"You have until I reach the throne to decide. If, when I turn, you are still standing there… I will kill you."

Almost casually, the Midnight King began to walk toward the throne. Each step thundered through the black stone hall. The sound spread, deep and reverent, as if each footfall was stealing the air from the room. Shadows lengthened and moved with him, as though the darkness itself obeyed his tread.

The force radiating from him was suffocating. The air felt thick enough to slice, a physical pressure on the chest, an unspoken warning that something vast and dangerous stood before them. It wasn't a passing tension. The weight of it settled over skin and thought, making even breathing feel like a choice that had to be measured.

"What do we do?" Jack asked, voice shaking, eyes fixed on the figure. His face had gone pale; sweat tracked down his cheek as he fought to steady his breathing. The archangel's mere presence made him feel small and exposed.

Erza Grimhart clicked her tongue and was the first to step forward. Her foot hit the dark marble with a dry, sharp sound. Her face tightened, anger, but not only at the enemy; anger at herself for feeling frightened. Still, she moved on.

Jack and Evangeline followed close, rigid and coiled, every muscle ready. None of them lowered their guard. Anne walked beside Erza, sword raised, metal catching the throne's dull light. Allison came after, cautious, her gaze shifting between the king and their party. One by one their steps beat out a weary, determined rhythm across the hall, like the measured pulse of a tired heart.

The castle seemed to breathe around them. Columns of polished black stone rose like ribs. In the center, the throne loomed, a crystalline monument, magnificent and terrible.

Luke watched from a distance. He caught Charlie's eye and she nodded without words. She moved forward with the others while he slipped back a pace, keeping just far enough away to avoid being swept into the first clash. He needed a clean line of fire, an angle where he could shoot without putting anyone directly in the arrow's path.

The bow in his hands felt almost insignificant against what faced them, but he kept it ready, fingers tensed on the string, poised to act.

Everything went still as the Midnight King halted before the throne. For a moment the silence was absolute. He turned slowly, calm, almost ceremonial, and there was something both mesmerizing and menacing in the motion. His stone wings unfurled a fraction, sending up faint motes of ancient dust. A cold blue light traced the fissures across his petrified skin like veins of trapped luminescence.

With one simple, merciless gesture he raised a hand. A translucent notification bloomed in the air before them, hanging like a pane of glass, calm, clinical, impossible to ignore.

[Dimensional Portal (Ancient)]: A crystal throne that activates a Dimensional Portal capable of transporting individuals out of the Midnight Terror Tutorial. It is linked to the corresponding universe and planet of those within this tutorial. Once time runs out, this portal will disappear, and this pocket universe will be lost forever.

The glowing text floated in the air, letters shifting and shimmering, their light flickering across the group's tense faces.

The archangel smiled.

"I imagine some of you understand how this works," he said in that deep, calm voice of his, too calm. "You only need to place your hand on the throne and channel mana. The portal will open. Simple. Convenient. This is the exit you've all been craving."

His tone was gentle, almost kind, yet every word carried an unnatural weight—authority born of something far beyond human. A king, a jailer, a forgotten judge. Perhaps all of them at once. No one moved. The air around the Midnight King seemed to warp, heavy with a power so dense it strained the edges of reality.

Erza was the first to speak. "We appreciate the guidance," she said evenly, her voice respectful but steady. "I promise we won't trouble you as we leave."

The King tilted his head, studying her with faint amusement.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"You wouldn't trouble me," he replied. "Ant bites don't hurt you, do they? Then you see... no trouble at all."

He laughed, a dry, hollow sound that echoed off the stone walls, as though the castle itself shared the joke. No one dared move. Even without open hostility, everyone could feel it—that one wrong breath could be fatal.

"Can we use the portal?" Allison asked carefully. "We have no intention of fighting, Your Majesty. We only want to go home."

The King drew in a slow breath. Though carved from stone, the sound was unmistakably human.

"Home…" he murmured, gazing up at the vaulted ceiling, as if searching the shadows for something long gone.

"Home…" he repeated, the word rasping now, stripped of its calm.

His eyes changed. The serenity shattered, replaced by a burning rage. The silence broke with a single, devastating sound. His fist came down on the throne. The impact cracked through the hall, shaking the ground. Dust rained from the ceiling as the shock rippled through the marble floor in jagged fractures of black stone. And then the throne began to glow.

Something moved—something bound.

Luke saw it first. A metallic flash beneath the throne's light, the gleam of an ancient chain. It emerged slowly, forged of links that looked half metal, half stone. Heavy, unyielding, it wrapped around the King's ankle. Luke's eyes narrowed.

It hadn't appeared out of nowhere. It had been there all along, hidden, cloaked by some spell. Now it was visible.

"Home… home… home…" the King whispered, his voice unraveling into something guttural and broken.

Then he began to laugh. The sound twisted into madness, echoing through the chamber—wild, discordant, the laughter of something that no longer remembered what it meant to be alive. The echo clung to the walls, stretching longer than it should have. When it finally faded, it left behind a stillness that no one wanted to break.

Erza stepped back, her expression tightening.

"Rhiannon," she whispered, voice barely audible. "What the hell did you do?"

The archangel lifted its hands and clutched at its own face. Stone talons scraped across its skin.

"Home… home… home…" it repeated, louder each time, teeth clenched, a sound that blurred between sobbing and laughter.

It began to bite its fingers, breaking them as if it felt no pain. Then, abruptly, everything stopped. The laughter. The sound. The trembling. All of it fell silent. The King looked at them. The stone eyes that had been dull and cold were now lit with a contained, terrible fury.

The group took a reflexive step back, forming a defensive semicircle. A translucent barrier shimmered into being in front of them, probably Anne's, a quick, instinctive ward raised with barely a flick of the wand.

"Home… ah, yes… home," the archangel said at last, and his voice slid back into a calmness that felt rehearsed. He breathed once, smoothed his posture, and collected himself as if nothing had happened.

Luke felt that something was profoundly wrong with the creature. This had not been a normal lapse.

"Oh… you are still here," the King said with a soft laugh. "Forgive me. You were not meant to see that. And please…" His tone dropped to a whisper, but it carried the weight of a promise. "Do not speak that word again… or I will cut you in half."

The chains shifted, scraping across the floor with metallic groans as the creature resumed its stride.

"Like you," the archangel continued, eyes fixed on the crystalline throne, "I am also trapped in this place. This pocket dimension is my cell and my tomb. For millennia, or ages, who can say, I have lain here, half awake, half dreaming, always trying to delay the inevitable."

They exchanged silent looks. Trying to delay the inevitable? What did that mean?

As he spoke, the King's form began to change. The uniform gray of his stone skin dissolved slowly. Cracks sealed themselves and a faint light bled through them, like flame imprisoned beneath the surface.

Bit by bit, the petrified flesh gave way to living tissue. The wings that had been carved of stone unfurled again, now white as snow, every feather pulsing with a living energy. The skin smoothed into a pale, luminous surface. The hair turned blond, not merely blond but shining with the sheen of pure gold.

Yet, as the radiance intensified, something went wrong. His perfection took on an unnatural quality, so flawless it hurt to look at. Light seemed to bend around his body; the air itself took on a metallic tang. When the King turned to face them fully, everyone felt the same visceral recoil at seeing the other half of him: disgust.

A wave of nausea, tangled with revulsion. Silence held for a moment as they stared at that second aspect of the archangel, until Mason breathed, barely audible:

"Holy shit…"

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