The voice continued to echo inside Zekai's head.
—Use it.
His eyes remained fixed on the tarot box.
'Why is everything pointing toward this tarot card...?'
The voice had appeared before. So had the strange interface. Even the rules had pushed him toward the same answer.
Use the card.
But why?
'Why is it telling me to use it?'
For once, Zekai didn't have a clever answer. The voice stopped. But the card didn't. His gaze slowly lowered toward the open tarot box.
The top card immediately caught his attention.
The Fool.
Compared with the other cards, it looked strangely new. The edges were cleaner, the surface less worn, as though it had been placed into the deck much later than the others.
Zekai stared at it.
If this place contained answers, this card was the only lead he had. And that alone was enough to awaken his curiosity.
It was a bad habit.
Whenever something caught Zekai's attention, he couldn't simply leave it alone. He needed to understand it—even when understanding it was probably the stupidest thing he could do.
He reached toward the card.
"...Let's see."
He didn't have to believe the rules. He only had to test them. Zekai raised his hand and bit the tip of his thumb.
Aron immediately flinched. "Mr. Zekai, what are you doing?!"
A small bead of blood appeared. "No—blood!"
Zekai ignored him. Aron had no connection to this strange system. Explaining it to him would only waste time.
Zekai held his bleeding thumb over The Fool. One drop fell.
Plop.
The blood touched the card. Nothing happened. The throne hall remained completely silent.
Zekai waited.
One second. Two. Three.
Nothing. His expression slowly flattened. "...Seriously?" He gave a dry, cynical scoff. "That's it?"
With a casual flick of his wrist, he tossed the card away. Except—
The card didn't fly. It stopped. Dead. In mid-air.
Zekai froze. For a fraction of a second, the card remained suspended before him, completely motionless.
Then—
Space snapped.
The card was back in his palm. There was no arc. No falling motion. No return.
It hadn't travelled from the air back into his hand. It was simply there.
Zekai stared at it.
The distance between "here" and "there" had been completely erased.
"...What?" His mind replayed the movement. He had thrown it. He had seen it leave his fingers.
But now—
'No.' His eyes narrowed. 'It never left my hand.'
The thought made no sense. Yet the card was still there. It was as though the world had removed the part between the action and its result.
Cause came afterward. Movement came afterward. The outcome had already happened first. Zekai slowly turned toward Aron.
"Hey, Aron..." His voice was quieter now. "Did you see that?"
Aron looked confused. "See what?"
"The card." Zekai lifted it slightly. "It stopped in the air."
Aron's confusion deepened. "No."
He stared at the card. "It's been in your hand the whole time."
Zekai went silent.
The line between his reality and Aron's was beginning to warp.
'What is he talking about?' He looked back at The Fool.
'I just threw it.'
The difference between what he had experienced and what Aron had witnessed was impossible to ignore.
Zekai needed another test. He threw the card again.
Snap.
It returned instantly. Again, there was no movement. No distance. No transition.
Zekai's eyes remained locked on it.
"...Cards don't do that." His fingers tightened around the golden border.
Then Aron grabbed his shoulders. "Mr. Zekai...?"
Zekai blinked.
Aron shook him. "Mr. Zekai!"
"What—?"
"You've just been standing there!"
Zekai's expression changed. "What?"
"You haven't moved at all!"
Aron's voice trembled. "You've been holding the card with your eyes closed and talking to yourself!"
Zekai stared at him. "Eyes closed?"
"Yes!" Aron shook him harder. "What happened to you?!"
Zekai tried to answer. But his body wouldn't move. His perception suddenly twisted.
The throne hall disappeared. Not physically. Something had changed inside his perception.
He tried to drop the card. His fingers wouldn't open. He pulled harder. Nothing.
It wasn't stuck to his skin. It felt integrated. As though the card had become part of his hand.
The skin beneath the card burned intensely—not with pain, but with the sudden rush of blood returning to a limb that had been numb for too long.
His breathing broke. "Hey—" His voice shook. "No."
He grabbed his right wrist with his left hand and desperately tried to force his fingers open.
"Get off..." His fingers refused. "Let go!"
Then—
Thump.
The Fool pulsed.
Zekai froze.
Thump.
It wasn't his heartbeat. The card pulsed again. Something dark began spreading across its surface.
A deep red liquid emerged from beneath the illustration. It didn't drip. It moved. Slowly. Deliberately.
The crimson substance crawled beyond the edges of the card and entered the air itself.
Zekai stared in disbelief. "What the..."
The red liquid split into countless thin veins. They spread across the walls. Then the ceiling. Then the pillars.
Crimson lines branched endlessly through the throne hall, twisting across the ancient stone like veins beneath translucent skin.
They branched endlessly through the throne hall—not like blood vessels, but unfinished pathways searching for somewhere to lead.
The temperature dropped.
Zekai's breath became visible. "That's not real." He looked toward Aron. "Aron!"
Aron didn't respond. He had stopped. Completely. His fingers remained suspended against Zekai's shoulder. His chest didn't rise. Even the dust floating around him had frozen in place.
Even the expression of fear on his face had become frozen.
Zekai stared. "Aron?" Nothing. He stepped forward.
Or tried to. His body still felt strangely disconnected from reality.
"Hey..." He reached toward Aron. "Wake up."
No response. Then—
The crimson interface appeared. It didn't materialize in front of him this time.
It seemed to burn directly across his vision. The entire world dimmed around it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[EVENT TRIGGERED — IRREVERSIBLE]
[CONDITION: SATISFIED]
[THE FOOL HAS ANSWERED]
[THE FIRST DOOR OPENS]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The decision was out of his hands.
Zekai's pupils contracted. "Irreversible..." He stared at the final line. "The First Door..."
His voice dropped. "...So this place was waiting for permission."
The realization settled heavily in his chest.
It hadn't activated randomly. It had been waiting. For him. For the card. For the moment he finally chose to use it. So this place hadn't been waiting for a command. It had been waiting for permission.
Zekai looked down.
The Fool was gone. His palm was empty. But the air around him wasn't. It had become heavy.
Sealed.
The throne hall seemed to separate from the rest of reality, as though an invisible wall had descended around him.
Zekai's hands began to shake. He noticed immediately. That frightened him more than the interface.
He forced his fingers to stop. "Calm down." His own voice sounded distant. Then—something moved behind him.
It wasn't human.
Zekai's eyes widened. He didn't hear footsteps. Didn't sense a presence. Didn't feel the air move.
Before he could even turn around, a pair of ice-cold, pitch-black hands reached out from the dark and covered his eyes.
He never sensed anything approaching. The hands were simply already there.
Zekai's entire body jolted.
"WHO THE—?!"
His heartbeat slammed against his chest. The darkness behind those hands wasn't ordinary darkness.
It felt endless.
Then reality shattered. Not around him. Inside his mind.
A torrential flood of images exploded directly into his mind. They weren't memories. They weren't imagination. They were fragments of a brutal truth he was being forced to see.
Waiting specifically for him. Zekai tried to scream. His voice never left his throat. The black hands remained over his eyes.
And the world disappeared. The figure raised its head. The sealed door began to open. And Zekai saw what was waiting beyond it.
Then—Everything went black.
✦ End of Chapter 6 — The First Door ✦