Chapter 407 : The New Lunar Calendar...

“The candles of the Wizard Tower never go out.”

The candlestick in Haywood’s hand had been pulled straight off the wall.

“That used to be the first rule in the apprentice handbook. Now, it’s the only rule: at night, the candles must never go out.”

Saul moved closer to the candlelight.

Not long after they entered the West Tower, the sky had gone completely dark.

It happened so fast, it felt unnatural.

It made Saul feel, once again, that this place wasn’t part of the real world.

He glanced around the messy room, feeling stifled.

“After nightfall, the atmosphere here becomes… strange.” Saul tugged at his collar—the air was too heavy, and he felt a faint sense of suffocation.

As if the room didn’t have enough air for two people to breathe.

After nightfall, Haywood had barely spoken.

He curled up in a corner, staring at the candlestick about a meter away, as if terrified it might go out at any moment.

“I feel like someone’s watching us,” Saul said as he walked toward the door.

The door was cobbled together from pieces of what must have been a dormitory door; the gaps were wide, and cold wind howled through.

“Of course. Lots of people,” Haywood muttered, moving slightly—a rare response. “Don’t look around. Wait until morning.”

But Saul wasn’t as cautious as Haywood.

He had no intention of lingering in this illusion for a hundred years.

The key to breaking an illusion was disrupting its order.

Although the illusion was so real that it made Saul doubt himself at times, he still leaned toward believing this wasn’t the real future.

But if he stayed here any longer, his grasp of reality might grow dangerously blurred.

He already knew plenty about this place, but he hadn’t yet found a sufficient crack to shatter the illusion.

“Maybe the way out isn’t inside the Wizard Tower.”

Saul leaned toward the door gap.

Outside, the patch of grass teeming with skulls stretched before him.

The wind howled as ever, flattening the dark green grass.

Pale skulls bobbed up briefly before being swallowed again.

As he watched, Saul had a strange illusion: somewhere among those countless skulls, a living face—of flesh and blood was hidden, staring at him through the gap.

“Someone is watching me. This isn’t just my imagination.”

Suppressing the goosebumps bristling across his skin, Saul scanned every skull peeking through the grass but he still found nothing.

Slowly, Saul looked upward.

Tonight, there was no moon but countless stars.

The starlight shimmered across the sky, yet something about it felt… wrong.

“Aren’t these stars… packed a little too densely?”

Saul squinted, focusing more intently.

The more he looked, the more certain he became: These weren’t the stars he remembered.

Among these stars, there seemed to be a small black dot at the center of each one.

Each black dot pointed straight toward Saul—like the pupil of an eye.

Eyes?!

Saul placed a hand on the door, ready to step outside.

“What are you doing?” Haywood’s voice suddenly cut through behind him.

Saul turned back.

He saw Haywood staring at him, wide-eyed.

Large swaths of whites around tiny pinpricks of pupils.

Just like the “stars” outside.

Saul smiled faintly. “Just stepping out for a look.”

“Never stay where there’s no light,” Haywood said darkly.

“The stars are so bright out there. Does that still count as ‘no light’?”

Haywood froze.

“There are no stars outside,” he said hoarsely.

Something seemed to click in his mind.

He immediately scrambled to the corner, pulling out more candles, lighting every single one without the slightest concern for wasting them.

As he lit them, his hands, clutching the firestone, visibly trembled.

Seeing Saul still standing at the door, he shouted in near panic:

“What are you doing, just standing there?! Help me light the candles! You’ve attracted the grudges! We need more candlelight to suppress them!”

Saul had no real intention of listening.

He was itching to go outside and investigate those stars.

But at that moment, the feeling of being watched surged even stronger.

A faint, sharp screech came from the door gap behind him.

Saul spun around, and was shocked to find that the gap outside was now pitch black.

No more grass.

No more skulls facing the Wizard Tower.

No more myriad stars across the sky.

“Get over here… hurry, hurry! Stay too long in the dark… and you’ll die!” Haywood’s voice had gone hoarse.

The moment the words fell from his lips, Saul felt it—

A murderous intent, sharp and electric, raced from his fingertips to the base of his spine.

Danger!

His instincts screamed at him to dodge immediately.

But Saul stood frozen in place, braving the bone-deep cold.

Then, he saw it.

The diary within his mental realm suddenly flipped open.

[May 14th, Year 317 of the New Lunar Calendar.

You are looking at the scenery through the door,

And the one watching the scenery…

Is watching you.]

No death warning!

This was a crisis alert!

The moment Saul finished reading the diary entry, he sprang backward three steps, landing beside Haywood.

The suffocating sense of danger weakened, but did not disappear.

In fact, as the seconds ticked by, it was growing stronger.

Haywood had filled the ground with lit candles, holding two more in his shaking hands, but his terror hadn’t lessened one bit.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!”

“Who’s coming?” Saul turned his head toward Haywood.

But Haywood just stared at the door, his facial scars twitching.

Receiving no answer, Saul looked back at the door—

And realized—

The door gap was widening!

“No—it’s not that the gap is growing—it’s that the door is shrinking!” Saul felt a wave of cold run through him. “The darkness is devouring the door!”

That old, almost forgotten sense of horror surged through his bloodstream, and within that terror, Saul found a familiar clarity.

He calmed down instantly.

His gaze dropped back to the diary.

“New Lunar Calendar, Year 317. So, this is still the present!”

Earlier, when he sensed the danger, Saul had deliberately hesitated before retreating—waiting for the diary’s prediction.

And the diary recorded the date!

“My initial analysis was right. This is an illusion—part of the black light’s attack!”

“The illusion isn’t complicated, nor is it directly lethal. If I’m right, the darkness won’t fully invade this room either.”

Unlike Haywood, Saul wasn’t gripped by fear, but neither did he foolishly step forward to provoke the dark.

Sure enough, after a few minutes of tense standoff between light and dark, the blackness slowly receded from the door.

Haywood let out a long breath.

He reluctantly blew out the excess candles, leaving only three for safety.

Then, in a much lower voice, he said to Saul:

“Don’t explore at night.

If you draw in more pollution, we’re dead.”

Unfortunately, Saul—who had just confirmed his theory wasn’t listening at all.

“I was right. This illusion doesn’t focus on fatal aggression. That’s why the diary only gave a crisis alert, not a death warning. But it plays heavily on human doubt. Anyone else, trapped here long enough without finding a way out, would start doubting themselves more and more. Seeing the illusion laced with fragments of logical truth, they’d start to believe. Maybe this really is a hundred years later.”

“The more they doubt, the more trapped they become. Eventually, they’d hypnotize themselves. They’d persuade themselves this really is the future, and they’d be trapped in this layer forever.”

Now that he had confirmed it was an illusion, Saul had a few ideas for how to break it.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“This illusion likely covers just a hundred meters or so around the Wizard Tower. If I try to leave, I’ll probably trigger an immediate, overwhelming danger. And those ‘stars’ overhead. They must be the eyes inside the layer. They’re powerful. Very powerful.”

Now, two options lay before him: One, walk into the darkness and fight the pollution head-on— though judging from the diary’s warnings, the battle would be fierce.

Or two—

Kill Haywood. Kill the one broadcasting this world’s setting.

Saul slowly turned his head—

Looking at the aging Haywood, lost in a daze as he stared into the flames.

(End of Chapter)

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