Looking at the Pyramids from the outside, you wouldn’t think they had the facilities to house a few hundred people each. My education tells me that they were built as tombs for the old warlord-kings of the Jermas Empire at the height of their reign over most of this continent. Eventually, the rest of the world decided they had had enough, and the once-prosperous Jermas land was cut into a hundred pieces, just like it was before. Four Pyramids, for four kings. They didn’t last very long, did they? But I suppose length of rule’s a poor indicator of power, seeing how we got into this mess we’re in.

My morning routine is as such: I wake to my ceiling being brighter than a chandelier; I get changed – though we don’t have much options in the way of fashion here, the lab coats suffice for all our needs; and I go down the treacherously steep steps to the central area of the pyramid, where I work with the rest of the team to figure out a way to survive in the outdoors again.

I think I’d be putting it mildly if I said we haven’t made much progress on that front. Realistically speaking, we’ve made none. Ever since we locked ourselves in here, we’ve worked day after day, sampling the sand, the air, even our stools when we’re feeling especially despondent, and much more that I won’t elaborate on – and we still have no idea what’s stopping us from going outside. “Technically” – Lucien said recently – “anyone’s free to go out, if they don’t mind going insane”… Well, pedantry aside, I don’t think the rest of the team appreciated his joke very much. One of them started sobbing – she’d lost her children to the sunlight, it seems – and since stone reflects sound quite well, her crying carried throughout the room and down the corridors to the adjacent sections of our pyramid. Soon we had concerned members of the community coming in to check on us, and Lucien found himself repeatedly apologising to the young lady and everyone who came in.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

As it turned out, this incident came at a rather opportune time. Though it wasn’t obvious then, it was soon apparent over the coming days that many of us had not found the time or place to grieve over our losses from before we came into the Pyramids, which contributed to the insidiously dour atmosphere under the surface of our repeated failures. Exacerbated, I’m sure, by the fact we can’t get any direct sunlight in the building. Lucien’s poor joke simply blew the lid off the pot, as they say. We had a few meetings with the administrators of the other Pyramids about this, and it was decided that we would organise a festival of sorts in the connecting halls underneath the four structures. I do hope it'll alleviate some of the dread that has no doubt built up within all of us.