At the end of the elegant curve, the texture of the air shifted once more.

  The atmospheric pressure, which had been pulled taut, dispersed in an instant, and a massive sense of volume—unbelievable for an underground space—crashed over Adin.

  Shu-u-uk—woom.

  Emerging from the curved path, Adin reflexively stopped and looked up.

  It was a circular lobby supported by five colossal pillars reaching toward an imposing ceiling. Marbles of various colors, breathtakingly beautiful, filled the floor and walls in a strange harmony. Between them, a light so piercing it made his eyes ache cut sharply through the air, its source unknown.

  Adin moved toward the center as if possessed.

  With every step, the gray powder on the floor billowed silently.

  Click, clack—

  Adin tilted his head back completely toward the ceiling where the light poured down.

  The massive mural filling the domed ceiling depicted the hellish stages of descent he had just experienced with bone-chilling precision. Adin began to read the complex illustrations one by one, following the exact sequence of sensations he had endured.

  On the outermost edge of the ceiling, decorated with ornate gold leaf, was a scene that appeared at first glance to be a peaceful paradise.

  It captured the most radiant moments of the Monolith’s ‘Nodes’—parents cradling newborns in ecstasy, lovers sharing their first kiss. These were the moments of joy frozen in time.

  The blue mist depicted above their heads looked as beautiful as a divine blessing.

  Yet, Adin instinctively felt that this was a gradual ruin, sweetly disguised. It was not the climax of life, but the first step of being silently sucked into the sewer of gravity—the beginning of The Harvest (Cool Submergence).

  Biting his lip, he could not tear his eyes away from that ultimate deception.

  Moving inward to the next layer, the style of the painting twisted abruptly to depict The Miring (Sticky Resistance).

  The background air had turned black like thick tar, and the limbs of the figures were tangled in that viscous darkness, grotesquely elongated. The faces that had been smiling just a moment ago were now distorted in horror, realizing something was wrong.

  The artist had rendered the viscous resistance generated as they struggled to escape the darkness as if it were quivering, living muscle.

  Rip, tear—

  Gazing at the painting, he felt as if he could hear the hallucination of tar being torn away echoing in his ears.

  The third stage that followed was The Erosion (Sandstorm of Time), a scene so cruel it was difficult to look at with open eyes.

  The flesh of the figures who had passed through the sticky darkness was now crumbling like fine glass shards. The ‘ashes of time’ Yan had mentioned surged like a storm, gnawing away every bit of human memory.

  The canvas was filled with those whose eyes had scattered into powder and whose lips had turned to gray dust, losing even the space to scream.

  The desaturated, gray flesh became sharp blades, hacking at one another's bodies.

  Finally, at the very center of the ceiling, the final destination where all descent ended, was a massive white hole symbolizing The Stasis Sink (Gravity’s Twist).

  It was an absolute incinerator that devoured everything. The things being sucked into that hole were no longer beautiful moments. With bones and joints twisted like pretzels into ‘gravity knots,’ they were vanishing into the abyss in smooth, curved lines.

  Sunflower petals wrapped around the edges of the incinerator like golden tentacles, swallowing even the last remaining scraps of the soul.

  Thump, thump.

  Adin’s footsteps struck the high ceiling.

  His gaze slowly descended from the ornate hell above, following the flow of the lobby’s endless corridors. Massive marble columns stood in layers, forming a forest, and between the elongated shadows cast by those pillars, mysterious forms began to reveal themselves one by one.

  What... what on earth is this...?

  As if haunted, Adin walked into the space where statues were exhibited.

  The statues he passed indifferently all boasted elegant poses with ruined faces. Walking through that forest of eerie silence, he stopped abruptly before an independent space hidden secretly behind a massive pillar.

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  “Gasp... T-this is...”

  Mom... Dad...

  His heart dropped.

  Two figures, exuding a vividness of a completely different caliber than the other statues, were barely caught at the edge of his vision.

  The names engraved at the base of the statues were ‘Arum’ and ‘Tildin.’

  They were preserved in the forms of their most radiant moments.

  The fingertips of Tildin holding a blueprint were so delicate they seemed ready to feel the texture of the paper at any moment, and within Arum’s eyes dwelt a benevolent light that seemed to mock the coldness of the stone.

  Yet, because the likeness was so perfect, it was all the more ominous.

  With a trembling hand, Adin reached toward Arum’s face. In that moment, across the smooth cheek of the statue, a pattern like a minutely fluctuating vein—too alien to be the grain of marble—brushed past.

  This was no mere statue.

  Mom... Dad... what is this...

  It would have been less dizzying if everything had been completely foreign.

  These excruciatingly familiar faces, suddenly appearing in the middle of this alien abyss, paralyzed Adin’s reason while creating an indescribable, complex crack deep in his heart.

  It was a far more agonizing and heavy confusion than the vague fear of facing an incomprehensible stranger—the feeling of one’s most trusted world returning as a grotesque truth.

  Just... just who were you...

  Were you components of this ornate hell, or were you accomplices who designed this tragedy?

  Please, tell me the truth...

  Adin’s low soliloquy rose toward the incinerator in the high mural.

  It was then. A strange sensation, as if one of the wisps of gray smoke circling the incinerator in the mural was descending minutely to his feet, brushed against his ankle.

  Sssss—

  “Hmm... what is this?”

  Adin reflexively grabbed his ankle.

  It was a chilling sensation, as if a shard of ice had brushed his skin. The gray smoke that had settled at his feet wove through the ash-colored powder on the floor, flowing gracefully toward a dark crevice in the corner of the exhibition hall.

  It was as if someone were leading him with an invisible thread.

  Is it calling me somewhere? Or is the smoke itself a signpost?

  Possessed, Adin followed the tail of the smoke.

  Leaving the silence of the statues behind, he entered another oddly curved, narrow passage.

  Shu-u-uk, shu-uk—

  As he moved deeper into the passage, all surrounding noise was perfectly cut off.

  Only the sound of his own heartbeat and the rustle of his clothes echoed unnaturally loud. Unlike the marble of the rotunda he had just seen, the walls of the passage were covered in a pitch-black darkness that absorbed light.

  Woom—

  A low vibration began to hum from somewhere.

  The path curved in a gentle arc, twisting into an even deeper spiral. Adin felt his body gradually becoming heavy.

  My body... it’s sinking.

  Yan’s logic was correct.

  To amplify the vertically plunging gravity, they twisted this path into a curve.

  The rotating centrifugal force is layering the weight of gravity, pressing me harder against the floor.

  With every step, it felt as if an invisible rock was being added to his shoulders.

  With every breath, the taut atmospheric pressure constricted his lungs. Adin braced his staggering legs and leaned against the wall.

  The cold surface was unpleasantly smooth.

  “Where is this? What have they hidden at the end of this?”

  His monologue, trapped in the tight pressure, could not travel far and fell at his feet.

  How long had he walked?

  Just as his mind began to grow faint amidst the terrible darkness and pressure, a single, minute streak of warm light began to appear far in the distance.

  Fwaaa—

  It was not the pale white glow of the incinerator, nor the cold golden light of the rotunda.

  It was a profoundly human, warm amber light, accompanied by the scent of burning old paper. Adin instinctively quickened his pace.

  He felt the oppressive weight of gravity thinning slightly as he approached the end of the passage.

  Upon reaching the source of this strange light, Adin realized it was not merely an open door.

  It was a secret crevice, cleverly hidden behind a shadow in the deepest corner of a library, where a massive bookshelf had always blocked the way, preventing even a single ray of light from entering.

  The space itself was so intricately distorted visually that even Adin, who had frequented this room so often, had never once noticed this hidden passage.

  Finally, Adin stepped over the crevice and into the room where the warm light flickered.

  And the moment he witnessed the scene unfolding there, his entire body froze cold, as if submerged in icy water.

  “No... no way. It can’t be.”

  What appeared before his eyes was not a grotesque laboratory or a massive mechanical device.

  A worn desk stained by hands, a bookshelf with a familiar arrangement filling the walls, and the scent of the ink Tildin used to prefer and the dried flowers Arum loved floating in the air.

  It was none other than the study of his parents, Arum and Tildin—the room that should have been somewhere in the upper levels of the Monolith.

  Tick, tock...

  A clock pendulum in the corner of the study swung with a rhythmic sound.

  But the terror Adin felt originated from that very tranquility. How could the end of this hell—the deepest, darkest bottom of the abyss, the final stage of incineration—be connected to his most intimate and warm home?

  That peaceful room where we lived... was it actually the very Core of this incinerator?

  Adin staggered and leaned against his parents’ desk.

  The texture of the wood beneath his fingertips was agonizingly vivid. It raked through his mind more cruelly than any sensation he had felt in the strange alien spaces.

  The comfort provided by familiarity instantly turned into a sharp blade, beginning to butcher Adin’s reason.

  He realized it now.

  That room, where he used to trace their traces every day to soothe his aching longing and desperately piece together fragments of happy memories, was in fact the beginning and the end of this colossal tragedy.

  Whi-i-i—

  A thin sound of wind came from somewhere.

  Beyond the open crevice of the study, that gray smoke was once again seeping in silently.