Chương 131: Chapter 64: The Erased Name

They followed Magnor with the seriousness the mission merited, but as they rounded one of the corners of the cave, at a bend where the veins crowded together to form a pulsing knot, the world in front of them disintegrated. In an instant, there was no longer a floor, walls, or a ceiling. Before them, in every direction, there were only lines. Lines of pure light and color, some golden like sunlight, others of an electric blue, others of a dark red like clotted blood.

They chased each other, intertwined, and avoided one another in a chaotic, kaleidoscopic ballet that defied all spatial logic. It was like being suspended in the center of an abstract, living geometric vortex. They barely had time to process the vision for a second, perhaps less, when the lines, as if abruptly remembering a function, a forgotten purpose, collapsed. It was a violent implosion toward a central point, right in the middle of the group. There was no explosion. There was no physical impact.

There was no damage to their bodies. The attack was against the mind. A wave of pure psychic force, born from the coalescence of those lines of distorted reality, enveloped them. It was an ominous illusion spell; it was a direct intrusion, a tear into memory and deepest desire, which ripped them from the dungeon and hurled them into their respective personal abysses. Selena did not see the desert, nor the blood, nor the shadows. She saw Earth.

Suddenly, he was sitting in his old armchair that was soft as a cloud, the one in his apartment in the city whose name he could no longer even remember. The sensation was overwhelmingly real: the weight of his tall, lean male body, the softness of the cotton t-shirt, the smell of coffee and old books. Upon his lap, a warm, purring bundle: Rulito, his cat, of a jet black so deep it looked like dense obsidian, dozing with one paw extended over his thigh.

On the laptop screen in front of him, an email gleamed in English. He read it, and every word burned itself into his mind:"Dear Saul, A friend from the Physics department told me about a strange project. Ultra-secret, military and private funding combined. They are looking for linguists and philologists, but not for normal languages. Something about… energy patterns that respond to language. As if reality had syntax. Sounds crazy, I know. But the contact is legitimate.

Look at the attached document (it's for internal eyes only, delete after reading). If you are interested in the position and the absurd number of zeroes they are offering, reply to the email at the bottom. Be careful, Saul. This smells like something much bigger. Sincerely, your dear friend Leonard Pitt" Below, there was an attachment with an encrypted name.

And at the end, an email address: [email protected] The nostalgia, the pain for what was lost, home, the smell of Rulito, the weight of the cut-short possibility… everything rushed over him with the force of a train. He reached out his hand, that hand, large, with long fingers and prominent knuckles, wanting to touch the screen, to delete the email as he should have done, to… THUD! A blunt impact to the chest, as real as the vision, ripped her from the couch, from the apartment, from the cat's lap.

The world of distorted lines and colors snapped back, mixing with the vivid memory that still burned her retinas. She gasped, air lacking in lungs that were now once again smaller, more feminine. In front of her was Magnor, his weathered face only a few inches away, his huge hands cupped around her mouth. He was blowing air into her. A rough, primitive gesture, but effective. The fresh air, or what passed for fresh in that place, hit her face, helping to clear the fog of the impossible memory. —Countess! Come to!

—Magnor's voice sounded muffled, as if coming from very far away. Selena blinked, forcing her eyes to focus. The vision of the apartment was fading, but the sensation of Rulito's fur beneath her fingers was still tangible, a ghost upon her skin. —I… I'm better now —she managed to articulate, her voice hoarse. Her gaze, still blurred, sought out the others. Alistair and Astrid had not gotten up.

They were sitting in the non-place of residual lines, their eyes closed, their faces contorted in expressions that ranged from ecstasy to absolute terror. Their bodies were rigid, trapped in their own mental prisons. —They were the same, right? —Selena asked, dragging herself a little to get onto her knees. Magnor nodded, a grimace of pain on his face. —Yes. They fell immediately. You too, but for less time. The giant's expression was unexpectedly formal, almost following a mental track.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. —Why didn't it affect you? —Selena inquired, noticing the tension in the giant's shoulders and how he clenched his fists. Magnor raised one of his huge, gloved hands. The chainmail gloves, which had previously gleamed faintly, now seemed to have contracted. The fine metal rings had embedded themselves into his skin, marking painful, red patterns from his knuckles to his palms.

A little blood dripped from between the links. —My artifact —he explained, his voice heavy with contained pain. —It has as a side effect… acute physical pain upon activation. A constant reminder of the price. I managed to feel it, to activate the resistance moments before the wave hit us. The pain… was an anchor. It kept me here, in this piece-of-shit place, long enough to see how that thing. He made a dismissive gesture toward the space where the lines had fused. —It vanished after releasing its visions.

When I opened my eyes, it was gone. He paused, looking at his scarred hands with a mixture of resignation and familiarity. —Look, Countess. This is why I have the scars. My intuition of the Void, my affinity… it always leads me to artifacts or situations that are paid for in pain. It is the price of my gift. He sighed, a deep and tired sound. —But there is no time for laments. We have to wake the others. Do as I do.

He stood up with determination, heading toward Alistair, who lay motionless, a thin trickle of drool escaping the corner of his lips while he whispered fragments of prayers. —Strike his chest —Magnor instructed, without looking at Selena. —As hard as you can. You have to shock the core, interrupt the dream cycle. If it doesn't work… He did not finish the sentence, but the meaning was clear: they will be lost. Their minds will be consumed in their own personal paradise or hell. Selena's mind completed the warning.

Selena did not hesitate. She knelt in front of Astrid. The blonde resonant looked younger in her trance, her face relaxed at first, but then a grimace of anguish contorted it. Her lips murmured: —No, don't let them go… the mine… too cold… Selena closed her hand. She was not a born warrior, but months of training had put strength into her arms. With a firm, controlled movement, she struck Astrid's sternum. Nothing. Another blow. Nothing. A third, a fourth.

Astrid's breathing became ragged, but her eyes remained closed, trapped in the snowy mountains and the family she had not seen for years. With the fifth blow, a harder, centered impact, something gave way. Astrid gasped, a dry, harsh sound, as if she had been suffocating. Her eyes snapped wide open, but they did not see. They were full of panic, of the snow and the danger from her vision. Her wandering, desperate gaze finally locked onto Selena. —Calm down —Selena said.

Keeping her voice low but firm, she took Astrid's shoulders. —You're back. You are here. With us. Open your eyes slowly and breathe. Inhale… exhale… She kept talking, a constant murmur anchored in the present, while she watched how the fog of terror slowly dissipated from Astrid's blue eyes, replaced by confusion and then by the lucid recognition of the real horror surrounding them.

It was at that precise instant, just as Astrid seemed to return completely and her gaze met Selena's, searching for an answer, a guarantee that the worst had passed… … that the floor swallowed them. It was as if space itself, that place of residual lines and broken geometry, decided to be something else. A blink. An absolute discontinuity in perception. One moment they were kneeling in the luminous non-place. The next, they were elsewhere. The change was so abrupt that Selena's stomach turned.

The light from her ring now illuminated a narrow, low corridor made of a black, porous stone that absorbed sound. The air smelled of saltpeter and marine mold, of oceanic depths never touched by the sun. The throbbing of the veins had ceased. There was only a dense, damp silence, broken by the distant dripping of water. Astrid, emerging from the stupor of the trance and the shock of the instant relocation, looked around with wide eyes. Her hand subconsciously sought the place where Selena had struck her. —This…

—she whispered, her voice a thread of sound in the oppressive silence— is really bad, isn't it? Her eyes, blue and now filled with a raw, adult fear, sought an answer, a glimmer of hope or courage in Selena's. But in the Countess's green eyes, Astrid found only the same unknown, reflected and amplified by the light of the ring that now explored, with dread, the contours of this new level of the nightmare. There was no comfort.

Only the cold certainty that they were lost now without the rest of the group, and that the rules, once again, had changed. —We have to go back until we regroup —Selena said, her voice a thin layer of stoicism over an ocean of latent horror. There was no room for panic, only for protocol, for the meditated action that kept them alive. Astrid, still pale and trembling, only nodded, a mechanical movement of her head. There were no words.

She had exhausted them in the visions, and only silence remained, a sound broken only by a persistent drop. They walked back down the narrow passage, the only path there was. Selena's ring projected its constant light; it was a one-way path, the darkness beyond the circle of influence almost absolute, a wall of black velvet that seemed to breathe.

The sound of water, which before had been a distant dripping, grew larger, more present, until it became a dull, constant rumor, like that of an underground river or the innards of an ancient aquifer. While desperately trying to find a return route that would allow them to reunite with Magnor and Alistair or at least, with whatever was left of them, they reached a fork. To the left, the passage continued dark and damp. But to the right, at the end of a short, sloping corridor, they saw it again.

The room of lines, or its echo, its residue. It was not the kaleidoscopic vortex that had attacked them, but something more static, more sickly. The lines of light, now dull and flickering, crawled along the walls and the floor like phosphorescent worms, tracing patterns that caused nausea and a dull pain behind the eyes. It was a wound in reality that still suppurated its distorted energy. They stood there, still, at a prudent distance, observing with revulsion and a renewed fear.

There was no trace of Magnor or Alistair. Only the almost inaudible whistling of the broken geometry. It was then, just as Selena's ring completed its cycle and went out, plunging her into a deeper and more terrifying darkness for her altered vision, that they heard footsteps. Heavy, shuffling, drenched steps.