The atmosphere inside was thick with an odd pressure. It felt as though the place was filled with life.
The deeper they went, the more certain he beca.
Life pulsed faintly in the stone around them.
The tunnel eventually widened into a vast cavern.
Before them stretched a city buried beneath the mountain, so vast that its edges were lost in the dim light.
The structures below were massive, built with hard lines and dark materials. Towers stood like watchful giants, and bridges connected them in networks overhead.
But it wasn't the architecture that caught Naless Death's attention.
It was the statues.
They were everywhere.
Lining the streets, standing at forges, perched atop balconies.
Enormous figures, all frozen mid-movent.
Each one had broad shoulders, thick limbs, and heavy torsos.
They looked like a dwarf human who was increased in size, but the proportions were kept the sa.
"What are they?" Naless Death asked.
"Dwarves," Zagreus replied as they walked.
"I thought the dwarves were supposed to be short?"
"They had proportions of a short person."
Naless Death frowned as he looked around the place with his Intent gaze.
The place felt wrong to him.
These statues lacked Intent of Existence. It was sothing that everyone had, even a corpse, and non-living objects.
Normally, a person's Intent of Existence was hidden by the energy they had cultivated. So the higher rank a person had, the harder was it to peek into their Intent of Existence.
Conversely, it was easier to check the Intent of Existence of objects without energy.
The more Naless Death looked around, the more he felt sothing was wrong.
The statues were unsettlingly detailed.
They weren't chipped or worn. It was like ti had simply stopped around them.
So held walking through the roads. Others were talking or laughing. Or they were supposed to be.
Naless Death and Zagreus walked across a high bridge that curved into the heart of the city.
Below them, he could see statues frozen mid-speech, others gathered in what looked like market areas. The city hadn't died in battle. It had just... halted.
Naless Death stopped suddenly and turned to look at the statues inside a smithy.
It was gripping a hamr with both hands, mid-swing, mouth open like it had been shouting.
He stared at it for a long mont.
"Sothing wrong?" Zagreus turned to him.
"I felt like it looked at ."
"You sure you didn't snort sothing weird on the way in? That thing hasn't moved in eons. None of them have."
Naless Death didn't respond.
He wasn't sure himself. Maybe it was just the energy of the place playing tricks. Or maybe not.
They continued forward.
As they neared the center of the city, the buildings grew larger. The roads widened. Stone gave way to tal. Pipes lined the walls and ceilings, so still faintly warm to the touch.
At the heart of the city stood a towering fortress.
Its outer gates were sealed shut with layers of runic tal and thick stone. The structure looked less like a castle, and more like a machine built for war and survival.
Zagreus pointed at it.
"That's the High Forge."
Naless Death studied the gates. They looked ancient, but intact.
The gates creaked open as they approached, revealing a corridor wide enough to march an army through.
The halls were lined with carvings of forges, so of them still holding tools in mid-motion, just like the city outside.
Naless Death followed Zagreus through the silence.
As they moved deeper, he started to feel a sense of recollection.
The feelings weren't clear or sharp, but it seed to him that he was supposed to know this place.
Strange feelings surged in his heart. He couldn't place a finger on those feelings.
Was it anger? Emptiness? Despair?
Or was it loneliness?
By the ti they reached a pair of thick, reinforced doors at the bottom level, his thoughts had grown too complicated.
Zagreus opened the doors with a single touch.
Behind the doors was a forge unlike the others.
This one was wide and open, more like a cathedral than a workspace.
Statues stood frozen in place, all focused on one thing or another.
Even the sparks seed to have been frozen in ti.
Naless Death moved slowly through the chamber.
He passed a row of anvils, each one larger than a bed. Long tables were scattered with tools that had rusted in place. On the far wall, a series of engravings caught his eye.
He stopped.
Zagreus noticed his reaction.
Naless Death didn't speak imdiately. He walked to the wall and raised a hand toward it, though he didn't touch it.
It was a blueprint.
A simple design, engraved into the surface of the wall.
It showed a cube.
The engraving had countless details of the cube.
It showed several internal sections, layers within layers, and symbols etched into every face of the cube.
The engravings were clean, almost reverent.
Zagreus ca up beside him.
"You know what they are?"
"No," Naless Death shook his head. "I just felt like this blueprint must be important. To engrave it on the wall like this… they must've seen it as one of their greatest works."
"Greatest invention, huh? That's one way to look at it." Zagreus smirked.
He tapped a knuckle against the blueprint.
"It's called the Womb of the Devil."
"That's a na if I have heard one."
Zagreus chuckled at his words.
"So what does it do?" Naless Death asked. "If it's their greatest invention, it must have so mythical ability."
"It's a device to create a Devil."
Zagreus was not the one who answered.
Instead, the floating eldritch octopus that had been hovering quietly nearby drifted forward. It pulsed slightly as it ca to a stop between them.
"A Devil," it said, "is Finality. The tamorphical being who embodies True End."
"…?" Naless Death frowned.
The octopus explained.
"Finality is not destruction, or death. It's the End. It's the mont where all paths cease. A Devil is the one who will embody that End and collapse all existence into nothingness."
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