[: 3rd POV :]

The torchlight sputtered against the damp stone walls, painting everyone's faces with uneasy shadows.

The blood dripping from the altar echoed like a slow heartbeat.

The guild members stood still, watching their leader with unease gnawing at the edges of their loyalty.

His words had been too precise.

There were just too much details.

At last, one of his closest friends, a veteran of many raids and battles, stepped forward.

His tone was calm, but his eyes carried the weight of suspicion.

"Guild Master…" He hesitated, then spoke firmly, though every syllable felt like stepping closer to a blade.

"How come… you know so much about them?"

The words cut through the silence like steel.

The others shifted uneasily, the question echoing in their hearts.

The Zero Organization was a ghost in the world, little more than whispers, rumors, shadows in forbidden texts.

And yet their Guild Master had spoken of them as though he had walked their path himself.

The silver-haired elf narrowed her eyes, clutching her bow tighter.

"It doesn't make sense"

"We've spent years gathering scraps of information, and in one night, you reveal more than we've ever uncovered."

A dwarf grunted low in his throat.

"Aye. Knowledge like that don't come from guesswork. So where did ye get it?"

The chamber grew cold.

The weight of suspicion pressed heavy on every chest.

And still—the Guild Master did not answer.

He stood before the altar, the crimson glow from the statue's eyes dancing across his features.

The shadows made his face unreadable, his expression carved from stone.

Finally, he turned, his eyes sharp as glass.

"Indeed… how did I know much about it…?"

The Guild Master's voice rolled through the chamber like a whisper from the abyss, his words carrying both calm and menace.

His lips curled into a smile—wicked, deliberate, unnatural.

The smile alone was enough to make the hairs on the back of every neck stand on end.

The mercenaries shifted uneasily, their hands instinctively tightening on their weapons.

The guild members exchanged wary glances, suspicion blooming in their eyes like a shadow spreading across the room.

Slowly, with footsteps echoing against the stone floor, the Guild Master walked toward the mid altar.

The flickering torches caught the crimson glow of the statue's gemlike eyes, painting his face in an otherworldly shade of red.

Each step he took seemed to thicken the air, as though the chamber itself recoiled from him.

When he finally stood before the altar, he lifted a hand.

His fingers brushed against the cold, bloodstained stone with the gentleness of a lover's caress.

His palm lingered there, his head bowing ever so slightly, not as a leader inspecting a relic… but as a worshipper before his god.

That sight alone froze the group in place.

The silence stretched, suffocating, until his voice cut through it like a blade.

"It's because," he said softly, almost tenderly, and then raised his gaze to them with a smile that twisted into something eerily inhuman.

"I'm one of the worshippers."

The words echoed in the chamber, cruel and undeniable.

His confidence was chilling.

The smile he wore, stretched and unsettling, crawled into their hearts like a poison.

For a heartbeat, no one moved, no one breathed.

The reality of what he had just confessed weighed on them heavier than the oppressive aura of the altar itself.

Some of the mercenaries stumbled a step back, their fear written plain across their faces.

A few guild members gritted their teeth, their eyes wide with disbelief, betrayal flashing like lightning in their expressions.

Yet he stood there—calm, composed, his hand still ressed against the altar—his presence commanding and dreadful, as though the statue itself lent him strength.

At his declaration, the chamber froze.

The mercenaries and guild members stared in wide-eyed disbelief, their hearts pounding so loud it felt as though the very walls echoed it back to them.

Though suspicion had gnawed at them when his tone shifted, none of them had truly wanted to believe it.

But now the truth was laid bare—raw, venomous, undeniable.

"W-What are you talking about…?" one of his closest friends finally managed to choke out, his voice trembling as though the words themselves might shatter him.

Arcturus turned his head slowly, his smile stretched unnaturally wide.

The torchlight glinted in his eyes, not with warmth, but with madness.

"What am I talking about…?" he repeated, voice dripping with mockery.

His lips twisted into a grin before it split into wild laughter.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The sound rattled through the chamber like a jagged blade scraping stone, echoing long after his laughter ceased.

The others flinched instinctively, some even stepping back.

"FOOLS!" he spat, his voice booming with manic fervor.

"All of you—every last one—are fools!"

One mercenary barked back, voice cracking between rage and terror.

"Guild Master, have you gone mad?! What is this nonsense?!"

Arcturus's expression snapped from laughter to fury in a heartbeat, his gaze wild, his voice sharpened like a dagger.

"Nonsense? Nonsense?! Don't you realize it?!"

He raised his arms wide, as though embracing the statues now awakening around him.

"Since the very beginning, I have been leading you here—not as your savior, not as your guide—but as your executioner!"

Gasps filled the chamber.

"No…" one guild mage whispered, shaking his head violently.

"That can't be true… Arcturus, you—y-you fought with us, you protected us—"

"Protected you?!" Arcturus snapped, throwing back his head with another fit of crazed laughter.

"No! I herded you! Like cattle! Like lambs fattened for slaughter!"

His hand slammed onto the altar, and the statues behind him groaned, their foreign light burning brighter, their forms twitching as though responding to his madness.

"Every step you've taken since entering this place… every corridor you marched through… every breath you dared to take—was exactly as I intended!"

His voice thundered, reverberating off the stone walls.

The mercenaries panicked, shouting over one another.

"You… you bastard! You betrayed us!"

"This was all a setup?! You dragged us here like pigs to the butcher?!"

"I knew it—I knew something was wrong the moment your voice changed!"

The dwarf gritted his teeth, spitting on the ground as he leveled his axe.

"I swear to the gods!, I'll split yer skull open for this treachery!"

But Arcturus only grinned wider, his expression splitting into something inhumanly twisted.

His shadow writhed unnaturally across the floor, stretching like a beast waiting to pounce.

"You think you can stop it?" he taunted, his voice dripping with malice.

"You are already dead—you just haven't realized it yet"

"All of you… are lambs waiting to be sacrificed"

A mercenary's voice broke into a scream, trembling as he pointed at the statues.

"L-Look! The statues—they're moving again!"

The chamber filled with chaos—panic, rage, fear all mixing into a storm.

But over it all, Arcturus's laughter rang loudest.

A mad hymn to their despair.

*Crack… crack…*

A low groan reverberated through the stone as flakes of rust and decay began to chip away from the statues.

At first, it was just dust, falling like ashes drifting from a fire.

But then chunks of corroded stone shattered off, hitting the floor with hollow thuds.

The mercenaries jolted, their weapons drawn instinctively.

The guild members tightened their formation, their eyes darting from one statue to the next.

And then—

*Thrum.*

The altar pulsed with a crimson glow, and suddenly, every single statue in the chamber shuddered.

Their hollow eyes lit with alien brilliance, like embers burning in a void.

The rusty shells fell away in torrents, and what lay beneath was no demon, no beast, no creature of the known world.

They were otherworldly.

Figures that defied the mortal eye, their forms shifting as though reality itself struggled to hold them.

Some appeared as beings with elongated limbs wrapped in ethereal cloths of shadow, others as towering, faceless figures whose skin shimmered with inscriptions that twisted and writhed.

Their very presence was suffocating, not monstrous, but foreign, a truth that felt wrong to exist in this world.

"No… n-no way…" one mercenary stammered, his voice cracking with fear.

His sword trembled in his grip.

"They… they're moving…!"

A guild mage staggered back, clutching his staff tightly. His voice broke as he cried.

"This isn't possible! I don't feel any puppeteery magic!"

The archer, her eyes wide, pulled an arrow to her bowstring, but her hands shook too violently to steady it.

"What are they? They're not demons… they don't even look alive!"

The Guild Master, meanwhile, never flinched.

His hand still rested on the altar, and his wicked smile only widened as he looked upon the beings emerging before them.

His voice carried with eerie reverence.

"Do you see now? These are not demons. They are not monsters. They are…witnesses"

"Fragments of His will, remnants of a higher existence."

"Shut up!" the veteran guild member roared, his voice shaking as much from fury as from fear.

He pointed his blade at the Guild Master. "What the hell have you done?! What are you trying to summon here, Arcturus?!"

Arcturus tilted his head back and laughed, a low, echoing sound that crawled along the walls.

His gaze swept over them like a predator indulging in the panic of prey.

"I told you, didn't I?" His voice rang with an eerie calm. "I am a worshipper. And now… you stand in the presence of the ones our Lord entrusted to guard His return."

The foreign beings' eyes burned brighter, a hum resonating from their forms as though the air itself bent in their presence.

The chamber grew colder, heavier, pressing down on every chest like a vice.

Panic rose in the group.

"What do we do?! They're waking up!" the dwarf bellowed, his grip white-knuckled on his axe.

"This isn't part of the mission!" another mercenary screamed, his voice breaking.

"We weren't told about this—nobody said anything about gods-damned statues coming alive!"

The mage's hands sparked with light, but he hesitated, trembling. "I… I don't know if magic will even work on them…"

And Daniel, standing still amidst the chaos, narrowed his eyes.

His heart was steady, but his instincts whispered louder than ever.

These were not creatures of this world.

They were something far beyond.

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