Chapter 25: Betrayal

The tension in the chamber was a physical thing, a dense, suffocating fog that made the air itself feel heavy to breathe.

No one spoke. Words were useless now. But their eyes screamed, darting, calculating, wide with a trapped-animal wariness.

The system's command hung among us, not as words, but as a cold, unchangeable law carved into the fabric of this place.

I stood perfectly still, an island of calm in the brewing storm.

I had no intention of fighting them. These weren't my enemies.

But a cold, logical part of my brain had already accepted the grim arithmetic: only one was leaving.

No amount of wishing would change that. And the strangest part? I wasn't afraid. That particular emotion rarely showed itself in me, especially when I knew I was strong enough to solve it.

Tobias, ever the pillar, took a heavy step forward.

The sound of his boot on the stone was like a gavel strike.

“Listen,” he said, his voice strained, a rock trying to hold back a landslide. “We’re not doing this. We’re a team. There’s got to be another way.”

But Marcus, standing a few feet away, was already living in a different reality.

His usual playful smirk was gone, replaced by a flat, focused intensity.

His daggers spun in a lazy, hypnotic circle between his fingers.

“I don’t think you get it, Tobias,” he said, his tone deceptively light. “There is no other way.”

Lily shifted her weight, her bow creaking as she half-raised it.

“Marcus, put the daggers down. We can figure something out.” Her voice was pleading, a last attempt at reason.

He let out a dry, humorless chuckle.

“Figure what out, Lily? You heard the system. If we don’t do it, we’re terminated.” His eyes, cold and assessing, flickered toward me for a split second, finding no purchase in my neutral expression. He turned back to Tobias. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like dying today.”

Tobias exhaled sharply, a puff of frustration and despair.

His knuckles were white where he gripped the hilt of his claymore.

“We’re. Not. Fighting.”

That was the moment the last thread snapped.

Marcus lunged. It wasn't a wild charge; it was a viper's strike.

His daggers became a silver blur aimed with lethal precision at Tobias's throat.

Tobias reacted with the ingrained instinct of a veteran, his massive claymore swinging in a wide, powerful arc.

The clang of steel against steel was a deafening, tragic bell tolling the end of their alliance. The battle had begun.

Lily cursed, a sharp, frustrated sound, and sprang backward.

An arrow whistled through the air, not to kill, but to warn, embedding itself in the stone floor near Marcus's foot.

Evelyn let out a strangled gasp, clutching her staff as if it were the only solid thing in a world falling apart.

Marcus dodged Lily's next arrow with an acrobat's grace, rolling and coming up in a crouch aimed at her.

"Sorry, sweetheart," he grinned, a hollow, terrible expression. "But survival of the fittest, right?"

Tobias roared, a sound of pure fury, and charged to intercept, but Lily was faster.

She fired again, the arrow grazing Marcus’s arm, drawing a thin line of blood.

“Damn it, Marcus! We don’t have to do this!” she shouted, her voice cracking.

He only laughed, the sound brittle and sharp.

“Oh, but we do.”

Evelyn stood frozen, her violet eyes wide with horror, darting between the combatants.

“Please, stop! We’re friends, there must—”

“Shut up, Evelyn!” Marcus snapped, his voice dropping to an icy snarl that made her flinch. “Friends don’t matter in a place like this.”

Through it all, I remained a statue, my hands tucked into my pockets, my face a blank mask.

I didn't flinch at the thunderous impact of Tobias's claymore or the whisper-thin flight of Lily's arrows.

I was a spectator to their collective breakdown.

I could feel it, the thick, cloying hesitation in every blow they pulled, in every non-lethal shot.

They were tearing each other apart, but their hearts weren't in it.

Desperation was a poison, and it was clouding their every move.

All I could think about was the exit. That was the only logical goal.

But looking at them, it was clear logic had long since abandoned this chamber.

Tobias's voice boomed over the chaos, his face a mask of anguished frustration as he parried another of Marcus's frantic attacks.

"Allen! Help us!”

I met his gaze, my own calm and unwavering.

"Why? To join you in killing, only to be killed myself?"

"No one is killing anyone here!" he insisted, a desperate lie.

"And who decided that?" I asked, my voice flat. "You?"

A faint, dismissive sound escaped my lips.

"Unluckily enough, the dungeon already decided. And that is what you are participating in now. A fight. An elimination."

His eyes widened. For the first time, I saw it clearly, the doubt, the fear, the realization that his noble stance was a shield against a truth he couldn't deny.

He opened his mouth, but no argument came out. He had none.

He growled in frustration, shoving Marcus back with a powerful heave of his blade.

Lily shot a glare at me, her expression a tangled knot of frustration and something close to panic.