The descent felt endless.
Every step they took, the staircase seemed to stretch farther downward, as if the very laws of distance and time had abandoned them.
The walls bled faint, ghostly whispers — soft enough to question whether they were real.
"You could have saved her..."
"Why didn't you fight harder?"
"You were always weak."
Fred gritted his teeth.
The voice wasn't external.
It was inside him.
Inside all of them.
The Forgotten District wasn't just ruins and dead streets.
It was a mirror.
A twisted, broken mirror reflecting every failure, every regret, every shameful moment they tried to bury.
Mira stumbled beside him, clutching her ears, tears spilling from her eyes.
Subject 0 growled low in his throat, shadows writhing along his arms as he fought the invisible attacks clawing at his mind.
They weren't just descending physically.
They were descending into themselves.
Into their own hells.
---
The stairwell finally ended.
They stumbled into a massive open chamber.
The walls rose into darkness above, and the ground was littered with objects — hundreds, maybe thousands.
Toys.
Books.
Photographs.
Shoes.
Jewelry.
Small, personal things, abandoned and forgotten.
Fred bent down, his fingers trembling.
There, half-buried in the dust, was a photograph.
A little boy.
Black hair.
A bright, innocent smile.
Fred's own face.
Younger.
Before everything.
Before the pain.
Before the betrayals.
He dropped it as if it burned him.
The floor trembled.
The objects around them began to twitch.
Slide.
Roll toward them.
A low, rattling moan filled the air.
The chamber was waking up.
And it was hungry.
---
From the piles of forgotten things, figures began to rise.
Not solid.
Not human.
Whispers made flesh.
Memories given form.
They looked like people Fred had known — people he had failed.
A boy he once left behind during a raid.
An old woman who had begged him for help when he was too afraid to act.
Friends.
Family.
Lies he told.
Promises he broke.
Mira let out a strangled sob as her own specters emerged — the face of her brother twisted in betrayal, the form of a child she couldn't save during the great fire.
Subject 0 roared in defiance, shadows bursting from his skin — but even he staggered under the weight of the illusions.
Fred realized the truth with a sickening certainty:
The Forgotten District didn't just trap the body.
It crushed the soul.
It fed on guilt.
And they were the feast.
---
"They're not real," Fred growled, forcing himself upright as the phantoms closed in.
"They're not real!"
But they felt real.
When they struck, it hurt.
When they spoke, it bled.
Each blow wasn't to the body.
It was to the heart.
To the memory.
To the identity.
Mira screamed as her brother's ghost tore at her arm, leaving behind black, festering wounds.
Subject 0 knelt under the weight of the dozens of specters clawing at him, biting, whispering.
Fred looked at his hands.
They were shaking.
Splintering.
He could barely remember his own name.
"Fight, Fred," a faint voice whispered in his mind.
Not one of the ghosts.
Not the District.
Something else.
Something deeper.
"Remember who you are."
Fred's mind flooded with images:
Running barefoot in the summer rain.
Laughing as he stole apples with Mira.
Holding his dying mother's hand, promising her he would survive.
Pain.
Joy.
Loss.
Hope.
All of it.
He roared.
Not a sound of anger.
But of life.
Of defiance.
Of memory.
The specters recoiled, shrieking.
Fred grabbed Mira, pulling her close.
Subject 0 staggered to his feet, snarling, his shadows flaring.
"They're lies!" Fred shouted. "We are more than our mistakes!"
The chamber trembled violently.
The Forgotten District shrieked, a wounded beast.
--
Fred led the charge.
He ran straight into the mass of phantoms, each step bursting into shards of memory.
He kicked through the image of his lost friend.
He tore through the crying mother.
He bulldozed through the weight of guilt and regret.
Each specter he touched shattered like glass.
Mira followed, screaming, her fists blazing with raw light, striking down the ghost of her brother with tears streaming down her face.
Subject 0 unleashed a storm of shadow, swallowing the illusions whole.
The three of them became a storm of fury.
A storm of survival.
A storm of truth.
They weren't innocent.
They weren't perfect.
But they were real.
They were still fighting.
Still choosing.
Still breathing.
The Forgotten District screamed one final time — a soundless howl of hatred — and the phantoms dissolved into mist.
Silence fell.
Real silence.
Not the crushing silence of the District.
But the silence of exhaustion.
Of victory.
For now.
---
Fred collapsed to his knees, gasping.
Mira fell beside him, sobbing quietly, wiping blood from her mouth.
Subject 0 leaned against a broken pillar, his massive frame trembling.
They had survived the first trial.
But Fred knew it was only the beginning.
The Forgotten District had more horrors in store.
More memories to twist.
More pain to unearth.
And somewhere deep below, waiting with endless patience, was the thing that had built this nightmare.
The thing that remembered everything they had ever tried to forget.
Fred forced himself to his feet.
"Come on," he rasped.
"We're not done yet."
Mira nodded weakly.
Subject 0 bared his teeth in a grim smile.
Together, they walked deeper into the darkness.
Deeper into the place where the past and the present bled together — where their final trial awaited.
---