Finally... I arrived.

The Seventh Dead Alley. This wasn’t just a random name given by the homeless—it was a precise physical description.

The deeper I moved into this narrow passage, the more the noisy sounds of Zirathion City faded away, as if I were sinking into the depths of a viscous ocean.

Even the acidic raindrops that had been striking my coat harshly suddenly stopped a few meters before the end of the alley, as if the clouds themselves refused to rain over this patch of land.

I stopped at the dead end of the road.

In front of me... stood the house.

"The House of Shadows."

I stood there, observing it for a moment, my crimson eyes narrowing behind my glasses as I tried to detect any energy fluctuations. From the outside, it looked ordinary... nauseatingly ordinary.

It wasn’t a cursed mansion emitting demonic fumes, nor was it surrounded by a red aura of Eitra like high-tier monsters.

It was just an old house, two stories tall, painted in a pale gray color, most of which had peeled away to reveal dead wood beneath.

The tiled roof was broken, and the glass windows were covered with a thick layer of ancient dirt from the inside, making them look like blind eyes staring into nothingness.

This excessive "normality," this complete absence of any energy, was what made the place feel abnormal. The house looked like a "glitch" in the fabric of reality.

A silent black hole that devoured even insects; there wasn’t a single ant crawling on the gravel, nor a single strand of spiderweb hanging from the ceiling.

I stepped forward slowly.

The sound of my footsteps on the broken gravel was the only sound in the entire universe.

I climbed the three wooden steps that groaned under my weight with a dry creak, and stood in front of the heavy wooden door.

There was no handle—only a rusty iron ring.

I grabbed the ring and knocked three times.

Knock... knock... knock.

The sound was muffled, dead, as if the wood wasn’t a solid material but a mass of dead flesh absorbing the vibrations instantly and preventing them from echoing.

I waited. No response. No movement.

I placed my right hand on the cold wood and pushed gently to test its firmness.

Creeeeak...

To my surprise, the door wasn’t locked.

It slowly opened on its own, emitting a sharp sound like a muffled scream, revealing pitch-black darkness inside.

A darkness heavier than natural night, as if it were a liquid substance ready to spill outward.

I stepped past the threshold and entered.

I directed Eitra energy into the lenses of my eyes. My eyes glowed with a red gleam, and the features of the hall began to take shape.

But the moment my second foot crossed the threshold, and my entire body was inside the house... a violent physical and psychological sensation struck me, as if an invisible icy grip had pierced my ribs and violently squeezed my stomach.

I froze in place. My limbs went completely rigid. My eyes widened behind the glasses in pure shock, and my breathing became erratic.

"What is this...?" I whispered, my voice trembling, unlike the Joker’s usual tone.

The place felt... "familiar."

It wasn’t familiar because I had lived here, nor because I had seen it in a dream or a picture.

It was familiar in a sick, twisted, utterly illogical way! It was a deep, instinctive sense of déjà vu, as if my body’s cells and DNA recognized this place independently of my mind.

It was the same instinct that makes a gazelle tremble in terror when it smells a lion for the first time in its life, even though it has never seen one before.

My body was telling me that I belonged to this place... and that this place knew me well.

The smell... was a mix of old pine wood, the scent of ozone that precedes thunderstorms, and a faint metallic hint resembling the taste of old, rusted blood.

The color of the faded wallpaper, the angle at which the wooden floor tilted beneath my feet... every corner of this house screamed at me as if welcoming my return, while my mind screamed that I had never set foot in this place in my life!

"This is impossible... is this mental manipulation? Is the house reading my consciousness waves?"

I summoned my killing intent with all my strength, trying to tear apart any magical illusion that might be controlling my senses.

I released a sharp wave of Eitra to break any spell.

But nothing changed.

The smell remained the same, and the texture of the wood beneath my shoes was real and tangible.

The place was not an illusion... this terrifying contradiction was real.

I took another step forward, trying to ignore the screams of my instincts.

The house was cold. A coldness that did not conform to physical temperature scales, but a metaphysical cold that gnawed directly at the bones, draining the warmth of the soul and making you feel completely exposed.

My breaths began to come out as thick white clouds, dancing in the still air untouched by any currents.

I looked ahead into the corridor.

Here... the laws of geometry began to completely collapse.

From the outside, before entering, I had estimated with my tactical eye that the house’s depth did not exceed twenty meters under any circumstances.

But this corridor, at whose entrance I now stood... stretched for hundreds of meters into the darkness!

It faded into an infinite point, with identical wooden doors lining both sides, all tightly shut.

How could a house only twenty meters long contain a corridor stretching half a kilometer?

Was this place manipulating internal spacetime?

I had entered an isolated dimensional pocket.

A sense of danger—a raw, primitive alarm—began to pound in my head like war drums.

Why don’t I feel good about this? I am Kael Valtier, the Black Joker. I have killed masters and toyed with entire armies—so why do I now feel like a small prey trapped inside a glass box, waiting for its owner to come play with it?

"Little girl!" I called out loudly, trying to assert control over the place and reclaim my shattered pride.

"I know you’re here! Come out at once—I don’t have time for these stupid hide-and-seek games!"

My voice didn’t echo. It had no reverberation.

The walls swallowed it instantly, like quicksand devouring a drop of water, and the suffocating absolute silence returned to clamp over my ears.

I bit my lip, summoned my tactical dagger into my left hand in preparation for any attack, and began advancing through the impossible corridor.