The first thing I noticed when I regained consciousness was the soul-crushing silence.
Not the kind that comes after a storm, but rather the kind that hangs in the air before something awful happens.
'Where am I?'
I wondered as I opened my eyes, and what surrounded me was just strange filth.
The ceiling above me pulsed with faint, cold light. Blue-white veins glowing behind black roots that twisted like nerves. I was lying in something—half shell, half stone, damp and cracked open around me.
I didn't know what it was. Or where I was.
I didn't know who I was.
No memories. No name. Just breath, and weight, and a growing pit in my stomach.
I forced myself upright. My arms felt distant, like they didn't belong to me. I slid out of the shell and stepped down onto wet stone. My feet hit water. Shallow. Cold. The ripple sounded too loud in this place.
The air was heavy. Stale. I moved slowly.
The walls were pulsing with roots. Bone and metal jutted out at angles that didn't make sense. Like this place had been grown, not built—and whatever made it had stopped halfway through.
I didn't know what mattered yet, so I kept going.
Then I saw it—something reflective. A broken piece of metal lodged in the wall.
I stepped closer.
My reflection stared back.
Pale skin. Blank expression. My left eye shimmered—wrong, like it was coated in something thin and sickly. It didn't blink right. I reached up and touched the edge of it.
A sting. Not sharp. Just... deep.
I turned away.
This place felt like it was holding its breath. I didn't know why I felt that. I just did.
Then I heard something.
Metal scraping on stone.
I froze.
Another sound. Movement. A voice.
Someone else.
I crept forward, hugging the wall, eyes scanning every shadow. The sound echoed too strangely to track—but it was real. Close.
I reached the edge of a hallway and looked around the corner.
A girl stood there.
Chains hung from her wrists, dragging behind her with each step. She looked like she'd been through hell—tall, built like a fighter, but tense. Alert. Her voice echoed as she called out again.
She didn't try to hide.
She moved like someone who had nothing left to lose.
I stepped into view.
She turned fast, raising her fists, chains looping around them like weapons. "You real?"
I nodded once.
"You sure?"
I almost made a joke. Didn't. Just nodded again.
She lowered her arms slowly. "You don't look like the walls, at least."
We stared at each other.
Then something shifted in my chest—warm and sudden. I looked down.
A faint white symbol had appeared on my collarbone.
She looked at her hand. A soft blue mark glowed across it.
Then, inside my skull, a voice—loud, cold, impossible to ignore.
"Connection Established. Please Begin Ascent."
The ground trembled. I staggered. Ahead of us, the wall split open—roots peeling back to reveal a narrow path.
She didn't move.
Neither did I.
Then I stepped forward.
She followed.
We didn't talk.
At the end of the corridor was a platform, circular and smooth, carved from dark stone and bone. We stepped onto it. It began to rise.
I stared ahead.
My eye burned again. I clenched my jaw and ignored it.
She rubbed her wrist. Kept her head down.
We stood in silence, rising together into the dark.
Not friends. Not enemies.
Just two people who woke up alone and weren't anymore.