CHAPTER 317: THE MOUSE IN THE TRAP [5]

Lumin shrugged casually, as if discussing the weather rather than standing in the lair of an ancient abyssal horror.

"It’s nothing amazing," Lumin replied, his voice casual, almost bored. "I was thinking... What if I just kill you instead of taking the stone and wasting time with all these theatrics? Wouldn’t that be much easier?"

The chamber fell into absolute silence. Even the gentle pulsing of the Nexus Stone seemed to pause, as if the universe itself had taken a breath.

Then Ossian’s laughter exploded through the space, wild and unhinged.

"Had you gone completely insane, little mouse?" he wheezed between fits of manic amusement. "Kill me? You can barely stand in my presence without trembling, and you think you can—"

"Since you’re so powerful," Lumin interrupted smoothly, his smile never wavering, "you should know I’m speaking the truth. Right?"

The laughter died instantly. Ossian’s violet eyes narrowed to burning slits, and the temperature plummeted so fast that frost began forming on the bone walls.

The chamber plunged into pitch blackness. The familiar architecture vanished, leaving only an endless void punctuated by countless violet eyes opening in every direction - above, below, to the sides, watching from impossible angles like malevolent stars in a dead sky.

Lumin didn’t even flinch.

The Architect of Discord frowned inwardly, a cold knot of unease forming in what passed for his consciousness. Why was this insignificant child so confident? The chamber was sealed from the outside world, cut off from any possible reinforcement.

The boy had no allies, no escape route, no conceivable advantage.

So why did he look like he was exactly where he wanted to be?

Could it be...

This insignificant mortal truly seen through all his carefully crafted lies? The layers upon layers of deception he’d woven so meticulously?

Impossible. And yet...

He cursed inwardly, his consciousness writhing with frustration. If he’d had access to his full power, he wouldn’t need to resort to such pathetic trickery.

He could have simply rewritten reality itself, bent the very fabric of existence to his will. But trapped as he was, diminished and bound by the accursed seal, most of his threatening words had been elaborate bluffs.

He could kill them, certainly. That much power remained to him. But altering memories? Creating perfect mental puppets? Those abilities lay far beyond his current reach.

And if he simply murdered these two, how long would he have to wait before another living being set foot in this forsaken place? Decades? Centuries? Another millennium of maddening solitude?

The thought made his ethereal form shudder with barely contained rage.

No. He needed the boy’s cooperation, truly willing or not. Which meant the psychological pressure had to be perfect, the manipulation flawless.

Voices began echoing from all directions, a chorus of whispered threats that seemed to come from the void itself.

"If you don’t want a fate worse than death, do as I say..."

"Submit, little mortal..."

"Your arrogance will be your undoing..."

Lumin chuckled again, the sound somehow carrying clearly through the oppressive darkness.

"You really don’t believe me?"

The Architect’s ancient nerves, unused to doubt after countless millennia of absolute control, began to fray. This was wrong. Everything about this situation was wrong. The boy should be cowering, begging, breaking under the weight of abyssal terror.

"You leave me no choice," the voices boomed, deciding to crush this insolence once and for all. "I will peel the layers of your mind until I find the source of this foolish—"

Just as he prepared to teach this insolent mouse a lesson that would shatter his mind completely, a powerful tremor ripped through the chamber, causing the very darkness to tremble and buckle like a shattered pane of glass.

Two massive eyes tore reality open behind Lumin.

Emerald green. Ancient beyond measure. Majestic like a dragon’s.

They held a weight of epochs that made the Architect’s own million-year existence feel like a brief moment. The pupils contracted to vertical slits, focusing with the cold, calculating precision of an apex predator that had found its prey.

And they were looking directly at the Architect of Discord.

The countless violet eyes widened in unison. The oppressive darkness of the chamber seemed to recoil, shrinking back from that emerald gaze like shadows fleeing the dawn.

For the first time in over a million years - for the first time since his imprisonment began - the Architect of Discord felt something he’d almost forgotten existed.

Fear.

Raw, primal, bone-deep terror that reached into the very core of his being.

The kind of fear that came with the absolute certainty of approaching death.

The emerald eyes blinked once, slowly, and the very air seemed to thicken with an ancient power that dwarfed everything the Architect had displayed. The void itself trembled under that gaze, reality bending around a presence so vast and primordial that the chamber’s walls began to crack simply from proximity to it.

The Architect’s countless violet eyes darted frantically through the darkness, searching for escape routes that didn’t exist, for explanations that made sense. How had this happened? How had a simple mortal boy managed to bring something like this into his sealed domain?

Unless...

The realization hit him like a physical blow. The boy hadn’t been trapped at all. He’d walked in here knowing exactly what he would find, carrying this ancient terror with him like a hidden blade. Every question, every suspicious glance, every careful probe - it had all been preparation for this moment.

The Architect had been so focused on his own web of lies that he’d failed to see the larger game being played around him.

The Architect’s countless violet eyes, now wide with dawning horror, fixed upon the true architect of this unforeseen calamity.

Utterly calm at the eye of the storm, Lumin watched the ancient entity’s panic unfold. A faint, knowing smile finally touched his lips, a gesture of cold triumph.

The terrifying emerald orbs hovering behind him seemed to approve of the expression.

"Still think I’m bluffing?" he asked softly, his voice cutting through the stunned silence like a whispered death sentence. "And it seems like you have already realized that..."

"You were the one who was caught in the trap, right?

"Little mouse~"