“Was I not clear?” Lady Victoria asked in a sickeningly sweet tone of voice as she laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed ever so gently. I shuddered and my breath hitched. My hands shook and cold beads of sweat rolled down my face. “I’ll say it again, my cute little student: bring me his liver.”

The world seemed to tilt on itself as I found myself with a distinct shortness of breath.

Why?

Why was this happening to me?

“I can’t….” I rasped, gulping. My body suddenly felt so cold. I was frozen. I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

“Oh, of course; how silly of me!” Lady Victoria chuckled as handed me a small knife that was made entirely of some gleaming metal that was almost like silver. Its edge was tiny, but incredibly sharp. For some reason, I reached out and grabbed the knife as though I wanted it, when I most definitely did not. “This is called a scalpel; be careful with it, my cute little student. Its sharpness is unparalleled. Use it to cut open his skin and his flesh.”

Lady Victoria nudged me towards the screaming man. “Go on; bring me his liver. Take your time; we have plenty of it. And don’t be afraid to make a mess; a Flesh-Crafter’s art is often bloody and messy, and that’s perfectly normal. What really matters is the quality of the end-produce.”

“And, remember, my darling protégé: the Shadow Academy will suffer neither weakness nor hesitation. You must be prepared to do the most horrible things if you want to survive.” She finished, before adding, "Oh, and you're not allowed to kill him."

I took a single, tentative step forward, which prompted the bound man to scream even harder. The chains around his limbs rattled as he strained and strained, until his skin broke and bled. Tears streamed from his eyes and snot oozed out of his nose. Spittle rained from his mouth as he screamed at me, “NO! STAY BACK! GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME! YOU’RE A MONSTER! YOU’RE ALL MONSTERS!”

Lady Victoria chuckled and, as loathe as I was to admit it, cheered me on as a parent was supposed to do. The only problem was that parents weren’t supposed to be asking their children to carve out living people’s organs. “Don’t be afraid, my student; if he dies, we can always get another one. He’s just one mortal; no one will mourn his passing.”

“SOMEBODY HELP ME, PLEASE!”

I nodded grimly, swallowing a lump of spit down my throat as I took another step forward. The scalpel, as Lady Victoria called it, rattled in my hand. I breathed in, my chest heaving up and down with shallow huffs of air. Why did it have to be me? I didn’t want to do this. The very idea of doing it would never have entered the darkest and deepest depths of my thoughts if Lady Victoria hadn’t told me to do it. It was… monstrous. I might’ve now had the guts to kill him quickly – seeing all that death during the Second Trial had a way of desensitizing me. But, this was something else entirely. Lady Victoria wasn’t asking me to kill him; she wanted me to cut him open and slice out something from inside him, an organ.

“GOD, PLEASE, SOMEBODY HELP ME!”

I wanted to hurl and vomit; instead, I forced myself to take another step forward, clenching my fists so hard that my fingernails dug into my palms. It stung, but the pain, however small, gave me something that took my mind off of the horror that was to come, a singular point to focus on. My hands were bleeding by the time I reached table and I locked eyes with the man, who screamed and screamed until his voice slowly disappeared underneath a flood of bloody hacking coughs.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered under my breath as I finally reached him. I stood about a foot away from the metal table upon which he was bound, kicking and screaming to no effect. I tuned out his voice from my head and focused only on his torso, under which lay the organ I was tasked with cutting out. “I’m sorry….”

I breathed in and steeled myself. My hands shook and rattled. The man’s screams continued at the background of my senses, a dull constant.

A quick glance over my shoulder told me that Lady Victoria was still there, watching and waiting; she’d grabbed a chair from somewhere and sat on it, smiling as she gestured for me to continue.

How could she be so callous and so sadistic? How could she sit there and watch?

I breathed in and swallowed the lump in my throat.

Could I do this?

Did it even matter if whether or not I could?

I had to do this. I had to do this, because there was no other way forward. I had to do this, because my life depended on it. No matter how brutal, no matter how horrifying, I wanted to live… no, not just live; I wanted to thrive. I wanted to become something great, something far greater than I could possibly imagine. As Lady Valaya said, I could become a god. This man… was nothing. I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me. There was no bridge between us, no connection that bound our fates. For all intents and purposes, this man was just like the soldiers I ended up killing in that dreadfully cold place. He was an obstacle, just another blockade I had to get through to reach my goal. He was nothing and no one; even if I didn’t kill him, someone else was going to.

I closed my eyes and took what was probably the deepest breath I’ve ever taken in my entire life – the slow and heavy inhalation, before the plunge.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I leaned in and took the scalpel’s edge and placed it onto his skin. I glanced to the side, where a life-sized model of the human body stood; the liver was located on the left side of his chest, buried beneath a cavity of ribs, right underneath his left breast. Cutting through his ribs with such a tiny instrument would be difficult and would only make the whole experience a hundred times more painful. But, no matter how I did this, the man would still find himself in agony. The most efficient way would be to cut open a hole underneath the ribs, reach in and pull the liver out from there.

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I gulped and forced my shaking breaths to steady. Just the thought of doing that to an actual, living, breathing human being made me sick to my core.

But I had no choice.

Slowly and as gently as I could, I dragged the scalpel to his last rib and made a small cut that immediately began bleeding. In response, the man screamed even louder than before, panicking and lashing out to such a degree that his left wrist broke and bent backwards, causing even more pain. The cut I made wasn’t deep, but the fear of knowing what was going to happen to him was likely what led to the sheer panic. I glanced at his tearful eyes and saw horror beyond imagining, the most primal terror of death and agony.

“PLEASE, DON’T DO THIS! I’M BEGGING YOU!” I gulped and tuned out the screams that followed.

I could do nothing for him. I could only continue and hope he dies quick – for both of our sakes.

As I traced the scalpel’s edge under his last rib, dragging it along his skin to make a bigger cut, I noted something occluding my eyes, like mist and water. Suddenly, seeing anything was difficult; colors and details blurred together.

I paused for a moment and, with my free hand, reached for my eyes.

“Huh,” I sniffed and chuckled. Was I crying?

Oh… I was crying. These were definitely tears, streaming from my eyes and clouding my vision.

I blinked once, before raising my left forearm to wipe my eyes clear of tears.

“I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry,” As I made another cut, my mouth seemed to move of its own accord. And words that weren’t entirely coherent, flowed out of them, streaming with the tears from my eyes. I ignored the tightening of my chest and slowly traced the scalpel down, opening up his skin beneath the last leftward rib, before moving diagonally to the right, carving a bloody line down to his left hip. He struggled and screamed, and thrashed in his binds, breaking even more of his limbs in the writhing panic.

“I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry.” The words flowed out of my mouth, like water down a waterfall. My mouth kept moving on its own, repeating the same words over and over and over.

My chest heaved up and down. Short breaths puffed out of my nose, appearing like cloudy wisps of white smoke. My heart hammered and boomed in my chest, each heavy beat exploding almost immediately after the last. Cold sweat ran down the side of my face. All the while, the man kept screaming and screaming; curses and pleas poured out of his mouth, alongside bile and spit and blood.

I cut upwards, before turning back diagonally to the left and forming a rectangular wound. It was still skin-deep; I haven’t even begun cutting into muscle. My idea was to slowly pull back the skin, before cutting open the flesh beneath it. I breathed in a deep and horrible breath, shuddering as I steadied myself for what was to come next. I placed the scalpel down and breathed in.

I gripped the edges of the rectangular cut; it was wet and warm, and hideously disgusting, and I pulled. The scream that followed afterwards seemed to drown the world itself, a ghastly screech that made my ears ring and made my head shake. I shrugged it off and continued, sobbing with the man himself as I pulled and pulled and pulled the skin away from his torso. “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry!”

It was harder than I thought – much harder. The skin was adhered tightly upon the muscles underneath it. Trying to remove it was like trying to remove the bark of a young and healthy tree. It was doable, but incredibly difficult. Blood and fluids covered my hands and forearms, and drenched the floor wet. And still, I kept on pulling, until the skin was unraveled from the flesh, accompanied by squelching and tearing sounds that made me shudder.

The man hyperventilated, frothing at the mouth. The heaving of my chest told me I was feeling much the same thing. My head felt light and hollow, and my legs suddenly seemed devoid of strength. I wanted to fall onto the floor and curl into a ball, and hide in the shadows and cry in silence. What have I done?

Unfortunately, I was far from finished. I tossed away the patch of skin in my hand and grabbed the scalpel once more.

I breathed in and out, my hands and my hospital gown drenched in blood and gore. And I’ve barely even begun the actual task that was removing his liver. I leaned in and placed the edge of the scalpel upon the very edges of the exposed flesh, where I’d first cut open the man’s skin. My hands no longer trembled; instead, they felt cold and steady. I made a shallow cut at first, prompting another scream. Blood rushed out of the gap in the flesh. And then, I felt something rising to my throat.

My eyes widened as I snapped my head to the side and vomited an acrid and bitter liquid. Behind me, Lady Victoria chuckled and clapped. “You’re doing great, sweetie! Just keep going; you’re almost there!”

I wiped my mouth and returned to the task at hand. The man was still screaming and struggling. With short and ragged breaths, I traced the scalpel down, carving out an even longer cut into the man’s crimson flesh. Muscle, I found, was easier to cut and slice than skin as it wasn’t flexible enough to offer any real resistance. The flesh was thinner than I thought and carving out another rectangle went smoother this time. The man would scream, faint, awaken, and scream again; the cycle probably repeated itself almost five times before I was done.

I pulled the flesh open first. Blood poured out of the opening. I saw his guts and other yellow things that must’ve been the other organs, covered in thin layers of membrane and veins. The smell was disgusting. I placed the scalpel down and reached into him, briefly glancing at the human model as I did. I grasped at the organ that must’ve been the liver, because there could’ve been no other organ there. It was soft and squishy, wet and warm, and so utterly disgusting. I grasped as hard as I could, but actually holding onto it was difficult; it was simply too soft and too slippery. Still, I held on by digging my nails into the soft tissue, before finally pulling and pulling and pulling. When I couldn’t pull on it anymore, I reached deeper. There were two thick veins that kept it in place, which I quickly sliced off with the scalpel, causing more and more blood to come rushing out. By then, the man had gone silent, eyes open and awake, but quiet and still, like a corpse.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of madness and pain, I was able to pull out his liver. My breaths shallow and quick, I held the organ in both hands as I walked towards Lady Victoria, who’d stood from her chair and was smiling at me, like a proud mother. “Good job, my cute little student; you performed… a bit better than I expected. At least, you didn’t try to run away.”

She grabbed a metal bowl and held it out to me. I promptly dropped the liver into it.

Lady Victoria chuckled. “Now, let’s get you to-”

I fell to the floor, like puppet with its strings suddenly cut, and curled into myself. The world fell quiet around me as I sobbed into my knees, and screamed.