Aeris' Past, Part II

I left the dining hall on my own, only to find myself being escorted by a guard after the ringing of a bell. I was told I was required to show up to an orientation. 

The hallway beyond hadn’t been there before. It curved left, then right, and then impossibly downward. The descent was subtle, but wrong. The floor’s tilt didn’t match the pull of my body. My balance felt borrowed, as if gravity itself was being rewritten in real time. The walls seemed to breathe, pulsating without moving, until I forced myself not to notice.

Just when I thought we were spiraling deep underground, the space opened up into an impossible vault. Black stone walls rose hundreds of feet, maybe more, vanishing into an absence so vast it was indistinguishable from the sky. Etched along their surfaces was script that moved like restless water, its shapes unfamiliar yet heavy with meaning.

Tiered seating stretched in concentric rings toward a center stage where a sphere of light floated just above the ground. Around it, hundreds of eyes locked forward. For a moment, I thought they were staring at the sphere, then I realized they were staring at me.

I blinked, and the guard who had guided me here was gone. My pulse quickened.

“Inmate Aeris,” a voice said. No, not said, placed. The words skipped my ears and settled cold and certain in my mind. I looked around, trying to find the source.

From beneath the sphere, a cloaked figure unfurled a shifting scroll.

“Classification: Fractured.”

The word hit harder than the rest. A ripple of quiet moved through the crowd, curiosity from some, pity from others.

“Role: Custodian.”

A column of violet light descended over me. I felt nothing, but when it vanished, my bracelet had changed, seamless silver, etched with a single rotating eye.

“You’ll be assigned to Reflection Duty. Compliance is mandatory. Memory is provisional.”

Before I could ask what any of that meant, the ground dropped away, not literally, but in that instant-lurch way that tricks your stomach into thinking it has. My vision warped, and the next moment I was no longer at the center of the chamber.

I stood in the highest ring of the stands, surrounded immediately by no one but further out, strangers whose attention was now fixed elsewhere, as the cloaked figure greeted the assembly with the same voice that had named me.

I didn’t know if I’d been dismissed, initiated, or sentenced.

Then, just as my gaze drifted, I saw it, off to the side, between the rings of stone seats. A shadow figure, tall and fluid, half-wrapped in the air like smoke folding in on itself. No one else seemed to notice. No one except me. Its head turned as if it knew I was watching. And then, it vanished. It didn't walk away, nor did it fade. It was simply erased.

The crowd didn’t stir. The cloaked figure didn’t pause.

The orientation ended as abruptly as it had begun. The last of the formalities dissolved into low murmurs among the gathered crowd, their voices like ripples breaking on unseen shores.

That was when I saw it, just for a heartbeat.

Between two of the bleacher rows, where the stone met shadow, a figure stood that shouldn’t have been there. Not cloaked in the ceremonial fabric of the prison’s officials, nor dressed in the dull grays of the inmates. It was more absence than person, a smudge of darkness shaped like a human frame, leaning forward as if to hear something no one else could.

I blinked. And it was gone.

No one else reacted. No heads turned. The sphere of light in the chamber continued its steady, soundless rotation. For all I knew, it hadn’t existed at all.

Except I knew it had.

I didn’t ask about it. Not because I was afraid of the answer, but because I suspected there wouldn’t be one.

When we were dismissed, the crowd began to disperse in branching streams toward the prison’s many corridors. I found myself drifting toward the cell blocks when a voice called out, calm, but with an unspoken command beneath it.

“Cleaning duty.”

A guard I hadn’t seen before stood waiting, face hidden behind the same knightly mask all the wardens seemed to wear. No expression to read, no hint of who or what they might be.

I followed without a word.

We moved through the west wing, the halls narrowing as we went. There was no one else here, only the two of us, and the sound of our footsteps folding into the low hum of the walls. The air smelled faintly of ash, and underneath that, something older, like the lingering breath of a fire long dead.

It was a maze with no windows, the stone broken only by archways leading to empty rooms. At times, the floor dipped without warning, or the ceiling stretched high overhead in dizzying curves. Gravity seemed half-interested in holding things together here.

We stopped at a wide, dust-choked chamber. Rows of long stone tables ran from one end to the other, their surfaces dull and untouched.

The guard handed me a cloth and a bucket of still water.

“Clean everything. I don't care how you do it, or how long it takes. Just get it done”

That was all.

I started with the nearest table, the cold stone gritty beneath the cloth. At first, my focus was small, corners, edges, the slow circles of wiping away what had gathered here over… how long? I couldn’t tell.

Then it happened.

Halfway through a motion, the stone seemed to give under my palm, not crumbling, but softening, becoming wood, warm and familiar under my fingers. The dust was gone. In its place, the faint scratch of pencil shavings and the deep grooves left by restless hands.

It wasn’t here. It was then.

A boy sat at the table, hair flopping over his eyes as he glared at the open page in front of him. He tapped the desk once, twice, then looked up at me.

“Miss Aeris,” he said, the words careful but heavy. His voice was a younger echo of something older, bitterness unformed but already rooted. “You said you’d help.”

My throat tightened. I opened my mouth...

...and the world snapped.

Stone again. The cloth rough in my hands. My palms stung, raw from the grit. I realized I was gripping the table like it might slip away if I let go.

The cloth was different now. No longer the plain, stiff weave I’d been given. It was thinner, fraying at the edges, the fibers soft with age. In the weave, faint shapes lingered, shadows pressed into the fabric like memories caught and flattened.

I didn’t give it back when my shift ended. The guard didn’t ask for it.

In my cell, I smoothed the cloth against the wall. My fingers moved without thinking, tracing lines in the soot and grime that clung to the stone. I drew the thing I’d seen in the stands during orientation—the silhouette that shouldn’t have been there.

Slowly, it began taking shape.

But when I stepped back, I realized I had added something I hadn’t meant to. Behind the shadow stood a faint curve, just a suggestion of an archway, like a doorway, or perhaps a mirror, its surface rippling with shapes too blurred to name.

I hadn’t planned it. The lines were faint, hesitant, like my hand had been guided by something half-remembered. Just then, the splotches of ink that stained the cloth began to dance around, they gathered around each other then vanished. 

All that remained on the cloth was the one thing I drew.

[Authors Note: 

I'm really sorry if these past chapters have been decreasing in quality. I'm planning on going back and revising them (if that's something this website allows). I took a break to start thinking through the story a bit more, creating more and more detailed roadmaps. Doing this had unintentionally lead me to rushing through these chapters in favor of crafting ideas and having the story exist solely between lines rather than writing the lines themselves. Anyways I include this note because of the rise of AI writing, and that even though I'm sure these past few chapters may sound lifeless and robotic, this is due to a lack of time and needed care put into them. 

If anyone has read this far, thank you dearly. I hope you'll forgive these first drafts, and as a proper apology, I'll make this story 1000x better, just you wait. I may have lost sight of the present writing, but never once did I lose sight of the end goal, of the characters stories (sadly I have found their voices have changed when they weren't supposed to), and the overall narrative.

With all that being said, beyond the scope of this contest, I aspire to write a story that's so good, it may one day be compared to the greats of: Steins;Gate, and Re:Zero. If this can even be half as good as either of those, I will know that I would have succeeded.

Until then, see you next chapter.]