The morning continued into the afternoon, and then into the evening. The final day of their three day limit was coming to close. It was now only a few hours before midnight. Andromeda was left alone with her thoughts.

Earlier that morning, she was told that her soul was broken. Apparently, this should have killed her. She didn’t understand all the particulars of the situation, but at the rate her soul seemed to break down placed the beginning as roughly three months ago. A date that lined up almost exactly with when she arrived to this world going by White’s account. It made sense, in a messed up kind of way. For a moment there back in King’s Grove it seemed like anything and everything was trying to kill her, whether it was her own body, or the king’s manor on the hill exploding.

Then it was the same mental loop she had considered before again and again. Nearly killing herself saving Milo, nearly being stabbed by Grant (though that was entirely on her), getting kidnapped by an unstable Arch Mage like Rapture. Then, had she stayed literally only a few days longer, she would have been attacked at the college along side Alice, and that was before it was blown up. In the middle of all this, White nearly killed her as well.

Then she figuratively got herself killed by entering the death-pact style oath with Ander Plact, the long and painful trip with Eli which had two separate chances to kill her between the bandits and Whisper also nearly killing her, followed by a trip on a boat that she still wasn’t even entirely sure how she managed to live through. More fights, more running, more being hurt, more people getting hurt.

Then, just as things were starting to get a tiny bit better, finding Rigur and all, she goes and gets herself hurt once again just to keep Whisper from dealing with a mental breakdown. Which in the long run has been a net negative result and put her in her current situation. Lethal to just be around without constant containment, unable to see, unable to hear, and less then a couple hours away from walking into the plot to take her own life once and for all.

Death, death, death, death, death, death, DEATH.

“Andromeda, calm down. I know it's serious, but spiraling into doom will only make it worse,” White said.

“I get that, but come on. This is just cruel at this point. Is it too much to ask for one good day? A day where I can just relax? No assassins, no school bullies getting heated over hurt feelings, no crazy psycho sister-wannabes trying to coddle me?” Andromeda said.

“I get it, really. But seriously, repeating 'death' over and over won't make it any easier,” White said.

“I'm just so tired. What will it take for this world to stop killing me?” Andromeda said. Then, Andromeda felt a wave of realization, like a light bulb going off. It came from Whisper.

“Guys? What even is death?” Whisper asked.

“… Are you serious?” White asked.

“Yes, really. This is coming from someone who is very acquainted with the concept. What does it mean, literally?” Whisper asked.

“Well, uh, the first thing I'd say is that the heart and brain stop working. Then, assuming someone cares enough, they put you in the ground, and then you just sit there until you turn into dirt,” Andromeda supposed.

“Alright, but what about the rest? We have a mind and a soul, right? Several, in our case. What happens to them?” Whisper said.

“Getting a little philosophical, aren't you? You asked what death is literally,” White said.

“I'm going somewhere with this. I want to test something. What if we…” Whisper started.

“No one dies,” Andromeda and White said in unison.

“Right, good, that's my point. How literally do you mean that?” Whisper asked.

“I-I don't know…” Andromeda said.

“Exactly. You guys are so focused on ensuring that no one can die because you can't accept the alternative, but have you considered what that really means?” Whisper said.

“You lost me,” Andromeda said.

“Alright, let's think about this. I don't care how you feel about it. Let's suppose that something happens somehow, and we all die in the morning. What would happen after that? Forget about the dying part and just think about what comes after,”

“Alright, fine… Well, no one dies, that's the start. But if we're dead… Well, we can't be 'dead' dead because no one dies,” White muttered.

“So what does that mean?” Whisper said.

“Well, we're 'dead,' but not really dead. I guess the only alternative is that being dead wouldn't have anything to do with dying,” White guessed.

“That made no sense. Seriously,” Andromeda said.

“Oh… OH, oh my god,” White said, suddenly overwhelmed by her realization.

“Exactly,” Whisper said.

Andromeda, who was experiencing a conversation in her head with variations of her own voice about a topic she didn't understand, was overwhelmed by the strangest headache she had ever experienced.

“Could one or both of you talk like normal people for five seconds and explain what you're talking about?” Andromeda asked, feeling exasperated. White spoke up.

“Do you believe in an afterlife?” White asked.

“Uhhm, I mean…”

“The one thing I learned from all the horrible things I've done over the years is that people have a genuine fear of dying. But so many people can come to terms with death when they accept that it's one step. I'm not asking you two or even myself to accept our death. This isn't a justification for causing it or an excuse to let it happen. What I'm saying is that part of our problem is that the moment we think about it, we freeze up,” Whisper said.

“Then what do you want us to do? Just get over it? Even if we accept it, that doesn't mean it's easier to deal with,” Andromeda said.

“No, we should fight against it with all our hearts, but you don’t fight something by ignoring it until it comes to bite you. We all know full well that letting something go until it becomes an issue is what got us here.”

“O-Oh… Wait, White, did you get all that just from her asking one question earlier?” Andromeda asked.

“Yep,” White said, with a faint sense of smugness.

“Yeah, okay, so… What specifically do we need to do, and how does this help?” Andromeda remarked.

“I guess the best way to start would be by testing it,” Whisper said.

“Dying?” White asked.

“I mean… Maybe? Not really? Alright, hear me out. You know how I can manipulate people's minds? I might be able to do that to you two as well,” Whisper said.

“Why?” Andromeda asked.

“So that you can get a feel for it. So that if it happens again, it won't be as scary,” Whisper said.

“So you want all of us to die a thousand times, in some of the most gruesome ways possible… as practice?”

“Yes…” Whisper said.

“What if it goes wrong?”Andromeda asked.

“I don’t know…”

With an outward sigh, Andromeda rubbed her temples. “I trust you. Let’s do it.”

----------------------------------------

Outside, Ferdinand and Carrion stood. The hours were counting down, and Andromeda had not improved in the slightest. The only change in her demeanor was that she seemed to be asleep. Not long after they delivered the news of her soul being broken, she laid down.

"She took it surprisingly well," Carrion said.

"I'm going to say it was shock. She seemed to have gotten that it was dangerous, but I get the impression another thing trying to kill her wasn't all that surprising," Ferdinand said.

They were quiet for a moment.

"Sir?" Carrion said.

"Yes?" Ferdinand said.

"We're not walking away from this, are we?" Carrion asked.

"No, I don't think we will," Ferdinand said somberly.

He knew that he had made a promise. When he did, he thought there would be some kind of progress on Andromeda's end. Time and again he had seen the Arch Mage pull victory from the jaws of defeat, even Carrion did so just a few days before. They usually didn't even have a choice. Ferdinand looked over to Rapture, sitting in a chair where she had not moved for several hours.

"I've done some sleuthing around the mind-controlling effect the Arbiter put on the people of Betel. We have detected a strong presence of psionics, but also hints of both hexing as well as curse magic. The exact nature of the connection between them is unclear, and there are even some runemarks. Whatever this is, it's a complicated technique," Carrion said.

"Yes, I had a feeling it wouldn't be so easy to fix," Ferdinand said.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Sir?" a Magister nearby said. Ferdinand looked over his shoulder and already knew what he was going to see.

The rates of mana once again started fluctuating, but this time it seemed inconsistent. Massive spikes and plunging lows came and went, sometimes happening simultaneously. However, one constant was that the numbers were trending down. Andromeda herself seemed to be doing nothing on her cot. She sat quietly, appearing as though she was sleeping despite claiming she couldn't.

In that moment, Carrion, Ferdinand, and even Rapture all felt a terrible pain in their chests. Andromeda started glowing silver inside her containment room, accompanied by a bright red light emanating from her chest. "What's happening!?" Ferdinand demanded. As the Magisters observing the situation frantically tried to understand what actually was happening, a flash of silver light burst out, and alarms started blaring.

"We're seeing irregularities in her heart and brain activity. Also, the mana levels are dropping rapidly," the Magister said. He ran for the door and tried to pull it open, only to be overcome by a nauseatingly strange feeling. Ferdinand doubled over in disgust and vomited on the floor nearby. Carrion rushed to help him up, but as his hand brushed the door, the same strange feeling overwhelmed him.

For the first time since she arrived, Rapture stood of her own volition and fluttered in and out of reality, suddenly appearing beside Ferdinand. He sat up, wiped his mouth, and looked at her. For the first time in many years, he saw something in her eyes — concern. That's why he did something he would never risk doing before now, and likely never again.

"Do something…"

Then reality broke.

Space and time shattered around them, the facility broke down into its constituent pieces, and the people turned into dust. The whole universe turned in on itself at Rapture’s whim until there was nothing but a blank void of nothingness. Just a world of dust and sunlight left.

Rapture walked through the void of nothing, a space so completely absent of reality that not even mana existed there. Andromeda's eyes circled behind their closed lids, and her hair emitted a silver light that scared Rapture more than anything else. But on her chest, a red gem glowed inside a locket made of gold.

Without hesitation, she spoke. "White." Rapture was thrown into a changed landscape, a ravaged land.

She wandered around the destroyed, lifeless streets of a seemingly deserted city. The sky was black with ash. She turned a corner to see a man and a young girl. Both were gaunt and sickly, and the man was leaning over the girl with a wild look about him. It looked as though the man was crying.

Rapture almost wanted to approach him to see what was happening, as she had no concept of what she was seeing or why it was present in Andromeda's mind. But as she stepped forward, she saw that what she thought were tears were not tears; it was drool.

She turned away just as the sounds of putrid, flesh-tearing noises rang out and filled the silent city. Every few seconds, the sounds would stop, and the man would cry hysterically. She even heard fragmented whispers under his breath. "I tried to stop… I tried to… I tried… I…"

It was all she could do to hold herself together, even her own fractured mind trying desperately to put together what she was seeing and why it was in her… sister's…

Then she turned slowly as reality seemed to fracture again. Everything faded into another white void.

"Hello, sister," a familiar voice said. Rapture looked at the being before her. It was her sister… but not. Her form was that of her sister White, but something was wrong. The eyes were black, and the skin was grey. The hair was the same color, but everything about this being seemed to be dead.

"What?" Rapture said.

"Oh? Don't you recognize me? Or was it just the white hair and pretty eyes that caught your attention?" the being said. It cackled a sour laugh, and its face cracked from the hairline above the right eye down to the chin below the left ear, then quickly repairing itself.

"What is this, and what are you?" Rapture said.

"You're sister, aren't you happy?" the being said. The scene around them changed, and they were suddenly in the white void again. But a short distance away was another copy of Rapture and White.

"You must understand that people die, that is simply a result of this world. If someone is going to die, that means they were not meant to live in the first place," the copy of Rapture said.

Rapture looked at her own copy, then back to the twisted reflection. The being that looked like white disappeared from Rapture’s view, and her voice came from behind Rapture. "I understand it now, I get what you mean. It took me looking through these hundreds upon hundreds of terrible memories, but I got it in the end," the being said.

"No, that's not… that's not what I meant at all," Rapture said.

"No? I'm surprised, honestly. I thought you of all people would understand this. No one dies this, no one dies that. I thought so long and so hard about death that I figured it out. What's the point? None of this is real after all," the being said.

"Real? Oh gods, no, White—no, Andromeda, listen. This isn't what I wanted. I just wanted to see you, I didn't want to hurt you. If I knew what messing with you would do, I wouldn't have done it!" Rapture yelled.

Then the scene changed again. All around them was a frozen wasteland in the middle of a city. Broken buildings and blinding blizzards distorted all light and made reality itself fuzzy.

"You seem different. Aren't you supposed to be some scary psychopath? Unhinged, uncontrollable? You're almost talking like a normal person. What happened?" the being asked.

"Me? No, what are you saying? You're the crazy one," Rapture defended.

"Am I? All I wanted to do was try and live peacefully. Spend some time with a nice family, but then the government came knocking and I had to leave. I tried to settle down and make something of my life at the college, but then you came knocking. That all got riled up, and I left again because no one could trust me. I came here and tried to salvage the situation, but oh my, here you and Ferdinand come again," the being said.

"We were trying to help!" Rapture said. The scene changed again, this time to another void composed of all black. The only thing besides herself was the man Rapture saw the night they found her — the older man with the coat and gristle for a beard.

"You pulled me in here and threw that guy in a cell. Now don't get me wrong, I don't blame you for acting on information you didn't have. It's not like I can place blame. But how can you say you helped when the only thing you accomplished is put an innocent man in prison?" the being said, its voice coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Once again, the entire world around them changed. This time it was the white void Rapture had seen before when she first saw White. Only now, there were three bodies on the floor.

"They broke themselves. Honestly? I can respect that. I might be biased considering they are me to some extent. They wanted to fix things so much, make everyone happy, and go back to the happy times. They literally tortured themselves for what must have felt like years just to try and understand what it was they were dealing with," the being said. Rapture walked up to the three on the floor. One was Andromeda, another was White, and a third was a darker-skinned version of Andromeda that Rapture guessed was this "Rapture" character. Each of them lay with their arms on their stomachs, as if they were being buried.

"Another thing, and I know you haven't asked, but you did ask so I'll say," the being said, then it bent a knee right next to Andromeda's head and pointed down at her.

"That was me, then we did all that 'death' practice stuff. It broke me, and them. She split off and took her own little scrap of a soul fragment and became her own thing. Funny how that works, it might have been me that broke off and been a fragment if she wasn't hasty. I'm the majority of the soul now, everything that isn't them at least," the being said. Then the three on the ground disappeared, leaving only the white void and them.

"So, you might be wondering where that leaves us? Good question. I'm sure if I wake up after this reality messing you're doing, I'll just be a twisted little ball of death and bitterness. Hell, I can see myself opening that door and walking right outside. Like you said, if people die, that's on them."

“I won’t let you do that, don’t push me.” Rapture said, trying to enforce some control on the situation.

The void changed again, and now they stood in the middle of a dirt road. A dirty, pock-ridden limping down the road towards them.

“Yes, do it please! The being said.” It said, getting right up into Raptures face with a twisted smile. “I’ve spent so long trying to understand like you.”

Then, a small crowd, and then hundreds of people all came limping down the road only a few feet from them.

“It was hard at first, everything single speck of my body wanted to make it stop, make these people not suffer and die. But every single time I realized that they were just memories. No matter how much I tried it wouldn’t change the fact they died. But I got it.” Every single person fell to the ground, and then dissolved into nothing.

“Do you want to know what happened? Its a little melodramatic I’ll admit, Whisper thought it was a good idea to try and force a girl who had a crippling aversion to the concept of death, do confront that. Her heard was in the right place, but as soon as they started going through the memories one by one, it just broke them. Whisper couldn’t handle the weight of what she did and broke off first. Then white broke after a few, but Andromeda, me, it was days. I watched hundreds of people die, felt myself die hundreds of times over. I thought that if I held on just a little longer, it might end. But nope, eventually I just accepted it.”

The world around them changed again, into the white void. Rapture could see a small house in the distance.

“People die, just like you said, that was the only solution. If they didn’t die, then what was the point? They’re probably in a better place right?”

"No," a new voice in the void said.

Rapture and the being before her turned to see a woman standing near them. A little taller and robed in similar white robes as Andromeda wore, only even more immaculate and completely white without an accent. Her face was covered with a faded white hood.

"What are you?" Rapture asked. Instead of answering, this new being walked past her and stopped in front of the being Rapture had been talking to.

"What?" the being before said. As casually as one might say to a stranger doing the same thing.

"I'm sorry," the woman said.

"Sorry? For what, unless you’re secretly god or something, none of this is on you." the grey-shaded being said.

Ignoring the being’s statement, the robed woman continued. "I'm sorry for all that you've had to deal with. It's unfair. It's something you deserve to hear" the woman said. Then she reached forward and embraced the grey being.

"Why?" the grey being said, both confused and surprised about being hugged.

"All that suffering, it wasn't your fault. You didn't deserve it," the woman said, then a red glow arose from under the robes. She reached under and pulled out a necklace with a red gem inside it. "I know that trusting strangers has historically been bad for you. But I can give you a proper rest, no one will ever hurt you again, it'll all be peaceful and serene."

The grey being was quiet, deep in thought. "Seems too good to be true," it said, only for the woman to rub the being's head and shush her.

"Don't think, you know that I'm not lying to you. I think you might even know what I am," the woman said. The grey figure sighed.

"This feels a little too sudden, the cliche white robed stranger saves the day and fixes everything?" the being said.

“I guess it is, call me old-fasioned, I remember those old stories and remembered liking them. You do too, right?” The woman said, her voice was kind, and genuine, and that put put Rapture and the being at ease, while also leaving a hollow feeling in their chests.

“What was the point in the end, I have a few bad memories, scare some random person, then go?”

"Do you really care?" the woman said. Then the grey figure did something strange. She laughed.

"I guess not. The redhead me probably would though," the being said.

"Good, now sleep, and let those who don't want to rest go on." the woman said, then there was a flash of red light, and the grey being was gone. The white void returned to a peaceful and serene state, not the blank void, but something that almost felt like home.

Then cracks seemed to emerge in the distance, not thunderous breaks, but like chipping paint, revealing a blue sky beneath.

Rapture, who had just witnessed the entire exchange, was left utterly confused. The woman turned to her and smiled. "This should be the part where I leave and all this goes away, but I want to say one more thing before I go," the woman said. Something clicked in Rapture's mind; the voice seemed strangely familiar.

"Things from now on are going to change, for her, and you, and everyone else. You talk about family, but if you really, truly want them to be your family, you need to help them, help your people, and help yourself. I know you can do it, Rapture. You're not broken, not like she was. I hoped one day I might be able to see you happy and healthy, living the life you deserve. But that's not the life I have. So long, sister," the woman said, then she disappeared, as well as the void, and everything.

Rapture blinked, and the endless white void was gone. They were back in the small dark room, the harsh lights above shattered. In front of her sat Andromeda, with red hair and a white hood on her head, holding a broken necklace in her hands. Small flecks of the formerly pristine gem tainted with grey.