They had indeed considered the worst possible outcome: that the Matriarch's awakening would fail to suppress the evil personality within her. But they had never expected their fears to actually come true.
Everyone immediately picked up speed, heading ever deeper underground.
And the farther down they went...
Even Lynn could sense something unusual about the atmosphere around them. The temperature kept dropping, and fine frost already coated the walls of the surrounding passageways. As though contaminated by something, the frost was speckled with black.
The deeper they went, the denser those black specks became.
It was as though the place they were heading toward was the true Hell.
And in the very next moment...
Just as Lynn and the others rushed up to the underground temple's doors, they stopped abruptly. They immediately spotted the two guards wearing Plague Doctor Masks stationed before the entrance.
Lynn had seen them before. When he had come to pay his respects to the Matriarch shortly after becoming a Night Doctor, these same two guards had stood watch outside the doors.
But now...
Their bodies were hunched, like two lifeless statues. The doors behind them were covered in thick black slime, like writhing lumps of pitch-black meat. The evil aura it gave off chilled them to the bone.
"Halt-"
Two hoarse voices rang out.
Before their eyes, the two guards' bodies suddenly began twisting with a series of cracks. Their limbs bent and stretched into grotesquely unnatural positions.
Their heads, clad in Plague Doctor Masks, slowly rose. The lenses shattered, revealing pitch-black eyes without a trace of white.
Rustle-
In an instant...
As Lynn stared fixedly at them, a pair of wings covered in black feathers burst from each guard's back. The places where the wings joined their backs were mangled and bloody, instantly transforming