Extra To Protagonist-Chapter 141: Underworld

The door didn’t open.

But it began to breathe.

Just once. Shallow. Enough for the dust lining its fractures to rise and fall. The air around it trembled, not from force, but resonance. Like the world remembered a scream it wasn’t allowed to echo.

The figure didn’t step aside.

Merlin didn’t move.

Their silence wasn’t a standoff. It was weight being measured. A soul trying to be scaled.

[The First Lawkeeper writes again.]

[The Broken Herald whispers: "This is not the same boy."]

[The Judge with No Mouth remains still.]

Merlin inhaled through his nose.

The shape before him flickered.

It wasn’t just watching, it was echoing. Like the memory wanted to become him. Fill the empty places grief had carved open and wear them like a badge.

But Merlin didn’t belong to it.

He carried it.

That wasn’t the same.

He stepped forward.

The blade the shade held twitched. Not a threat. A test. As if it expected him to flinch, to kneel, to beg the memory for permission to walk forward with its weight.

He didn’t.

He kept walking.

Until the blade pressed against his sternum.

No blood.

Just cold. Not like ice.

Like absence.

The figure leaned closer. Its face still unreadable. Just contours of what could’ve been a life, erased too deeply to recall.

"You speak for the memory."

It wasn’t a question.

Merlin nodded.

The figure’s voice dropped, crackling beneath the surface like old thunder. "Then give it back."

Merlin’s eyes narrowed.

"I saw it. Lived it. You can’t ask me to pretend it didn’t etch itself into the bone."

The shade paused.

Then turned.

The door hissed once. Not open. But less closed.

The ground trembled again.

[The Smiling Witness marks a line.]

[Observer Count: 63.]

[The Messenger writes: "He still carries his own name."]

Behind Merlin, the ruined expanse of the underworld shifted.

Not visibly. But he felt it.

A presence deeper than any god he’d ever known, older than stars, more tired than time, leaned into his spine and whispered through marrow:

You were not meant to walk this far.

And yet, he had.

He placed his palm to the fractured door.

The crack split wider.

And with it, the weight inside his chest, the exile’s agony, spilled forward like gravity reversed. Not out of him, but around him.

The underworld responded.

Not in rage.

In memory.

The towers shifted, subtly. Not rebuilt. Not cleansed. Just acknowledged. The shape that had stood in the door faded, leaving no farewell.

Just air.

And choice.

Merlin stepped forward.

The crack widened enough to admit him.

And as he crossed the threshold—

—

He was no longer alone.

Not in the spiritual sense. Not metaphorically.

Literally.

The chamber he stepped into was whole.

Untouched.

Not by age, not by wind, not by ruin.

Smooth marble reflected a sky that didn’t exist. An illusion. A memory of a world long forgotten, projected in infinite light above.

And in the center—

A body.

Not alive. Not warm. But not rotted.

Wrapped in ribbons of black and gold, arms folded across its chest, a blade lain over the heart.

Merlin stopped five paces away.

The name etched on the stone read:

[VIREN]

He knew that name.

The exile’s name.

He hadn’t remembered it until now, but the moment he saw it, the grief clicked into place. Like a puzzle buried under sand, suddenly visible after one last gust of wind.

[The Nameless Clockmaker has stopped time.]

[The First Lawkeeper whispers: "Do not touch the blade."]

Merlin didn’t reach forward.

But he crouched.

Watched the face. Young. Too young. Too still.

There were no gods here.

No voices.

No systems.

Only the echo of a life that hadn’t died, but had to be buried.

He whispered, just once: "What did they do to you?"

The corpse didn’t answer.

But the chamber flickered.

And the memory came.

Not in words. Not in sounds.

In presence.

Pain carved through ages.

Flesh stripped of name.

Stars burned out one by one in its honor.

Viren hadn’t been exiled.

He had exiled himself.

Because he’d chosen mercy once. And the gods hadn’t forgiven him for it.

[The Crownless Mother speaks: "He was the last to fall."]

[The Judge with No Mouth records nothing.]

[Observer Count: 67.]

Merlin stood.

Not to leave.

To decide.

There was something here. Buried under the body. Or inside it.

Not treasure.

Not weapon.

Record.

Not of Viren’s life.

Of his last choice.

A final seal. The same kind that had demanded Merlin’s life.

He stepped forward.

He knelt.

Not in prayer.

In respect.

His palm hovered over the blade.

And the world held its breath.

[The Messenger waits.]

[The Devourer grins.]

[The Smiling Witness shuts their eyes.]

—

Merlin didn’t touch the blade.

Not yet.

The hum of the seal thrummed just beneath the surface of the tomb, like a song trying to remember its final note.

He stood still in that breathless pause, hand hovering inches above cold metal, watching the polished edge catch the illusion of sky that wasn’t real.

The silence had changed.

It wasn’t dead.

It was watching.

Then—

The air fractured.

No burst. No flash.

Just a fold in space beside him, like the world forgot where its seams were sewn. And from it, Hermes stepped sideways into the chamber.

No sound of arrival. No weight to his feet.

But presence.

Like gravity choosing favorites.

"Still touching things that don’t belong to you," Hermes said mildly.

Merlin didn’t flinch. "You’re late."

Hermes glanced at the body of Viren, his smile tightening just a fraction. "Not late. Just watching."

"And?"

"I liked the way you flinched when you thought you were the one being chosen. That was new."

Merlin lowered his hand from the blade. "Why are you here?"

Hermes walked once around the tomb. Not reverent. Just careful. Like someone retracing a path they used to know.

"Because you woke something that wasn’t meant to be remembered," he said. "And now the ones who made it want it buried again."

Merlin’s gaze sharpened. "The gods?"

"No." Hermes stopped walking. Looked directly at him. "Not gods."

Merlin didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

Because Hermes had never sounded less amused.

"Hades never wanted disciples," Hermes said, voice low now. "But you know how power leaves shadows when it passes."

"Strays?"

"No. Scions."

The word landed sharp.

Hermes continued. "They smell the break in the seal. They’re coming for it."

"Coming for me."

Hermes tilted his head. "You’re not the only door left open, Merlin. You’re just the one carrying the key."

Merlin looked back to the tomb.

To the blade.

To the name: VIREN.

"How long?"

Hermes didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to.

[The First Lawkeeper stops writing.]

[The Smiling Witness rises.]

[Observer Count: 71.]

Hermes stepped forward, and for the first time, his voice lost its detachment.

"You must not draw that blade until you’re ready to carry everything."

"I thought I already was," Merlin said quietly.

"You’re not."

He turned to leave. But paused.

"And Merlin?"

Merlin looked up.

"If they catch you before you leave this place, you won’t die."

A beat.

"You’ll forget. Everything."

Then he vanished.

No flash. No exit.

Just silence. Again.

But not alone.

Because now?

Something else had entered the tomb.

The air turned colder.

And behind the fractured door, the real underworld began to stir.

—

Merlin didn’t move.

He could still feel the shape of Hermes’s warning. Not in his ears, but in his bones. Like it had left a residue.

Forget.

That word held weight. Not as punishment, but as erasure.

And behind the tomb’s fractured seal, the air shifted again.

This time it didn’t feel like memory.

It felt like judgment.

A presence descended through the broken seams of the tomb, not fast, not loud. Just inevitable. The temperature didn’t drop. The light didn’t flicker.

But the color of shadow changed.

And the silence itself grew teeth.

Merlin turned, slow.

No figure stood behind him. No footsteps. No voice.

Just watching.

Then—

The prompt came. Not his system. Not his will.

A presence outside of both.

[The King Below has turned his eye.]

[He watches the bearer of the exile’s wound.]

[He does not speak.]

The text came in black. Not stylized. Not glowing.

Black like absence. Like someone speaking from behind all mirrors.

Merlin’s throat felt dry.

Not from fear.

From recognition.

[He waits.]

[Not for obedience.]

[For collapse.]

A pulse hit behind his ribcage, not pain, not pressure. Just certainty.

Like someone knocking once on the walls of his soul.

And suddenly he remembered things that weren’t his.

Sand so hot it cooked bone. Screams of things too large to die. The slow, deliberate weight of time turned inward.

Viren’s memory burned in him again. Sharper now. Clearer.

Because the one who had exiled the exile was watching.

The King Below.

The one the gods didn’t pray to. The one the dead didn’t name.

Merlin looked up, not at the sky, not at the broken ceiling, but at the part of the air that felt heavier.

"I didn’t ask for it," he said aloud.

No answer.

Just another line.

[That is not a defense.]

The presence didn’t move.

But it pressed deeper. Into him.

And beneath the floor, beneath the tomb’s stone and shadow, he felt something open.

A door. A threshold. A breath inhaled by something without lungs.

[The scions move.]

[The King Below does not intervene.]

[He waits.]

Merlin’s knees nearly buckled.

Not from weakness.

From scale.

This wasn’t a god watching.

This was the one who remained when gods bled dry.

And now Merlin held the last breath of a creature who had once stood against that.

He didn’t reach for the blade.

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