Ravenna knew now was no time to rest. Hecuba had escaped, and though injured, she could return at any moment—armed with tricks she could neither predict nor be able to withstand. She needed to find a way out of this dark space with Dahlia and escape to the world above the overcast. But even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew deep down that the escape was nearly impossible.
She inhaled slowly, surveying the area that had once housed Hecuba's lair. The space was fractured, littered with debris, its ground split with jagged fissures still trembling from the aftermath of Hecuba's power. Ravenna had always known that Hecuba was deeply rooted in fetish rites, but even so, she had been stunned by the devastation that erupted from a single shriek.
She felt lucky to be alive. If Hecuba hadn't prepared the concocting potion in her cauldron... or if she had been thrown away by Hecuba's shriek in any other direction that was not near the cauldron... she didn't dare imagine how it might have ended for her.
Her gaze drifted to the space where she had crawled in a desperate bid to escape Hecuba's claws. A shiver passed through her as the memory gripped her body. Then a breath of relief followed—deep, and uncertain.
Her eyes lingered.
Something tugged at her memory.
She recalled that, during her desperate scramble, her back had slammed into something solid. Something unmoving. At the time, she thought nothing of it. But now, as she studied the area more carefully, she saw nothing and just more of the hollow area.
Still, the sensation had been real.
Almost absentmindedly, she lifted her hand to her chin, stroking at the imaginary beard she'd grown used to mimicking—an unconscious habit picked up from Hecuba over the years.
There's debris there, she thought. But I didn't hit anything rough or jagged. It wasn't rubble. It was smooth...
Like glass.
The memory returned with clarity, and her curiosity sharpened. She reached for Dahlia, guiding her gently by the arm as they hobbled together toward the place. Once there, she settled Dahlia against a small rise in the terrain, before she extended her hand into the space before her.
She gasped.
There it was.
An invisible barrier—smooth, cold, and solid. Had she not struck it earlier, she'd have never known it existed.
This should have been hidden behind the master's lair, she realized. If the lair hadn't collapsed... She would never have discovered it.
But what was it for?
She ran her palm along the surface, feeling it stretch far into the dark on both sides. The wall soared high—far higher than her reach, even on her toes. She traced it back toward where Hecuba's lair once stood. There must be a reason this is here.
A sudden impulse took hold of her.
She picked up a fist-sized stone from the scattered debris, stepped back, and hurled it at the invisible wall with moderate force. The stone struck with a crisp crack, like glass being tapped—yet instead of falling, it bounced back with a violent recoil, hurtling toward her with more speed than she had thrown it.
She barely dodged in time. The stone grazed her cheek, leaving a thin, stinging trace of blood.
Breathing hard, she touched the scratch, her eyes locked on the unseen wall. It sounds like glass, solid like glass... but repels things away from it. It is like elastic. The contradiction fascinated her. She ruminated, trying to summon answers from memory, from theory, from instinct.
Could this be related to an exit?
She had always wondered if there was a hidden way out of the dark place. No matter how endless the overcast above seemed, it couldn't be without limits. A passage had to exist somewhere—perhaps hidden, forgotten, or cloaked in misdirection.
Her suspicions had always been from those years her master had always gone above the overcast to look for the others she had brought back along with her. Ravenna had always thought of her means of exit and entrance.
Could this wall barrier be related to how she crosses through?
But then she knew that it might not be. Hecuba had always travelled by warping through space, where there were no entrance and exit. Just trailing off with the wind without leaving traces behind.
She retrieved the two flint pebbles she had once used to spark an ember to Hecuba's body. Though she could see with ease in this abyssal darkness, she wondered if illuminating the area might reveal something peculiar to her eyes.
Then she spotted Hecuba's staff, sprawled among the wreckage. She took it, tore a strip from her garment, and wrapped it around the end. Remembering how flammable the spilled concoction had been, she hurried to a spot where it had soaked into the earth. She scooped some of the tainted soil and smeared it along the cloth, readying her torch.
She bent down and prepared to strike the pebbles together—
But then she heard it.
Footsteps.
Heavy and swift, charging down the passageway toward the hollow.
Her heart clenched.
It wasn't Hecuba. She would have felt her presence. No—these were the others.
And sure enough, six figures emerged from the passageway, spilling into the hollow like shadows, their eyes glinting like hunters drawn to the scent of blood. Ravenna's breath caught. There was no way they had heard the chaos of her struggle with Hecuba from their distant chambers.
Doris.
It had to be her. The only one among them who dabbled into the fetish arts—like the master, like Hecuba. She must have sensed the disturbance or ripples from Hecuba power, rallied the others, and come running down as fast as they could.
Ravenna rose to her full height, the torch still unlit in her hand. Behind her, Dahlia stirred.
Before her, the six women closed in, eyes gleaming as their gazes swept across the wreckage, the shattered remnants of Hecuba's lair. They saw Ravenna standing amidst the wreckage, Dahlia behind her with empty, lifeless eyes that were continuously tearing in an endless stream down her cheeks and they didn't need to ask—they understood something monumental had just occurred.
Ravenna steadied herself. She had nothing to fear. Even if she had been powerless against her master during the short struggles, she still held certain confidence in her strengths when facing the others. But they had all come down together, and facing all six of them at once… with Doris among them, she had to admit how unpleasant it was.
She lifted her head and met their eyes.
"What brought you girls down here?" she asked.
None of them answered immediately. The silence stretched, cold and heavy. Then, the tallest among them stepped forward, her tone laced with arrogance.
"What happened here? Where is the master?"
Her eyes burned with suspicion.
Ravenna let out a scoff, followed by a wild, sharp laugh. "Leela," she said, her voice amused, "you do remember I'm like your elder, don't you? And yet you speak to me like that."
She paused, then continued with mock casualness, "Well, to satisfy your curiosity—I fought the master. As you can see, the debris around us came from the collapse of her lair during the battle. After some struggle… I destroyed her body. Not dead, though—her soul escaped."
A flicker of regret passed through her face, but only briefly.
A furious roar cut through the hollow.
"Impossible! There's no way you could've done that to Master!"
Ravenna turned toward the voice. The lady had silver hair. The only one among them with such peculiarity of hair colour.
Ravenna gave a short chuckle and pointed to the scorched, broken form lying nearby. "That's her body. You can see I'm not lying."
Then her eyes shifted again—this time landing on the one woman she hadn't wanted to see: Doris.
"You shouldn't have come down here," Ravenna said calmly. "Take the others and leave."
Doris met her gaze with a look that was neither aggressive nor passive. Her voice was composed, unnervingly calm.
"You really attacked the master?" she asked. "You destroyed her body?"
The way she asked it—no tremor, no disbelief—made Ravenna's nerves prick. She's dangerous, Ravenna thought.
Ravenna said nothing. Her silence was its own confirmation. She watched Doris carefully, knowing what she was capable of.
Doris was the second to spend more years in the dark space just after Ravenna. And during their years of training, Hecuba had often praised her—the most ruthless of the seven. Ravenna knew it wasn't empty praise.
"You couldn't have beaten her in a fair fight," Doris shook her head and continued, her eyes drifting to Dahlia. "So… you waited. You must've struck during the ritual. Interrupted her before she could complete the process."
She looked back at Ravenna, her voice sharpening.
"All this—for her?" She pointed accusingly at Dahlia, her voice rising with restrained fury. "You betrayed the master… for her?"
"You wouldn't understand," Ravenna said quietly.
Before Doris could reply, a thunderous voice split the air.
"What don't we understand?!"
It was Brute this time. With her thick-muscled and broad-shouldered, she reached for the heavy club at her waist, her fury boiling over. With a tap of her foot, she lunged forward with shocking speed, swinging the weapon in a wide arc toward Ravenna's head.
But Ravenna was already moving.
She crouched dodgingly, as she rolled to the side, the club whistling past her ear and slamming into the ground with a deep thud, throwing up earth and dust.
She didn't give Brute the chance to recover. In one smooth motion, Ravenna flipped to her feet and leapt into the air. Her leg shot out—a hard, precise kick that struck Brute across the face with brutal force.
The impact staggered Brute, and for a moment it looked as if she might fall. But Brute, despite the sting, held her footing, retreating a few paces while clutching her face with a snarl.
She glared at Ravenna with pure hatred, lifting her club again, ready for another strike—
"Stop!"
The barked command froze her.
It was Doris.
Her voice echoed through the dark hollow like a crack of thunder.
Brute stopped mid-step, her body tense. She feared none of the others—but Doris was different. Ruthless in every sense. Even Hecuba had seen something of herself in Doris, which was wickedness and craftiness.
Before Dahlia had come into their mix, Doris had been Hecuba's favorite. That favoritism hadn't faded, even after Doris failed to provide herself as a suitable vessel.
And later, when Hecuba found Dahlia and turned her focus to her, it had struck Doris the deepest. Although she knew everything was for retrieving a suitable vessel, yet she still felt indignant and often wondered why her body hadn't been useful. Her obsession with the master ran deeper that she would offer everything of herself willingly.
Her hatred for Dahlia ran deeper than any of the others.
And now, Ravenna had shattered everything—had almost destroyed the master totally and protected the one her master wanted to acquire.
The storm inside Doris was hidden beneath a still surface. Her voice was calm. Her face was unreadable. But her eyes—those cold, gleaming eyes—burned with madness.
She took a step forward, staring Ravenna down.
"Do you really think this would end here?" she asked, quiet and dangerous.
Ravenna said nothing.
But she didn't look away.