Apprehension coiled up his spine like icy vines, each heartbeat striking their thorns. Nervousness made his breathing shallow and rapid. Behind the blindfold, in the darkness, he could almost hear the roar of his own blood rushing in his ears. The larger, warmer hand on his shoulder was like a silent branding iron, announcing the transfer of control, burning away the last scraps of his fragile composure.
Just as all his senses focused on the oppression and uncertainty brought by that unfamiliar touch—
Change struck without warning.
The hand on his shoulder clenched—suddenly, violently.
Not an adjustment. Not a light press. Five fingers like iron pincers dug deep between muscle and bone, applying brutal, merciless force—enough to make bone ache—seizing him, crushing down.
"Ghkh—!!"
A short, twisted, barely human sound of pain was forcibly squeezed from deep in Erika's throat, tangled with air abruptly cut off. He couldn't even tell if he was screaming. The agony was so sudden, so violent, it drowned all thought instantly.
In the instant of that crushing grip, his entire body convulsed as if electrocuted, curling uncontrollably toward the seized side in an unnaturally distorted posture. His spine twisted, his neck wrenched the other way. His restrained left arm and torso spasmed violently, trembling as they tried to resist pain that felt like it would pulverize his shoulder blade. The wheelchair rocked slightly.
The hand did not relax.
It seemed welded to his shoulder, maintaining that initial, cold grip—stable, constant, inescapable. It neither loosened in response to his struggle nor increased pressure to finish him off. It held him precisely at the threshold where pain erased thought.
The first wave of tearing, bone-splitting agony surged through him like a tsunami. Then it didn't fade—it settled, becoming a deep, persistent, bone-burrowing pressure.
Under this constant, intense stimulation, something changed.
Erika realized he hadn't gone numb. He hadn't blacked out. Instead, the pain acted like a rough file, scraping away the dull insulation that had coated his senses.
He could feel every edge where the restraint suit's straps bit into his skin. The faint uneven grain of the wheelchair's leather. Even the swollen ache of blood struggling through his cramped limbs.
More importantly, the once-dead silence inside his body was being forcibly awakened—lit up. Not energy flowing, but something more primal: a neurological, instinctive awakening. He could feel the pain radiating outward from the grip on his shoulder like ripples from a thrown stone, spreading along half-forgotten, latent pathways that had once belonged to energy channels—tiny waves laced with sharp, needling sensation.
Sluggish nerves began to stir.
This was no gentle awakening. It was a near-savage revival born of agony. Each breath tugged at his shoulder, bringing fresh pain—yet that pain made him feel more real, more present within this bound, stripped body.
He remained curled, trembling faintly. But the initial panic and confusion had ebbed. He stopped fighting the grip. Instead, he began to endure it, to coexist with the pain, observing every subtle internal change it forced upon him.
The owner of the hand stayed silent. Only the cold, unwavering grip—and the faint vibration of the wheelchair rolling onward—confirmed his presence.
Darkness remained.Silence remained.
But in Erika's world, a new color had been added—the sharp, vivid crimson of pain itself. It tore open numbness, brought suffering, and yet, unexpectedly, pried loose a long-slumbering fragment of his body's own primitive responsiveness.
The path ahead was unknown.The one in control, inscrutable.
But in this moment—in this pure pain—he was acutely aware of one thing:
He was still alive.Alive in a way that was more brutal—yet also more lucid.
"Quiet."
The word appeared directly in his mind—clear, steady, utterly devoid of emotion, like a factual statement. The sensation… mind-voice. But unlike Anna's clumsy, emotionally noisy connection, this link was firm, cold, precise—carrying unquestionable authority.
Pain sharpened his awareness while draining all capacity to respond. Every scrap of his consciousness was consumed by the iron grip on his shoulder. **He knew he couldn't answer—**even a thought might collapse into meaningless static under the pain.
He could only endure.
At last, just as he felt his shoulder blade might fracture, the crushing force began to ease—slowly, fraction by fraction. Like a tide receding under perfect control.
Erika gasped like a fish thrown ashore and returned to water, sucking in cold air greedily. His chest heaved; his bound body trembled with exhaustion. The pain didn't vanish—it merely downgraded from annihilating pressure to a heavy, spreading ache.
The reprieve was brief.
Before his body could complete even a single recovery cycle—
"Have you repented?"
The voice returned, closer, heavier—judgment given form.
The world seemed to still for one second.A second that felt like confirmation.
Then—
The hand clenched again.
This time the force was even more violent. No longer testing, but crushing—punitive, awakening by force. Fingers sank deep, as if trying to seize bone directly, to squeeze cracks into it.
"GRRAAAAAGH—!!!"
Erika's scream tore out, hoarse and ruined. His body arched violently, veins bulging along his neck. Behind the blindfold, white flashes detonated in the blackness. He could feel his teeth chattering uncontrollably, saliva spilling from the corner of his mouth.
Repent?Repent for what?
Betraying the Sanctum?Fleeing the ritual?Entering the Black Tower?Or merely… existing?
Agony surged like a cataclysmic tide, obliterating every path of thought. His mind burned white-hot, reduced to raw survival and hatred of pain.
Phantom sensation.
A more vivid, more horrifying presence. As if the missing limb wasn't empty, but packed with cold, dormant thorns. Now, jolted by violence, those thorns stirred, scraping against flesh and bone that no longer existed.
This was worse than absence.
With each renewed application of force, the thorned presence spread—**slowly, painfully—**from the amputation site deeper into his torso. Not growing, but being pushed inward. Every inch brought stabbing, organ-piercing pain and violent rejection.
Erika could no longer scream. Only ragged gasps tore from his throat. His body convulsed wildly against the restraints.
"It seems not."
The mind-voice returned, faintly indifferent.
The pressure vanished.
The hand released him.
His body collapsed forward, barely held upright by restraints. He coughed violently, tears streaming, every spasm reigniting the ice-and-fire agony within.
Darkness returned. Silence returned.
But neither was pure anymore.
Within him, the cold thorns remained— nestled deep, uninvited, impossible to expel. Filling the space where emptiness should have been.
As if he had lost not only the arm, but also the proper emptiness that space should have held. Now, something not his own—yet forcibly embedded—filled that void, bringing a sense of fullness more unbearable than emptiness itself.
The wheelchair began moving again.
Pushed, as before, by the owner of the large hand—silent and steady.
Erika could not think. He could not judge direction. He could not even clearly perceive "himself." His existence was splintered into several focal points of agony: the fiery shoulder, twisted as if crushed out of shape; the cold, stabbing foreign sensation deep within his torso; and his consciousness, scoured into fragments, reduced to nothing but a numb shell by the pain.
After an unknowable length of time, the wheelchair stopped.
He felt the restraints being undone. That large hand seized his intact left arm again, hauling him up from the wheelchair. His legs were weak and unresponsive, barely able to support him; most of his weight sagged against that arm's grip.
He was dragged a few steps, then pressed down onto a cold, hard surface—not a bed, but something more like a metal chair or a raised platform.
The hand withdrew.
Something soft yet unyielding—straps—emerged from the chair back, the armrests, and beneath the seat. They automatically aligned, tightened, and locked into place, binding his torso, left arm, thighs, and ankles firmly to the chair. More precise, more intimate, and far more deliberately mechanical than the restraint suit had ever been.
Total immobilization was complete.
Once again, he was left alone.
But this time, not on a sickbed in a pale, clinical room—but on an unknown chair steeped in cold mechanical presence. Not in a relatively "safe" state of weakness, but bearing the body's newly, violently awakened internal anomaly and its sharp, lingering pain.
Darkness.Silence.Cold.Pain.Restraint.
And the final icy judgment lingering in his mind:
"It seems not."
Repentance? He could not even begin to grasp what "repentance" was meant to refer to.
The internal "thorns" pulsed faintly in the silence, delivering fresh, needle-sharp pain.
Erika slumped in the absolutely bound chair, even the strength to tremble completely spent. The darkness behind the blindfold seemed to merge seamlessly with the cold darkness buried deep within his torso.
He did not know where this was.He did not know what would happen next.
But he faintly sensed that the brutal "awakening" and interrogation he had just endured were not the end—only the beginning of some longer, more unimaginable "processing" or "adjustment" procedure.
Silence reclaimed everything.
Only the unceasing, icy pain within his body spoke on—wordlessly declaring that change had already occurred.