Elara took two steps back, the click of her boots echoing off the stone walls as the apprentice on the conveyor suddenly opened her eyes.
Her head remained pinned, secured alongside the rest of her body, but her gaze snapped sideways, locking onto the two figures standing by the table.
Her pupils dilated so wide that Elara reflexively clenched her fingers into the hem of her sleeve.
“Is she still alive?” she asked, glancing at her mentor, who hadn't even looked away from the belt.
“How could she be?” Caldra stepped closer and lifted the black hide draped over the corpse, revealing the marks of prior procedures.
A single look was enough for Elara to see why her mentor found the question absurd.
Whatever had been brought into this room had already passed through the hands of harvesters, and traces of dirt still served as a grim reminder of the apprentice's fate - a girl someone had only recently tried to save.
Even so, the dead eyes tracked Caldra, and her lips parted slowly to reveal a set of even, white teeth.
Elara swallowed hard, fighting a sudden knot in her stomach, and forced herself to stand her ground.
Since waking up in Noxveil Spire, she had seen enough blood and inexplicable horrors not to vomit on the spot, but until now, her instinct had always been to run. Now, she was expected to step closer, pick up the tools, and do the work promised to earn her points.
It's a corpse.
She won't get up just because I'm looking at her, and she's not going to tear my face off…
Though in this fucking tower, I can't even be sure of that.
“Her brain has ceased functioning, and what lingers inside is not her soul,” Caldra explained, letting the hide fall back into place. “Under normal conditions, it poses no threat.”
That final caveat didn't reassure Elara quite as much as it probably should have, but at least it explained why the mentor approached the body without hesitation.
The girl tried to steady her breathing, an unpleasant task in a room saturated with such a foul stench.
“Are you afraid?” Caldra turned her head, studying her more closely.
“Yes,” Elara admitted before she could decide whether lying was the smarter choice. “But I can try. I can do the work.”
“Willingness alone is not enough,” the mentor replied with a dry snort, resting her hand on the black hide. “This corpse has already undergone two stages of processing, where hazards were assessed and certain materials harvested. Mutated bodies cannot simply be thrown away; left unsupervised, they could break out and turn the Spire into a cursed domain. Before they are ultimately disposed of, however, we check whether anything else of value can be salvaged.”
Elara listened, trying to keep her eyes on her mentor rather than the lips moving beneath the drape.
The clinical way Caldra described the procedure sounded no different than explaining how to organize cabinets in the laboratory; apparently, the difference between a misplaced tool and a corpse capable of bringing ruin upon the tower came down mostly to the necessary safety protocols.
“You will handle the final sorting and cleansing,” Caldra continued. “You will use knowledge or intuition to identify parts that gained magical properties through mutation without being tainted by spirits. You will excise the useful materials and place them into the designated containers on the table, then seal them shut. Everything else goes into the large chest beneath. In the evening, after you leave, someone will collect the containers and restock empty ones.”
She pointed in turn to the small boxes and the wheeled chest beneath the table, giving Elara a moment to map the instructions onto the workstation.
“I will grade your performance by the number of viable materials you produce. Five in a month is enough to pass and earn the three points I mentioned; exceed ten, and you receive a bonus point. Now, inspect this body and tell me what is worth salvaging.”
Elara stepped cautiously back toward the conveyor, stopping a bit farther back than was practical for an inspection. The most striking feature was the eyes, which still reacted to the presence of living beings, so after a brief hesitation, she pointed toward them.
“Could those be useful?”
“No,” Caldra replied, offering no further explanation.
The girl lowered her hand and studied the dead face once more, trying to glean something useful from the dismissal.
Evidently, activity alone was no indicator of value; it could just as easily signify contamination - the very thing she was supposed to avoid. Yet without proper training, telling one from the other was guesswork.
So the most bizarre part isn't necessarily the right one. Of course it wouldn't be that simple…
I wonder if everyone who studies Darkness ends up in a room full of corpses, or if I just had incredible luck with my mentor.
The dry thought crossed her mind as she lifted the hide and resumed her inspection, doing her best to ignore who the girl on the belt used to be.
The stench still burned her throat, but the initial wave of nausea was receding, allowing her to keep her eyes on the body without immediately having to turn away.
Perhaps her mental strength was buffering the shock, or perhaps she was simply growing numb to it; she didn't care to analyze why, so long as she could finally focus.
Still, that didn't mean she knew what she was looking for. Under ordinary light, nothing distinguished valuable material from the remnants destined for the chest. Beside her, Caldra crossed her arms, tapping the fingers of her left hand against her right shoulder.
Knowledge or intuition… If I had the knowledge, I wouldn't need this test.
Maybe by intuition she means something you can sense with mental strength?
She glanced toward the book hovering beside her left shoulder, but the dark red cover remained shut.
It seemed she couldn't rely on it to earn a living the way she did to dodge death. Tearing her gaze away, she decided to try an idea of her own.
She recalled the diagram of shifting human forms, focusing on the seamless transition from one shape to the next.
Achieving that state without a crystal sphere was harder, but after yesterday's ordeal in the laboratory, she knew how to tap into meditation unassisted.
She didn't try to submerge herself completely this time; she needed just enough focus to peel back the ordinary surface of her surroundings and reveal what physical eyes couldn't see.
The apprentice's face shifted in her perception, though Elara detected no actual physical movement beyond the earlier twitching of her gaze.
In place of eyes, swaying stalks emerged, reminiscent of a snail’s antennae, while a ring of tiny black spines bristled around her mouth. Yet between them, she caught something entirely different: a soft, distinct sheen across the teeth, contrasting with the surrounding deformities in an oddly familiar way.
For a second, she puzzled over where she had seen something like that before, until the realization struck with such sudden clarity she nearly lost her trance.
Like a collectible item in a game…
“Still found nothing?” Caldra’s voice broke into her concentration, and the ordinary view of the face snapped back into focus. “There are at least two usable parts in this corpse. Point out even one, and you pass the trial.”
With no time to second-guess herself, Elara raised her hand toward the dead girl's mouth, making the mentor furrow her brow.
“The lips?”
“No, the teeth,” the girl clarified, watching her face.
Caldra offered a flicker of surprise before reaching for a slender black rod among the tools. Using it to pry open the corpse's jaws, she leaned over the conveyor and silently inspected the spot for a moment.
“Yes. That will do,” she conceded at last, straightening up with an expression slightly less dismissive than before.
Elara suppressed a smile, though relief eased the tension in her shoulders. She still didn't understand why she could see the glow, or whether it consistently signaled something usable, but at least she hadn't mistaken it for corruption this time.
Calling the diagram back to mind, she slipped back into that focused state and scanned down the length of the body until she spotted two more points bearing the same distinct luminescence.
Instead of blurting both out, she pointed to one and feigned hesitation.
“Maybe… here as well?”
Caldra confirmed with a nod, then asked if she saw anything else. Elara took a moment to look over the body again, deliberately skimming past the final glowing spot, before straightening up and lowering her hand.
“I can't find anything else.”
“Not bad for a start.” The mentor pointed directly to the spot Elara had held back on. “There is this piece as well.”
Elara bowed her head, taking the note, and made sure to memorize not only the placement of the material, but the texture of the surrounding tissue as well.
The confirmation was worth more than empty praise: the three illuminated points she had perceived corresponded exactly to three harvestable components, though she was still too green to assume the rule would never fail.
Caldra moved on to explaining the instruments, having the girl select them from the table and correcting her grip as needed.
Under her watchful eye, Elara extracted the designated materials and sorted them into the small containers, mindful of the exact sequence for latching and sealing the lids. The extraction required far more precision than she had anticipated; within minutes, her attention narrowed entirely to the mentor’s commands and keeping her right hand steady enough to avoid a slip.
They wrapped the remaining carcass in the black hide once more and transferred it into the heavy chest engraved with sealing runes. Only when the lid dropped into place did Elara allow herself a full exhale, her eyes drifting to the dark smear left behind on the belt.
She was given no time to catch her breath, however, as Caldra jerked her chin toward the conveyor lever.
The girl pulled the handle, setting the gears in motion; the stained section of the belt rolled down, and from beneath the black leather curtain emerged the next body.
At first, Elara watched the securing straps, mentally rehearsing the steps of the procedure, but when she caught sight of the uncovered face, her fingers froze on the lever.
She recognized the maid who had delivered the supplies to her room on her first day - the one who had offered to help unpack them.
She remembered the girl's voice, her practiced demeanor, and above all, the fact that she had appeared in her nightmare that very same night.
Back then, she could at least tell herself it was merely a bad dream born of stress and trauma; now, that identical face was rolling toward her on a slab in the Pale Ossuary.
I was just talking to her…
Did she have an accident?
Did someone do this to her?
“Do you know her?” Caldra asked, noticing how long Elara stared at the corpse.
“She brought supplies to my room,” the girl replied, letting go of the handle. “On my first day.”
“Death in the Spire is an ordinary occurrence,” the mentor remarked, glancing at the body with casual indifference.
Elara ran her tongue over her dry lips, remembering the maids crammed into shared beds, the morning shifts, and Gwenna, who had been so desperate to serve her.
Not long ago, she had been one of those girls herself. If not for the book and a handful of desperate, last-minute choices, she could just as easily be lying beneath that black hide right now.
“If they keep dying like this, you'll eventually run out of workers,” she said, shifting her eyes to Caldra. “What happens then?”
“We bring in more from the surrounding settlements. People are always eager to send their children here.”
The mentor answered without hesitation, as if Elara had merely asked about restocking candles, then pointed toward the maid lying before them.
“In this body, you will find… at least one useful piece. If you can identify it, the job is yours.”
Elara caught the brief hesitation in her speech, though she couldn't tell whether Caldra was recalculating something or merely choosing her words.
She forced herself to step forward. Passing this test meant securing points to fund her education, and a reliable income was an advantage she couldn't afford to walk away from now.
Lifting the hide, she tried to look at it with the same detached focus as before: scanning for signs of mutation and areas that warranted closer scrutiny.
The body bore incision marks from a preliminary dissection, but it was far better preserved than the apprentice's corpse, and the visible deformities were less extensive. The maid hadn't been an initiate, yet something abnormal had clearly transpired at her death - otherwise, she wouldn't be on this slab.
Elara summoned the diagram to mind, straining for that state of heightened awareness, but tuning out the familiar face was far harder this time.
As the contours of the chamber finally began to blur, the memory of the maid from her nightmare lingered, and she could no longer convince herself that her dream had been entirely unrelated to the flesh resting on the conveyor.