the Dark Divine" it wheezed, a note of reverence in its voice despite the dire situation it was facing.
"Nadim Vilal… was meant to be… our vessel… But… you… you're not him… "
"You're not supposed to exist…"
"You are a mistake, huge mistake... I can confirm it... "
"You are not him despite having his body"
Mize's expression darkened, his eyes narrowing. "A cultist of a dark divine," he muttered, more to himself than to the figure. "And you dared to toy with me… to manipulate me into believing a lie?"
The figure's resolve flickered, but it wasn't completely shattered.
Despite its fear, a twisted loyalty to the dark divine it served kept it clinging to its mission, even in the face of death. "You're not… real… You're just… a mistake…"
"A horrible mistake"
Mize's smile faded, replaced by something far more sinister, a shadow of malice that sent a shiver down the figure's spine.
"Since you don't want to speak so much," Mize began, his voice low and dangerous, "then let me show you a way to speak… a way to understand true happiness."
He adjusted his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose, the light reflecting off the lenses in a way that obscured his eyes entirely.
The figure's fear spiked a deep, primal terror that clawed at its very soul.
There was something about Mize, something dark and unfathomable, that made the figure realize how deeply it had underestimated him.
Mize leaned in closer, his breath ghosting across the figure's void-like face. "And by the way," he whispered, his tone almost conversational, "I forgot to tell you something… One part of the memories you faked for me is true… "
"It's actually very interesting…"
"To say that a lie can be true... That one lie you believed that I trusted so blindly, though it's true!"
The figure's form shook violently, the terror of what was about to happen overwhelming it. "W-what… what are you…?" It managed to choke out, its voice filled with a desperate, futile fear.
Mize's smile returned, but this time it was a dark, twisted thing, filled with an unspoken promise of something far worse than death.
"As for the reward," he murmured, his voice soft but dripping with malevolence, "I can show you what I am."
The room seemed to grow colder, the shadows lengthening as Mize's words hung in the air, a prelude to the horrors that were about to unfold.
The figure's fear was palpable, a suffocating wave that filled the space between them.
Mize's smile widened, the darkness in his eyes deepening, as he prepared to reveal the truth that the figure so desperately feared.
"You were right about one thing. I am indeed not Nadim," Mize began, his voice low and ominous, each word dripping with a dark promise.
He paused, his features contorting, as if something deep within him was unraveling. Bit by bit, the room around them began to change.
The shadows that had once lingered innocuously in the corners of the room started to swell, expanding like an inkblot on paper.
But these were no ordinary shadows. This was a darkness so pure, so absolute, that it consumed everything in its path—obliterating light, form, and reality itself.
The room upstairs and below was swallowed in an instant, becoming a void where no light dared to tread, an abyss of sheer nothingness.
The temperature dropped, the air grew thin, and the walls seemed to groan under the weight of the all-consuming blackness.
The figure, now little more than a trembling wreck, stared in horror as Mize's form began to distort, becoming something incomprehensible, a twisting mass of flesh and void, an abomination that defied the very fabric of existence.
"W-what! Tab-taboo?" the figure shrieked, its voice breaking with terror as the reality of its situation dawned on it.
The entity before him was no mere human, nor was it anything remotely understandable.
Mize's smile—if it could still be called that—emerged within the depths of the darkness, a grin that was more a gaping maw of despair than an expression of mirth.
The figure tried to move, to escape the creeping dread that crawled up its spine, but it was too late.
Mize's form had become a vortex, a terrifying hole in the fabric of reality itself, and it began to pull the figure in with a force that defied resistance.
The figure could feel it, deep within its very essence, something vital being torn away. It wasn't just its body being drawn in, but its soul, its very existence.
"No… no… this can't… be…" the figure whimpered, its voice weakening as it struggled against the inevitable.
But the more it fought, the stronger the pull became. Something else accompanied the suction—a miasma, thick and suffocating, seeping into every pore, every thought, choking out hope and life itself.
"Feel it," Mize's voice echoed through the void, distorted and inhuman, reverberating through the darkness like a dirge.
"Feel the pain of your soul and very essence being taken away."
There was a sick pleasure in his tone, a malevolent joy in the suffering he inflicted.
"Be proud," he whispered, his voice now surrounding the figure from every direction as if the darkness itself spoke, "for you have the privilege of seeing me in my true form…"
The figure's body convulsed as the miasma penetrated deeper, corroding it from the inside out.
Its soul, the very core of its being, was unraveling, thread by thread, pulled into the maw of darkness that Mize had become.
The pain was indescribable, a torment that transcended physical agony, a suffering that cut straight to the soul.
"M-m-mercy… please…" the figure begged, its voice barely more than a breath now, its resistance finally broken.
But there was no mercy in the void. No salvation in the abyss. Only the slow, agonizing pull into the darkness, the inexorable consumption of everything that it was or could ever be.
And as the figure's consciousness faded, as it became one with the darkness, it was left with only one thought—a realization of the profound horror of what it had encountered.
Mize's grin was the last thing it saw, a grotesque smile that would haunt the remnants of its soul for all eternity before the void claimed it completely.
As the figure was swallowed whole into the void, the darkness that had once consumed the room began to recede.
Slowly, the overwhelming blackness dissipated, retreating like an ebbing tide until it vanished entirely.
The broken remnants of the room, the shattered walls and cracked floorboards, were miraculously restored as if nothing had ever happened.
It was as though time itself had rewound, erasing all evidence of the fierce battle that had just taken place.
Mize now sat gracefully on the bed, his legs casually crossed, exactly where he had first awakened.
His demeanor was calm, almost serene, a stark contrast to the chaos that had unfolded just moments before.
In his hands, he held a stone tablet, its surface inscribed with arcane symbols and words that glowed faintly under his touch.
He turned it over in his hands, weighing it thoughtfully before he muttered to himself, "No wonder. The fool wasn't even officially accepted as one of the so-called divine lackeys. He needed a certain number of sacrifices to become one."
A wry smile played on his lips as he continued, "It was smooth sailing for him until he met me.
While he was about to sacrifice this body's soul, he made the fatal mistake of reading this stone tablet, one with the wrong offering inscription. It shouldn't have happened but to be fooled by that mysterious merchant in the dark market
He mused, holding it up and letting the faint light catch on its surface, "This tablet is strange, it is not meant for any divine to be offered for…"
He sighed with a touch of amusement, his fingers idly brushing back the strands of hair that had fallen against his face.
He leaned back slightly, his posture relaxed, exuding carefree confidence as he toyed with the stone tablet.
"Somehow, this wrong inscription on this tablet managed to summon me into this strange world," he said, almost as if the notion itself was an absurd joke.
"I am no divine, nor deity," he chuckled softly, his voice laced with irony.
"But simply a wandering ghost of a boy who attained immortality through the means of suicide."
The statement hung in the air, both chilling and bizarrely casual as if he were recounting a trivial anecdote rather than an unfathomable truth.
His eyes, dark and glinting with a mix of amusement and something far more sinister, scanned the tablet once more before he laughed, a sound that was both light and deeply unsettling.
"Hahaha, it's laughable looking back to that time, but it worked so well"
"As long as there's fear, pain, misery, I can feed on all types of emotions to grow" he murmured, the smile on his face widening as if the memory brought him genuine pleasure.
"Who would have thought I would be summoned here, but really... I am not surprised since I am a ghost myself. Anything can happen" Mize said, his voice trailing off as he stared at the tablet with a mix of curiosity and amusement.
It was as if the tablet, this strange object that had brought him to this place, was both a puzzle and a toy to him.
His gaze shifted to the room around him, now pristine and undisturbed, as if the battle that had nearly torn it apart had never happened.
The transformation of the pace mirrored his own—something dark and terrible hidden beneath a veneer of calm, something that could be unleashed with devastating consequences at any moment.
Mize's smile lingered, a reflection of the darkness he held within, a darkness that had been summoned not by divine intent, but by the tragic irony of a botched ritual.
In this new world, he was no longer just a ghost with a cursed immortality—he was something more, something far more horrendous that shouldn't exist.
The one that breaks the balance.
"Having a body is quite nice, whoever that person was, thank you... Sincerely"