The Unspoken Trial Part III

In the corner of my cell, a light flared, sharp, searing, almost blinding. I shielded my eyes, then saw the source, the page Aeris and I had been given. Where once it carried only a countdown, its surface now blazed with new letters, a single command written so bright it nearly burned through the paper. Proceed to the Judgment Hall.

The words bent themselves into a language I could understand. Was it the prison itself forcing comprehension into my mind, or had Aeris woven some quiet magic into the page? I couldn’t be sure. Either way, the meaning was clear.

I stepped out of my cell and into the corridor, and there she was, Aeris, waiting, her own page burning with the same command. The faint glow of her bracelet caught my eye, and when I checked my wrist, mine pulsed with light as well. We didn’t need to speak. One look was enough, a shared resolve, the quiet understanding that this path would not offer us another chance. Side by side, we began to walk.

Usually, the prison twisted itself to guide us toward whatever destination it chose, hallways folding, walls rearranging, whole corridors sliding into place. But this time, nothing shifted. Instead, the prison collapsed around us. Stone cracked. Ceilings buckled. Inmates stared from their cells as the structure broke apart in our wake, their shouts trembling with fear. The ruin chased only us, like the institution itself was shedding its skin to drive us forward.

The guards awaited us at a dead end, stationed before a wall that seemed more suited to a burial mound than a prison, massive, ancient, like the entrance to a Viking’s tomb. No door was visible. But at the tap of their spears, the stone groaned, splitting and folding until a vast doorway yawned open, heavy and ceremonial. Overdone. Dramatic. I almost scoffed, but the weight in my chest wouldn’t let me. Neither Aeris nor I faltered.

We stepped through.

The Judgment Hall towered around us, a cathedral of stone and silence. The colossal statues loomed in their eternal watch, eyes glowing with unearthly fire. When their voices came, they struck like hammers on iron, deep, metallic, echoing through every wall, every bone, every thought.

“Inmate 10485 and Aeris Faelan.”

The voice crashed through the chamber, deep and metallic, reverberating from the stone and into my chest.

The way they addressed Aeris by her full name, while I was reduced to a string of digits, gnawed at me. A petty irritation, maybe, but it stuck. Then the name Faelan struck a chord. Where had I heard it before? …A flash of memory came wafting by “Ms. Faelan.” That was it. She’d been a teacher, in that game. Wait… wasn’t Aeris also a teacher? The thought lodged in my head, unfinished, before the next words came.

“I’d prefer if you called me by my name instead of the first six digits of the divergence meter when read on the promised place where time intersects!” My voice rose, breaking against the chamber walls. “I’m a person too! My name is—”

I shouted it so loud the prison itself had to hear, from every shadowed corner. Aeris’s head snapped toward me, confusion in her eyes.

“You wish to be called upon with respect?” the statues boomed back. “Answer: why did you neglect to write your name at graduation? What changed that makes you care now?”

The question slammed into me. For a moment, my mouth went dry. Then the words came, steadier than I expected.

“What changed? Everything. The man who walked that stage didn’t earn that degree. He didn’t kill anyone either. He just accepted whatever came his way, good or bad. But now,” I lifted my chin, the weight of it falling off my back. “Now I’ll act. For what I believe is right!”

A hiss of metal broke the silence. My bracelet clicked open, a band of light unfurling from widened eye like a thread severing a chain.

“Very well,” the voice declared with content, echoing off the vaulted ceiling. “Before we pass your judgments, it is customary to ask: Do you know why you are here, Aeris Faelan and Akito Nozaki”

I thought I was prepared. I’d been asked before. But never had I stopped to think. Why was I here? Did they mean here as in the prison itself, or here, as in this chamber? Did it even matter?

Memories rose unbidden. Emails from the school, whispers from students in lecture halls, the deaths that had followed me like a curse. Classmates. Professors. People I knew, people I once sat beside. And me? I had nothing to do with them. I didn’t even care. That was the point. Maybe that was why I was here.

I clenched my fist. At first, I wanted to cry out, I don’t belong here. The charges were false. But the fire, the ash, the shame of doing nothing stopped the words in my throat.

“I know why,” I said, my voice low, then rising. “Because I let everything fall apart. Because I thought doing nothing was safer than being wrong. But I won’t let that happen again. I’ll prove these charges false. I won’t stand idly by any longer. I’ll act, and I will earn my freedom!”

The bracelet on my wrist split further open, light pouring from its cracks.

Beside me, Aeris trembled, silent. Her lie pressed against her chest like a weight too long carried. She whispered, “I only wanted to help.” But even as the words left her, they twisted bitterly on the air.

The look on her face said much more than her words. She had a look of rising determination, the face of someone who has confronted themselves. Her eyes lifted to mine, and in that reflection, her voice hardened.

“No. That isn’t the truth. I wanted to believe I was whole, so I made others carry what I couldn’t face. I wanted people to help me, so I helped others in the ways that I wanted and not how they needed. I told myself I was their light, but I was only hiding in the shadow of my wounds. I am here because I lied, to them, and to myself. But I won’t lie anymore.”

Her bracelet burst wider, a flare of white heat arcing across her arm.

Aeris stepped forward, her voice ringing clear. “I’m here because you called me a liar. Before, I thought that was meaningless and cruel. Now I know what that lie is, I see the truth. I’ll do what must be done. Before I failed Everett, I failed myself. So now, I’m going to succeed, I’ll do better not just for others but for me as well!”

I laughed under my breath, energy I hadn’t felt in years sparking in my chest. “And I’m here to attest to my sloth. Why exactly you dragged me across dimensions for this? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just some stupid contest you’re running on how many people you can keep here, but we’re breaking out of here whether you like it or not!”

The quip rang out sharper than I expected, defiance folded in with my words. And it felt good. Alive. To say more than the minimum. How much had I missed these past years living like a ghost?

The voices of the statues rolled like thunder. “All those who stood before you have faltered and met a terrible fate. Do you truly believe you won’t fall where they have fallen?”

I clenched my fists. For once, the fear didn’t take root. “We won’t,” I answered, my voice carrying further than I thought possible. “Because we’ve seen exactly what you’ve wanted us to this entire time.”

No glance was needed, Aeris and I understood. The memories we had scrubbed away in endless corridors, the shadows that vanish during orientation, those were the remains of people. Inmates who failed their judgment, erased from existence but not from this place.

“They thought they were forgotten,” Aeris whispered, but her voice rose as she reached for the folded cloth she always kept at her sleeve. Unfurling it, she smiled with a strange, fragile joy. “Now it’s complete, just how I first saw it.” She raised the cloth like a banner, a vow made flesh. “I won’t let them be erased. Their losses carried us here, to this chamber. They led us to finish what they could not.”

The statues stirred. The bracelets at our wrists trembled, glowing faintly as if their locks heard her words.

The air grew thick with shadows, with the weight of accusation. They hissed fragments of memory I’ve never experienced, the last moment of one of my professors, classmates whispering behind my back. Her student, Everett, turning away from her, hollow-eyed and unheard, marching to his own self-inflicted death. The prison was pressing us to deny, to collapse as so many had.

But denial was what had bound us here. If we were to break free, it could only be by naming what we had fled.

The statues’ eyes burned brighter, their judgment pressing down like the weight of mountains. My bracelet quivered against my wrist, the first notch trembling as if waiting.

“I told myself silence kept me safe,” I said, voice hoarse. “But silence only made me complicit.”

The shackle cracked, a seam of light bleeding out.

“Every time I turned away, I killed a piece of myself.”

The second notch opened. My hand shook, not from fear, but release.

“I thought apathy was mercy. It was cowardice.”

The third crack split wide, metal groaning as though it couldn’t stand my words.

The shadows of memory lunged at me, smoke, fire, ash, my fallen classmates screaming. But I didn’t flinch. I stood straighter.

“I did not earn the name Nozaki. I hid behind it. But I will earn it now.”

Another notch broke open, light spilling like threads unweaving.

“My family carried me, while I drifted with the river. But I am done drifting.”

The fifth split. Heat seared my wrist, but it wasn’t pain, it was fire in my veins.

“I will fight the current. I will carve the path I was always meant to walk. I am Akito Nozaki, and I will not be slothful again!”

The final lock screamed as it snapped, light bursting in a halo.

Beside me, Aeris trembled, clutching her cloth. Her voice was thin at first, almost breaking.

“I said I healed others. But I only handed them my wounds.”

Her shackle clicked once, hesitant.

“I told myself I was strong. I was only hollow.”

Another seam of light.

“I clung to their light because I feared my own shadows.”

Her third notch tore free. She was breathing hard now, eyes wet but unyielding.

“I thought kindness would save me. It only hid me.”

The bracelet groaned, a fourth notch flaring open.

“I wanted to believe I was whole. I was not. I am not. But I will face that truth.”

The fifth cracked.

She raised her head then, eyes burning with the fire she’d buried. “I am Aeris Faelan. I was a liar, but I will not lie again!”

Her shackle exploded in light, bursting free just as mine had.

The shadows screamed, writhing back from the glow.

We stood together, wrists bare, the weight gone. Not erased but transformed.

“We are not here to be erased,” I said, voice steady.

Aeris joined me, her voice ringing with mine. “We are here to be seen.”

And in that moment, the prison itself seemed to shudder. The statues lean forward, eyes glowing so bright it hurts. “Then prove it. Show us that neither of you will falter.”

Side by side, in unison, we declare “We will show you all!” The light in the statue’s eyes dim, as the walls around us collapse inwards. The cracks lining up exactly as the mirror that guided us here once had. The light from this world’s sun begins to shine through illuminating a path forward.

“Your judgement is not yet over…”