He and Jeanne walked through a vast banquet hall, hidden under spells that erased their voices, scent, and physical presence. The place roared with noise. All around them, guests were drinking and laughing uproariously, clapping and dancing with abandon. They reveled in this ghost mansion, nestled deep within a ghost city, their cheers rising in mad ecstasy. The orange-yellow candle flames lined neatly across pristine white tablecloths cast flamboyant glows on the partygoers' faces, illuminating their manic motions. A few of them, having drunk too much, collapsed onto the floor, faces flushed. Yet only a moment later, they sprang back up as if nothing had happened, returning to the festivities.
A drummer beat rhythmically on a taut drum, the pulse striking like hammer-blows on the hearts of the listeners, sending hot, frantic blood through chest and skull. The drums seemed to set the room ablaze with invisible fire, making it shimmer with surreal color—like a frenzied revel painted by a court painter obsessed with garish hues and decadent scenes.
Then, suddenly, a well-dressed man leapt into the center of the room. Sasser's eyes narrowed in shock—the man's face was familiar. He'd seen it in one of the portraits back in the dining hall. Perhaps this had once been the master of the house.
The man spun in the center of the room, smiling with a joy that seemed eternally frozen on his face.
A woman of a similar age soon followed, leaping up beside him. She was heavily pregnant, yet her body was as thin as a reed. Her neck looked so frail it might snap from a single sharp turn. Yet she spun with the same effortless grace as the man, her movements as fluid as windblown leaves.
And then—from her womb—a child's voice sang out, clear and sweet as silver bells:
"Oh mother, don't run anymore,
It's time for us to soar,
After your remarriage, with your new child, together!
We'll fly from the castle, fly out the window,
Fly from the prison that locked me below."
The pregnant woman spun faster and faster, like a leaf caught in a whirlwind, her silhouette blurring like a top lashed by a whip. The man joined her in song, his falsetto shrill and unnatural, completely unlike the voice of any normal man:
"Father rides in the seventh sky,
He gallops fast as lightning flies—
Oh my dear, my little one!
He wears the shoes your mother made,
Stitched with sheepskin, fine and neat!
Finer than my ribbon bow,
Give it to me, give it now—
Your foot still in it, if you please!"
The black sorcerer led Jeanne through the gaps in the crowd, one hand always on the hilt of his longsword—just in case. Mist curled around their feet, weaving through the flickering candlelight in grimy veils like a filthy shroud.
More and more people began to spin.
An elderly man with snowy white hair leapt into the air like a puppet on strings. He flailed his arms high above his head, kicked his shriveled legs skyward, bent low at the waist, then abruptly arched his back—like some spring-loaded wire coiling and uncoiling. His hoarse voice rasped like a saw scraping across wood as he howled with all his might:
"Poor Eliane, poor Eliane,
Come now, jump high, dance fast,
Possessed, possessed!
Come now, come now! Hoo!"
Everyone was dancing now—not waltzing or solo performances, but spinning, spinning in synchronized madness, as though gripped by a force compelling them to whirl until their bodies tore apart.
In his childhood, after hearing some terrifying folktale from his father, Sasser occasionally had nightmares like this—fairytale-like, irrational, filled with the fevered nonsense of dreams.
"Judge, what do you think this is?" Sasser scanned the scene, voice tight. "Some kind of folk ritual?"
Jeanne swept her gaze across the banquet hall with open disgust. "You've spent too long cooped up in labs, black sorcerer. There are no such folk rituals—unless you count the lunatic rites of deranged cultists. And this place is vile. If it weren't the wrong time, I'd personally conduct a full three-day fire execution on the master of this house until he begged for forgiveness."
"Could you maybe talk about something other than burning people?" Sasser muttered, carefully eyeing a possible path through the frenzied dancers.
The spinning intensified, becoming a gale of human limbs and blurred faces. Hair stood on end, garments puffed out from centrifugal force, and each figure twisted into a vague, white column. The singing turned into a nightmarish chorus of overlapping voices—some laughing, some shouting, all merging into an eerie cacophony. It felt less like the revelers were expressing themselves and more like some other entity was laughing, singing, and shouting through them.
Wine spilled everywhere. Bottles shattered on the floor, their shards crunching underfoot. Pus and blood mixed with the liquor, releasing a stench of decay. Some dancers collapsed with spasms, frothing at the mouth like those possessed by spirits. One fell face-first into broken glass—his eyeball punctured and leaking milky fluid—then stood back up, his ruined eye spinning with him, and continued dancing.
"Let me guess… you're wondering how to break through a black sorcerer's concealment spell," Sasser said, narrowing his eyes and glancing toward Jeanne, trying to gauge how serious her tone was.
"Let's go back to talking about fire executions," he added. "Maybe start with whether you've ever been burned yourself."
"I have. When I was very young." Her tone was disturbingly flat.
"…Eh?"
Sasser blinked. Jeanne stared right back.
Then she said, "Red Death. Ever heard the term?"
"I know of it. Your people burned heretics. They burned everyone. Including themselves."
"Good. Then you understand," she replied. "I don't want to talk about it in detail. But over a decade ago, I was pulled out of the burning ruins by one of the Lord's servants—an Iron Inquisitor."
The Iron Inquisitors…
Sasser said nothing more. He turned away, drawing in a deep, cold breath that crept through his chest and coiled in his gut. Among those who dabbled in powers from beyond, Iron Inquisitors were feared more than even the Empress's own hunters. No one truly knew what horrors those zealots did to themselves in pursuit of sanctified destruction.
Still… the black sorcerers weren't in much of a position to judge.
Moments later, they and Viola the cat arrived at the banquet hall's far exit. The corridor beyond was empty. Sasser tilted his head toward the open doorway, squinting, trying to make out what lay just beyond.
Viola had told them the master's chamber lay ahead—so of course the owner had set up defenses. As for why the cat herself couldn't leave the room, Sasser figured it was probably some constraint tied to the nature of the maze.
What cloaked the exit wasn't a wall, nor darkness exactly—it was more like a shadow curled in on itself, so pitch black it made the banquet hall's dim candlelight feel like midday in comparison. A trembling, uneven gray silhouette pulsed within it—like someone had scooped a lump from a rotting wheel of black cheese.
"This isn't just a hallway. There's… something wrong beyond that," said the cat. "But it's the only way to reach the master. Even if you smash the walls, all you'll find are normal corridors."
"I think we can still turn back," said Sasser, taking a step in retreat. "I've got a really bad feeling about this."
Jeanne raised her sword and rested it lightly against his neck.