Rivers of the Night

Theron was like a fish out of water, gasping for breath. Impurities were practically leaking out of him, and his breath itself was rapidly changing from hot to cold and then back again.

Impurities leaked out of his body in streams, but as many impurities as there were, the blood was in even larger supply. He had practically turned the Imperial Clan guest bedroom into a crime scene, crimson splattering across everything and a foul stench hanging in the air.

He tried to stand, but his body wouldn't listen to him. His mind itself wasn't even thinking straight, a string of thoughts that were usually coherent coming out in a jumbled mess instead.

Barely, he managed to start a crawl, pulling himself piece by piece into the bathing room and turning on water wherever it was he could find it.

He didn't stand. Instead, he let pelting pseudo rain and jets of water unleash their fury against him before he fell into a deep sleep.

Maybe the only thing that could help his bruised ego now was the fact he probably wouldn't drown—unless even that ability managed to ignore him just now.

**

Theron didn't know how long he spent asleep in the mess of his own making. Well, the mess itself was no longer left, the continuous streams of water finally clearing that up.

However, his mind still felt the weight of it.

He didn't sense or feel any improvements in himself. His comprehension was the same, his Mana control was the same, his Laws—the very reason he had taken such a chance in the first place—were completely worthless.

Just what was all of that for?

Was he not meant to try and sink into the pool of blood?

No, the fact it had almost killed him made Theron think it was certainly necessary that he did. There was nowhere else to go in that world.

So, that only left one possibility.

He still wasn't doing it right.

He had learned to use his soul to control the flesh and blood he had taken in there, but before he did this, he hadn't even been able to move. So who was to say that Theron's path was certainly the correct one?

'Laws…'

After learning that the odd comprehensions he had had a name, Theron had also come to understand that there was some sort of systematic training one needed to grasp them.

Part of the reason he had pulled out *Mazes of the Mind* in the first place was because there seemed to be a direct correlation between the strength of his Third Eye and the power of these comprehension abilities of his.

In that case, if his soul or Third Eye alone wasn't enough, then what about his Laws themselves?

Theron finally managed to scrape himself off of the floor of the bathing room, turning the faucets off. With drenched hair and soaked skin, he walked back into the murder scene he had left behind.

'That's not just blood…'

The stench couldn't just come from blood alone, plus the discoloration was too dark even for dried blood, not to mention the fact it was far from dry just yet.

Theron didn't know how long he had been out, but his blood was far from normal now, and it didn't evaporate easily because of it. A dried blood would have a darker hue to it, but this blood wasn't in that state, and yet it was more of a blackish red.

Plus the stench, and Theron was sure.

'Impurities…'

It seemed that maybe that blood lake had done something after all. But why was it that he hardly felt a difference? Was it because it was too little?

But if that was the case, the impurities wouldn't be so obvious.

Where had the impurities come from? And why did expelling it take so much of his blood too?

Theron's brows furrowed.

After a moment, he chose to reach for the slab again, only to freeze.

It was gone.

No, that much he could accept. It was likely somewhere inside of him right now.

The real problem was that he had placed it in the same location as the Mandate Plaque—or so he thought.

The plaque was gone too.

How could they both disappear?

He had entered the plaque, but it had been there when he came out. It was the slab that he couldn't account for. Had the latter taken the former?

That was trouble.

He was provoking the Mandate Guild, but if the plaque was permanently gone, absorbed, or swallowed, there was no going back now. There was no way they would accept the plaque just disappearing, and there was no telling when Ott would have enough "fun" and try to have him return it to make peace.

Suddenly, this situation had become even worse of a ticking time bomb than it already was.

Theron found himself feeling frustrated again. This feeling was appearing more and more frequently lately, ever since that conversation with Sadie—or maybe he had already been changing before that.

He didn't like feeling that things were out of his control, and he didn't like being forced to make decisions that were the result of being driven into a corner either.

The time he returned to the Thistle Brook Academy when he should have run. The time he returned to the Nightingale Empire. And now he was stuck in this Imperial Tyre Clan palace once again because of decisions outside of his control.

Theron's thoughts came to an abrupt stop, and the fiery heat in his throat became overwhelming.

His gaze radiated a chilling cold as he suppressed the feeling until an icy, frigid air came from his mouth instead.

Right about now, his throat was undoubtedly a great deal hoarse, but there was nothing he could do about it.

If he wanted to stop feeling so helpless, then he would have to grow stronger.

The slab. He needed to enter it again regardless of the consequences.

Just when Theron thought it would be a bit difficult to figure out how, a familiar suction feeling came from his heart.