Elara’s fingers still rested against the wooden doll. With every glance at the open book, it became harder to decide whether she should yank her hand back immediately, or if that exact movement would set something in motion she wouldn't be able to stop.
The object lay motionless by the cabinet, seemingly as harmless as a toy abandoned by a child. But the girl could no longer look at its tiny limbs without thinking of the book’s final sentence.
On the other side, Elara walked away. And I was left inside.
Does every apprentice have to deal with things like this, or am I the only one who can find a way to die just by putting a toy away?
She slowly relaxed her grip and pulled her hand back, keeping the doll in her peripheral vision the entire time. Nothing happened. When a few breaths passed and she still felt the solid floor beneath her knees and could still move her right hand, she allowed herself to breathe a little deeper.
Apparently, just touching it wasn't enough.
Maybe opening the cabinet was the trigger, or placing the doll among the others, or simply standing in front of that many empty eye sockets at once. She wasn't about to test any of those possibilities with her own body.
She stepped around the object and looked at the small bin where she had gathered the debris earlier.
If I can't put you back where you belong, maybe I can just drop you somewhere you can't climb out of.
The book stirred before she could even reach for the container.
May 26th, Year 314 of the Lunar Calendar.
Unwilling to finish your task the proper way, you decided to treat the wooden doll like garbage.
Perhaps it truly deserves such a place, but an ordinary trash bin cannot contain a magical artifact.
The next day, you returned to a laboratory that looked as if a hurricane had torn through it.
Mara refused to listen to your excuses. After an encounter with her hungry hands, you were reduced to a skeleton.
At least your left hand finally felt like part of a well-matched whole.
Elara jerked back from the bin, then glared at the doll lying by the cabinet.
“So over there is bad, and here is bad too…” she muttered, crouching down cautiously. “Why don't you just tell me where the hell I’m supposed to put you?”
She picked it up, making sure not to look at its face. For a moment, she tightened her grip, trying to gauge the wood's durability.
It didn't yield, not even when she carefully pulled on one of the arms. The hard surface showed no signs of stress from the same grip that had easily crushed solid rock earlier.
She gave up before attempting to use her full strength.
She wasn't sure if she actually saw it, but for a split second, the doll's lips seemed to curve slightly differently - as if the motionless face had just answered her helplessness with a smile.
No.
I am not checking what happens if I tear your arm off… Maybe I’ll just take you out of the laboratory and find somewhere else.
The book didn't display a new entry; it simply floated back toward her left shoulder.
Elara closed her eyes for a single breath, then turned around, intending to finish checking the room and get out as quickly as possible.
The artifact's silence wasn't a promise of safety, but at least it didn't come with another sentence detailing what Mara would do to her the next day.
A crash echoed behind her.
The glass doors of the cabinet stood wide open. Wooden dolls spilled across the floor, their limbs and heads knocking against the stone. Elara spun around reflexively, her eyes instantly meeting the empty sockets of one of them.
“Help me… help me… help me…”
The whispers weren't coming from one specific place. They brushed against her ear, echoed inside her skull, and resonated from somewhere deeper, overlapping with more voices speaking faster and faster.
“I want to too… help me… me too…”
Elara dropped the doll she was holding and bolted for the door, completely abandoning the cleaning, Mara’s orders, and whatever consequences awaited her the next day.
She didn't even make it a few steps before her legs suddenly refused to bend. Her body pitched forward, crashing heavily onto the stone floor.
She tried to catch herself, but her right arm remained rigidly locked at her side.
A paralyzing numbness began creeping up from her limbs, slowly enveloping her torso. The overlapping whispers grew louder, blurring until they were almost indistinguishable from her own thoughts.
Elara tried to lift her head, but her muscles responded with a sluggish delay, as if the commands had to wade through something thick and alien. Panic seized her - so intensely that she momentarily forgot about the book - until Melyss's words finally pierced through the tangled voices in her mind.
Meditation could help preserve mental clarity.
She didn't have an open textbook in front of her or a crystal ball to look through, but she began recreating the figures from the diagram in her memory, focusing desperately on their postures and the minute changes between them.
The woman raised her hands, tilted her torso, shifted her stance. Elara clung to the sequence with the desperation of someone clutching the very last lifeline available.
The whispers faded to a murmur.
They didn't vanish completely, but the numbness halted. Slowly, it began to recede from her torso, returning the sensation of the hard floor beneath her and the jagged rhythm of her own breathing.
Elara tried to move her right arm, but it still wouldn't bend. Her legs remained just as useless. But when she focused on her left hand, the skeletal fingers curled with little resistance.
This one still works… Just don't stop, please, at least you.
She hooked her fingers into a groove between the stone tiles and pulled, dragging her body forward a few inches. The movement instantly broke her concentration. The whispers surged back with renewed force, and the creeping numbness began crawling up her limbs again.
Elara stopped and retreated back into the memory of the diagram.
She couldn't maintain the meditation and focus on dragging her body at the same time. But staying in one place wasn't an option either. Sooner or later, her strength would give out, and the dolls would still be lying there, patiently repeating their pleas.
She began moving in short bursts.
Grip the groove, drag her body forward, stop when the numbness crept too high, and visualize the circle of figures all over again.
Every cycle required a moment to regain her focus, and the door was still so far away she didn't dare guess how many times she would have to repeat the process.
Her uniform scraped against the stone. Her hair fell into her face. Her skeletal fingers occasionally slipped from their purchase, forcing her to readjust her grip. Elara gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the voices that continued demanding help with the blind persistence of something completely incapable of understanding refusal.
Finally, her left hand touched the base of the door.
That damn experiment… If Vespara had just left me a normal hand, I’d still be lying under that cabinet.
The door opened inward. She had to pull herself up against the wall, reach the handle, and make enough room to pull the heavy wood toward her. She dug her fingers into the frame, shifted her shoulder higher, and was just trying to heave her torso up when the door began to open on its own.
A familiar face appeared in the gap.
“Elara, what are you doing?”
For a fraction of a second, relief washed over her. But from her angle near the floor, she saw something she would have missed if she had been standing up.
Behind Mara’s face, there was no head.
A thin, flat sheet of skin was sliding out from behind the door, bending unnaturally around the edge of the wood. The wide-open eyes glared at her in anger, completely oblivious to the fact that, from this low angle, it could no longer pretend to be human.
“The laboratory is in this state, and you’re trying to leave? Get back in there and clean!”
Elara froze. A sudden, piercing chill washed over her - one that had nothing to do with the dolls anymore.
Right next to her, the lid of the red bin snapped open with a loud crack.
A pale, emaciated hand clamped down on the rim. The fingers strained, joints protruding sharply beneath the skin. Something hidden inside the pitch-black interior began hauling itself up, making the bin shudder with every attempt.
From deeper inside the laboratory, a low, wet gurgling echoed, followed by the sound of something heavy dragging itself across the floor.
Elara didn't turn her head.
The book shot in front of her eyes and began flipping its pages so violently she wouldn't have been able to read a normal sentence. But this time, every single page bore only one word.
DEATH.
The next page showed the same thing, and the next. The frantic rustling of the paper sounded almost as if the artifact itself had panicked, having run out of ways to point to a single exit.
Elara started to laugh.
It began as a short, broken sound that escaped with a breath, but a second later, she couldn't stop it.
She was lying by the door with paralyzed legs, a book flashing a relentless countdown to her death in her face, and something wearing Mara’s skin still nagging her to get back to work.
“Why is it always me?” she choked out between spasms of laughter. “What, do I taste that fucking good?!”
Her skeletal fingers tightened their grip on the wood, but this time she didn't try to pull herself up. Her mind felt hot and empty. Terror melted into a blinding fury with nowhere left to aim.
“Come on then! All at once, if you’re in such a hurry! Let’s see what’s left of me, you fucking - ”
The door swung open violently, the heavy edge smacking her squarely in the forehead.
Her laughter cut off instantly.
Elara groaned and reflexively clapped her right hand over her forehead, before she even realized she could move it again. The book stopped flipping pages and drifted quietly back over her left shoulder. The girl looked up, not yet understanding what had just interrupted her breakdown.
Mara’s face was gone.
Standing in the open doorway was a tall, broad-shouldered figure, wrapped almost entirely in dark pink bandages. Layer upon layer concealed the body and face, leaving only a narrow slit through which pale gold eyes stared out.
Elara froze at the sight.
The stranger’s gaze fell on her for only a moment, but it was enough to instantly quiet her mind - as if someone had slammed a door on all the noise, the terror, and the frantic laughter all at once.
The bandaged woman turned her head toward the laboratory.
“Go back. All of you, back to your places.”
Then she looked back down at Elara. The earlier coldness in her eyes receded, replaced by something calmer, almost gentle.
“A new apprentice? Why are you spending the night in the laboratory?”
Elara moved her lips, but at first, no sound came out. Sensation was returning to her legs. The fingers of her right hand were still pressing against her throbbing forehead. The meaning of the question only sank in after a few shaky breaths.
What night?
She looked at the hourglass hanging on the wall. The blue sand indicated it was eleven o'clock at night.
Mara had left before six in the evening. Elara was absolutely certain that no more than half an hour had passed since then. She had pushed in a chair, gathered the trash, walked over to the cabinets, and found the doll. Then she had spent some time crawling toward the door. She remembered every single movement, yet none of it explained the reading on the clock.
She slowly lowered her hand from her forehead, staring at the blue sand with mounting horror.
If it really is eleven at night… what have I been doing for the last five hours?