Henla tries to remain conscious. She can feel the nothing pulling at her. She knows the pain and fear on the other side. She fights to stay conscious. Zenya is resting, at peace, recovering and Henla is afraid to wake her but more afraid to lose the fight with staying awake.

Zenya, please!

Zenya startles awake, spines out, blade out ready to protect the-- they're in the broken Core dungeon. They go limp before accessing the log and puking. What? They fall to their hand and knees. Something -- They're dying? Deep breath. Shield. And they feel better? No!

Zenya drops the shield and Henla's pain and weakness come flooding back in. She's collapsing again. What did she do? The logs! Zenya finds that Henla's taking exhaustion from staying awake. But she won't go to sleep because -- Fear? She's under a very powerful fear effect. From what? Kimlxik? But. Hob dung!

Zenya goes into Companion controls and finds that there's a whole slew of effects that have come online, built into Henla's Core. That fucking bastard literally cursed her! He crafted a curse and bound it to Henla's spirit and then claimed she was a soulless machine? Zenya scoffs in disgust, then shouts, screams, and finishes by bellowing as she tries to tear through, dismantle and disable the subroutines and pre-written commands. There's no passwords and the smug bastard signed everything. There's even a file of documents for each of the triggers for "keeping the dungeon productive".

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Zenya double checks that everything Kimlxik had created to stop Henla from resting, the ones that have come online and were actively available, were disabled, and, barring that, deleted. There's still the FAQs and logs as evidence. Hopefully that will be enough. Backing out and waiting Zenya doesn't feel Henla. Not actively. The Core is quiescent and the temperature, the mists, the aether feels cool and subdued. Zenya's body is wracked by sorrow, their contrast high as they realize they'd failed to act in time.

Reopening the logs to finalize them and file a dead dungeon report Zenya hesitates. Henla never got to make the dungeon. This is a dead Core without a dungeon report. Those are far more complicated. More paperwork and the death of Henla does not stop the investigation into her abuse. These things cannot be allowed to stand. Watchers and Workers... Zenya braces themself as they go to read the logs. To read Henla's last thoughts.

Henla's resting. Blinking in confusion Zenya can't process what they're reading. Henla's resting. Did she reset again? Did she survive another reset? How? Zenya's contrast is high and now there are disorienting bands of color undulating across their form. Defensive banding and a high stress indicator. Wait. She's resting. Zenya collapses in relief and begins to toss together a pile of logs and copies of the commands and documents they'd found and a quick note that Kimlxik had in fact set up many commands that triggered at certain points to torture Henla. That she hadn't rested and Kimlxik had put in a fear of idle time and recovery to stop Henla from getting any peace.

Rest. It's time to rest. Zenya collapses onto their back, making one last check of their alarms, alerts and activities before collapsing into sleep.