Ghostly hands reached towards her core, clinically white and unfeeling. Precise automatons of calculated violence, inching their way across her flesh and Ether, closer and closer to her core. Had she been able to string together a coherent thought, she’d tear her own heart out if only to make the searing agony stop.

The pain wasn’t even the worst part — the feeling of being vivisected in mind and soul was, her entire existence judged, measured and recorded. Her life taken apart by unyielding metal and unfeeling processes, bit by bit, second by second.

Only for it to stutter, start up once again, and stop completely after the next stutter.

After that, there was only the oblivion of unconsciousness and a hollow ache at the centre of her chest.

As if something that could not be replaced had been irrevocably ripped out.

—❈—

Alice’s coughs were cut short as a lancing pain in her right leg tore a raw hiss out of her throat. Her head spun, and it felt as if someone had crammed a can full of wriggling maggots down her lacrimals, the wriggling feelings she discerned within her brain and eyeballs making Alice double over and vomit a stream of blackened sludge with different chunks of pulsating carmine.

Looking up from her seated position in the middle of a cold rock tunnel with nothing but a string of bioluminescent moss to give light on the ceiling, she looked left and right, her head spinning more and more with each minute movement.

She knew where she was, she knew how she’d gotten to the cave system, she just didn’t know where she was, nor how she had gotten precisely there. The general concepts and memories were fine, but the rest was a disjointed, disgruntled mess of fragmented half-thoughts.

Each darkened crevice could hold anything from parasitic insects to a faultline in the rock that’d spell her doom. She remembered the lake, the Dusk Forest, and… a chasm? She remembered all that, but not how to get there.

Alice felt her breath quicken, muscles twitching in anxiety and sending jolts of pain along her leg and running up her spine. Trying to do a calming exercise did nothing when every crack and minute sound reverberating across the tunnels painted the image of horrid monsters nipping at her heels, playing with their food.

A smell akin to that of burning plastic and rusty metal assaulted her nostrils as the stress over not knowing which path to take towards safety — or if there even was a path to safety reached a manic crescendo that had her ready to try and bolt her way through the tunnels, unusable leg or not.

Turning towards the source of the smell, she stared at what appeared to be a blank section of the wall. Wracking her brain for any kind of answer or memory, the only thing she could get was a burning sensation closing in on her chest that made her recoil.

The pain in her leg reached a new high with that movement, and with a snarl that was half fear and half flaring irritation, she focused her attention on it, immediately noticing how there seemed to be a clump of Pain wildly running around her lim and making a mess of things.

Alice shivered for a second, thanking whoever may be listening that her Ether wasn’t one of a more destructive variety, like Fire or something similar.

Taking control of the wild Ether, she brought it to heel as quickly as she could, intent on getting away from where she was as quickly as possible, regardless of direction.

Tiredly sighing once her leg was repositioned and ready to use once again, Alice stood up as her head swivelled constantly between what she now remembered was an illusory wall and the two tunnel entrances.

As she did so, she tested her leg by gently stepping down with it, frowning at the feeling she could only describe as ‘calcified’ that permeated her leg. Worries about a permanent limp arose on the tumultuous horizon of her psyche before being banished anew. She could worry about life-changing injuries after escaping the tunnels.

Choosing to go towards the right tunnel she was forced to stop when the faint sound of what almost sounded like the scraping of bone on rock reached her ears. Taking a step back, she turned towards the other tunnel and immediately stopped once again.

There was something beyond that corridor, and she did not know what. Maybe it was her head playing tricks on her, or just a sound that reverberated in all the wrong ways across the stone, or maybe something different altogether.

As the scraping sound went higher and higher in volume, she stepped into the illusory wall, flinching as she was met with some kinds of weird contraptions twitching before violently sparking and smoking, falling utterly still once again.

The lab beyond the metallic double doors that had been apparently guarded by those sparkling contraptions was more of a ruin than a proper lab. Sheets made of strange paper were strewn about a tiled floor of cut stone, and machines that would’ve felt at home on an Earth lab sat along strange, dusty glass contraptions.

Everything, from the papers on the floor to the dusty machines that sat on large metallic tables, including the crushed set of double doors was covered head to toe both in glyphs and a heavy coating of dust.

For fear of setting off some kind of trap, she only dared to use her broken sword as a testing tool, gently hitting the first of the tiles in front of the door before hurriedly stepping back. Seeing that nothing happened, she tried to grab one of the smoking contraptions near the entrance. To her surprise it came free with a wrench of tortured metal that made Alice freeze on the spot, intently listening to any sounds from the outside.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

That’s when she noticed the graveyard-like silence that hung upon the strange laboratory. Not a single sound from outside the illusion could reach the enclosed space, which was mildly unsettling.

She knew that air and light could pass through the fake wall because she could still observe her surroundings in that cold blueish light the moss gave off and she had found the entrance by smell, so the fear of asphyxiating was somewhat abated but the eerie atmosphere didn’t help.

Mournfully staring at her broken sword’s hilt, she threw it across the room only to be promptly blinded by a bright, flickering light coming off from the ceiling.

Up there was what looked to be some kind of broken fluorescent tube covered in incredibly small markings that she couldn’t make heads or tails off from where she was. The tube was flickering on and off constantly, still somehow barely functional despite all the signs of damage the laboratory showed — both intentional and due to the passage of time.

Cautiously staring at the hilt and expecting it to be obliterated in the next instant, she was pleasantly surprised when nothing appeared out of thin air locked and loaded, ready to blast her head off her shoulders.

Alice took one cautious step forward, ready to jump back at any second, her head on a swivel and her hands twitching at her sides, ready to summon her chains. Surprisingly, nothing happened. It appeared that the security measures outside the double doors were the only ones, or perhaps they had quietly died off as time went by, unnoticed and forgotten in this little corner of the world.

It was just one room with enough space to be able to move comfortably along with some kind of half-room full of demolished racks and splinters of wood that was currently inaccessible due to all the rubble and Alice’s unwillingness to cause a massive ruckus by moving everything barring her path.

Besides, there were more interesting things along the floor and tables than a bundle of rotten wood and corroded metal could be.

Bending down and wincing slightly at the jab she felt on her leg, she grabbed a bundle of papers lying on the floor and covered in dust. Gently blowing in a constant stream so it didn’t blow back on her face, Alice cleared the papers and tried to read them, disappointed at first due to them being covered in some kind of chicken scrabble that had some structure to it if you squinted really hard and tilted your head to the side, and then pleasantly surprised when said scrabble arranged itself on letters she could read.

Mostly.

The paper was torn and scratched in various places, not to mention that some letters had been straight-up erased by the passage of time. Everything pointed at this place being positively ancient.

“...eed to upgrad… ensive measures. Current Nether… array only good for single use action… enhance soul-tearing.”

Alice recoiled away from the paper, a small rush of memories assaulting her head. That white light she had seen was meant to tear out souls? Sweating profusely, Alice did a physical inspection of her own body, and not noticing anything wrong besides her leg still being wrapped in spectral chains, she dove into her core.

Her soulspace greeted her with the same warmth it ever had, but this time there was an exception. On the centre of the room where the plinth with her soul and Ether core rested, there was a missing spot somewhere along the edges. A kind of depression, as if someone had reached out with a spoon and taken out a smidgeon. Examining it closer, her panic mounted as she noticed an infinitesimally small part of the centre of her sphere also missing. It wasn’t bigger than a fingernail, but the sense of loss that assaulted Alice wasn’t small nor possible to ignore.

Passing Ether through her core, she only noticed an incredibly small hiccup as Pain looped around her soul, but the sense of loss remained.

With dread piling on higher and higher, Alice examined her memories one by one, at the very least, the very few happy ones she had.

The small group of friends she had in middle school before they left the country, Lily and their small moments together, her small victories each time she managed to fully complete a game or puzzle on that one book Lily had gifted her, her Grandparents and the homemade cake they made each time they were on town…

Alice stopped dead on the spot, replaying that memory in her mind. She could see them go through the door of their apartment, dessert in hand. Then came the small party they hosted for only the three of them, and then came the candle blowing. She bent down, knife in hand, cut a slice, and quickly dug in, tasting — nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Alice stared at the enclosure that made up her soulspace, debating whether to laugh, scream or beat the wall until her hands remained as nothing but bloodied stumps of pulped flesh and splintered bone digging into mangled muscles.

With her mind feeling horribly numb, that’s when she noticed the blinking along her vision, and most importantly, the three doors and three objects along the walls of her soul and floating alongside it respectively.

Pulling up her notifications, she stared blankly at them, incapable of stringing together a coherent thought that didn’t involve murder or mutilation.

Profession-aligned action taken.

Bonus granted.

Level-up.

[1.7 Initiate Explorer] up to [1.10].

+2 Agility, +2 Reaction, + 2 Perception, +3 Free per LV.

Total:

+6 Agility, +6 Reaction,+ 6 Perception, +9 Free.

Then, below it, a bigger screen.

Maxed-out Class and Profession.

Tier-up available. Your options will depend on your deeds done within this tier.

Tier up?

Yes/No

Declining will not have any negative effects. Tiering up will be available at all times.

She selected yes, eyes dull and mind awhir.

Even as she stared right at the new screens that popped off just after making her choice, they grew blurry and indistinctive, eventually closing off by themselves.

Alice’s back found one of the walls within her soulspace and as she started to slowly slide downwards a wail of pure despair clawed itself out of her throat, bloody and scratchy.

To the tune of the comforting clinks of the chains above, Alice cried her heart out for the loss of something she would never get back, the aching hollowness it left behind in its departure causing her more agony than any physical wound ever had.

To the soft clinks and crushing loneliness within her soul, she wailed.