She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, staring out at the water, but for the first time in hours, she felt something close to clarity.

The reservoir’s tranquility seeped into her slowly, calming the edges of her frayed nerves. The distant hum of traffic had been replaced by the soothing symphony of the night. And yet, beneath the stillness, a simmering anger remained, replacing the grief -a raw, restless energy that refused to be soothed.

Dom inhaled deeply, the night air cool and grounding as she wiped her face with the edge of her sleeve. She sat straighter, her gaze sweeping over her surroundings for the first time since she’d arrived. The splintered log beneath her was rough against her hands, and the dark expanse of the reservoir stretched out before her, silent and still. The nearest houses were a good mile away, and the dirt and gravel trail leading back to the main road was barely visible in the dim light.

A brief flicker of unease crept in as she realized how isolated she was. Not the smartest place to be alone at night, Dom. The thought spurred her into motion, her hands fumbling for the straps of her backpack. She rummaged through its depths until her fingers brushed against a familiar crinkled wrapper.

She pulled out a protein bar and tore into it with a ferocity that startled even her. The peanut-buttery sweetness filled her mouth, but it wasn’t satisfying. It was just a distraction -something to bite into besides the scream of anger clawing at her throat.

Her questing hand brushed against something else in the bag, and she froze. Slowly, she pulled it out: the wooden box her father had given her earlier. The intricate scrollwork caught the faint starlight, the lines and grooves seeming to shimmer with a life of their own. And all prior thoughts fled as she gazed at its surface.

As she chewed on the protein bar, her mind was fixed on the box. Under the canopy of stars, the patterns seemed different somehow -more fluid, more alive. She turned it over in her hands, the wood smooth and cool against her fingertips. The design shifted subtly in the dim starlight, the grooves glinting with a faint blue hue that hadn’t been there before.

The light of the stars reflected in its surface. Star light, she thought in surprise. Maybe the others who’d tried to open it hadn’t attempted to do so under the light of a moonless sky?

But no, that was impossible.

Her mother’s words echoed in her mind again. “It’s up to each generation to figure out the next step.”

Dom frowned, a tight knot forming in her stomach. What if I can’t? What if I let her down?

She traced her fingers along the patterns, following the paths Olivia had shown her years ago. Her movements were slow and deliberate, but something felt off. The grooves didn’t respond the way they used to. The box’s warmth was different now -it felt alive.

Frustration gnawed at her, and she ran her fingers over the surface again and again, retracing the steps her mother had taught her. The box remained stubbornly unyielding. The more she worked, the more it felt like trying to solve a puzzle with pieces missing.

She even pulled out her pocket knife and tried to use it to pry open the box. But it didn’t even scratch the surface.

That startled her out of her growing frustration. What the hell?

Dom’s eyes narrowed as she flipped the box over, inspecting every inch with a growing sense of determination. On her second pass, something caught her attention. A new indentation -a barely visible seam that hadn’t been there before- gleamed faintly under the starlight.

Her breath caught. A starting point.

Her fingers moved instinctively, the motions smooth and certain as if the box itself was guiding her. The first stage clicked into place almost effortlessly, the unfamiliar sequence of twists and turns flowing like muscle memory, despite having not practiced this exact sequence before.

This time when she reached the point where Olivia had always stopped, the box didn’t stop. The smooth surface began to shift beneath her hands, the patterns twisting and folding into themselves. The transformation was mesmerizing, almost hypnotic. She watched as the rectangular box slowly morphed into a segmented sphere, its surface growing impossibly smooth, devoid of any of the scrollwork it had displayed moments ago.

Dom’s breath quickened as she turned the sphere over in her hands. Its weight felt different now -lighter but somehow more significant. The surface was cool and soft to the touch, unnervingly so, as though it weren’t wood at all but some strange, living material.

When she tilted the sphere, the starlight hit it at just the right angle, creating a strange, floating reflection at its apex. The refracted light hovered there, impossibly suspended above the sphere like a tiny, glowing orb. Dom hesitated, her pulse racing as curiosity warred with unease.

Tentatively, she reached out and touched the reflection with the tip of her finger. A faint, cool sensation spread across her skin, clinging to her like dew. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it sent a shiver down her spine. She tried to wipe it off on the sphere, but all that did was leave a shimmering trail of light, like a slug’s silvery residue.

Her unease deepened as she watched the light ripple and spread across the surface of the sphere, moving in intricate, fluid patterns. Filling in the gaps as it flowed. It was beautiful in a way that had the feeling of the forbidden, as if she were witnessing something she wasn’t meant to see.

The night seemed to grow quieter around her, the usual chorus of crickets and frogs fading into an expectant hush. Dom stared at the sphere, her thoughts racing. What the hell is this thing?

The cool sensation lingered on her finger, a barely perceptible pulse thrumming against her skin.

The sphere in her hands was mesmerizing, its segmented surface smooth as polished stone. Yet the light beneath its surface was luminous, and the faint coolness from its touch was an eerie reminder of how alive it seemed. The light from the stars above caught its surface at strange angles, creating shimmering reflections that seemed to hover and shift like will-o’-the-wisps at the poles of the sphere.

When her fingers brushed the faint glowing lines, a soft chill prickled her skin, leaving a trail of light that seemed to sink into the sphere. The lines didn’t fade but grew brighter, their glow intensifying with every movement of her hand.

Dom’s brow furrowed as she traced the glowing patterns, her focus narrowing to the intricate shapes forming beneath her fingers. This is… a maze, she realized, her breath catching as recognition set in. The realization filled her with both awe and determination, spurring her into action. Her movements grew purposeful, deliberate, as though some part of her already knew the solution waiting to be uncovered.

The maze began to take shape quickly, the glowing paths twisting and turning with an elegance that was hypnotic. The sphere seemed to hum faintly, its energy resonating with her every touch. Finally, with one last stroke, the maze was complete. The glowing paths pulsed with a rhythmic light, as though the sphere itself had taken a breath.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Dom froze, her eyes locked on the sphere. The chill had disappeared from her fingers, along with the strange substance, leaving only the faintest tingling sensation. The sphere felt different now -lighter, expectant. It’s waiting for something, she realized. But what?

Her gaze fell on two faint lights on its surface: one blue, one red. They were barely visible, and if she hadn’t been looking directly at them, she might have missed them entirely. The blue light glowed softly on one side, while the red glimmered on the opposite pole. Both seemed to pulse gently, as if calling to her.

Dom didn’t hesitate. Blue is safer, right? She plunged her finger toward the blue light, expecting a cool glow or some kind of acknowledgment.

Instead, arctic pain exploded through her hand, an icy shock that radiated up her arm and seized her chest. It was like plunging her finger into liquid frost and holding it there while her nerves screamed in protest. Her breath hitched as she yanked her hand back, cradling it against her chest as she blew on the finger, trying to thaw the icy burn.

The cool night air curled into a faint wisp of steam around her finger, the sight reminding her of the way a freeze pop steamed when first pulled from the icebox. Dom winced, shaking out her hand as she glared at the sphere with a mixture of frustrated pain, and betrayal.

“Great,” she muttered. “I’m being outsmarted by a ball.”

She stared at the red light now, its glow faint but insistent, like a silent taunt. If blue was this bad… Her lips pressed into a thin line as she reached for a sliver of wood from the splintered log. No way am I sticking my finger into that without knowing what it’ll do.

Carefully, she jabbed the splinter at the red light. The result was immediate and shocking: the splinter caught fire, a brilliant burst of flame consuming it in seconds. Dom yelped, dropping the charred remains as they crumbled into ash between her fingers.

“Okay then,” she muttered, her voice shaking slightly. “That handles that. Sticking fingers in glowing red lights is a terrible idea.”

She leaned back on the log, the sphere cradled in her hands, its faint pulsing rhythm mocking her. “Alright, you stupid ball. How do I beat you? There’s always a trick -I’m just missing it.”

Dom’s mind raced, cycling through possibilities and discarding them just as quickly. She stared at the sphere, willing it to reveal its secrets, her frustration mounting with every passing second. The red light seemed to pulse more brightly now, as if taunting her further. Her previous troubles had disappeared entirely from her world. Now there was only the puzzle box and unlocking its secrets.

Unbeknownst to her, she was no longer alone. From the shadowy tree line, a pair of eyes watched her with an unnerving stillness. They glowed faintly, the light from the sphere reflecting off their surface in brief, flickering glints. The figure didn’t move, its presence blending seamlessly with the darkness. It simply observed, its attention fixed on the sphere and the girl holding it.

Dom was oblivious, her thoughts too consumed by the puzzle in her hands to notice. Her fingers drummed lightly against the sphere as she tried to think. There’s always a trick, she repeated silently. Always.

And then, like a whisper in the back of her mind, a thought emerged. A simple, almost ridiculous idea that refused to be ignored.

“It can’t be. That’s just… too simple,” she murmured, her brow furrowing.

Her hands trembled slightly as she weighed the thought. If I’m wrong, I’ll lose a few fingers. If I’m right… She swallowed hard, her throat dry. But if I’m right, maybe I’ll succeed where Mom couldn’t. Maybe I’ll finally make her proud.

Her breath hitched as she stared at the sphere, the pulsing red light daring her to act. The weight of her mother’s legacy bore down on her shoulders, a pressure she could feel in every fiber of her being.

Do or die, Dom. No half-measures.

When Dom had been poring over her martial arts books, she’d stumbled across a peculiar piece of information -something that had seemed too strange, too far-fetched to be true at the time. It was a snippet buried among discussions of pressure points and biomechanics, almost like an afterthought.

The Recipe For Pain.

The concept had stuck with her, partly because of its simplicity and partly because it sounded like the kind of thing people whispered about at secret tournaments or in the back alleys of kung fu movies. Pain, the book claimed, wasn’t just a physical sensation -it was also an emotion. And to create it, you needed only three ingredients: heat, cold, and an energy source.

Dom had been skeptical, but curiosity had won out. One afternoon, armed with a couple of hand warmers, and an ice pack, she’d decided to test the theory. To her shock -and temporary discomfort- it had worked. A tiny jolt of energy passing through her hand, paired with the opposing forces of heat and cold, had triggered a sharp, distinct pain unlike anything she’d experienced before.

The human body’s a walking battery, she thought now, her lips quirking upward at the memory. Hell, anyone who’s seen The Matrix knows that.

The principle behind the IcyHot patches her dad swore by, the magnets her mom had used for headaches, even the alternating hot-and-cold compresses in first-aid kits -it all came down to the same simple mechanism. Overwhelm one of the three elements, and you could disrupt the signal, canceling out the pain entirely.

It was a crazy idea, but if the theory held, it might just work here. The blue light on the sphere clearly represented cold, and the red light was its fiery opposite. If she combined them, with her body acting as the energy source to complete the circuit…

Her pulse quickened. This has to be it.

Of course, she could be wrong, but what did she have to lose? Aside from a few fingers. Or maybe an arm.

Dom swallowed hard, her throat dry. It’s just science. Sort of.

She cradled the sphere carefully, holding it between her thumbs and last two fingers. Her heart hammered in her chest as she steadied her breathing. Her index fingers hovered over the glowing lights, trembling slightly as she prepared to put the theory to the ultimate test.

“Okay,” she whispered, more to herself than the sphere. “Here goes nothing.”

Taking a deep breath, she pressed the tips of her index fingers to the lights simultaneously. For a brief moment, there was nothing. Then, a tingling sensation surged through her hands, racing up her arms and spreading through her chest like an electrical current. Her body became a conduit, completing the circuit between the two opposing forces.

Relief washed over her as the sphere began to respond, the faint pulse of its glow quickening in rhythm. Dom couldn’t help the small, triumphant smile that spread across her face. It’s working.

Carefully, she began sliding her fingers along the sphere’s surface, moving in perfect synchronicity as the tingling sensation grew stronger. The maze she had traced earlier seemed to reappear beneath her touch, guiding her movements as if the sphere itself was showing her the way. Each twist and turn felt instinctive, her fingers weaving through the patterns with fluid precision.

Then, just as the glowing lines connected, there was a sharp flash of light. Dom flinched, her vision momentarily overwhelmed by the brightness. A rush of air hissed through the sphere’s surface, escaping through a seam that hadn’t been there before.

Dom pried at the opening, her fingers slipping against the smooth, segmented surface. The suction pulling the sphere closed was intense, resisting her efforts with a stubbornness that bordered on sentience. She grit her teeth, wedging her fingers into the tiny gap and using her remaining digits to gain leverage.

It was like trying to open a clam the size of a softball, using only her fingernails. Sweat trickled down her temple as she struggled, the muscles in her arms burning from the effort. A fleeting image of a sea otter floated through her mind, smashing a shell against its belly with a rock to crack it open.

“Yeah, no,” she muttered under her breath, her lips twisting into a grimace. “This isn’t working.”

She tilted the sphere, angling it to get a better look at what lay inside. The faint red glow pulsing from within caught her eye, like the heartbeat of some dormant creature. Her curiosity flared, pushing her to dig deeper. She heaved against the resistance, her breaths coming in sharp, ragged bursts.

“Come on, you crazy, stubborn Pokéball!” she grunted, her voice rising with frustration. Her grip faltered, but she redoubled her efforts, her nails scraping against the sphere’s unyielding surface. “I-choose-you!”

The words were forced through clenched teeth as she strained against the relentless suction.

The seam widened slightly, enough for her to slip her fingers further inside. The sharp pressure cut off blood flow to her fingertips, leaving them numb and useless. Her grip weakened, her hands trembling with exertion. It was worse than grappling an opponent twice her size, their weight pressing her into the mat as she fought to escape a chokehold.

Sweat dripped from her chin, falling onto the sphere’s polished surface and sliding off without a trace. She was nearly at her breaking point, her arms shaking violently as her muscles screamed in protest. Still, she didn’t let go. Couldn’t let go.

The faint red light flickered, teasing her with its mystery. What’s inside you? What are you hiding?