Chapter Seventeen:

“Choose… But Choose Wisely”

The instant before Lucinda fell into The Dive, the world didn’t just shatter, it erupted in a silent concussion that sent shockwaves through her bones.

The air around her vibrated like struck crystal, her skin tingling as if it were about to peel away.

Sensation twisted, folding in on itself, warping into something that neither her mind nor body could comprehend.

One second she existed.

The next, she was ripped away. Flung through a space where time did not touch her. It wasn't falling, wasn't drifting, it was erasure, total and absolute.

It was a severing.

There was no warning, no gradual slipping into unconsciousness, just a sudden and absolute absence, as if her soul had been snatched and yanked through something not meant to be crossed.

Then, all at once, she existed.

She woke to the sound of breathing, a ragged, unnatural wheeze, like something struggling to remember how to be alive.

The scent of decay clung to her, thick and nauseating, coating her tongue with the bitter sting of rot.

It seeped into her pores like a sickness she couldn’t shake, saturating her skin with the foul stench of death.

The sharp, coppery bite of blood mixed with the sickly-sweet rot of something long past saving.

Mist wrapped around her sides, heavy and damp, its presence suffocating, like unseen threads weaving around her limbs, dragging her into the depths of something ancient and unrelenting.

The world around her was moving, shifting, alive in ways it should not be.

"Ah, where are my manners? Where would we be without introductions?" The voice was rich with amusement, dripping with something too sweet to be trusted. "Welcome, my dear Lucinda, to Avalis. A land where suffering lingers, where the dying grasp at what little remains, and where you, my little beacon of light, have been given the rarest of honors."

Lucinda’s HUD came to life, static rolling over its interface, but no notifications came.

No map.

No guidance.

Just the voice, curling around her thoughts, leading her forward into the unknown.

A heartbeat passed.

Another followed, sharp and hollow.

The mist thickened.

Lucinda tried to move, but her body resisted, sluggish and unyielding. Her muscles strained, twitching with effort, but refused to obey. It was as if the link between thought and action had been severed, leaving her a prisoner in her own failing body.

A dull ache spread through her limbs, fingers trembling against the unseen force holding her down. Her hands pressed into the damp ground. Something soft. Something that gave too easily.

Not soil.

Not stone.

Flesh.

She jerked back, her breath catching, but before she could fully process the horror beneath her palms, the mist parted.

There were bodies. Hundreds. No, more. She had been placed at the center of them, a sea of figures stretched across the forest floor, their forms barely visible beneath the eerie green luminescence that pulsed through the vines weaving between them.

Some were still, lost to whatever sickness had taken them, but others twitched, coughed, moaned.

The air rattled with their dying breaths, the sound layered, overlapping, suffocating.

She staggered to her feet. The ground pulsed beneath her, the trees loomed unnaturally, their limbs curling like skeletal fingers.

Lucinda’s vision blurred at the edges. A deep unease tightened around her skull, pressing in, suffocating, like her mind was struggling to reject what it was seeing.

"What, what is this?" Her voice came out hoarse, barely above a whisper,

"This? Oh, this is your lesson... your tutorial my dear." There was laughter beneath the words, soft, entertained. “You see, my dear Luci, you came here to heal, did you not? And what a healer you are, such a bright, burning light in a world of rot."

Lucinda’s stomach twisted. A pressure tightened in her chest, like a vice closing around her ribs, squeezing tighter with every shallow breath, as if the very air refused to be drawn in.

"So, shall we begin? You may choose three."

She swallowed. "Three?"

"Three souls to save." The mist grasped tighter around her. "From one hundred thousand."

A cold spike of realization drove through Lucinda’s chest, sharp and immediate.

A thought crashed through her mind, frantic and wild, move, move, move, but nothing obeyed. The number made her stomach drop.

The moans, the rattling gasps, the wet, struggling breaths, they were everywhere.

"Choose, but choose wisely... little healer."

Luci’s hands trembled. She clenched them.

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Around her, others moved, staggering, frantic, desperate. Tattered white robes clung to their frames, their wide eyes darting, hands reaching out.

Healers.

Just like her. They were being forced to choose too. Some were running, sobbing, collapsing in despair, others were frozen, unable to lift their hands at all.

Gameweaver’s voice purred, delighted, threading through the air like satin soaked in venom.

It crawled beneath Lucinda’s skin, sending icy pinpricks racing up her arms.

"The ones you do not choose will be free from their suffering soon enough. Isn’t that what you wanted? A world without pain? The faster you choose, the sooner all this suffering surrounding you will end."

Lucinda's stomach clenched. A deep, twisting knot of nausea crawled through her gut, as a cold sweat broke across her skin.

Every muscle in her body screamed at her to run, to do something, but she was trapped, frozen in place by the sheer weight of it all.

Her fingers curled into fists.

She wanted to scream, to demand answers, to fight back against the sheer cruelty of it.

But the bodies around her were waiting.

They were suffering.

And she had to choose.

The other healers moved in frenzied chaos. Some stumbled from body to body, their hands glowing as they pressed against foreheads, chests, broken limbs—choosing. Others stood frozen, locked in place by the sheer impossibility of it. A few had already collapsed, sobbing, voices cracking under the weight of playing god.

A scream split the noise, raw and fractured. "Please, my son, help my son!"

Lucinda turned. A woman, pale and trembling, clutched a skeletal boy to her chest. Her fingers dug into his jaundiced skin as if she could physically keep him tethered to life.

His lips parted, cracked and dry, a whisper slipping through. "It hurts..."

She took a step forward. Then another.

The moans swelled, pressing against her skull. Hands grabbed at her, clawing at her sleeves, her legs. Voices overlapped, desperate.

"Help me! Please, I don’t want to die!"

"She’s not breathing, oh god, she’s not breathing!"

"I… I have a family! You have to pick me!"

"Please, just look at me!" A withered old man pleaded to her.

Lucinda did, she bent down and took the man’s hand. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry your suffering.” The dying man looked up into Lucinda’s comforting eyes, and was instantly at peace.

“Go, it’s okay. Heal someone that can help you survive this place.” The man laid his head back against the mud, and closed his eyes.

The thick, suffocating weight of pain and disease was drowning her, pulling her under. But beneath the pleas, something else stirred, something deeper.

Someone watching.

Gameweaver.

Her voice broke into Lucinda’s mind, slick and invasive. "Oh, how they beg." The mist curled tighter, like it was listening. Like it was hungry. "Isn’t it beautiful, Lucinda? The way they fight for one more breath? The way they think it matters?"

A giggle, light and breathy. "It doesn’t, of course. But you already knew that, didn’t you?"

Lucinda dug her nails into her palms, trying to shut her out, but the voice pressed closer, teasing, ever-present.

"No matter how many you breathe life back into, my little life saver," Gameweaver whispered, "it will never be enough."

A sharp chill shot through Lucinda’s spine.

The cries grew louder. Time was slipping.

Her fingers trembled.

Three.

She could only choose three.

Then.

A pull.

Not a voice. Not a hand. Something deeper.

The unknown heartbeat from deep within the plague-stack grew louder.

Unable to be ignored.

Lucinda’s head snapped up. And then she saw her.

A girl, lying unnaturally still among the writhing bodies. She wasn’t gasping. Wasn’t reaching out. She simply lay there, eyes open, staring blankly at the heavens. Her bare feet sank into the damp, rotting earth, the filth pooling around her untouched skin.

She was beautiful.

The kind of beauty that didn’t belong here. A cruel contrast to the suffering around her, as though the world itself refused to touch her. Untainted. Unreachable. Eerily, impossibly perfect.

The sickness that clung to the others never touched her. Her porcelain skin was flawless, smooth, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders in thick waves, unmoving despite the humid air. Unlike the dying around her, her body showed no signs of fever, no tremors of pain. She did not moan or gasp for breath. She was simply... still.

Lucinda’s stomach twisted. The air thickened, pressing against her, unnatural in its silence.

Then.

A heartbeat.

Not Lucinda’s.

Not the dying’s.

One single, steady thud, impossibly loud beneath the chaos.

Lucinda’s breath caught as something in her, something instinctive, something deeper than reason, pulled toward the girl.

Not a voice.

Not a plea.

Just that heartbeat, calling her forward.

Gameweaver hummed, delighted. "Oh, you found her." The words dripped with something too sweet, too knowing. "Clever girl."

Lucinda’s throat tightened. "What?"

"Come now," Gameweaver purred. "You felt it, didn’t you? That little tug? That pull toward her?" A pause, thick with amusement. "I wonder why."

Lucinda didn’t move. Couldn’t move.

The girl remained silent, unmoving, her storm-gray eyes fixed on nothing, unseeing. She did not stir. Did not blink. If not for the steady, singular beat of her heart, Lucinda would have thought she was already gone.

Lucinda’s pulse faltered. Something strange settled in her gut.

Gameweaver's voice embraced around her, savoring the weight of the moment. "Oh, isn't she fascinating? So still, so silent. And yet, she lingers.”

Lucinda’s skin crawled, the cold frosting the very blood in her veins.

Gameweaver let the silence stretch. "Lily Sheppard. Such a simple name for something so... persistent." A pause, deliberate. "Ahh, but you get it, don’t you?"

She didn’t. Not really.

But she knew one thing, she had to choose her.

Luci’s eyes snapped to another movement in the haze.

A figure, a woman, actually stood up, wavered, gripping her stomach.

Lucinda turned as the woman buckled, hitting her knees hard. Her breath came ragged, her body was worn but unyielding.

Fighting.

Still fighting.

She lifted her head, chestnut waves of hair damp with sweat, hazel eyes cutting through the sickness dimming them.

Gameweaver’s voice drifted through the air, soaked in amusement. “Oh, and look at her. Still standing, still fighting, still pretending she isn’t already crumbling.” A pause, savoring the moment. “Evelyn van Dijk.”

The name rang out like it had been plucked from the depths of something half-forgotten, something stained with regret.

Gameweaver hummed. “A woman who once sold herself to survive, who learned to wear a smile like armor. Who watched someone die because of her kindness. Who mastered the art of seduction not for pleasure, not for love, but because the world made it a currency she couldn’t afford to ignore.” She sighed, almost wistful. “Tell me, Luci, do you see it? The weight on her soul, the tired fight in her breath?”

Evelyn gave Luci a sharp, commanding look. “Don’t you even think about it!”

Evelyn’s gaze drifted past her, to the sea of bodies writhing in sickness—the others dying slowly, painfully. There were so many out there. So many who deserved to be saved.

Why would she choose her?

But then, she thought about that night. The night that changed everything. The night she let her die.

That world was already gone before she ever came here.

If she was going to be healed, then so be it. She would make sure no one else ever felt the weight her soul had been forced to carry. She would wield the same skills that once bound her to survival, turning them into a weapon, not for herself, but for those who needed protection.

A smirk lifted Evelyn’s lips, though her breath was uneven. “Hope you’re not looking for someone grateful, sweetheart.”

Lucinda’s throat tightened.

She reached forward.

"Cleanse."

Light surged from her fingertips, warmth spilling over Evelyn’s weakened form. The sickness faded, her breath growing steadier, her limbs regaining their strength. The exhaustion clouding her hazel eyes lifted, leaving behind something sharper, something unbroken.

Her MP bar dipped again, another third drained.

Lucinda didn’t hesitate.

Pushing herself upright, she turned, stepping toward Lily.

The girl lay still, caught between life and death, her body failing against forces it couldn’t fight alone.

"Cleanse."

The last of her magic poured from her hands, sinking into Lily’s frail form. Strength returned where there had been none. Her fingers twitched. Her chest rose with a steadier breath.

Lucinda blinked as her vision dimmed at the edges. The MP bar in the corner of her sight had emptied completely.

Three.

Her three.

Gameweaver’s voice dripped with velvet amusement, always polite, always indulgent, almost soothing in its cruelty.

"Oh, well done, little healer. Such thoughtful selections. I do wonder, though, will they ever forgive you?"