Screams echoed down the solide stone halls as seven men and women were strapped into mechanical chairs arranged in a circle. Three women and four men waited upon the dais with uncertainty in their souls as they looked around, pointlessly trying to see through the blindfolds firmly tied around their heads. Some of them screamed for help, while some begged the people around them to let them go, while others merely waited in silence resigned to their fate after hearing the others. The one thing they had in common was that no one was quite sure why they were in the situation they were in.

One would think that a gathering of seven people would be taken from a local bar, or perhaps a fishing boat returning with its catch for the day, but not a single factor of their old life was left to the seven victims. Sure, they had all the internalized wisdom of their respective years of age. Feelings of love, and loss, and all the trappings of experience that comes from your average life. But the memories of who you knew, what you had done, or even who you are? There was nothing.

So the seven strangers waited, and struggled, and wailed, as they met the very fates the gods had in store for them. There was no warning, only a sharp intake of breath, the sound of movement from the side of their chairs, and then an intense pain that blossomed from every part of their body. The screams stopped, and the begging waned as seven strangers blacked out in unison. Ready to start a new life, and ready for the world of Nevitta to change with the coming of its new gods.

—----

A wave of pain followed me into the black void of unconsciousness as I lost touch with reality. It was strange really, to wake up in a chair uncertain of anything other than having had a life before this one. Not like I could really complain too much about the feeling considering all I had left was nothing itself as time passed in the void. I don’t know how much time passed, only that it did. I eventually took stock of myself and what I knew to be true.

I was a grown woman of 24 years old who had lived a somewhat successful life up until this point. I had loved, and then seen that love turn into an ugly thing that I had to run away from, only to love again. I had managed many people at different times in my life, only to realize that leading others brought me no joy of its own merit. But most importantly, i realized that I was not leaving anything behind when I lost this last life of memories. Perhaps I was lucky compared to the woman that was screaming her head off in the room I blacked out in, or perhaps this was the greatest failing of the life i left behind. Regardless, I knew that what I had lost meant nothing to me now, and in return I could now understand what I truly wished for. Everything.

Reality scraped its way back into my brain one slow moment at a time as the void transferred into a different shade of black. My eyes were open but saw nothing as I realized i could feel a cool stone pressure upon my back. My hands wandered around me, searching the new void that somehow felt real only to find that walls locked me in on every side of me. Cool, rough stone boxed me in, a couple of inches from my body in each direction and just tall enough to allow me to raise my head.

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“Is this, a tomb?” I asked myself

And as though my word brought me back to reality, a sharp pain began to throb from where my heart was. I moved my hands to clutch the area, but quickly cut myself on something very hard and sharp that was protruding from my chest a couple inches. I groaned into the new void as a new stinging sensation came to my hands as they started bleeding onto the rest of my body. That's when i started screaming.

—

Time passed slowly as I tried my best to get free from this hell. First I tried yelling for help, only for my screams to echo back at me and bear into my ears within the enclosed rock. Next I tried to brace myself along the bottom of the box and push upward as hard as I could, only for nothing to budge. My hands had stopped bleeding relatively quickly since it was a shallow wound, but a dull ache remained as I set to exploring my new box of reality. The bottom and sides to the prison were practically perfect, even if a little rough on my skin. I couldn’t find any lips, or creases, or joints in the wall except where the top of my trap seemed to fit into place with the bottom. Only there was the faintest hint of a crack in my coffin as I could fit the barest piece of my fingernail into the crease. And so I got to work.

I poured whatever will I could into this one last solution as I started working my fingernails away at the crack trying to make it bigger. The stone was certainly hard, sure, but I was also out of other options at this point and digging my way out seemed the best option. My nails slowly chipped away, and my finger tips grew numb as I worked away at the crease in the cage.

After a few more broken finger nails, my blood was starting to add an irony smell to the air around me, but I was past caring at this point. My chest ached from a strange object stuck in my heart, and my hands pulsed from the earlier cuts trying to explore the object. My fingers felt like raw little burns at the end of my arms, but I had started to make progress. Slowly, a small chip of ceiling at a time, the stone wall began to flake away from the crease that I was working on. If only it hadn't been starting to get hard to breathe.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been down there, but my chest was starting to hurt worse and worse as time went on until a heavy feeling started to fill my lungs like I was breathing through a straw that just kept getting smaller and smaller. Soon enough I was gasping for air as my chest quivered up and down trying to get anything at all to breathe on. Tears streamed down my face as my gasps for air quickly became sobs of resignation as I realized I was really about to die.

My eyes closed themselves against the void and I settled my arms back down on my chest as I accepted the end, and fell unconscious. In the future, I would often look back on this moment and wonder how much better things might have been for everyone if this had truly been my final moment.