The crack behind the throne yawned wider as Royce approached, as if the shrine itself hungered for him.
The darkness beyond was not absence—it was a presence, thick and pulsing like diseased flesh.
He hesitated only once.
Then he stepped through.
The world behind the Bleeding Door swallowed him whole.
---
It was cold.
A cold that bit into his bones and whispered promises of endless sleep.
The ground underfoot shifted, slick with something that smelled of rust and old grief.
Royce staggered forward.
Shapes loomed in the mist—pillars of flesh, twisted and writhing, their surfaces slick with tears and blood.
Faces formed and melted into them, mouths silently screaming, hands reaching out, only to be dragged back into the living stone.
He was in the Womb of the Shrine now.
A place where sorrow was born—and where it devoured itself endlessly.
A low hum throbbed in the air, matching the rhythm of his heartbeat.
It grew louder with every step until it became a chant—low, broken voices, singing a hymn of despair:
> "Bury the name,
Drown the sin,
Hollow the heart,
Let the mourning begin…"
Royce pressed on, teeth gritted against the growing terror, when suddenly—
The ground beneath him shifted.
He stumbled and fell into a pit of hands—thousands of grey, skeletal hands clawing at him, pulling at his clothes, his skin, trying to drag him into the weeping earth.
"You were supposed to die with her," they hissed.
"You abandoned her. You chose yourself."
Royce screamed and thrashed, the voices ripping into him like knives.
---
Then—
A light.
A pale, sickly light cut through the mist.
A figure stepped forward—Eryndra.
But not the Eryndra he remembered.
This Eryndra wore a funeral gown of black thorns, her eyes blind and bleeding, her mouth sewn shut with silver thread.
She raised a hand, and the pit of hands recoiled, releasing Royce.
He gasped, crawling free, his body trembling.
"Eryndra!" he choked out.
The stitched lips parted slightly—and a voice not hers spilled out:
"She suffers because of you, Royce. She suffers in silence."
The voice was his mother's, who had died long ago, whispering from beyond death's veil.
Eryndra reached into her chest—ripping it open with cruel fingers—and pulled out a heart still beating, black as ash.
She dropped it at Royce's feet.
"Take it," the voice whispered.
"Prove your love. Feed on her sorrow."
Royce looked down at the heart.
It pulsed in time with his own.
He realized then—the shrine did not want him to save Eryndra.
It wanted him to become like it.
A creature of endless hunger and grief.
---
Royce knelt, tears burning his eyes.
His fingers brushed the heart—and for a moment, he saw a vision:
A life where he never saved her.
A life where he let her die.
A life where his soul rotted quietly, forgotten.
He recoiled, fist tightening.
"I won't," he whispered.
"I won't become this."
The shrine screamed.
The pit of hands surged again, furious, but Eryndra—no, the illusion—raised her arms, halting them.
A crack split the ground before Royce.
Without thinking, he leapt into it.
---
He fell—
Through memories.
Through guilt.
Through every mistake he had ever made, each one a chain binding him tighter to the shrine's will.
Finally, he landed hard on a surface of cold, black marble.
Before him stood a mirror, far larger than the first, framed with bone and sorrow.
In its depths, he saw not a reflection—but a path.
The boy's voice echoed from nowhere:
"Beyond the Mirror lies the First Labyrinth.
Only there can you reclaim a shard of her soul.
Only there will you die properly."
The mirror rippled.
Royce, broken but defiant, stepped through.
Into the First Labyrinth of Grief.
And the Pale King smiled from his throne, a tiny crack appearing in his eternal mask.
The game had begun.
---