Chapter 12: I Scarifiiced Her

He couldn’t make his eyes agree on what they were looking at.

The rectangular shape floated in the air, patient, reddish static crawling along its edges. He stared until his eyes burned. Nothing about it settled into something ordinary.

I’m hallucinating.

The thought felt almost safe. He’d nearly died. Blood loss did things he’d read that somewhere. His brain was probably just trying to protect him from a grief too big to hold, handing him something stranger to look at instead.

Or it’s all the web novels. All the system stories I’ve binged for years. My head’s just recycling the only shape it knows how to panic in.

That almost worked.

Then something in him, less willing to be comforted, asked: and if it’s real?

He didn’t want an answer. Because if it was real, the actual question was already waiting underneath it.

Sacrifice her.

Even thinking the words felt like touching something that would burn. Sacrifice her, and she’ll continue within us. She need not be gone. Only changed. Changed into what. Into him? Into something that wore her voice the way the thing in the tunnel had almost worn his?

What if this is a deal with something evil. The thought embarrassed him even as he had it too much like a line from the exact kind of story he’d just accused his own brain of stealing from. What if I press yes and I don’t get her back? What if I just open something I can’t close?

He sat there arguing with himself, her body cooling under his hands.

She saved your life. Twice. You’d let that go because you’re scared?

Or I let her rest instead of dragging her into whatever this is. What if I’m about to be selfish and call it love?

The window floated above him, unmoving, like it had nowhere else to be.

Even if this is selfish. The thought came quieter than the others, and steadier. I don’t want to live with the guilt of her dying so I could live. I want to see her again. That’s it. That’s the whole reason. It doesn’t have to be nobler than that.

He raised his hand.

[yes] [No]

He pressed yes.

For one full second, nothing happened.

Huh. He almost laughed. The sound died in his throat. Figures. Guess it really was just—

The pain hit before he finished the thought.

It started at the exact center of his skull and detonated outward. Something reached in through the bone and squeezed. Pressure crushed behind his eyes. A high, raw sound tore out of his throat, one he didn’t recognize as his own.

What’s — fuck, what’s happening—

The world split open behind his eyes.

He wasn’t looking at the tunnel anymore. He was inside something too large to look at a dark that had shape without edges. Things floated in it, bodies that wouldn’t hold still long enough to count, surfaces that kept opening into more surfaces. Eyes. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Opening across every inch he could half-perceive, all of them already fixed on him, already there before he could catch up to any of it. Some blinked sideways. One of them, small, black, and utterly wrong to find in a place like that

"No ,no, no, leave me—" The words came out thin and pleading, a child’s voice wearing his throat. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry—"

He didn’t know what he was apologizing for. Nothing in him was steady enough to ask.

The window floated in front of him, unchanged, the whole time he screamed. When his vision cleared enough to focus, it finally wasn’t.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Pr□cessing

[■□□□□□□□□□] 10% C0mplete

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He pressed both hands to his skull and rode the next wave, teeth locked. A sound ground out between them that wasn’t quite a scream , he didn’t have the breath left to make it one. His pulse hammered so hard he felt it in his teeth.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Pr̷ocess​ing

[■■■□□□□□□□] 3̶0% C0mple̸te

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Why—" His voice cracked clean in half. "Why is this — what did I even do to anyone. I’m a — I’m a ki—"

He couldn’t finish it. The word wouldn’t hold.

The pain didn’t ease between waves. It just changed shape, one kind of agony handing off to the next before the first had finished. Somewhere in the middle of it, he was crying, salt mixing with the blood taste still in his mouth.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Pro̸cessing

[■■■■■□□□□□] 50% C̶omplete

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"I can’t—" He curled forward over his knees, forehead nearly touching the ground . "I can’t do this. I think I’m gonna die from just this. Just the pain. Not even the thing that hurt me. This."

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Pr□ces̷sing

[■■■■■■■□□□] 7̸0% Complet̷e

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

His breathing had gone thin and useless, small frightened pulls that didn’t seem to reach anywhere. His eyes were half-closed. Keeping them that way took more effort than he had left.

It didn’t stop.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

C0mpete

[■■■■■■■■■■] 100%

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The air above Wen Ruo’s body tore open.

Something came through the tear. Fast. Too many limbs moving at once. Lian’s eyes couldn’t lock onto a single shape each one folding into more of itself, a mass that kept rearranging while it reached for her.

It closed around her without hesitation.

"No—" His voice broke. "No, wait, stop — I didn’t wish for this—"

He watched it tear her body apart. It ripped her open, swallowed her flesh, her organs, her limbs, everything. Blood splattered across the concrete and across him.

What did I do, he thought. What did I just do to her.

The tunnel went quiet except for the sound of his own breathing. Blood was still running from the place she had been, thick and dark, spreading toward his knees. The smell of it filled his nose and mouth until he gagged. He tried to wipe his face and only smeared more of her across his cheek.

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He stared at the empty stain and the scattered pieces the thing hadn’t taken a scrap of cloth, a single tooth, a clump of hair stuck to the floor in a dark clot. The rectangular shape still floated above him

He wanted to scream again but nothing came out. His throat was raw. His chest felt hollow, like something had been scooped out of him along with her. He kept waiting for her to sit up, to scold him, to call him a brat one more time. The waiting stretched. Nothing happened .

I did this to her

I did this to her

I did this to her

I did this to her

I did this to—

He folded forward over his own knees and stayed there, shaking, some sound coming out of him that wasn’t crying anymore because he had nothing left to cry with just a dry, wrecked heaving that hurt worse than the ribs had.

He lost track of how long he stayed folded over like that.

Then he heard her.

"Lian."

His whole body locked still.

She sounded right. Almost exactly right. But something about it felt odd in a way he couldn’t describe, and it went down his spine like ice water poured slow.

"Lian," she said again, closer now,

though he hadn’t heard anything move.

"Turn around."

The cold at the back of his neck tightened with the every word she spoke

He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. His grandmother’s old warning screamed through him , don’t answer, don’t turn, not until you know who’s actually asking.

But this was her voice. And grief, it turned out, could shout louder than fear ever had.

He turned around.