“Where am I?” I asked, standing on a platform located in the middle of a gigantic abyss. One moment, I was shouting for Shuuta, and then I suddenly found myself here. It was like I was trapped in space, yet there wasn’t a hint of stars or galaxies in the distance. 

It was all black. 

Totally black. 

Just like... 

“Just like the void...” I whispered, turning around to find what looked like an entrance to a maze or labyrinth. It was only then I realized the platform and maze were bleeding since everything looked to be made of skin. 

“You’re an utter failure, Quella. You couldn’t save me. You left me to die. I hope the scorn you feel from your parents scars you to your core.” My heart sank to the pit of my stomach as I turned around to find Shuuta’s skinless face inches away from me. His wounds were engraved on his crimson flesh, his eyes wide open and peering deep within my soul.  

“I’m dead now, you know. And it’s your fault. And it’s Greggie’s fault. And it’s Keeth’s fault. And it’s Elly’s fault. And it’s Ami’s fault. And it’s Ms. Mary’s fault. And it’s Will’s fault. You’re all to blame...and I hate you all. But you? YOU LED ME ON!!!! YOU NEVER ACTUALLY WANTED ME TO LIVE!!! YOU JUST WANTED TO MAKE YOUR FUCKING FAMILY HAPPY!!!!!” 

“That’s... That’s not it!" My breath froze solid when I heard the irritating noise of a bell. The being standing before me opened vertically like a bloody iron maiden. Thick tentacles grabbed my arms and legs, pulling me inside and clamping shut not even a moment later. Blood covered me from head to toe. My mouth was filled with the taste of hot crimson... 

And then I drowned, dying a painful death. I wanted to wake up, but no... 

Before I knew it, I was back in front of that thing. It started to say something in Shuuta’s voice, but I turned on my heels and rushed into the maze. His face appeared on the walls and the floor, taunting and shouting and crying, spewing his utter hatred like vicious venom. I begged him—reasoned with him—tried to do what I could, but my answer end with a bell ringing. The ground before me vanished, and I fell into a pit of sharp spikes. They skewered me from all over, bringing me to my second death. 

Suddenly, I found myself standing back on that platform. Only this time, Shuuta’s form had grown triple in size. It towered over me, the blood dripping off his exposed flesh like fat raindrops. 

“You’ll never escape!!! I’ll haunt your dreams!!! YOU’LL FEEL WHAT I WAS FORCED TO LIVE THROUGH, YOU FUCKING TRAITOR!!!!!! YOU’LL LIVE WITH THIS FAILURE FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!!!!!!” He grew bigger with each curse, and I started to run. 

I ran, I ran, and I ran.  

I never once escaped his wrath, but I always begged for forgiveness. 

It was never enough.  

---

“SHUUTA, I’M SORRY!!!!!!” I screamed a name I hadn’t known before today and leaned up.  Something hard was awaiting me as I bashed my head into it, knocking the last remnants of that nightmare from my mind. 

“Wah!!!” A girl with blue hair fell backwards a bit and rubbed her forehead. “Qutie!” Elly exclaimed. She hugged me with tears shining in her eyes, but I remained sitting. She whimpered while I searched my new surroundings.  

We weren’t in Shuuta's room. Instead, it looked like I was in a room with six beds, which reminded me of the communal living bunks I once saw on a tour of a military base. It was designed to increase camaraderie between new recruits.  

It also functioned as a punishment because it removed any sense of privacy. Each bed had a lantern above it, seemingly controlled by a nearby knob. Within this windowless room, the cool glow of a faint, flickering light was all that staved off the encroaching darkness. Even the walls were as dark as coal, and that was on purpose. 

“Shuuta! Where’s Shuuta?!” I cried out. Hazy sweat found refuge on my face and arms, but I didn’t focus on that discomfort. 

“Qutie… He’s gone...” Elly whispered. She pulled back from the hug and stared at me with reddened eyes. I rubbed my head and refused to believe it. Greggie and Keeth walked over while Elly helped me to my unstable feet. They explained I had lost consciousness while shouting his name when the portal closed. Once Meruria lifted the restraints on us, she mentioned there would be consequences for anyone who attempted to get revenge for the ‘failure.’ 

Greggie didn’t care, but Keeth and Ami were the ones who kept him from making things worse in a moment of anger.  

Elly said Meruria didn’t waste any time in summoning another Soul Warrior. His name was Carter Armlet—the pilot of the plane we were on. With a 3-Star Soul, he was immediately granted several skills, one of which created a drone-like object he could control. Whatever the drone saw and heard was transferred to him, but he could share that with others by creating a visual display. Elly said it was like a TV. 

Meruria was so impressed she left with him to train. “She even said recycling Shuuta was the best idea she ever had,” Elly whimpered.  

“We’re in the room assigned to Team Quella. That’s us, by the way,” said Greggie, who had a pensive look of sadness. He pulled a wooden key from his pocket and handed it to me.  “Meruria said we were to stay here until further notice.” 

After the trial, Meruria teleported us back to the bloody building with the rotting goblin corpses—possibly to remind us of our fate if we chose to go against her. There was a maid there, and after Ami picked me up, they followed her through the courtyard and into the building we weren’t summoned in.  

Ms. Mary said we entered a ballroom with elegant flooring and expensive-looking diamond-tipped chandeliers. The maid had continued through a large door and turned left, leading the team down a hallway that emerged into a welcome hall. Elly said there were two sets of stairs that flanked a doorway into the nave of a church.  

That makes sense. 

Ami had effortlessly carried me up the stairs. Greggie said the wide windows gave him a glimpse of this new world, but it was hard to decipher anything through the red and blue stained glass. At the top of the stairs, they took a left and walked for a few seconds. Keeth unlocked the door with our name on it with a key, and Ami gently dropped me on the dark gray, lumpy mattress with ease. A few minutes later, I struggled in my sleep, and Elly tried to wake me up.  

“It sounded like you were having a nightmare,” Ms. Mary said.  

I nodded and recalled the uncomfortableness but didn't say what it was about. “You should all be upset with me.” 

“For what?” asked Ami. She sat on the bed and tilted her head. 

“Remember what Mia said? She spoke the truth. Deep down, I knew I wanted to challenge her viewpoint. And when I saw Shuuta’s injuries, I thought it would be better if he died. I can’t even imagine what he went through to look like that, and this world is far more dangerous than the one we came from. But he trusted me... And I... And I let him down...  I couldn’t save him...”  I stood up, not knowing the right words to say, but Ms. Mary wrapped her arms around me. She held a hand to the back of my head and softly petted it. 

“The reasoning doesn’t matter. You were the first to come to his defense and speak up. Deep down, you wanted to prevent his death. So, no, Quella, we aren’t angry. Don’t be hard on yourself...” 

“I’m sorry!!!! I’m sorry!!!!” I repeated my apologies and whimpered, which later upgraded to a wail.  

Mother and father never permitted me to cry... Not even when I was a child. Failure is the greatest sin we can commit… Please... Let me have this... My heart hurts too much to keep this all in... 

I thought I had cried all I could, but I discovered a hidden cache of tears when Elly and the others joined in on the hug. The six of us were all crying for an abused boy who lived a hard life... No doubt the reveal of his scarred body affected Greggie and Keeth more than me. After all, they were the ones who knew him. I was just a stranger. My heart still hurt all the same, though. 

Regardless of the reason, I wanted to save him... I really did... 

---

“I’ve seen you around lots of times, Greggie. Why haven’t you talked with me before?” asked Elly, who went back to her bed after our crying session. She wiped her red eyes and runny nose. 

“I’ve been focused on my cooking all my life that I found it hard to have friends,” he replied. He sat on the gray blankets, leaning his large back against the wall. “I swear I wasn’t trying to ignore anyone.” 

“I’m the same,” Keeth said. I knew he spoke lightly, but it looked like that was changing. “I’ve...only known clay.” 

“Before today, I never knew Shuuta was in our class,” I confessed. I sat on my bed and hugged my knees. “Even if we were strangers, I want to learn about him. That way, I can keep him alive in my memories.” 

“We chatted with him a few times,” said Elly. “He was always quiet, though. Really brisk when talking.” 

Ami sat beside her cousin on the same narrow bed. The perpetual smile she usually wore wasn’t there. “Yeah. But he was easy on the mouth.” No one bothered correcting her. “It was like talking to a dog, but it was fun for me.” 

“It’s almost funny you say that. We could be talking about cooking or sculpting, and he would barely listen. But bring up something about history and war? He would perk right up. Really, he could talk for hours about the Second Punic Wars and Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who used war elephants.” 

“He was a history buff?” I asked. 

Greggie nodded. “History, war, and guns.” 

“How did you all become friends?”  

“Yeah, I wanna know too,” Ami added.  

Greggie fondly smiled. “It all started when I was hungry. Mr. Rhamsaey kept me after class, so I was late getting to the cafeteria. He let me use a spare kitchen to make my lunch, and I went to the roof to eat. There was a nice, shaded spot, so I sat down and ate my spaghetti and meatballs. The door opened a few minutes later, and Keeth walked out. He was working with a chunk of clay because of a job he had. Later, Shuuta walked through and took a seat away from us. Then Will... He showed up with a few books to work on a math theorem. Two weeks later, the rooftop became our meeting ground. I don’t remember who said what, but we began to talk and chat. That friendship continued until...Meruria happened. If I knew what he was going through, I could’ve helped him. We could’ve helped him. I’m just...a little upset he didn’t trust us enough.” 

“Greggie...” Elly whispered his name, then walked over to give him a hug before returning to her bed. We talked a little bit more about Shuuta until our teacher had something to say. 

“On the plane…” Ms. Mary sighed and rested her face in her hands when I said her name. She was starting to cry again. “If I knew this would happen, I would have acted like a teacher for the first time in my life.” 

None of us knew what she meant. When asked to explain, Ms. Mary said she was destined to be an instructor from the moment of her birth. She had a tattoo of ‘M15H37’ on her upper shoulder. “I’m the 37th unit of production order M15H, paid for by the academy,” whispered our teacher as she dropped a bombshell. She pulled her sleeve up to show us.  

“Mary Mishel…” I whispered, realizing where her last name came from. Our teacher then talked about her life. 

She was born in a hidden lab operated by a company named Scientia Doctrinae. Publicly, they were known as the inventors of the learning chambers. Ms. Mary was forced to live inside a chamber for 24 hours a day. By the age of 6, she had completed Mekka Academy’s entrance exam and scored the highest on her aptitude tests. 

Someone asked about the obvious bodily functions we couldn’t ignore, and Ms. Mary just said it went as we might think. It was disgusting, dehumanizing, and horrifying.  

A scientist responsible for her well-being couldn’t handle the cruelness of producing knowledgeable livestock, so he faked her death and made plans to stash our instructor with a friend of his. This man took Ms. Mary in and taught her what it meant to live. What it meant to cry, laugh, and even yell, destroying the shell cast around her heart. 

It was ironic that those at the Club Domme brothel had more humanity than the ones who created her. Everyone there treated her like a daughter or little sister. She ended up helping with tracking finances and other clerical work. Ms. Mary didn’t have a name at this point, so her adoptive father fixed that when he helped her with physical therapy to learn how to walk.  

She found safety for ten years. Eventually, Scientia Doctrinae captured her. She watched as the scientist who helped her was skinned alive for his betrayal. With a cruel warning, Mary was told the same fate would befall Club Domme if she didn’t fulfill her assigned role. 

A few days later, our teacher introduced herself to class 2-F as Ms. Mary after being granted permission to use the name her adoptive father gave her as a first name. “If I had intervened, dad and the others would have died… I sacrificed one of my students so they wouldn’t be killed.” 

When Ms. Mary finished her tale, tears flowed from our eyes. None of us had a single clue she had such a history. Ami and Elly rushed off their bed and nearly jumped on her, burying their heads in her black hair. I felt rather emotional, and I went to join the pile. Greggie and Keeth soon joined in after Elly told them to, and all of Team Quella shared our teacher’s pain while engaging in the second group hug of the day. When the emotions simmered, we went back to our beds, but not before making sure she was okay. With her eyes red and raw, she asked us if we could drop the ‘Ms.’ from her name because she felt she didn’t deserve to be a teacher. 

Something about the timeline didn’t add up because Mary told us she was in her late 20s. She saw my confusion and told us she was 19. She had medicine to regulate her accelerated aging, the one flaw Scientia Doctrinae hadn’t yet been able to fix.  

“I always carry the pills on me. I have enough for 8 months,” she said, showing us a bottle she pulled from her skirt pockets. “But I feel fine. It might have something to do with being a Soul Warrior.” 

“Umm... Can... Can we talk about the bell?” Elly asked, changing the subject and crossing her legs. It was an uncomfortable topic—one I’ve been dreading to discuss. “As much as I want to believe it, I don’t think Meruria was manipulating the bell. When I saw Shuuta’s injuries, it felt like I was looking at my dog when its kidneys shut down. You don’t want it to suffer, so you put it to sleep. It can die peacefully that way. That’s...the first thing that came to mind, but he's not a dog. He’s a person.” 

“I think it was the same with me,” I replied. “He looked so pitiful... Like a cat we used to have. It broke its back, and mother and father put it to sleep. What I felt then was what I experienced when I saw him. Just like a stake being driven through my heart... I wanted him to feel at peace. No matter what, I wanted the hurt to stop, but I also wanted to save him. But I couldn’t do both...” 

“Wait? It happened to you too?” Greggie suddenly asked. “In my case, it was a turtle. I had one when I was a kid, but he passed away after getting sick. Now that I’m thinking about it, the feelings I felt were the same when the doctor told me Turtley had to be euthanized.” 

“Did...we all think of him as an animal that needed to be put down?” Mary inquired. “In my case, it was a gerbil we used to keep at Club Domme. We all took care of it, and it was my first animal. A year later, we had a vet put it to sleep because it couldn’t walk anymore. But ignoring that, what we experienced isn’t natural behavior. Perhaps if two of us thought like that, then yes. But all six? Something doesn’t feel right.” 

“Hold on...I didn’t think what I wanted to think?” Ami asked. “But my feelings are my feelings, and I felt like I did when my goat was run over by a truck. My feelings didn’t want Shuuta to die, but if they did, then it wasn’t me while also being me? But why did the bell sing? I’m confused,” Ami touched her head and slowly closed her eyes. 

“It was a bird in my case. Pierty broke his wings, and he was put down when the vet couldn’t fix him,” Keeth said, his eyes becoming cloudy with water.

"Then... Someone made us feel what we felt when our childhood pets passed away? You think it was Meruria?” I asked. 

“The bell still rang because what we said didn’t match our feelings, but our feelings from our childhood were brought forth from our subconsciousness. Do you think she has the power to do that?” Mary replied.  

“Like, if we ask her, I doubt she’ll be honest with us,” said Elly. 

“Wonder if she’ll lend us the bell? Maybe I can talk her into it... But I need to know if she’s behind it. If I’m being honest, though. I’m...almost glad this is the case. I hope that’s not—” 

“I get what you mean,” replied Greggie. “It means I never wanted Shuuta to die.” Everyone’s moods improved somewhat after we really, genuinely wanted him to live. Silently, we all agreed on Meruria being our foe. How could we not after realizing the likelihood of her rigging the trial? But what could we do against her? Talking out loud about her in the middle of her church was a foolish mistake, and one we did not make.  

It wasn’t long before someone knocked on the door. When I opened it, a tall maid bowed her head and left, leaving us with six crates that held our names. We grabbed them and started to open them. 

“Clothes?” Ami quizzically said. She dumped the contents of her box on the bed and stared at a perfect recreation of the outfit she had on. Everything from the shirt down to the socks was a match, and there was a rough, brown towel with a bar of soap wrapped inside. It was obvious we were meant to change. I grabbed my box and walked to the only other door that wasn’t an exit.  

It was a bathroom with a toilet. The ‘shower’ was a metal pole with a hole at the top. A knob ‘controlled’ the temperature, but only cold water came out. A thousand and one thoughts ran through my mind when the door slammed shut behind me. I stripped naked and started to clean myself free from the dried crimson and sweat. The room was nearly dark, but a lantern with a weak flame struggled to provide illumination.  

The water was nearly freezing, yet the discomfort didn’t compare to what he’d felt. He’d felt an unenvious torture. He’d felt his life coming to an end. I was still alive. 

This world was a dangerous one, but I still had the blessing of feeling my heart pump to circulate blood through my body. In my beloved books, there was sometimes a scene of the main protagonist witnessing the death of someone close to them. After a bout of depression, they become determined to live for the recently departed.  

I wasn’t like them. This wasn’t a book. I couldn’t turn back to the prologue and relieve the times before chaos ruled the world. And I couldn’t flip to the end and hope his death was a temporary setback.  

Reality wasn’t fiction, and happy endings were a myth... 

I could still try, though... I could face this world... I could... 

I could... 

The rough edges of the shower tile nearly scratched my butt as I sat down, allowing the cold rain to fall over my red hair. The noise it made slapping into the floor overpowered my quiet whimpers, but I couldn’t stay here. I had to stand up, scrub the dried blood off, and get dressed. 

I’ve cried enough... If I’m the leader of Team Quella, I must be strong... Not just for me, but for them... And for him, too...