Beyond the Grave [ILLUMI X CHROLLO]

[3] Giving Pookie-Bear A Little Gifty Wifty

Being trapped in a dark room with nothing but a single window the size of a dinner plate to guide his way definitely wasn't on Illumi's Top Ten Afterlife Plans. But, unfortunately for him, he'd lost sight and track of the door—not that it mattered. Pride's domain only listened to Illumi when Illumi wasn't talking.

If it weren't for the child deep down and buried inside Illumi fearing the unknown, he might have found this room pleasantly calm. Reassured by the eternal light of Pride's eyes being nowhere near here, Illumi could have maybe, possibly, relaxed.

Instead, he was nothing if not more terrified.

"H-Hoookay," Illumi sighed, shakily, and took his first step away from the wall.

Doing so confirmed that Pride did not have the complete control Illumi had feared. Meruem, Wrath, and Chrollo were all esteemed guests in their own domains, but had no real sway over the construction of them. Meruem struggled to teleport without a familiar landmark in mind—luckily, he'd had more millennia on Illumi to memorize it all.

But Pride's ease of teleportation, how quickly he found Illumi, could only be explained away by the eyes.

Were they all his? Illumi wondered. The malevolence Illumi recognized in Pride was of a similar caliber to the eyes, after all, and wondered if this was the true power of a Sin's omnipresence: to have eyes in all halls of an infinite castle. There was no need for landmarks to anchor one's self when Pride was aware of them at all times, everywhere, all at once.

And then there was the matter of...

Being "betrothed," Illumi thought with a shudder.

He was certain it wasn't a ploy, unless Pride was a better actor than Illumi gave him credit for. The things Illumi had been thinking, however, would surely bring some intrigue to Pride's facade. And if not intrigue, then more of that smoking rage embedded into Pride's skin.

Illumi's hand traveled along the wall and columns, moving further from the window light overhead. The window itself was better suited for an attic.

His hand slipped from the wood the moment his hips made contact with something—furniture, perhaps? He felt around it. A wooden dowel, a railing. He followed it, circled it, and felt with his feet for stairs. Where he expected to go down, he instead found that the steps ascended.

On the odd chance that the stairs went to nowhere and Illumi truly discovered if his spirits bones were breakable, Illumi continued on. Though, as soon as he did, he regretted it.

Pride's domain, thus far, was 1-for-2 on delivering what Illumi needed. Once he considered trusting it, however, the stairs were gone.

"Dammit," he swore and wondered where those stairs might have taken him.

The wall continued in a straight fashion until the shoulder not facing the wall brushed into something. He pulled himself closer to the wall and reached for the object. His palm landed flat on cobwebbed lumber, bare and rugged. It was a beam, poised against the a wall just as rugged as the one he stood against.

He pressed harder against the horizontal wood paneling he'd been following all this time. It was separated, loosely, and caked over with what felt like concrete. His fingers met wood scaffolding and supports.

"A servant passage?" he realized, whispering into the hall padded by the backside of plaster walls and linen wallpaper. He was behind the very corridors Pride's eyes were cast across.

He went on, blindly, through the dark with both hands to the chalky timbers.

It was clear to him then that something wasn't right. Death wasn't at all what he'd anticipated from Gon's stories and the afterlives he'd observed from a distance in his dreams.