The elevator stopped after a few long moments.
The door flew open.
The room was small.
Stone walls, faint light, no sound but their breathing. One door behind them, one door ahead. And in front of that door stood something that shouldn't have moved, but did.
A skeleton.
It was half-armored—if you could call it that. A single leather shoulder strap hung off its collarbone like it had forgotten what it meant to be human. Its weapon was worse. A broken longsword, jagged and rusted, its blade barely longer than a knife.
She didn't move.
She stood there, hands slightly raised, breath caught in her throat. Her eyes flicked from the sword to the sockets in that skull. It didn't speak. It didn't groan. It just waited.
She couldn't step forward.
The girl with the chains moved.
Her wrists burned from the weight, but she didn't stop. The metal links rattled softly as she raised her hands and sank into a guard, boots scraping against cold stone.
She was scared. Every inch of her screamed to run. But fear, she could handle fear. Freezing? That wasn't an option.
She charged.
The chains snapped forward as she swung, aiming low, aiming hard. The links struck bone with a loud crack, a direct hit across the skeleton's chest.
Nothing.
The thing didn't move. Didn't even flinch. The recoil hit her arm like a hammer. Her wrist throbbed immediately, pain blooming deep into her bones.
Her mind screamed. She staggered back, gasping. Her breath caught.
Then her foot caught on something—a chunk of stone near the wall. She hit the ground hard, air knocked from her lungs.
And the skeleton moved.
Its jaw hung loose. Bones clicked as it raised the jagged blade high, aiming straight for her chest.
She couldn't move in time.
She moved without thinking.
The black-haired girl surged forward, eyes still shut tight, one hand outstretched toward the skeleton. No weapon. No plan. Just panic.
And then—
BAM.
The sound cracked through the stone room like thunder. Both girls flinched as a wall of dust swallowed them whole.
Silence.
They coughed, blinking through the haze. The room had shifted.
The skeleton was gone.
Only the broken remains of the heavy entrance door remained—its full weight collapsed onto the floor, right where the creature had been.
It hadn't been luck.
Something had caused it to fall down
not that it matters what right now
The chain-bound girl groaned from the floor. "So… not the worst first fight."
The quiet one didn't answer. Just stared at the crushed bones beneath the fallen door.
"…We should probably call each other something," the girl said, getting to her feet. "Before we die horribly on the next floor."
The quiet one gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug.
"I mean, I'm not gonna shout 'hey you' if something's trying to bite my face off."
She looked at the other girl for a moment. Took in the pale skin, the quiet, the strange shimmer in her left eye.
"You've got that cold look. Like... distant. That eye too. Gonna call you Blue."
The quiet girl paused, then nodded. "Alright."
The girl glanced down at the broken shackles on her wrists, then smirked. "And I guess I'm Chains."
She chuckled once, under her breath.
They didn't say anything else. But when they stepped toward the next door, it wasn't as strangers.
Not anymore.