The shrill scream, a raw sound of mortal, unadulterated terror, was a knife thrust through the fragile silence of the cathedral. It instantly shredded the remnants of their cosmological discussion, replacing the theoretical dread of gods with the immediate, visceral horror of the present moment.
Kane and Linia didn't hesitate. They burst from their room, their eyes wide and their bodies already coiled for combat, and ran towards the scream's origin. Missy trailed silently behind them, her expression unreadable.
The sound had drawn them deep into the cathedral's service area, leading to the cavernous Kitchen area. When they arrived, they were met not with an enemy, but with a terrifying stillness. A large number of people were crowded there, their backs turned, forming a silent, horrified circle of witnesses. The atmosphere was choked with a cold dread far worse than any active fight.
Kane spotted Clarice near the edge of the throng, her usual aggressive posture melted into a stunned rigidity.
"Someone died," she stated flatly, the grim simplicity of the words amplifying the horror.
Linia, her divine focus momentarily eclipsed by a flicker of human grief, asked, "Who is it?"
Clarice looked at her, her eyes hollowed by the sight she had just witnessed. "It was Ben."
A cold weight settled in Kane's stomach. He remembered Ben—a nervous, ordinary man whom he had met just before entering this accursed cathedral. A simple life extinguished with horrifying abruptness.
Linia offered a soft, sad murmur. "I'm sorry."
Clarice simply shook her head. "Don't be." Before she could continue her thought, the practical, desperate need for information superseded all else in Kane's mind.
"Can I see the body?" he interrupted.
Clarice nodded wordlessly and parted the crowd, leading him and Linia to the horrific, silent truth at the center of the floor.
Kane looked at the corpse, and a chilling feeling began to climb his spine, a cold, tickling dread more profound than any injury.
This was not a body; it was a husk.
There were no wounds, no blood, nothing that resembled a conventional corpse. The horrific truth was that the entity, whatever it was, had left only the skin of Ben lying on the floor. It was a deflated, terrifying human sack, perfectly preserved yet utterly hollowed out, like a discarded suit of clothing. The very essence, the flesh, the organs, the life—everything between the skin and the bone—was gone. The eye sockets were empty, two black, staring voids in the mask of Ben's face.
The only thing that was left was the skin alone. No wound marks, no tears, no entry or exit points—it was a surgical, spectral theft of the body's interior.
Kane turned to Clarice, his voice barely a whisper. "What exactly killed him? I... I've never seen anything like this before."
Clarice nodded, her face grim. "I haven't either. Dear Emma saw this first and screamed in fright."
The context immediately clicked for Kane: the scream had not come from the victim, but from the stunned witness, a testament to the shocking, profound unnaturalness of the death.
Linia, watching the grotesque tableau, started to ask about the nature of the attack, but Kane felt the subtle, tickling sensation again in his spine—the familiar premonition, the phantom tickle of imminent danger that his cursed Aspect warned him of. He whirled around to see nothing but the people surrounding him, their faces a canvas of shock and fear. The threat was invisible, pervasive, and sickeningly close.
Suddenly, Norman shouted, his voice cutting through the frightened babble like a whip crack.
"Everybody, be quiet!"
The commotion instantly ceased. Kane watched as Norman stood on a table, his figure now visible and commanding to the entire, terrified assembly.
"Since there has been a murder in the cathedral, we shall split into pairs for the search of the culprit!" Norman's words echoed with an authoritarian certainty they all desperately needed. "If anything suspicious occurs, come here and inform us. Be careful of the snakes; if they enter your body, death is a mercy to you."
The grim warning about the snakes—a veiled reference to the Unknown Snake Replicas—reinforced the deadly stakes. Death by husk-stripping was terrifying; death by soul-sucking monster was worse.
After a few tense minutes, the survivors paired up. Kane paired up with the person named Emma, the woman who had first screamed—a girl with black hair wearing a sandal-colored armor.
She approached him, clearly trying to steady her nerves. "So, you're the Newcomer, aren't you?" she asked, her eyes still haunted.
Kane nodded, his mind already calculating threat vectors. He and Emma headed into the maze of the ancient structure, choosing one of the long, shadowed hallways.
As they walked, Emma spoke again, forcing a semblance of normalcy. "So, which area did you land in Solstice?"
Kane replied with an indifferent, almost mechanical tone, focused on scanning the high shadows. "Forgotten Shore."
Emma tilted her head. "Must have been a new place."
But Kane's mind was elsewhere, running a cold, brutal calculation. 'If Ben died nearby, my ravings would have increased. But it didn't. That means the kill happened fast and not near me and within that window of distraction.' The silence from his Aspect was terrifying—it meant the death was either so quick it left no trace, or the killer was a void, leaving nothing for his Aspect to latch onto.
Emma suddenly turned, studying him closely. "Are you from the Legacies?"
"Nope. Why are you asking that?" Kane replied, keeping his voice neutral.
"It's just that you remind me of a person I met in the academy for a short period yet unique, who was a few years older than me," she explained.
Kane's interest, which had been purely tactical, sharpened into genuine curiosity. "Who is it?"
"His name is Asterion," Emma said, her voice laced with a memory of unease. "He was quite... weird. Scary, and somehow newly acted to the Waking World, like he was seeing it for the first time."
The name Asterion hit Kane with the sudden, sharp, familiar tickle that started to shiver his spine. It wasn't the dull dread of the crowd, but a specific, cold warning.
He stopped dead and turned around instantly, his eyes narrowed, desperately searching for the unseen threat. But there was no one. The hallway stretched long and empty behind them, swallowed by gloom.
"What is it?" Emma whispered, unnerved by his abrupt, violent movement.
Kane forced the word out, trying to sound calm. "Nothing." He immediately began to walk forward again, increasing his pace.
"So, you're saying that I am similar to this... Asterion... guy," Kane pressed, his own name echoing eerily against the description of this unsettling stranger. "But how is a person 'new' to the Waking World?"
Emma shrugged, her fear returning. "I have no idea."
Kane continued his pace, his senses painfully alert, Emma following, examining his back while he kept examining his surroundings—the high ceilings, the shadows, the corners where the essence-thief might lurk.
He formulated a question, one designed to ground them both in reality, to confirm her presence and focus her attention: "So, how long are you stuck here?"
But Kane never received a reply.
The silence stretched, a sudden, heavy silence where her breathing should have been.
Kane stopped, his heart slamming against his ribs. He slowly turned around to see that Emma had vanished.
There was no trace of her, no sound of a struggle, no lingering scent of a fight—nothing. It was as if she had never been here in the first place,
The terrifying speed of her disappearance, the lack of a struggle, and the absolute silence of the attack were infinitely more horrifying than Ben's deflated husk. Kane felt a surge of cold terror and professional fear. The killer was an entity of absolute stealth and profound, unsettling power.
'Better to tell this to Norman. Immediately,' he thought, his blood turning to ice. He did not search; he did not linger. He turned and left immediately for Norman, his quiet, rapid footsteps echoing the terrifying void that had just swallowed his companion.
=======================================
Kindly Give me review Comments and Powerstones
Here are the few Webnovel stories I might start (not Immediately,But surely I will)
1.Shadow Slave: Lumian Lee
Spoilers for the Domain war:
Lumian Lee and Aurora Lee,who was awakened who was in Valor Clan,When lord of shadows and Song of the fallen Siezed the domain from the Soveriegn,Unfortunate things befalled on them,What happened?Lumian must forge his own path from his own blood and conflicts
2.LOTM:New Greater Old One
Morpheus,the transmigrated into the world of lord of the mysteries,is forced to take the most crazy pathway switches that makes even alista Tudor see sane
3.LOTM:I am king Grey
The original MC of Tbate,King Grey/Arthur Leywin,when he died,what will happen he transmigrated into Loen Kingdom instead of Dicathen?
4.Shadow Slave: I am Azik Eggers
A transmigrator who landed on Shadow slave named himself Azik Eggers,unknowingly followed a fixed fate.