Those cold words—"Proceed at the hospital"—pierced my brain like an ice pick, shattering all rational thought. In that instant, my rage and hatred dissolved into primal terror that clawed up from the depths of my being.

"NO! STOP!" The howl tore from my throat—the desperate cry of a trapped animal watching its young being slaughtered. I lunged for the phone but was slammed to the ground by two guards, a gun barrel jammed against my skull. "Victor, you sick fuck! Take me instead! Leave her alone!" I thrashed wildly, my face grinding against the stone floor, mouth filling with the coppery taste of blood.


"Take you?" Victor looked down, his smile widening with sadistic pleasure. "You're hardly in a position to negotiate. I'll count to ten. Ten…"

Each number fell like an executioner's axe. I could see Lily in my mind's eye, her frail body convulsing in agony miles away. A torture worse than any death.

"Nine…"


I couldn't let this happen. My pride, my vengeance—none of it mattered compared to my sister's life.

"Eight…"


Revenge could wait. Life couldn't. Dad's final wish was for me to protect her. I wouldn't fail them both.

"Seven…"

"Stop! I'll give you the sequence!" My voice broke as I stopped fighting, each word costing me. "But I have one condition."

Victor raised his hand, halting the count. His eyes gleamed with amusement, like a theatergoer enjoying a particularly good tragedy. "I'm listening."

"The sequence isn't just notes. It's timing, intensity, even the specific striking implements. One mistake and this entire chamber becomes our tomb."

I steadied my breathing, mind racing through my final play. "Only I can execute it properly. Take me to the main chamber, and I'll perform the ritual while you watch."

Victor's eyes narrowed to slits, cunning and suspicion warring in their depths. He wasn't a man who trusted easily.

I bit my lip and pushed harder: "Keep a gun to my head the whole time if you want. Once activated, the sound field will fill the entire chamber—healing everyone present. After that, kill me if you want. Or are you not even that confident in your control?"

The barb hit home. A cold smile flickered across Victor's face.

In his mind, I was already a dead man walking. What harm could I possibly do? He needed the ritual performed, and I was merely the tool to accomplish it.

"Very well," he nodded, eyes still glacial. "But understand this—one wrong move, and I'll make sure you hear every last scream as your sister dies." He spoke a terse "hold" into the phone, then gestured to his men. "Move them out!"

Surrounded by armed guards, we marched through the bell chamber. Leo's eyes burned with such hatred that if looks could kill, Victor would have been incinerated on the spot. Michael kept his head down, expression hidden behind his glasses, mind clearly racing.

I walked ahead, shoulders slumped like a man defeated. But as I passed Leo and Michael, my right index finger tapped three times against my thigh—our prearranged signal for "Plan B."

Leo's stride hitched for just a microsecond before resuming. Michael adjusted his glasses in acknowledgment.

Victor led us through his shortcut—a wide, trap-free passage clearly designed as an emergency exit for the tomb's creator. After ten minutes of walking, we emerged into a chamber so vast it took my breath away.

The main burial chamber.

The space dwarfed every chamber we'd seen before.

The vaulted ceiling soared overhead, etched with celestial maps that made the Court of Stars look like a child's drawing. Black jade tiles—polished to mirror brightness—covered the floor, reflecting the starlight patterns above so perfectly it felt like standing between two infinite skies.

At the chamber's heart stood a massive bronze altar rising in concentric tiers. Atop it rested a set of chime bells that dwarfed those in the murals—sixty-four massive bronze instruments arranged by size, each glowing with an eerie green luminescence like dormant beasts. This was it—the ritual core, capable of producing the healing sound waves. Or, I knew, something far deadlier.

"The main chamber… a true masterpiece of divine craftsmanship." Victor surveyed the space, naked greed and obsession gleaming in his eyes. "Our ancestors left us quite the legacy."

"Shall we begin, dear nephew?" He turned to me impatiently.

"I need to calibrate the mechanism first." I moved toward the altar without emotion, two guards shadowing my every step, guns trained on my spine. I climbed the structure and began examining its intricate components—gears, levers, and metal fittings arranged like some cosmic clockwork. While making a show of adjustments, I stole a glance at Grandfather's notes, where nearly invisible writing detailed a "countermeasure mode."

"…When confronted by the treacherous who seek to steal divine power, reverse the connection between the 'Central Pillar' and the 'Four Guardians Wheel.' This transforms the 'Return to Origin' frequency into the 'Soul Devouring' tone. For the worthy, healing; for the wicked, damnation…"

This was it! My pulse thundered in my ears as I examined a small bronze gear near the base. With a seemingly casual adjustment, I redirected the connection pin from the "Phoenix Wheel" to the "Tortoise Wheel" instead.

The entire sabotage took less than a second—just another adjustment to the guards watching my every move. I straightened and exhaled slowly.

The trap was set.

I climbed to the altar's summit, where a lotus-shaped basin waited with a blood channel carved into its center. I pulled Leo's combat knife from my boot.

Victor tensed immediately: "What are you doing?"

"Activating the ritual. It requires blood from the purest bloodline as authentication." I kept my voice steady, not bothering to look at him. "Something you could never provide."

Without hesitation, I sliced my fingertip. Blood welled immediately, bright crimson against steel. I held my finger over the channel and watched my blood—carrying all my hatred and hope—fall drop by drop into the ancient mechanism.

The moment the first drop hit the channel, a deep hum resonated through the chamber as the altar awakened.

Crimson light traced the blood channel, then spread along invisible patterns across the altar's surface—a vast neural network suddenly illuminated.

Within seconds, the entire structure glowed with swirling energy, ancient and terrible in its beauty.

"It works! By God, it works!" Victor's face contorted with manic glee, his voice rising to a fevered pitch. "The bells! Strike them now!"

I shot him a glacial look, tossed the knife aside, and approached the massive bells.

I lifted two wooden mallets, inhaled deeply, and summoned the complex sequence to mind.

Then I struck.

"Ding—" The first note rang pure as crystal, filling the chamber with its resonance. The second followed, then the third… My movements accelerated, the sounds blending into a complex tapestry. The five tones interwove with the twelve pitches in a pattern that seemed to come from beyond human understanding—not music but cosmic mathematics given voice.

An invisible wave emanated from the altar, rippling outward through the chamber. Though unseen, everyone felt it—the air grew dense, the star map above blazed with sudden brilliance, and the very stone beneath our feet began to vibrate.

Yet amid the cascade of sound, only I noticed the return of that strange, familiar sensation.

An icy tingle crawled beneath my skin like a living thing, racing along my nerves, making my scalp crawl and my grip on the mallets falter.

"Shit!" I hissed, forcing myself to focus on the sequence.

"…one more strike." I eyed the final bell, steeling myself.

Victor and his men stood transfixed by the sound waves, utterly oblivious to the doom I was orchestrating.

Now!

I struck the final bell—the "echo bell"—with every ounce of strength in my body. "DONG!" A thunderous note like a dragon's roar shook the chamber as the sound pattern reached its crescendo!

In that instant, I launched myself backward, leaping from the towering altar without hesitation! "NOW!" I bellowed as I hit the ground and rolled.

Leo and Michael moved as one!

Leo bulldozed into the nearest guards like a berserker, sending them flying with bone-crushing force. Michael whipped out homemade flash-bangs, yanked the pins, and hurled them into the mass of armed men!

BANG! BANG!

Blinding light and concussive force erupted, plunging Victor's men into chaos. Screams and curses filled the air as they stumbled blind and deaf.

Victor froze for only a split second before reacting with predatory instinct. Ignoring his men, he lunged toward the altar's center—determined to claim the ritual's power for himself!

"Fools!" he crowed as he bounded up the steps. "All this power will be MINE!" But as his foot touched the altar's center, his victorious smile vanished. CRACK—BOOM!

Metal gears ground together as the black jade floor collapsed in a perfect circle around the altar. Simultaneously, massive stone slabs thundered down from the dome above, completely encasing the altar in an impenetrable cage!

Victor and his elite guards—who had followed him onto the altar—were sealed inside the stone prison, their shouts of surprise turning to screams of terror!

The "Soul Devouring" frequency reached its peak. The beautiful bell tones vanished, replaced by a bone-chilling drone that seemed to tear at the very fabric of reality. To us outside the cage, it was merely uncomfortable. For those trapped inside, it became unimaginable torment.

"AAAHHH!" Victor's scream wasn't human. His skin withered before our eyes, turning gray and desiccated while blood vessels burst in his eyes. Every dark emotion, every sin, every disease lurking in his body was amplified a hundredfold by the soul-devouring frequency!

"NO! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!" He clawed at his own face, tearing strips of skin away as if trying to remove invisible parasites burrowing beneath. His men suffered the same fate—some writhing on the ground, others smashing their skulls against the stone barriers in mindless agony. A scene from the deepest circle of hell.

I watched from outside, cold and detached, as my father's murderer and my sister's tormentor reaped the harvest of his own evil.

His body contorted in impossible angles as his life force drained away. Through a crack in the stone barrier, his terror-filled eyes found mine—burning with hatred, malice, and finally, desperate pleading.

Meeting his gaze, I slowly raised my right hand and extended my index finger—the one whose blood had sealed his fate.

Victor's expression froze in ultimate despair. His screams faded to whimpers, then silence. Finally, he and his men were nothing but withered husks sprawled across the altar.

The soul-devouring frequency gradually faded, leaving the chamber in perfect silence.

I stared at the stone cage and whispered words only I could hear.

Of course, nobody heard these words except me.