Little Saim quickened his pace, wanting to leave this dim corridor as soon as possible and reach somewhere lit—the stairwell, the hall, or the kitchen.
Yet he did not know whether it was just an illusion, but he felt that he had walked for a long time and still had not escaped the darkness.
"Something's wrong." Little Saim halted and looked toward where the curtains hung. Outside was still that tree shadow, clawing and dancing wildly.
Little Saim trembled as he stepped forward and pulled open the curtains. At once, he heard the mountain winds outside battering against the window with thumping blows, as well as that oddly shaped tree.
He remembered that tree far too clearly. It stood near the terrace.
And he had left the terrace some time ago. That meant he had not moved at all.
Yet Little Saim could hear his frantic heartbeat and his ragged breathing, the aftereffects of his hurried walk just now. His body bore the feedback of such intense exertion, yet his actual distance had not shifted in the slightest. What was going on?
"Soul-Death Blinding?" Little Saim unconsciously spoke the term.
It was something recorded in a book he had read at the orphanage a few days ago, an ability unique to souls. It looked like an illusion, but it was actually a kind of mental wave frequency that directly affected the mind, guiding and misleading one's inner choices, producing all manner of illusion-like effects.
The most famous effect of Soul-Death Blinding was making people lose their sense of distance and fall into an endlessly looping labyrinth.
And this situation was extremely similar to Little Saim's current predicament.
"If this really is Soul-Death Blinding, then there's a high chance an undead has come..." Little Saim's heart pounded like a drum as