Oldred took his first step down the wooden staircase. The air around him felt cold and ancient, scented with old paper and eternity. His steps were slow and careful, his boots producing a solitary echo in the grand silence. "Tuk… Tuk… Tuk…" The sound was the only marker of time in a place where time seemed not to exist. The only light came from the candles along the railing—faint, but it was all he had.
He kept walking, descending the seemingly endless spiral. The giant bookshelves on either side shot up and down, forming the walls of his infinite prison. How long had he been walking? Hours? Days? He paused for a moment, his hand touching one of the leather-bound books. He pulled it out. The book was empty, containing only blank, pale parchment without a single speck of ink. A story waiting to be written, or a life that had been erased. A strange curiosity, a cold and logical idea, formed in his mind.
He stood near the frail wooden railing of the staircase, staring into the gaping abyss below. Then… he let the book go, trying to measure the depth of his new hell.
"Whoosh… Whoosh…" The book tumbled as it fell, its sound growing fainter.
"Whoosh… Whoosh…" Quite a long way down, apparently. He should have heard the impact by now.
"Whoosh… Whoosh…" Okay, maybe this was too far. Logic was beginning to fray.
"Whoosh… Whoosh…" Hmm, now this was getting strange. Very strange. The sound wasn't fading, as if the distance remained the same.
???: "Whoosh… Whoosh~"
His reflexes moved faster than his thoughts. In a single, fluidly brutal motion, Oldred spun around. He threw the hot candle he was holding toward the source of the sound, aiming for the eye area (old habits, perhaps?), and simultaneously swung his sharpened crowbar in a deadly arc aimed at the figure's neck.
???: "Bleugh?!..."
There was a wet squelch as the iron fang sank deep. The figure jolted, vomiting a dark, thick red fluid onto Oldred's uniform. With a low growl, Oldred pulled his crowbar back, preparing for a second strike, but he froze when he identified the face—or the remains of a face—of his attacker.
The figure was a woman, or something that resembled one. She wore an elegant black gown that seemed woven from night itself. However, her head was incomplete. It was neatly severed horizontally from the nose up, as clean as a laser cut, leaving only the area of her mouth, chin, and neck. Atop the flat surface of her head, a half-melted wax plate was affixed, its flame still burning brightly. Her long, jet-black hair didn't grow from a scalp but floated magically in the empty air above the candle's flame, moving slowly like seaweed in an unseen ocean.
Before Oldred could process this impossible sight, the figure began to lose its shape. It melted like a wax statue doused in hot water, turning into a pool of thick black liquid on the marble steps. Oldred could only watch in silence. *Am I hallucinating again?* was perhaps the thought that crossed his weary mind. He continued his journey down the stairs, only to find the same pool of black liquid a few turns below.
Trying to ignore it, he kept descending. It was no use. He ended up at the black pool again, and again, as if he were walking on an endless, demonic treadmill. He was being toyed with.
???: "Hehehe~"
From within the inky pool, the figure of the woman without the top of her head reformed, the black liquid rising and gracefully solidifying into her gown and pale skin. The wound on her neck was gone.
???: "I was surprised, you know? Very, very surprised~. You almost gave me a heart attack. I might have had one, that is, if I possessed such an organ."
Her mouth curved into a smile, a smile that looked odd without eyes above it. Oldred raised his crowbar, its sharp tip now just an inch from the figure's smooth neck.
???: "Ah, ah, ah~ I wouldn't be so hasty. You still haven't realized, have you?~"
Oldred: "?"
???: "You've passed the phase of finality, Mr. Blind Dog. We are now in a world where death and time are merely irrelevant and, frankly, rather boring concepts~"
Okay, let's just assume Oldred is already dead.
Oldred: "...."
Oldred: "Do you want my soul?" he asked in a flat tone, as if asking for a price at the market.
....
....
....
The woman was silent for a moment, before bursting into peals of laughter, the sound echoing throughout the abyss. "AHAHAHAHAHA!"
???:"LOL! LMAO!"
???: "Huh? Your soul? No, no, no! That's not how it works! Oh, please, that is so cliché! I'm not some low-rent demon from a fairytale, you know!"
She patted her dress, dusting off imaginary specks.
???: "Actually, I do want something from you. But certainly not that battered soul of yours~" She winked—or at least, the area where an eye should have been twitched—flirtatiously.
???: "Let's discuss this in our room." She snapped her fingers, and a thick, leather-bound book materialized from thin air. She opened it, its pages flipping rapidly.
"Hmm… let's see… ah, here we are… hmm…" She tapped a long finger on one of the pages.
???: "Meet me in room nine million, seven hundred seventy-two thousand, and ninety-nine!"
Poof.
The figure vanished in a puff of black, ozone-scented smoke, leaving Oldred alone on the endless staircase.
Room of Nine Million plus, great way to start a quest...