"Have you repented?"
The cold mind-voice chiseled into his consciousness once more, like a judge's final, inescapable interrogation. No emotion. No urgency. Only a calm wait for an answer—or perhaps, for an outcome.
Introspection required strength. It required clear memory, and a self not torn apart by pain. Erika had none of these.
He had only helplessness—like a moth pinned to a dark specimen board.The visual afterimages had finally subsided, leaving behind nothing but pure, all-devouring darkness, and the burning numbness deep inside his eyeballs. Thought was a luxury. And worse—it was useless.
It could not bring relief.It could not lessen the pain.It could not even stand as a final, illusory banner of dignity.
He could not resist.He could not endure.
Perhaps the only way to survive—to make it through the next moment—was to yield.
To stop this endless, meticulous torment.To buy even a single breath of reprieve.Even if it meant drinking poison to quench his thirst.
Erika's dry, cracked lips trembled."Hhkh… hhk…"Only broken sounds scraped out of his throat. After several failed attempts, he finally forced out a fragmented sentence, barely audible—yet unbearably clear in the silence:
"I… confess… to the Merciful Father…"
The voice was hoarse and weak, steeped in the salt of involuntary tears and the tremor of total exhaustion.
He no longer had the strength to consider what repentance truly meant.No strength to ask whether he was, in fact, guilty.
Fixed to the chair, surrounded by pain within and without, sealed in absolute darkness, he was like a drowning man grasping at a familiar straw—something known, something that might offer a brief pause for breath.
Even if that straw belonged to his tormentor.
This was not faith.Not even fear.
It was merely a mechanical survival response, driven by instinct alone—a reflex triggered by the repeated appearance of a keyword.
The moment the words left his mouth, it was as if an invisible switch had been flipped.
At the edge of the absolute darkness before him, a single point of light appeared.
Not the violent, retina-searing glare from before.This light was faint, hazy, unstable, as though filtered through thick frosted glass. It barely illuminated a small area ahead of him.
The source seemed to come from the same direction as the previous light, but its intensity had been deliberately restrained—just enough to sketch the rough outlines of the chamber walls, and the cold reflections of the restraints binding his body.
Then—
A figure emerged slowly from the shadows behind the light source.
The figure stopped at just the right position, placing itself directly in backlight. The glare traced its silhouette, but its face remained completely swallowed by deep shadow, impossible to discern.
Only the blue robe it wore remained visible—a silent declaration of identity.
"Speak your sins."
The figure's voice passed through some kind of filter—neutral, steady, yet carrying a strange note of curiosity… almost interest.Not the authority of a judge looking down from above.
"Let us beg the Merciful Father for forgiveness."
The tone shifted slightly—softened, coaxing, disturbingly gentle, almost rhythmic.
As the words fell, the hazy light before Erika began to brighten.
Not suddenly.But slowly—agonizingly slowly—yet irreversibly.
As if someone were patiently turning an invisible dimmer, one precise increment at a time.
The light grew clearer.More darkness receded.The figure's outline sharpened—though its face remained unseen.
Under the strengthening glow, the texture of the blue robe revealed itself: worn, delicate, aged—as though shaped by countless years.
"Beneath the Merciful Father," the figure continued, its voice steady within the rising light, "we are no longer separate from one another."
Like an incantation.
"If your confession is sincere, you will receive a response."
The light grew brighter.
From vague to clear.From hazy to distinct.
Erika's eyes—forced open, unable to close—began to feel the pressure again. Tears welled uncontrollably, a futile attempt by his body to mitigate the intensifying stimulus.
He stared fixedly at the silhouetted figure beyond the light, trying desperately to extract any recognizable feature from the shadow.
There was nothing.
Nothing but the blue robe.
Sincere confession?
His inner world was a wasteland—only the ashes of lingering pain, and a fatigue without bottom. He didn't know what sincerity meant anymore. He wasn't even sure his earlier confession contained the slightest trace of will.
He had only…said what was demanded.
Yet the light continued to grow.
It had already surpassed comfortable illumination, creeping toward the threshold of the previous torment. The familiar sensations returned—dryness, stabbing pain deep in his eyes. His vision began to wash out, bleaching white.
The figure's silhouette blurred, wavered, dissolving into the glare.
"Sin! I have sinned! I am a sinner!!"
Erika could bear it no longer. The slowly intensifying, step-by-step advancing light was far more destructive to the nerves than the previous sudden brutality. It was a dull blade, carving away at his final line of defense inch by inch.
He screamed—the sound twisted and shattered, no longer a response but a pure release of collapse at the absolute limits of body and mind. He confessed. He confessed to every sin imaginable or impossible, begging only for this slow, lingchi-like execution of light to stop.
The light went out instantly.
Absolute darkness returned, bringing with it violent vertigo and nausea, born of lingering afterimages and the sudden shift.
Just as Erika's consciousness began to scatter under the combined assault of darkness and physical distress—
A pair of hands suddenly cupped his face.
Not the cold, gloved hands of execution from before.Not the large hands carrying absolute force and punitive authority from his shoulders.
These hands were warm, trembling, their palms damp with sweat. The fingers pressed firmly, yet carried a strange, almost devotional urgency. They clung tightly to his cheeks, thumbs rubbing hard over the skin beneath his cheekbones—still wet, then dried again by tears—as if to confirm his existence, to soothe his pain, or to force some fervent belief directly into him through touch.
Then Erika felt warm liquid—one drop, then another—fall onto his forehead, the bridge of his nose, his cheeks.
Tears.
From the person holding his face.
"Yes, my brother," the Blue-clad's voice sounded right before him, close enough to exist inside the dark void itself.
The voice had completely changed. The former calm, neutral, inquisitive tone was gone. In its place was choked sobbing, trembling, a passion mixing immense sorrow with twisted ecstasy.
"We are sinners by birth… we must face it! In the Merciful Father's radiance and chastisement, we wash clean this inborn filth!"
It sounded as though the light had not only burned Erika's eyes—but had seared the Blue-clad's own soul as well.
This sudden surge of distorted empathy, this intimate physical contact and emotional eruption, left Erika far more disoriented than simple torture ever could. He froze, his face marked by the other man's scalding tears and desperate grip, his ears filled with sobbed, fanatical words.
The brief breath of relief gained when the light ceased was immediately drowned by this more complex, more skin-crawling intimacy.
He could not even tell whether this was another, more refined form of torture—or whether the Blue-clad man himself… was mad.
However, this moment of fervor—nearly solidifying into some grotesque sense of communion—was interrupted.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Not heavy blows, but clear, steady knocks with a deliberate rhythm. They came from the direction of the chamber's thick door, sounding unnervingly out of place, almost indifferent, within the absolute silence—forming a sharp contrast to the Blue-clad's emotional turbulence.
Then, without waiting for any response—
"Have you repented?"
Once again, the words—cold, steady, devoid of all emotion—appeared directly within the depths of Erika's mind.
Unlike the Blue-clad's sobbing fervor, this mind-voice link was stable, powerful, and carried unquestionable systemic authority, instantly piercing the emotional fog the Blue-clad had woven.
The hands cupping Erika's face froze, then released him at once.
The warmth and dampness of tears vanished abruptly, as if that moment of shared fervor had been nothing more than an illusion.
Erika heard the faintest, sharp intake of breath from the Blue-clad. The sobbing fervor receded like a tide, replaced by a tightly contained silence. He could even sense the other man swiftly adjusting his posture in the dark, increasing the distance between them.
Then—
The light source ignited again.
Still in that same manner: beginning faint, then slowly intensifying.
Brighter.Point by point.
The light once more outlined the Blue-clad's silhouette as he withdrew behind it. The figure stood rigid, the earlier agitation seemingly completely extinguished, reverting to the detached stillness of an observer.
Only the blue robe, under the growing light, appeared older, more solemn—and perhaps carried a faint, almost imperceptible trace of… submission.
"Repentance…" Erika murmured unconsciously, his gaze ensnared by the rising light.
His mind could no longer process the rapidly shifting reality—collapse through confession, fanatic empathy, cold knocking and mental interrogation, sudden withdrawal of touch, the return of the growing light.
All these fragments spun wildly, collided, ground against one another beneath the physiological pressure of light and total mental chaos.
Was the Blue-clad's fervor real—or false?Who had knocked?Where did the cold mind-voice originate?Repentance… for what?To which Merciful Father?For which sin?
Questions tangled like knots of wire, their answers hidden behind the ever-brightening light.
The light grew stronger, surpassing comfort, edging toward pain.
The Blue-clad's silhouette blurred once more, melting into the halo.
Erika's eyes burned. Tears streamed freely—offering no relief.
The echo of the cold mind-voice still rang within him:
"Have you repented?"
Before him lay devouring light.Behind him, thick darkness and silence.Within him, the cold, stabbing presence of foreign matter.Upon his face, the lingering traces of a stranger's tears and touch.
All these contradictory, painful, incomprehensible sensations finally collapsed the last remaining barrier.
Erika broke completely.
Not another scream.Not physical struggle.
But an internal, total implosion.
His consciousness crumbled like a sandcastle, scattering into an endless field of white noise formed by light and shattered perception. Thought, fear, doubt, pain—all lost their boundaries, dissolving into a passive, formless endurance.
His eyes remained open, but empty, unfocused, reflecting only the ever-whitening light. His body slackened entirely within the restraints, showing no trace of resistance, as though reduced to a shell sustaining nothing but basic life functions.
The light reached its peak—pure, merciless white.
The Blue-clad's silhouette vanished.
Within the chamber, only Erika remained—bound to the chair, consciousness dissolved, staring into the light—and that pure, brutal radiance.
Confession.Empathy.Interrogation.Light.
Together, they formed a closed cycle, one designed to grind him down completely.
And this collapse was perhaps the very endpoint the cycle sought—
Or perhaps…the threshold to something deeper, darker, and beyond all words.