanatics are right. Perhaps peace is the only answer.

But then, a memory surfaces. Not Heze's memory. The original Nihil's memory. Memories of his loneliness in the tower, of his quiet longing for connection, of a faint glimmer of hope that one day he would be accepted.

And he remembers Celia, sitting by his bedside as he lay unconscious. He remembers the respectful nod from Zander. He remembers Velka, his sister, who now knows where she is.

He is not alone. Not entirely. And that thought gives him new strength.

He tries again. This time, with a different approach.

He does not try to "patch" the wall as Heze. That is a battle he can never win. Instead, he tries to accept both sides of himself. He is Heze. He is Nihil. He is the Void itself.

He no longer tries to fight the sea. He dives into it. He does not try to command it. He tries to negotiate.

In his mental landscape, he stops patching the cracks. Instead, he tries to persuade the flow of the black sea to avoid the cracks. He no longer treats the seal as a prison to be reinforced, but as a riverbank to be respected. He seeks balance, not domination.

This is a mad conceptual gamble.

Slowly. Very slowly. The roaring of the sea begins to subside into a murmur. Its destructive tides start to recede. In one of the smallest cracks in the crystal wall, the flow of black energy begins to stabilize, even forming a thin protective layer around it.

Nihil opens his eyes, panting, his entire body drenched in sweat. He feels more exhausted than after battling a Wyvern. But he also feels something else. Peace.

[BASIC CONCEPTUAL STABILIZATION SUCCESSFUL.]

[New Skill Unlocked: Sync Control (Rank F)]

[Description: Allows the user to consciously stabilize or slightly reduce the rate of Void Sync increase through intense meditation and focus.]

[Void Sync: 9.7% -> 9.6%]

He has succeeded. He has found a path. A way to fight back, not by destroying, but by understanding.

He has only managed to reduce his Void Sync by 0.1%. But it is a victory. It is proof that he is not destined to be consumed by his own power.

The war within him is far from over. But for the first time, he now has a weapon to fight.

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