'Painful'
'So painful'
Rem was dragged back to consciousness with a sensation that made her bones shudder.
Warmth pooled in her hands, spreading up her wrists in waves that bordered on uncomfortable heat.
Voices filtered through the haze. Muffled at first, then clearer as awareness crawled back into her sluggish thoughts.
"—need to keep the flow steady, Altaria. If you—"
"I know what I'm doing." The priestess's voice carried an edge Rem had rarely heard from her. Stress, exhaustion, maybe fear bleeding through her usual gentle tone.
Rem tried to open her eyes. Her eyelids felt gummed shut, heavy with dried blood and tears. When she finally managed to pry them open, soft golden light filtered down from a sky that looked wrong. Too uniform, too perfect, lacking the organic chaos of real clouds.
Kaisen's pocket dimension.
She was lying on soft grass. But when she turned her head slightly the world seemed to end about fifty yards away. Not a wall, just... nothing. The boundary where this conjured space gave way to whatever existed beyond it.
"Rem?" Altaria's face swam into focus above her, hair falling forward to frame worried features. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, stress written in the tightness around her mouth. "Don't try to talk yet. Your tongue..."
Rem's mouth tasted of copper and salt. When she tried to swallow, her throat protested with sharp pain that made her wince.
"I said don't." Altaria's hands pressed against Rem's, warmth intensifying until it bordered on burning. The priestess's brow furrowed in concentration, lips moving in what might have been prayer or just muttered curses. "The damage is severe. I need to focus."
Rem looked down at her hands.
The flesh was gone.
Strips of skin hung in tatters, exposing raw tissue beneath that glistened wet in the strange light. Deep gouges scored her palms where she'd dug nails in hard enough to reach bone. Her fingers trembled weakly, tendons visible through gaps in the meat.
Memories crashed back in fragments. The fog. Running. Biting down on her tongue until she tasted nothing but blood, scratching lines down her arms, digging nails between her fingers. Pain had been her anchor, the only thing keeping consciousness from scattering into the white nothing.
Movement to her left drew her attention. Kaisen knelt a few feet away, close enough to reach her quickly but giving Altaria space to work. His face was drawn, exhaustion written in every line, but his eyes held something else. Relief, maybe. Or concern so deep it looked like pain.
His hair was wrong.
It had grown longer, nearly touching his collar instead of the shorter style he'd maintained . Stubble shadowed his jaw, at least a week's growth worth.
Beyond him, Elise stood with arms crossed over her chest. Her braid hung past her shoulder blades now, thick enough that Rem could see the difference even at this distance. Wear showed in her clothes, in the way her boots looked scuffed and used beyond what a few days of travel should produce.
"How bad?" Kaisen's voice was carefully controlled, but he was anything but.
Altaria didn't look up from her work. "Bad enough. The flesh on her hands is shredded down to bone in places. Her tongue is nearly severed at the root, there's damage throughout her throat , internal bleeding in her mouth." She paused, breathing hard. "She hurt herself extensively. Repeatedly. These aren't fresh injuries that I can just seal and move on from."
"Can you heal it?"
"I'm trying." Frustration bled into her tone, barely controlled. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the perfect temperature of the pocket dimension. "This is... complicated. The injuries layered on top of each other, some healing partially before being reopened. It's like trying to repair a tapestry that someone kept tearing while I was stitching it back together. At least there seems to be a slight self healing effect…"
Silence fell, heavy enough to feel. The warmth in Rem's hands pulsed brighter, digging deeper into damaged tissue. Flesh began crawling across exposed areas, skin knitting together in ways that sent pins-and-needles sensation racing up her arms.
Kaisen ran a hand through his too-long hair, the gesture frustrated. "My system's showing things I don't remember."
Elise's eyes flicked to him, sharp. "What kind of things?"
"Levels. Stat increases. Skill progressions." His jaw tightened. "All dated over the past month."
The past month.
Elise went very still, her mind clearly working through the implications. Then she looked down at herself, really looked. Her hands came up slowly, turning over to examine calluses that shouldn't be there. Her fingers moved to touch her braid, following its length down to where it ended well past where it should.
"My hair," she said quietly. "It's grown."
"Mine too." Kaisen's voice had gone flat, carefully neutral "Look at us. Our clothes. The wear, the dirt we can't remember getting. We didn't just lose time."
"We lived it," Elise finished. She uncrossed her arms "Our bodies lived it while our minds... what? Reset?"
Altaria's hands faltered for just a moment before resuming their steady flow of healing magic. "A month," she whispered. "We lost a month of our lives… maybe more"
"We didn't lose it." Something dark crept into Kaisen's tone, an edge that reminded Rem this man was the protagonist she'd written. There was steel beneath the concern, something harder. "We lived it without knowing. Did things, made choices, had experiences we'll never remember. That's worse than losing time. That's having it stolen."
Nobody argued with him.
Rem tried to speak, managed a sound that came out more like a pained rasp than actual words. Altaria's head snapped toward her.
"I told you not to talk yet."
Rem ignored the warning, forcing her damaged muscles to cooperate. What came out was slurred, barely intelligible, but understandable enough through sheer stubborn will.
"Not stolen. Looped."
All three of them went very still, attention zeroing in on her with sudden intensity.
"Explain." Kaisen's voice was quiet now, dangerously so. Protective worry giving way to something darker, more demanding. "What do you mean looped?"
Rem swallowed again, tasting fresh copper. Her tongue felt thick, clumsy, but functional enough to shape words if she concentrated.
"Time loop. We were... trapped. Same day."
The silence that followed felt suffocating.
"How..." Elise's analytical mind was already working the problem, fitting pieces together. "How do you know? If our minds reset each loop, how could you possibly remember?"
Valid question. Dangerous question.
Rem forced her healing tongue to cooperate, words coming clearer now though each one still ached. "I…Woke up wrong. My body felt... sore.." She paused, breathing hard. "Hair too long. Nails grown out. Clothes worn and dirty. Things that didn't match my last memory."
Kaisen leaned forward slightly. "Rem… and then? "
"I realized we were trapped. That the fog wasn't just fog, it was... something else. Something that kept us cycling through the same experiences while it..." She trailed off, not sure how to explain what the creature had been doing. Feeding? Observing? "While it kept us."
Altaria's healing had reached Rem's tongue now, warmth spreading through the torn muscle at its root. The damage began knitting together in such pain that it made her eyes water, nerve endings reconnecting in bursts of sensation.
"But you broke out." Elise's eyes were sharp, searching Rem's face "You stayed aware when the rest of us couldn't. How?"
This was the part where lying became necessary.
Rem met her gaze as steadily as exhaustion allowed. "My mind is... different. Stronger in some ways I don't fully understand." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "I-I…. I cant explain it…... When I realized what was happening, I used pain to stay conscious. It was the only anchor that worked."
Everyone was quite for a bit, they of course did not doubt her but felt a deep pain in their hearts. Hence the wounds covering her body.
"Then I..." Rem frowned, trying to piece together fragments. "I realized the pocket dimension. That the fog couldn't follow us there, it was a hunch really. So I got you to open it, got everyone inside, and..."
The rest was blur of white nothing.
"Carried me out while hurting yourself to stay aware." Kaisen finished.
"Something like that." Rem let her eyes drift closed again. "It's not clear. Sorry."
"Don't apologize." Altaria's healing surged warmer through Rem's hands, the priestess's compassion bleeding through despite her own confusion and fear. "You got us out. That's what matters."
The silence stretched. Altaria's magic continued its work, flesh knitting together in unimaginable pain. Pain. that was what she felt most of the time these days. The warmth surged one final time before releasing, leaving her hands tender but whole.
"Done," Altaria said softly, pulling back. Exhaustion lined her face, the expenditure taking its toll. "You'll be sore for a while but everything's repaired."
Rem flexed her fingers experimentally. They moved, sluggish and tight, but functional. She pushed herself upright slowly, every muscle protesting.
Around her, the group fell into heavy silence. All of them processing, trying to understand what had happened. A month they'd never remember.
Kaisen was staring at his hands like they belonged to someone else. Elise had that distant loo trying to fit impossible pieces together. Altaria just looked lost, compassion warring with confusion across her gentle features.
A month. Gone. Not dead or empty, but filled with a life they couldn't access.
"What do we do now?" Altaria's question was barely a whisper.
Nobody had an answer.
Rem pulled her knees up to her chest despite the protest from her sore muscles, wrapping her newly healed hands around her shins. "We rest," she said finally. " then we keep moving."
"To the capital," Elise confirmed, her voice regaining some of its usual tactical edge. "It seems like a distant dream at this point…..My mother ... "
Elise's sober tone made everyone think too, especially kaizen and rem. This had been a long journey, too long. They had lost the goal of their journey in all the emotions during this journey.
Rem pushed herself to her feet slowly, legs wobbling before steadying. "I need air."
Kaisen looked like he wanted to protest, concern clear in his expression. But something passed between him and Elise—a silent communication—and he nodded instead.
Rem walked away from the group without waiting for permission, heading toward the boundary where this pocket reality simply ended. The grass beneath her feet felt cool, soothing, but it did nothing for her.
She sank down maybe ten yards from where the world gave way to nothing.
Behind her, quiet voices resumed. Rem stared at the too-perfect sky and tried not to think about what she saw.
Gods, who was he, Loki.. She had no idea.
LST has risen to 26. Her body changed but she hadn't examined it yet. She pulled up her status with trembling mental focus.
[STATUS]
Name: Rem
Level: 12
STATS:
STR: 16
DEX: 21
END: 17
VIT: 19
CHA: 26
LST: 26
Available LP: 9,072
Unallocated Stat Points: 20
LST 26. The threshold crossed. Her body would have changed again, evolved in ways designed to make her more seductive, more corrupt.
She looked down at herself properly for the first time.
The changes were subtle but there. Her proportions seemed more... idealized. Curves slightly more pronounced, skin impossibly smooth, features sharper beyond simple human beauty. When she shifted her weight, the movement flowed with unnatural grace. She was reaching a point beyond humans by now. At least this change was subtle
At CHA 26 and LST 26, she was becoming something that drew eyes without reason. Something people would want to look at and keep looking at.
The Divine Mark pulsed faintly on her lower back. Recently fed, her mind noted distantly. Which meant she'd had sex during those lost weeks.
With Kaisen, probably.
The thought should have bothered her more. Should have felt like a violation. But it just felt... distant. Something that happened to a body she couldn't remember inhabiting.
Maybe that was worse.
Rem leaned back in too-perfect grass and waited for the inevitable divine contact she knew was coming.
It didn't take long.
A familiar presence brushed her mind through the Divine Mark. Gentle at first, then more insistent.
Aria's voice bloomed in her thoughts, clear and intimate.
"Well, well. Look who survived."
Rem didn't respond immediately.
"I have to admit, toy, that was genuinely impressive. You figured out the loop, stayed conscious through, and dragged everyone out through sheer refusal to die."
There was something off in Aria's tone. The usual mockery was there, but underneath... worry?
"What the fuck was that thing?" Rem thought back, too exhausted to be diplomatic.
Silence. Long enough to be concerning.
"Exactly what I'd like to know. That fog horror was dormant when I last checked. Had been for centuries. Someone woke it up, and timing suggests they did it specifically for you."
"Loki."
"Loki," Aria agreed, and yeah, there was definitely worry now. "Though whether he acted alone is the question keeping me up at night. Metaphorically."
Rem processed that, dread settling cold in her stomach.
"What do they want from me?"
Silence. Heavy, weighted silence.
Then Aria's voice, quieter than before: "You don't realize what you've created, do you?"
The words sent ice racing down Rem's spine.
"This world. Your story." Aria paused. "Do you still think of it as just a story? You left gaps. Background details you never fleshed out because they weren't relevant to your porn plot. Gods you never named, threats you never defined."
Rem's stomach dropped.
"Those gaps filled themselves when I brought you here. When this became real instead of fiction. Every missing piece had to be accounted for." Aria's voice was almost gentle now. "They're not following your outline anymore because there is no outline. This is reality now. Complex, chaotic, and completely beyond your control."
The implications crashed through Rem's exhausted mind. Every lazy piece of worldbuilding, every handwaved detail, every background element she'd mentioned but never defined... they'd all become real
"How do you know that?" Rem's mental voice cracked. "How do you know this isn't still just a story?"
Silence. Complete silence.
"Aria. Answer me."
Nothing.
Frustration and fear burned through her "Fine. Go to hell!"
The connection cut immediately, Aria's presence vanishing.
Rem sat alone , trying to process all this, she couldn't, didn't want to.
This wasn't her story anymore. Maybe it never had been. The world had outgrown her, she was not in control anymore… had she ever been?
Maybe ignorance was mercy.
She looked back at the three, her heart panged.
She'd gotten them out. They were safe for now. But safe from what?
Rem lay back in the too-perfect grass, letting exhaustion finally pull her toward something like rest.
Ignorance really was bliss.