Nero grimaced as he cursed again.

"Fuck!"

He finally realized what the Oracle meant when it said his chances were really slim.

Because that was quite the case.

The entity he cannot gaze upon has trapped him in some magical maze from which he cannot escape. Every time he tries to go forward, he is killed before he can reach his target.

And that is because the thing is looking at him.

However, for some reason, it cannot truly kill him. He believes the Oracle must be keeping him from dying somehow. However, he has absolutely no idea how it's doing this, or why it would even be capable of such a thing.

Every time he dies, he returns to this spot with no recollection of what happened previously. But this time, something has changed. Perhaps it is the effect of Heretic Eyes revealing the truth beneath the nightmare. He is not sure.

But there is one thing he is certain of.

Unless he can get the thing to avert its gaze from him, then he will keep dying forever, trapped in this endless cycle of death until he goes mad now that he has gained awareness of his situation.

The thought alone was enough to make his hands tremble.

He has died countless times already. How many? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? He doesn't know. The memories are fragmented, scattered like broken glass in his mind. He can recall flashes. Flashes of teeth tearing into his throat, madness consuming him, falling into darkness, being devoured alive, but they feel distant and unreal. Like half-remembered nightmares.

Except they weren't nightmares.

They were real.

Or were they?

Nero pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying to force clarity into his thoughts. The world around him felt unstable, like it might collapse at any moment.

The shadows curled strangely like wisps. There was sourceless light. The darkness seemed to grow darker and darker, hiding terrible things and monsters in their bowels. The air tasted like copper and ash.

"Do I try again?" he muttered to himself, his voice sounding hollow in the empty street.

He shook his head immediately.

It's impossible. There is no way he can outmaneuver the gaze of a god, even if it is merely a fraction of a fraction's fraction of what the god truly had been before its death.

Every route lead to death. Every path ends in failure. The thing above sees everything, knows everything, controls everything within this pocket of twisted reality. He is an insect trapped in a web, awaiting death despite the futile struggle.

Nero's breathing grew ragged as panic threatened to overwhelm him again. He forced himself to take slow, deep breaths, trying to calm the racing of his heart.

Think. There has to be a way out. There has to be.

But what could he possibly do against something like this? He was just a human—no, not even fully human anymore, but still bound by mortal limitations. His strength, his speed, his weapons, none of it mattered against an entity that could kill him with a thought, that could trap him in infinite loops of death just by looking at him.

The Oracle had said the odds were not in his favor.

That was an understatement.

Just as Nero continued to think, turning over possibilities in his mind and discarding them one after another as futile, he heard a loud sigh.

The sound cut through the oppressive silence of the ghost city like a knife.

Nero's entire body went rigid. His hand moved instinctively to Gungnir's shaft, gripping it tightly. The sigh had come from behind him.

How had he not sensed their approach?

His mind raced through possibilities.

Nero's muscles coiled, ready to spin around and strike, ready to fight whatever fresh horror this nightmare had conjured for him.

But something made him hesitate.

The sigh had sounded... familiar.

Slowly, carefully, Nero began to turn around.

He felt the presence of someone behind him more clearly now, and as he completed his turn, his eyes widened in shock.

Lyon stood there, looking at him with a grim smile on his face.

The doctor was dressed in his usual dark clothing, his sword-like brows furrowed in that familiar expression. But there was something different about him here, in this place. An intensity to his presence that seemed to push back against the evil of the ghost city, a solidity that everything else lacked.

"Looks like you've got yourself in a bit of a fix here, Nero," Lyon said, his voice cutting through the oppressive silence.

Nero's jaw hung open in surprise. His mind struggled to process what he was seeing.

"You... How did you—?!"

"Save the questions for later, kid," Lyon interrupted, walking up to him and patting his shoulder with a firm hand.

"I came as soon as Theo reached out to me," Lyon continued, "You aren't one to just run off for no reason, so I suspected foul play."

His gaze turned to the ground, and he spat out bitterly, his expression darkening.

"And from the looks of it, I guess I was right."

Then he turned back to Nero, his deep eyes studying him intensely,

"What happened here?"

Nero huffed, trying to organize his scattered thoughts into something coherent.

Then he started speaking, the words tumbling out.

"I saw a man in the crowd. I could sense... the corruption coming off of him. Much like that of an Abomination, but a bit different. And so I chased after him. Then I found myself here. In this... nightmare."

He gestured vaguely at the empty city around them.

"I don't know how long I've been trapped here. Every time I try to move forward, I... die. And yet, I am still here. It all makes no sense. I don't know exactly how many times it has happened, but—"

He cut himself off, realizing he was starting to ramble.

Lyon nodded, his expression grim but not surprised. He stayed silent for a moment, processing the information.

Then he began to tilt his head back, his gaze moving upward toward the sky.

"Stop!" Nero screamed in horror, his hand shooting out instinctively to grab Lyon's arm.

But he was too late.

Lyon's eyes were already fixed on the thing above.

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