Evelyn’s pallid face turned wax-yellow, fat beads of sweat rolling down her cheeks like rain on old wax paper.
A thorned spike sat lodged in her pierced abdomen; blood soaked her clothes, shifting from deep crimson to tar-black.
Pain crept across her features like a blind stranger feeling out an unfamiliar road, each twitch a map of suffering.
“Cough... cough-cough...”
She coughed, and something surged up from deep within, like a congealed lesion reversing through her throat.
She vomited blood in waves. Clots splattered the corridor wall and sprayed into its packed pores.
The torment kept grinding; the torn stomach was churned by the spike like a storm-tossed sea.
Black slurry fountained from her mouth.
“Don’t,” Hedi warned Olivia from the shadows, a chill crawling her skin into goosebumps.
“If you kill her, she won’t talk.”
Olivia stopped the cruel stirring. She didn’t pull the spike from Evelyn’s belly, but she crafted a brittle balance.
She held Evelyn on the edge—life shaving death, awareness kissing blackout.
The pain was slow and merciless. Her body frayed apart, yet her mind clung on like a lizard’s severed tail, still twitching.
Hedi shuffled closer and looked at Evelyn’s wan face.
She had too many words; they rose to her throat, then broke like surf and left her sighing.
“I... won’t let you...” Evelyn rasped.
“Feel satisfied...”
“Why chase satisfaction?”
“Because... it’s... always... like... this...”
Hedi understood. It dragged back the news documentaries from her original world.
A prisoner stood in a white, gleaming courtroom, wrists cuffed, hearing the judge read his crimes.
Her child heart went cold like winter glass.
Then the close-up showed remorse, tears, the plea to trade death for a lifetime behind bars.
It made her feel a rough relief, the grim sweetness of punishment landing on guilt.
Back then, she believed a sacred force would punish nearly every kind of evil that could happen.
So watching the news became ritual.
With growing up, that feeling evaporated like smoke at dawn.
“Right. People are like that,” Hedi said, her tone plain.
“More than justice, people crave a remorseful face. It gratifies their own understanding.
If that culprit, out of regret, offers their life to help the suffering, the audience feels even more fulfilled.”
Evelyn’s lips trembled. “...Those are surface apologies. People call them crocodile tears...”
Hedi recalled a Priest’s sermon. “Repentance is a journey of self-recognition.”
“Heh... heh...”
“And he said, it’s often triggered from the outside.
But it only works if a person chooses to listen, and that choice can only come from within.”
“Melvina...” Evelyn whispered, thinning to a thread. “I will never... regret...”
“I can tell.”
Evelyn coughed violently, like a half-dead sailor dragging one last breath on a sinking ship.
Her throat felt stuffed with cotton.
All her strength went into tugging, wrenching, pounding—no motion to spare.
The walls crackled and snapped; green phosphorescence fluttered and painted her body.
It gleamed like dying fireflies venting their last light, frozen mid-glow.
“Too much blood loss,” said a voice from the dark, scratchy as a worn record.
“A kind of unregretting acceptance of fate.”
Hedi blinked in surprise. “You can speak?”
“My voice sounds ugly.”
“It’s fine... What will you do with her?”
“Leave her in the Dark Realm. She’ll become a new wall, like the last Investigator.”
“I’ve seen it.” Hedi crouched to ease the pain in her ankle. “Where did the other Investigators go?”
“Hollow walls.”
“The Dark Realm used roaches to herd them there?”
After a pause, Olivia answered, “Another core.”
“There are two cores here?”
“One.”
“Got it. Only closing both at once will truly lull the Dark Realm.”
“Don’t say that. I’ll kill you.”
“So the other Investigators are already dead?”
“Only you remain.”
By the wall’s green glow, Hedi checked her swollen, throbbing right ankle.
As her focus tightened, an insect limb, like from another dimension, slid into the center of her sight.
At its tip hung a string of crystal pendants, their halos faint in the dimness.
“Out,” Olivia said. Her true body stayed buried in gloom. “You can’t stay.”
“From the other Investigators?”
“Don’t you like using relics?”
“I just don’t get why you’re helping me.”
“Selina wants in. I can feel her probing the Dark Realm.”
Hedi took the crystal, listening like a thief cracking a safe.
She chased the click and clack of its turning, trying to catch the one note that breaks the lock and frees her from the Dark Realm.
“Don’t know how to use it?”
“I wait for Selina to handle it.” Hedi flicked her hair, irritation sparkling. “Don’t rush me!”
“She’s coming in.”
Whoosh.
The crystal flared with a hard white light.
In an instant, wind slammed against Hedi’s body, like same poles of magnets repelling with brutal force.
She shot upward; her back didn’t hit the wall—she felt like she passed straight through it.
Two, three seconds.
She stayed rigid, suspended, riding the whiplash of sudden weightlessness.
Her body refused to accept it—muscles quivered, head swam, ears hummed.
The strange drift vanished. Hedi’s eyes snapped open.
Her heart thumped like a drum, and gravity dragged her down.
She fell like a meteor ending the age of dinosaurs and slammed into the earth.
“Professor!” Selina wrapped Hedi up, breathing in her scent to confirm it wasn’t a dream.
“I’ll have to burn favors. If you pull this again, that’s breach!”
“Okay—sorry.”
“Look at you. Filthy all over, mud in your hair!”
“Where’d your honorifics go?”
Fury blazing, Selina poured it into Hedi’s curls, wrecking neat strands into a wild, matted field.
Hedi squirmed. “Mmm... hey... Don’t. My foot hurts.”
“You’re hurt! I can’t bear you getting hurt!”
“Bold talk. You only knocked me out, huh?”
Selina hugged her, nearly with all her strength, then spoke softly, a dull ache in her voice.
“I have to learn some things. So this never happens again.”
“Good.”
“I’m not joking!”
“I know.” Hedi nestled against Selina and pressed her lips gently to her neck.
“Neither of us is a burden to the other. We move as two.”
