Chapter 164: 164: Ghouls and numbers
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Sekht lay on his back, eyes open, staring at the dark ceiling of his room.
The candle on the side table had already burned low. Wax had pooled around its base like a small pale lake. Dawn House was quiet in the way old houses always beca quiet at night, as if the stone itself decided to sleep.
Bat Bat was not here.
Elena had taken her to finish howork, and Bat Bat had scread about letters being evil, then lost the war because Elena’s voice had the sa unstoppable force as gravity.
The servants had withdrawn.
Even the corridor footsteps had faded.
Only Sekht remained awake.
Not because he wanted to.
Because sleep ca slowly when your throat still rembered the taste of new blood and your mind still carried the weight of two kneeling vampires calling you master.
Vera and Vela were in the guest room wing. They would not leave unless commanded. They would not betray unless it was worth becoming a broken thing. That bond sat in Sekht’s chest like a hidden chain, not choking him, but reminding him he had created sothing that could not be undone casually.
Mira was sowhere in that sa wing, under contract, under rules, under ink and seal.
Auri was in the void land.
And that was exactly why Sekht’s eyes narrowed when the air in his room shifted.
It was subtle.
Not a gust of wind.
Not a footstep.
More like the sensation of a thought bumping into the edge of another thought, urgent enough to demand attention.
Then it ca.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
But clear enough that it sliced through the quiet like a thin blade.
[Ding! SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Contact Attempt Detected.
Source: Void Land Entity – Auri.
Status: Urgent Request for Host Presence.
Action: Open Void Land Access Point?]
Sekht sat up instantly.
His body moved before his mind finished processing the words. That was the instinct that had kept him alive for five years. You did not ignore a warning. You did not delay when sothing under your control signaled urgency.
Auri was not the type to panic.
If she was calling, sothing mattered.
Sekht swung his legs off the bed and stood, bare feet touching the cold floor. He did not shout for servants. He did not wake Elena. He did not wake Bat Bat.
If sothing was wrong inside the void land, it was his problem first.
He drew a slow breath and spoke inside his mind, the way he always did when he needed clarity without witnesses.
Hey system.
The reply was imdiate, cold, efficient.
[System response... Awaiting Host Command]
Sekht’s eyes narrowed slightly.
"When I got the Void land," he thought, "you said I can stay there for ten minutes. But now I am stronger. Chaos Rank One. How long can I stay now?"
The system responded as if it had been waiting for the question.
[System Response: Void Land Internal Ti Limit Updated.
Reason: Host Chaos Energy Purity Threshold Achieved.
Current Chaos Energy Purity: 13%
Current Void Land Stay Duration: 30 Minutes.
Next Threshold: 20% Purity.
Projected Stay Duration at 20% Purity: 60 Minutes]
Sekht blinked once, processing the logic.
"So that’s how it works," he murmured quietly to himself, voice barely audible in the dark room. "Purity decides duration."
He rubbed his jaw once, as if wiping away the last trace of sleep that never truly arrived.
"Whatever," he muttered, then lifted his hand.
He did not hesitate. He opened the void land.
The air in front of him tore with a smooth unnatural motion, like a curtain being pulled aside by invisible hands. Darkness folded into darkness, and behind it waited a world that belonged to him.
The void did not shine.
The void did not welco.
It waited.
Sekht stepped forward and crossed the threshold.
The sensation of entering was always the sa.
A mont of weightlessness.
A faint pressure on the skull.
A quiet drop in sound, as if the real world had been muffled by thick cloth.
Then the void land accepted him, and the world returned.
He stood on dark ground that was neither soil nor stone, more like a hardened shadow shaped into terrain. Above him was an endless dim sky with no sun, no moon, no stars. Light existed only in faint glows from his own summons and the traces of chaos energy that drifted in slow currents.
He moved forward imdiately. He did not have ti to stand and admire his private kingdom. His eyes scanned. His instincts reached outward.
And he found them.
Not far from the usual gathering area where the bats liked to cluster.
They were all there.
Auri stood at the front, posture tense, wings folded close. Her eyes were fixed on sothing on the ground. She was calm, but the calm was sharp, like a blade held steady.
Bat minions sward around, small shapes fluttering, their red eyes bright in the void darkness. The six rare bats were present too, larger, sharper, their bodies carrying stronger chaos energy now, their movents more controlled than before. They perched like disciplined soldiers, not like wild animals.
Even the ghouls were present.
One of them, the one with a missing hand, stood slightly apart, his posture stiff like he had been told to stand and he was doing it because he was too dumb to do anything else.
And on the ground...
A body.
Sekht’s steps slowed slightly as he approached.
The figure lying there was human-shaped, but barely.
It looked like a corpse that had been dragged out of a dry grave and forgotten again. Skin pulled tight over bones. Jaw slightly open. Eyes half-lidded. Not dead yet, but close enough that the difference was almost insulting.
Sekht stared.
Recognition hit him like a small unpleasant slap.
The robber.
The scavenger thief.
The man who had tried to rob him when he first ca out of the madness of purgatory, before he entered the city with Lily. Sekht had been angry. Also Hungry and Cold.
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