I found myself in a dark place surrounded by jagged rocks. Maybe a cave? I'd never seen one in my life, but from what I'd read in orphanage books, the description matched.
I wasn't sure if I was going deeper or climbing out, but either way—this wasn't normal.
Suddenly, a strange sound echoed around me. Chilling. Thin. Familiar in a way that terrified me.
Then, a presence behind me.
I turned and attacked by instinct.
"Punch from the left.""Roundhouse kick from the right."
I grabbed the figure's neck. The torch from my watch lit it—if you could call that a body.
It had no color, no texture, just a human-like shape. A transparent skin. No features.
It tried to kill me, I was sure of it. So I ripped it apart with raw instinct.
And then—it happened again.
Flashes of impossible memory.
But this time, I wasn't remembering my life.
I saw myself from the outside.
I threw the punch. I did the kick. I saw my body, my face, my eyes—and deeper.
My veins. My organs. My brain. All of me. At once. I was looking at my entire body from within and without. Incomprehensible shapes formed from that vision.
And at the end of it all—I saw my own disheartened smile.
The memory ended. I gasped for breath, dizzy, disoriented. This wasn't my memory. This was its memory. The Fractite.
This was how it saw me.
I leaned against the rough wall, trembling. Checked my watch.
You killed a Lv-1 FRACTITE Kill 10 Fractites to gain Neuro-Coolant Lv-1
"Fractite? Neuro-Coolant?" I murmured.
The word "coolant" made sense—something for the nervous system, maybe. But Fractite? Clearly, the translucent creature I just killed.
I moved forward. Three more attacked. Same story. I tore through them, and again… those alien memories.
I kept seeing myself. Over and over. With every part of my body laid bare.
By the sixth one, I puked.
No, not puke.but clughed Blood.
Thick and dark, pooling at my feet. I wiped my eyes— but found more blood. My vision blurred.
"I want to quit," I whispered. "I want to stop."
All this pain—for what? Elari might not even be alive.
But something forced me to keep moving. Whether it was Elari, the children's sacrifice, Kael's words, or my fear of death—or maybe all of it , I didn't know.
But I moved.
Like a puppet.
Seven kills. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Reward Unlocked: Neuro-Coolant Lv-1
The watch produced a slim pair of blue goggles. I put them on, and for the first time, a cool breeze rushed through my mind.
Effect: • Reduces mental fatigue • Increases spatial and temporal awareness • Heightens sixth sense and beyond
My thoughts became clearer. The cave no longer blurred around me—I saw more. Heard more. Felt more.
Many presences lurked all around me.
Then I remembered—
Personal Quest: Find the Executioner
And that's when I saw someone, far away, surrounded by five Fractites.
I stepped closer.
It was Elisa—on her back, unconscious or in shock.
She was younger. No longer the thirty-something I'd last seen—now she looked no older than 14 or 15.
The Fractites were circling her.
I counted them. Five.
One by one—I killed them.
This time, the memories were different.
No longer nausea-inducing visions of anatomy.
Instead—I saw myself like a piece of origami. Flat, folded, clean. My face like a paper mask.
No sickness. No distortion. The goggles were working.
I looked back at Elisa. She was crying.
And then, a distant memory pulled at my mind—
Overwhelming my senses—
I find myself in an unfamiliar house, surrounded by strange walls. I don't move by my own will, only watching from a first-person perspective. I'm trapped in this moment, unable to control my actions. I wander aimlessly through the narrow streets, not knowing where I'm going. The roads twist and turn, but somehow, I end up where I need to be.
I come across a large, metallic fence that separates me from a junkyard. I squeeze through a small hole in the fence and anxiously step onto the other side, my heart racing. My surroundings feel foreign, and I can't shake the feeling that I'm about to witness something terrible.
Running through the junkyard, I eventually find a road leading to a park, its green expanse surrounded by towering buildings. But as I move closer, I spot a figure in a green uniform — a police officer. His face is metallic, featureless, like some kind of robotic human. He stops me.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, his voice flat and mechanical.
I get flashes of the general, a figure of authority, and the nightmares he brought with him. But then, another voice cuts through the tension — a woman's voice.
"I'm sorry," the voice says, soft and apologetic.
The officer looks me over, his gaze cold. "You don't belong here. What's your name?"
"I've come to meet someone," the woman's voice says.
The officer doesn't respond immediately. "We're investigating a murder here, sir," he finally says. "A child, about your age, has killed his family and run away. You shouldn't be here."
With a swift kick, he pushes me away, sending me back out to the road.
I turn and retrace my steps, back to where the memory started. "I'm back home," I hear the woman's voice say.
A small, warm voice in my mind whispers, Elissa?
I find myself sitting at a table, eating a bowl of thin, watery soup. The woman across from me, dressed in faded clothes, speaks.
"Elissa, there's a house that wants to marry you. It's the landlord's house, the one who works at the orphanage. They're very rich. His son has an interest in you."
"No," I protest weakly, "I'm only 14."
But the woman's voice is firm. "You have to. If you marry him, we'll have a better life. He's promised to give us this house."
I stare at the table, unsure of what to say. "You don't care about me, do you?" I mumble.
The woman slaps me, her face twisted in frustration. "I do all the work! You don't understand!
The young girl protested
"I do the cleaning for the rich, and you—" her voice cracks as she glares at me. "and you do work which is disgusting."
The women in anger beats me all night
I feel her fist her slaps her kicks almost killing me out
The night drags on in painful silence. In the morning, I finally speak, my voice small. "Fine. I'll do it."
But I'm already numb. I can't argue. I don't have the strength to fight back anymore.
I wake up, drenched in sweat, my breath shallow. My head spins as I try to piece together what just happened. Was that Elissa's memory?
A sharp pang of grief rises in my chest as I look at the younger Elissa, crying in a dim room, her world crumbling around her. She was just a child, forced to endure far too much. But her pain, her desperation… it's too much for me to bear.
What happened to you, Elissa?
The memory fades, and I blink, gasping for air. The world around me blurs again, the images of my body, of Elissa, of everything, slipping away. But one thing stays clear: her name. The one piece of the puzzle that binds everything together. Elissa.
The memory fades completely, and I'm back in the present, heart pounding, breath shallow. It feels like the walls of the cave are closing in on me. But I can't stop now. Not when I'm this close. I've seen enough to know that Elissa's story is far from over.