A flash of phantom pain surges through your lungs and rib cage as the blade lodges clean into her neck with a sickening thunk—the ethereal-like crystal biting deep into warm flesh like an axe splitting wood.
Wait?? What happened?!
One heartbeat you’re facing down death, the next your soul crashes into foreign flesh with the violence of a car wreck…
Your victim’s eyes bulge wide, pupils shrinking to pinpricks. Crimson blood fountains between her clutching fingers—warm, copper-thick, spurting with each weakening heartbeat. The glowing flint buried in her throat pulses with arterial rhythm, your weapon now a grotesque metronome counting down her life.
She hits the floor like a sack of meat.
Your hands shake as instant regret floods your borrowed veins.
Quickly looking around, you instantly recognize where you are — the same room as previous, just in a different body — The Stranger’s body…
“No, no, no—” The words tear from your throat raw and desperate. You crash to your knees, palms slapping wet against her wound. Warm blood squeezes between your fingers like thick honey, the metallic stench filling your nostrils until you can taste iron on your tongue.
Then—
White-hot agony explodes through your ribs — THEN the phantom pain follows…
The same pain that hit you seconds before your flint jammed into her neck…
The phantom pain tears through your chest like molten glass, every nerve ending screaming in frequencies that don’t exist. It’s not just hurt—it’s wrongness, your brain shorting out as it tries to process injuries from another body, another death, another life entirely. The sensation crawls under your skin like fire ants, burning pathways through flesh that isn’t even wounded.
Blood is pooling on the ground now…
Instinctively, you kick your journal away from the spreading crimson pool.
The blood smell—god, the smell—thick and cloying, coating the back of your throat like syrup. It triggers something deeper than memory. Back on that fateful day, watching helplessly as Amina rushes onto the expressway…
Your nephew Jinn’s laughter echoes off glass towers—pure joy bubbling from a nine-year-old whose birthday gift has just come alive in his hands. The sleek drone pilot practice controller you gave him this morning gleams silver in the afternoon sun, its quantum rotors humming as it dances away from his grasp like a mischievous fairy. Jinn’s dark locks bounce with each running step, his gap-toothed grin splitting his face as he chases his escaped treasure.
The boy’s sneakers slap concrete as he darts between pedestrians, weaving through the crowd with the fearless grace only children possess. His small hands clutch the controller, thumbs dancing over haptic buttons, trying to regain command of his spiraling birthday present.
Cold dread crystallizes in your chest as you realize where the drone is leading him. The magnetic transit zone…
Light towers pulse in frantic sequence—red, red, red—but Jinn sees only his drone tumbling toward the restricted zone. The warning systems scream their automated alerts, but terror drowns out everything except the sight of your nephew racing toward the magnetic rails.
The Bullet Pod Train materializes—chrome death riding invisible tracks at three hundred miles per hour. The emergency barriers try to deploy, but they’re designed for normal pedestrian crossing, not for a child who’s already breached every safety perimeter.
The final warning hum builds—a deep electromagnetic throb that vibrates through building foundations, rattling windows forty stories up. But Jinn’s noise-canceling headphones—the expensive ones you bought him last Christmas—drown it out completely as he focuses on his escaped toy. Holographic warnings flicker to life bright red across the asphalt of the pedestrian zones, emergency symbols blazing like neon blood, but he’s already past them, moving too fast for the sensors to track.
“Jinn, stop!” Your scream cuts through city noise like a blade.
Amina doesn’t hear the warnings either. Doesn’t see the flashing lights. Doesn’t feel the ground vibrating with electromagnetic fury. She sees only her son Jinn in harm’s way, and she reacts. Hurling herself forward, arms wrapping around his small body, shoving him clear just as—
Impact…
The sound isn’t what you expect. Not a crash or collision. More like… wet paper tearing. Then silence so complete your ears ring.
Where your sister stood, only red mist hangs in the air. Droplets of what used to be Amina spatter across your face and the nearby sidewalk like crimson rain.
Someone pulls Jinn away—he never sees the aftermath, the way the mist settles, the way it stains everything it touches.
Minutes passed in stunned silence…
Then your earpiece crackles: “Help… can’t move… so much pain…”
A voice message from Amina. A message from the dead…
When you arrived at Amina’s apartment with a shell-shocked Jinn, you found Amina sprawled on the floor, her face contorted in agony. Her hands won’t stop shaking. Her eyes darting to shadows that aren’t there.
Relief flooded you, quickly replaced by concern as you read her desperate face…
You didn’t sleep that night, neither could Amina — she couldn’t feed herself or bathe herself, let alone sleep…
“What’s it like?” you whisper that first night as she lies rigid in the bed. “Dying?”
Her laugh is broken glass: “Indescribable. Like drowning in acid while someone flays you alive. Then you wake up screaming in skin that isn’t yours, feeling injuries that never happened to this body.”
She lifts her shirt, showing unmarked flesh where the train should have liquefied her organs. But her fingers trace those unmarked ribs like they’re on fire. “It’s like waking from a nightmare, only you know it actually happened…One moment, I felt the impact, this explosion of pain. Then darkness. And suddenly — tada! I was gasping awake in this body.
“Phantom pain,” she breathes. “It follows you. Every nerve remembers what this brain never experienced. I can still feel my bones breaking, my blood boiling. This body is perfect, but my mind…”
She doesn’t finish. Doesn’t need to.
Week one: She can’t feed herself. Her hands shake too violently.
Week two: She takes her first steps without collapsing.
Week three: She stops screaming in her sleep.
Week four: She starts walking without a cane…
Week five: She —
Dying fingers brush your arm.
The woman reaches for a battered radio nearby, movements puppet-jerky as consciousness flickers. She fumbles with dials, static hissing like angry wasps her movements weak and desperate.
You watch, stunned, as she flicks it on…
A voice crackles through speakers: “Wait… you don’t… understand…”
You recoil. Her lips motionless but her words pour from the device— impossible.
“How—”
Your eyes squint as your synesthesia kicks in unbidden. Golden threads shimmer into existence, gossamer-thin connections flowing from her temples to the radio’s antenna. The tether pulses with each word she speaks through the device. It’s beautiful and terrifying—like watching someone’s soul reach across space to touch metal and circuits.
“I’m not your enemy,” she gasps through the radio, fighting to stay conscious. “I saved you… from the hippo…remember?”
Memory flashes: massive jaws, rancid breath, the thunder of charging death.
“Brought you here… to heal…” Her words slur as blood pools in her lungs. “You’re still in bad shape,” she continues, her words slowing.
“If you’re left alone… you will certainly die.”
The iron smell intensifies. You look down. You notice your robes hang heavy with blood—your blood, not hers. The dark stains spread like ink blots across fabric you don’t remember putting on.
The Ether Rig clamps against your temples, alien-like metal warm as living skin. Its lights strobe red-white-red in frantic pattern like morse code, monitoring vitals that spike and plummet with each phantom surge.
The phantom pain spikes to 6 out of 10, feeling like your ribs are cracking in slow motion, like invisible hands are reaching inside your chest and squeezing.
Realization dawns on you — “You’re in a proxy?” you ask her…
She nods weakly. “But you aren’t… Which means… we’re both in danger. We’re in… an ever-seal vault… blocks tethering… We’re trapped… “
Your synesthesia kicks in as panic floods your system. Golden geometric patterns overlay your vision, analyzing the space with mathematical precision. The walls aren’t just smooth—they’re seamless, forged from a single piece of titanium-steel alloy. No welds. No joints. No imperfections. Each surface curves with impossible perfection, creating a sphere within a cube, designed to contain forces beyond human comprehension.
The metal frames aren’t decorative—they’re functional. Massive electromagnetic coils embedded in the walls, generating fields said to bend space itself. Your synesthesia translates the energy patterns into writhing serpents of blue-white light, each one a barrier against tethering technology.
Then it hits you…
Wait.
This isn’t your reality. None of this is real—not for you anyway. You remember you’re tethered to The Stranger, experiencing his memories, his body, his death. This is just another “level in the game”, another glimpse into someone else’s life.
“Archivist!” you call out desperately, your voice echoing off the seamless walls. “ARCHIVIST! Get me out of here!”
Silence.
No familiar glitched voice. No sudden ejection from this nightmare. Nothing but the sound of your own panic reverberating in the confined space.
“ARCHIVIST!”
Terror claws at your throat as understanding hits like a physical blow. Ever-seal vaults aren’t just prisons for bodies—they’re barriers against everything. Communication. Tethering. Even The Archivist’s ability to reach across realities and pull you back to safety. The same technology that traps the dying woman in her proxy body has severed your connection to escape.
You’re not just witnessing The Adept’s death anymore. You’re living it.
Your mom’s face flashes in your mind—her worried expression when you miss curfew, the way she always waits up until she hears your key in the door. Dakota, probably still waiting for you to show up for your “study session,” controller in hand, wondering where the hell you are. Los Angeles stretching endlessly beyond your bedroom window—streets you skateboard down, places you belong, a life that suddenly feels impossibly far away.
You may never see them again. Any of them…
The woman’s voice crackles through the radio, weaker now: “You’ll die… I won’t… but I’ll be trapped in here… forever…”
She begins choking ferociously — you can’t determine if it’s from blood in her lungs or the blood blocking her esophagus…
“Quick… you must… push… that BUTTON…” She points with trembling fingers toward the far wall. The button’s blue glow beckons from across impossible distance…
“Twenty-one seconds… before it’s too late… and I untether… will be trapped… forever…”
Your heart hammers against your ribs as you lurch upright. The Ether Rig screams warnings, its alerts drilling into your skull like ice picks.
“Nineteen seconds.“
The phantom pain erupts through every nerve—not just your chest now, but everywhere. Your arms burn with imaginary flames. Your legs feel like they’re being crushed by invisible boulders. Like someone else’s death is living in your bones, and it’s fighting to drag you down with it.
“Fifteen seconds.“
You take a step. Your leg gives out immediately, sending you crashing to the cold stone floor. The impact sends fresh waves of agony through your actual wounds, mixing with the phantom torture until you can’t tell which body is screaming.
Think. THINK. Your synesthesia flares, searching for patterns, for solutions. But the mathematical beauty of the vault offers no escape—only the cold certainty of perfect containment.
“Eleven seconds.“
“Please…” you whisper to no one, to everyone, to the universe itself. the woman’s breathing becomes shallow, ragged. Each exhale might be her last.
“Eight seconds.“
You claw forward, fingernails scraping against seamless stone. The button glows mockingly in the distance—twenty feet might as well be twenty miles. Your vision blurs as phantom pain reaches into your skull, feeling like invisible hands are cracking your ribs from the inside.
Why is this happening? What did I do to deserv—
“Five seconds.“
Desperation claws at your throat. You reach out with your synesthesia, begging it to show you something, anything—
“Three seconds.“
Behind you, she exhales. Long. Slow. Likely final…
The sound chills your blood—not just air leaving lungs, but life leaving a body. You’ve heard it before, with Amina’s original death, that terrible moment when existence simply… stops. It’s a sound that echoes in frequencies your ears can’t detect but your memory keeps forever.
Terror floods your system. You’re going to die here. Alone. Trapped. No one will ever find your body. No one will ever know what happened. The phantom pain reaches a crescendo, feeling like your entire being is being torn apart at the molecular level.
But then—through the agony, through the fear—you see it.
The flint. Still buried in her throat. Still tethered to you.
Memory flashes: The Stranger on the hover-stretcher, his hand rising with deliberate purpose, golden light pulsing from his fingertips. The way he reached out, not toward the hippo directly, but toward something beyond. The tethers. The connections.
Your synesthesia explodes into full awareness. Golden threads shimmer into existence, connecting everything—you to the flint, the flint to the button, will to matter, thought to reality. The mathematical beauty of it takes your breath away even as your body screams in protest.
“Two seconds.“
You stretch out with senses you barely understand, feeling for those invisible connections. The threads pulse with your heartbeat, respond to your desperate need.
“One second.“
“Please!” you whisper.
Then you feel it—the tether. Not just see it with your synesthesia, but feel it like a physical cord running from your core to the flint buried in her throat. It thrums with energy, electric and alive, responding to your will like an extension of your own nervous system. Your synesthesia calculates in real-time: trajectory, velocity, angle of impact—golden mathematical equations blazing across your vision in perfect precision.
With every ounce of strength left in your shattered body, you pull on that invisible thread. Not with your hands, but with something deeper. Your soul grabs hold of the connection and yanks with desperate fury.
The flint tears free with a wet, sucking sound that will haunt your dreams. It flies through the air like it’s guided by invisible hands, striking the button with an electric snap that echoes through the vault like thunder.
A panel slides open, revealing darkness deeper than space.
For a moment, there’s only silence…
You stare at her limp body on the floor — then back at the dark void beyond the open panel…
But, you are too late…
You start to realize — this is it…
Through the pain, you can already start feeling the numbness in your toes…
You’re going to die here — or possibly even worse — be trapped here forever. The button press was meaningless. The vault is still sealed.
You can feel the walls begin closing in on you —like they are moving inward with mechanical precision, ready to crush you into paste. Your phantom pain reaches 8 out of 10—impossible levels that make you question if pain can actually kill you. It feels like your soul is being flayed alive while your body burns from the inside out.
.
.
.
Time stretches like taffy. Seconds feel like they become minutes. You can smell your own fear, taste copper pennies on your tongue. Is this how it ends? Trapped in a box?
.
.
.
The darkness beyond the panel remains absolute. Empty. Mocking.
.
.
.
But then a rustling catches your attention.
A woman steps out from the open panel and falls to her knees — gasping for air…
She is identical to the one you just slain…
Her hand clenches her throat…
Her new eyes lock with yours, a slight smile now playing on her lips as she regains her bearings.
Her eyes glance to the far end of the room, then back to you —
The flat horizontal panel where The Stranger originally laid, snaps to life and begins floating toward you…
Your blood soaked garbs still draped over it…
“Now,” she says, her voice stronger and clearer, “let’s start over, shall we?”
Both of you collapse simultaneously—you from exhaustion, lack of blood and phantom torture, her from the overwhelming echo of a death she didn’t experience in this body. For a moment, you lie there breathing hard, the relief so intense it’s almost painful. You’re alive. She’s alive. Somehow, impossibly, you’ve both survived.
The phantom pain begins to recede from its impossible peak, settling into a merely excruciating 5 out of 10. Your breathing slows. Your heart stops trying to hammer its way out of your chest.
The platform float closer toward you with humming grace. She helps roll your broken body aboard, her touch gentle despite the phantom torment clearly wracking her new flesh. Her hands shake as she touches her unmarked throat, still processing through her recent death.
Questions crowd your mind like vultures— the biggest one: how many more proxies does she have in that hidden panel???
But before you can voice any of them, red lights strobe throughout the vault. Alarms shriek like banshees.
“Warning. Incoming objects. Fatal impact in forty-seven seconds.”
The phantom pain surges to 7 out of 10, feeling like your chest is being crushed in a vice made of broken glass and molten metal. As darkness swallows you whole, one thought claws at your fading consciousness:
What’s coming for us?
And how in the world can I untether from this nightmare???