Audience with Urare
The iron corridor was long and narrow.
Metallic echoes rang from their footsteps, striking the endless walls of steel that stretched on without end. The overhead lights flickered in a steady rhythm, swaying the long shadows they cast and, for fleeting moments, rendering Minel’s face unrecognizable even to himself.
The Grand Worshipper on the left spoke in a low voice.
“When were you appointed Grand Worshipper?”
Minel steadied his breath, then answered in a deliberately calm tone.
“Not long ago. That is why the mistake occurred, nothing more.”
The Grand Worshipper on the right gave a quiet laugh, thick with undisguised mockery.
“A mistake… Can setting foot in a forbidden zone truly be called a mere mistake?”
Minel narrowed his eyes and met the challenge head-on.
“I was en route to Zone One, where the trouble had arisen, when I heard an anomalous sound. It was alien enough that I had no choice but to investigate. Leaving it unchecked, for the sake of my own safety, would have been the greater error.”
Silence settled over the corridor for a moment.
The cloaked Grand Worshipper leading them halted mid-stride and turned his head at an angle.
“Describe that sound more precisely.”
He had already been given the hint—the voice of a surplus soul. Minel recalled the sound he had heard and refined the words in his mind.
“It was something like wind, and something like a whisper. One thing was certain: it was neither simple machine noise nor random interference.”
The cloaked Grand Worshipper fixed Minel with a sharp stare and muttered,
“If you are genuine, Lady Urare will know you. If you are false… you will live long enough to regret that dying by our hands would have been the kinder fate.”
At those words, the grips of the two Grand Worshippers flanking him tightened further. Minel felt the pain in his wrists instinctively, yet not a flicker of expression crossed his face. Deep within the cold machinery of his thoughts, however, a needle of unease drove itself home.
How long had they walked?
They arrived before a massive iron door.
“This is the day we have filled every soul we so long desired. I shall report it myself.”
At the cloaked Grand Worshipper’s words, the two at Minel’s sides drew short breaths. Their eyes were no different from those of the fanatics mid-worship.
The three produced prayer beads and held them to the iron door. Yellow lightning spilled from the beads, and the great door swung wide.
“Opening the door to the Sanctuary is always a joy.”
They stepped into the chamber called the Sanctuary.
Minel narrowed his eyes at once. He had expected something vast and ornate, yet the only thing that occupied the center of the room was a single box. It was no ordinary iron chest. Intricate patterns covered every surface, and red jewels set into it glowed with a soft, steady light.
Minel had seen something like it before—the box left behind in the Arcade on the 1st Floor after he cleared an event and the Digital Vein machine vanished. A treasure chest that spat out items, wasn’t it? How were they supposed to see Urare with that?
The cloaked Grand Worshipper’s voice rolled low.
“Prepare yourselves to meet Lady Urare.”
Minel ran the calculations again for any chance of escape, but the two Grand Worshippers pinning his arms showed not the slightest opening. Their grips were iron.
Meanwhile the cloaked Grand Worshipper approached the box and lifted the lid. The interior was no simple space. A dark abyss like empty void yawned open, and within it countless fragments of light glittered like stars.
Minel’s heart hammered.
“Enter.”
The command came with a rough shove between his shoulder blades. In that instant the box seemed to devour the world itself; everything shuddered and collapsed. The metal floor vanished beneath his feet, and an endless vortex of light swallowed him whole. His vision twisted as though torn apart, and unintelligible whispers surged against his ears like waves. An ugly noise he had never heard in his life accompanied the sensation of his body scattering into the air.
And then—
When the plummeting feeling of being cast into a strange world faded and the vortex of light subsided, he stood upon a long gallery polished to a golden sheen.
“……”
The floor was marble smooth as ice, black veins and white grain cutting across one another so that every step seemed to send ripples outward. One wall held an unbroken sequence of mirrors stretching beyond sight, endlessly duplicating light and shadow. Opposite them, massive oil paintings hung in succession, their gold-leaf frames undulating like waves and imposing order. Between the frames stood statues of warriors and priests, somehow both clamorous and harmonious.
Above, vaulted ceilings soared. Nested arches interlocked as if lifting the sky itself, and the frescoes that poured down beyond them wore light the way the surface of a deep sea does. Chandeliers of crystal radiance hung in rows, shifting the light by fractions, so that transparent shards drifted through the air like swimming things and every grain of dust sparkled like a star with each step.
A vision the world would never see again. And yet a strange sense of wrongness clung to it. Not because it was too beautiful to feel real—rather, it looked exactly like graphics polished by AI.
The cloaked Grand Worshipper arrived behind him a moment later. When Minel turned, he realized the items that had bound his arms were gone. The man regarded him with a look that said, Move if you dare.
Testing whether I know the way?
But the gallery branched in countless directions. Which path among so many led to Urare? Minel wasted no time and began walking forward at a brisk pace, making certain to glance back with a faint sneer.
The cloaked Grand Worshipper stared after him with an odd expression, then seemed to grasp something and immediately set off in pursuit. Minel eased his pace just enough; the man overtook him as if it were a race. As he passed he shot Minel a sidelong look laced with wariness.
In a cult, everything turned on the recognition of the leader. They competed for the privilege of reporting first as if their lives depended on it—childish to the core. Minel did not know the way. He was simply grateful someone had decided to lead.
With a measure of ease restored, he began cataloguing the colors and grain of the marble for the return journey, counting the rhythm of the repeating columns. The spaces between pillars where one might catch a breath. The angle of light seeping through arched windows. The border between shadow and brilliance. Outwardly serene, he calculated without pause.
Then, abruptly, he felt the illusion of his own form splitting into dozens of versions, each scrutinizing the others. Far ahead a silver wave stirred; a transparent membrane at the gallery’s end trembled minutely and began drawing the surrounding light into itself. The wave formed a pattern, the pattern resembled a door. The door did not look like a door, and the passage stood as though it were not a passage.
The cloaked Grand Worshipper stopped, bowed his head in a respectful tone, and spoke.
“I have gathered every soul required for the vessel. I request an audience.”
With those words his feet seemed to leave the floor; layers of light and darkness alternated in rapid succession, and up and down inverted.
Silence.
Then a quiet fall.
Thread-thin strands of light brushed the contours of their bodies and released them; each frame of light found its balance and settled again. Some presence waited beyond, thin and long as a drawn line.
And there—
At the center of the world sat a single being.
“……”
“……”
An age that seemed to linger at the final edge of youth. A face like a flower just beginning to bloom, yet carrying at the same time the dignity of an ancient tree that had lived a thousand years. Her skin was transparent and smooth as jade touched by sunlight; the moment it took in light it became radiance itself, illuminating everything around her. Hair of silver and black flowed down in waves, stirring slowly even though no wind moved through the gallery. The world that enfolded her seemed to bow its head and breathe in time with her.
Her eyes were stranger still. Abyssal black, yet within them countless starlights drifted. Her figure was slender, not yet fully matured, and yet possessed a fullness that spoke of complete ripeness. Things that human eyes declared irreconcilable existed together in one body, and that very imbalance created a harmony that overwhelmed whoever looked upon her.
She had not yet spoken a word, yet the air itself, the golden pillars of the gallery, even the marble floor already matched their breath to hers.
“Ah… aah… aah…”
“……”
Her presence could not be confined by the simple word “beauty.” The moment one gazed upon her, the brain discarded every previous standard of beauty and began erecting an entirely new one.
The Grand Worshipper dropped to his knees. More accurately, he collapsed.
“L-Lady Urare… Lady Urare… I-I present myself before Lady Urare.”
Yet Minel’s eyes only grew colder. The Mystery of the Backrooms, upon witnessing it, should produce a sharp headache. That was normal. Yet the woman before him, for all her fantastical appearance, brought none of that strange pain that accompanied an encounter with Mystery.
Minel was certain.
The scene before his eyes was false.
But remaining motionless would itself invite suspicion. He dropped to one knee and offered a respectful greeting.
“I present myself before Lady Urare.”
Minel thought: cult leaders treat their followers like tools. They never remember faces or names. If she failed to recognize him, a vague excuse would suffice. Among countless Grand Worshippers, one more would hold no interest for her.
Then a man’s voice—middle-aged, roughly forties—issued from Urare’s vicinity.
“You have gathered every soul. Well done. At last we can awaken the vessel we have yearned for across thousands of years.”
Urare herself remained seated in stillness at the world’s center. The voice’s owner was not Urare, but almost certainly the one called her Spokesman.
The cloaked Grand Worshipper lifted his head and cried,
“Congratulations! Lady Urare! Congratulations! Lady Urare!”
“And yet… who is the one beside you?”
The cloaked Grand Worshipper immediately fixed Minel with eyes flashing murderous intent. A rotten smile settled on his face, as though he had known this would happen all along.
Minel remained composed, yet widened his eyes in a show of feigned shock. Then he collapsed where he stood, as if the strength had gone out of him.