Chapter Text
Day 546.
Another mundane day in Khaenri’ah.
At exactly 5:30 am, your eyes open to the uneven stone of your room’s ceiling. You spare the unimpressive sight exactly one second before sitting up straight, maneuvering out of the thin bedsheet that did not even move an inch over the night.
You barely register the noise of complaint your roommate lets out at the grating noise of your shared room’s stone door opening, and you walk out with your uniform in hand to the servants’ quarters shared bathroom.
By the time you return to the room, your roommate is out of bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and tensing when you walk in. You pay her no mind, simply placing your nightwear to be picked up for laundry and heading to the tiny dining area where a simple meal of meat and mushrooms awaits you.
Blank eyes scanning the clock in the room, you note that your morning routine took fifteen minutes, exactly as it always has. The tiny portion of meat and mushrooms eventually vanishes with calculated bites and chewing, and before you know it, two guards are waiting outside of the dining hall for you at 5:55 am.
Their names are Leif and Jensen - you have always known this bit of information. Everyday for the last 545 days, they have never once missed escorting you down to the generator room, passing through dark hallways and staircases that only had artificial light from outside shining through the windows.
The hum of energy from Azosite blocks greets your ears as you enter the room. Leif and Jensen hang by the entrance as you head further inside, and another worker monitoring the generators hands you a fresh Azosite block, brimming with energy. Once again, you pay no mind when they retract their hand as fast as possible after handing you the crystal, as if scared to touch you.
Your body automatically carries out the familiar movements to replace energy blocks with new ones to power the castle. You switch off the power, take out the drained crystal from the first generator, and insert a new one. You switch the power back on, noting the day of replacement. The second generator’s crystal will be replaced tomorrow, and then the third generator’s the day after. Each Azosite block lasts for 72 hours, and with three generators powering the building, this alternating maintenance routine was established.
You dropped the drained energy block into the worker’s waiting hands, ignoring the distance they kept from you. You simply followed the guards back upstairs, parting ways with them to head to the kitchen and help with preparing meals at exactly 6:10 am.
When you enter, the kitchen falls silent. No one really makes conversation, and the only voice is the head chef who occasionally barks out commands. All you have to do is prepare rice - something imported from aboveground is what you heard about it. Fitting, that only royalty can have such expensive foods while servants are stuck with the same mushrooms and meat for every meal.
Once multiple pots of rice have been prepared, a chef takes over. You are now left to your next duty, which is laundry. You fall in line with other servants heading to rooms at the edge of the castle, and then the crowd splits up. Some go to work on linens, others on the royal family’s clothing, and you join those working on the clothing from the servants.
Laundry is no easy task. The entire process of washing clothes still required it to be done by hand, despite the advancements in technology at the “Universitas Magistrorum” you hear servants excitedly chattering about every now and then. The only real simplification made to the laundry process was a room with panels radiating heat, powered by the energy blocks of course. Light coloured clothes go closer to the heaters, while dark coloured clothes are further away. Finally, clothes that dried overnight were meticulously folded, all in all making laundry duty last from 7:00 am till 11:00 am.
The only reward that awaited you afterwards was yet another simple meal of meat and mushrooms, the blandness making it pale in comparison to the food you witnessed being prepared in the kitchen earlier. It does not matter to you, however. You ate the same meal for ten minutes, exactly as you always have. No one sits with you at the dining hall.
You’re not sure what you do till 12:00 pm. The clock strikes noon in what feels like no time, making your body stand up and head to the kitchen yet again. From there, you carry plates, utensils, and napkins to place in the real dining room - the one where the royal family eats. You have never laid your eyes on them, and it is likely you never will. This is only granted, given your lowly position.
Shortly after, other servants take plated dishes to the room, and while you observe their movements to be not as polished as one would expect when serving royalty, it is not your place to comment. Dishes filled with aromatic food go out, and empty dishes come back in, one by one. The next two hours are spent with the monotonous movements of washing and drying dishes, including kitchenware.
By 2:30 pm, you set down the last cleaned dish on the pile used by servants. The fancier plates and utensils used by the royals have a separate cabinet altogether, which other servants keep them in once you are finished with drying. You then spend the next hour chopping vegetables you have never seen or heard of before, meant only for the dinner eaten by the wealthy.
That thought seems depressing as you stare at, once again, a plate of bland meat and mushrooms that is meant to be your supper at 4:00 pm. After ten minutes, you set down your fork and head to the second floor. Starting from the room at the end of the hallway till the room closest to the staircase, you dust the rooms and make the beds.
At 7:00 pm, you finally return to the servants’ quarters, going from your room to the shared bathroom and back, where your roommate already seems ready to collapse on her bed. She eyes you cautiously as you do not even spare her a glance, walking straight to your side of the room.
As you get into the bed at 7:15 pm, your muscles sigh with a relief you did not know you needed. This does not faze you, because no matter what, by the next day, your body is as good as new. It feels as if it goes through a complete reset overnight.
You simply lie down facing upwards, with your hands clasped over your stomach for the next thirty minutes. At some point, the light in your shared room is turned off, and you barely catch your roommate muttering about tomorrow being another day. The obvious fact is appreciated.
At exactly 7:45 pm, like every day, you drift off to sleep, not moving even an inch overnight.
—
Day 553.
Another mundane day in Khaenri’ah.
It has been a week, and nothing has really changed. You wake up at 5:30 am to the uneven stone ceiling, and make a trip to the bathroom and back in fifteen minutes, your roommate groaning at the noise like always.
After a breakfast of - surprise - meat and mushrooms, guards Leif and Jensen were there as usual at 5:55 am to escort you to the generator room. You take the new energy block, switch off the power, replace the old one and switch the power back on. Today was the day to replace the second generator’s crystal.
6:10 am. Meal preparations in the kitchen were the same. No one spoke. You wonder how anything that’s not meat and mushrooms tastes. Then it’s 7:00 am, and you’re near the edge of the castle heading towards the laundry rooms. This time, you notice when your body aches and strains, but despite the tiredness, it does not slow down even a little bit. Hang the light-coloured clothes closer to the heaters, and dark coloured clothes further away. Fold the laundry. No one speaks.
Another plate of meat and mushrooms greets you for lunch at 11:00 am, and you finish it in exactly ten minutes. The next fifty minutes go by somehow, and at 12:00 pm you finally lift yourself from the dining hall table to set the royal family’s table instead. You head back inside without ever seeing them, and then by 2:30 pm all the dishes are done.
This is when they appeared.
The Steward entered the kitchen, followed by a handful of strange, cloaked individuals. You have only ever seen him once before, and that was on your first day working in this castle. As for his entourage, they were completely… new.
His imposing gaze scanned the crowd, and you wonder if you imagined it when it lingered on you. Nevertheless, an announcement was made for servants to assemble in the basement. You were not even aware there was a basement, and neither did your coworkers, it seems. Murmurs erupted, and the whispers you heard communicated wariness, anxiety, and fear.
One stern command from the steward is all it took for the crowd to begin shuffling out of the kitchen. The strangest thing, however, is that you do not follow them. Instead, as if you are not in control, your feet take you to a cutting board where another unknown vegetable lies, and you simply begin cutting.
Nobody says anything. They do not even glance your way. Even the steward, who was the last to leave the kitchen, simply turned the other way. You were left with a silence that is even more deafening than usual.
Sometime during the hour dedicated to chopping the vegetables, you hear a scream. It was faint, but still audible. A woman’s scream. A nagging feeling told you that you should recognise it. Still, your body did not freeze or give any acknowledgement to what just happened. It simply continued chopping away, not even looking up when the kitchen staff returned, shaken by whatever they saw.
Your body continued on, eating the usual supper of meat and mushrooms at 4:00 pm for ten minutes. Somehow, the familiar, calculated motions of eating that your body carried you through felt abnormal. It felt wrong. By the end of the ten minutes of your supper, it seemed like everyone else got good at acting like nothing happened. And so, you simply cast your thoughts aside, getting up to move to the second floor. Start from the room at the end of the hallway to the room closest to the stairs.
During the walk back to the servants’ quarters, you can feel a familiar blankness enveloping your brain now that everything has settled down. Everything is fine. You should just continue with your regular routine.
That was, until, the absence of your roommate became noticeable at 7:15 pm. On her side, her belongings are there, but she herself is not. As the time crawls closer to 7:45 pm with no signs of her, the haziness in your head clears again. Was the scream earlier… hers?
Your entire body locks up, frozen in your position on the bed. Trying to even think at this moment felt like walking against a river current, as if something is blocking you from comprehending. You do not know what to call that sinking feeling at the bottom of your stomach when you realise you cannot even remember her face. You can only recall pupils with red crosses in them.
Still, your body did not betray your racing thoughts. It was the epitome of calm, positioned in its usual fashion on the bed, facing the ceiling with your hands clasped on your stomach. Recognising the pattern, your eyes barely widen before your body takes over again, forcefully drifting off to sleep at exactly 7:45 pm.
Tomorrow is another day.
—
Day 554.
Another day in Khaenri’ah.
At 5:30 am, you wake up feeling completely refreshed. None of the physical strain from the previous day can be felt as you maneuver out of the bed, grabbing relevant items before opening the stone door to your shared room. As you leave for the common bathroom, there is a small tug at the back of your head saying something is missing, but it fades away as your feet automatically carry you forward.
By 5:45 am, you had finished showering and now sat at a table in the dining hall, a plate of meat and mushrooms before you. Ten minutes later, Leif and Jensen are escorting you to the generator room. There is one difference, though. Jensen seems agitated today, taking quick breaths and eyes darting around so slightly that only you, standing close to him and having walked with him for nearly 550 days, are able to catch. You could swear his eyes look different. Did something happen? What are you forgetting?
Today was the maintenance for the third generator. After taking the new crystal, you switch off the power, replace the old energy block, and switch it back on. You let your body carry you through the process, your thoughts fading away to blankness. Well, almost.
As the power comes back on, your eyes catch movement in the corner of the room, spotting a cloaked figure. You subtly inspect them as your body mindlessly follows the same path taken everyday to deposit the used crystal, and notice the close eye they are keeping on the worker currently keeping their usual distance from you.
How odd. Was extra security added to the castle? You don’t recall the steward informing the palace staff of this.
The… steward? With cloaked figures?
A hazy image forms in your mind, one of the steward accompanied by multiple strangely cloaked individuals. But you have only ever seen the steward once before, right? On your first day of working at the palace? No, you have seen him many, many times before.
Walking towards the kitchen, the two guards having left your side minutes ago, the image grows clearer. You recall the servants, leaving with confusion and returning in horror. You recall everyone, even the steward, barely sparing you a glance as your body ignored the instructions and continued with your task, as if you did not count as a staff member.
You enter the kitchen at 6:10 am, footsteps feeling heavier despite them sounding the same. The voices in the kitchen always fall into complete silence when you enter, so why does it bother you so much now? Maybe it is because of how unrestful the rest of the staff in the kitchen seem.
For today, their shaking hands and weary eyes are justified, because multiple cloaked figures line the walls of the kitchen, keeping a monitoring gaze on the kitchen staff the same as for the generator worker. Yet, none of them pay you any mind, and you do not know if you should be relieved or skeptical at that.
Either way, your task of preparing the rice goes off without a hitch. So does the laundry - at 7:00 am, you start scrubbing at the clothes, then hang the light-coloured clothes closer to the heaters, and dark coloured clothes further away. You fold the laundry.
By the time you are eating your usual serving of meat and mushrooms at 11:00 am, the only further observations you have made are the locations in which the cloaked figures stood, keeping a watchful eye on the servants in the washing, drying, and folding rooms respectively. The time on the clock tells you it has been ten minutes, and you set down your utensils as you take the last bite, perfectly on time. Time passes by as you think back on your day, and at 12:00 pm, you get up from your seat.
When you enter the kitchen again, it is like the dreadful atmosphere multiplied tenfold from what it was in the morning. All of your questions are answered when yet another cloaked figure shows up at the stone door of the kitchen, mere seconds after you. If your recently recovered memory serves you right, this is earlier than when they first appeared yesterday.
Wordlessly, the servants put down what they are doing, but you don’t. Or, your body doesn’t. As they shuffle out the door, you notice the cloaked figures following them out. Not even one stayed back to monitor you. The stone door closes, and you are once again left in silence, the only sounds coming from the creaking of drawers and cupboards as you open and close them.
You don’t have time to think about the lack of staff to help set the table, let alone prepare the royal family’s lunch in time, because your body still gets to work, making the decision for you. You take the usual number of plates, utensils, and napkins assigned to you and head out to the royal family’s dining room.
It is outside that you are able to hear more. You can hear arguing. Actually, it is more of someone begging for something. You cannot make out the words, only the desperation with which the speaker is shouting.
Then, barely a few seconds pass before that shouting from the voice turns into a gut-wrenching scream. It’s like time stops for you, and the sinking feeling at the bottom of your stomach comes back full force. Moments pass where your ears are only greeted with silence, but your head is loud.
You remember. You remember it all. No, you still don’t remember everything.
You remember the scream you heard yesterday. You remember returning to an empty room. An empty bed. You realise that once again, you had just heard someone’s final moments. Who? Who was it this time? Whose life was ripped away from them mere moments ago, joining your roommate in the afterlife?
More importantly, why did you forget? Why are you being left in the dark? Why can’t you trust your own mind and body? Why can’t your legs follow them, even for just a second? Why won’t your body listen to you-
You sneeze.
Your body. It has never once reacted to anything, always dead focused on the same tasks you repeat at the same time every single day.
Your hands shake as you lift them up, bringing your fingers to touch your nose. Your body - you are able to control it.
You look around, realizing that you are in the dining room, your task of setting your assigned part of the table already completed. You do not know how long you have been standing there. You only know that for once, your body has not taken over to head to your next duty.
When you sneeze again, your eyes scan the room, instinctively searching for what is making you react this way. They settle on the seats of the grand dining table. The ones supposedly used by the royal family living in this castle. The ones covered in a thin layer of dust, as if they have not been used for a while.
At that, you back away, until you are leaving the dining room, feeling as if you are walking for the first time in a long, long time. Your footsteps are light, uneven, and without purpose, coming to a stop when you hear more of them. More screams.
You do not make a sound - you can’t. It feels like your body does not know how to use your voice, and you try to remember the last time you even let out a sound. You can’t.
Whatever is happening in the basement is murder. It is a purge. Your erratic heartbeat only grows faster when you hear footsteps approaching, the stench of blood permeating the air, and in a hurry, you enter through the nearest door that happened to lead you right back into the kitchen, where your next task of washing the dishes is supposed to be.
Then you make a mistake, and look at the clock. 2:53 pm. That’s not right. You should not be looking at the clock right now. You are supposed to be doing the dishes.
All of a sudden, it feels as if a heavy blanket was draped over your consciousness, forcing it down as your body takes over, control slipping from your weak grasp.
Everything falls silent. Even in your head.
Then, your hands reach into an empty sink.
You pick up an imaginary dish, and the soap you try to clean it with drips down into the sink instead. Your hands that don’t belong to you go through the motion of washing and drying dishes that don’t even exist.
The servants eventually return, one or two of them missing. You don’t notice. You don’t care. You chop unknown vegetables.
At 4:00 pm, you eat meat and mushrooms for supper. At 4:10 pm, you move to the second floor, starting with making the room at the end of the hallway and ending with the room closest to the stairs. At 7:00 pm, you return to the servants’ quarters. At 7:15 pm, you get into bed, facing up towards the ceiling with your hands clasped on your stomach.
It is only in the (still) unnatural silence of the, once shared, room that it all hits you again, and your head clears up once more. You feel exhausted, your muscles aching for relief even when you are already lying down. You lift your hands up, staring at them in horror. These aren’t yours.
Something catches your eyes, almost blinding you as you turn to look at it.
The light is on, because your roommate isn’t there to turn it off. You have never had to do it yourself before. But this morning, you clearly remember waking up to a dark room.
Your entire being trembles in what you realise is horror. If it wasn’t you, then who-
At 7:45 pm, your body falls limp as you drift off to sleep.
The stone door to your room opens.
—
Day 555.
You look at the light in your room. It has been turned off.
Why? Why are you still here?
Your body always wakes up at 5:30 am. Never early, never late.
It takes you fifteen minutes to be ready and seated in the dining hall. Never more, never less.
You eat the same plate of meat and mushrooms for breakfast with the same calculated bites and time spent chewing.
At 5:55 am, your nails dig into your palm when you leave the dining hall. It seems you really did know one of the screams you heard yesterday. With Leif, a new face took up the second position of escorting you to the generator room. He did not introduce himself or why he is here. He doesn’t need to. Jensen is dead, and you can’t help but think back to your last memory of him, paranoid and shaking with anxiety.
You have to focus when you replace the crystal for the first generator. For some reason, you are more in control of your body as time passes, and holding the new Azosite block seems to make your body feel lighter. You carefully switch off the power, replace the crystal, and switch the power back on, mentally thanking the fact that your body, or whoever was controlling it, seemed to still have some memory of what to do. You eye the cloaked figure in the room, and wonder when exactly you took up such an important job of generator maintenance. When were you chosen for this? Why you?
When preparing the rice, your hands stuttered and strayed away from their usual rhythm at times, which you found strange. Whether you were in control or not, doing the same tasks for over five hundred and fifty days should have left your body with some muscle memory. And does the royal family, if there even is one, really have rice for breakfast everyday without fail?
Thankfully, what sticks with you after so much time is actual memories. While walking through the halls to the laundry rooms, you are able to recognise which staff members are new. Comparing the number to that of those who are missing, it is clear that these are replacements. Replacements that, whether they realise it or not, glance at or even stare at you a lot. Why you?
It gets harder to keep up the image of your usual robotic self. Washing, drying, and folding the usual amount of clothes is absolutely draining. By the end of it, your arms are shaking, and you are praying that no one notices that or how sloppy your work is compared to when you were controlled. At least you were able to notice one more thing - nothing about the laundry was different from day to day. It is the same articles of clothing every single day, with no unique stains and absolutely no signs of use.
During your walk to the servants’ dining hall, you admire the grandiose paintings on the wall, but hone in on the fact that none of them are portraits of the royal family you are supposedly serving. You still have no idea what they look like, which only makes your doubts about their existence worsen.
Seated at a table at 11:00 am, you feel nauseous looking at that disgustingly bland dish of meat and mushrooms. However, you have appearances to keep up, so you force each bite down with great effort. It helps, although you are weary, that your body is still following another command, just enough so that you know what bite to take when so that you are finished with the meal in ten minutes. The next fifty minutes waiting for the clock to hit noon is excruciatingly painful, because sifting through your memories showed that you only sat in place and stared at a wall during this time. Earlier, it felt shorter because your consciousness was not entirely present, but this time it is.
So when it hits 12:00 pm, you get up slightly quicker than you should, and head to the task of setting the table for the ‘royal family.’ If the plates and utensils are kept crooked or slightly off-center, it’s because you are still desperately trying to find some evidence of the people you are supposed to be working under. But no, nothing comes up except maybe that the seats collected a few more specks of dust.
Is any of this real?
Throughout the time you wash the dishes (shivering at memory of your mindless body washing nothing) and chop vegetables, you brace yourself for when the servants would have to go to the basement. When more screams would echo, and you’re forced to resort to only your imagination to figure out what is happening below you. That time never comes, however.
At first, you wonder if it is because they have changed their targets. If they’ve noticed something different about you. One quick look at the cloaked figures monitoring the room debunks that, since they do not even look your way and instead focus all the attention on the rest of the staff. Still, you feel eyes on you, and you slowly become aware of the cautiousness the new servants regard you with, even giving you a wide berth wherever you work or walk.
Is there something wrong with you?
At 4:00 pm, you have to force down the meat and mushrooms for supper again. This time it is harder without the subtle force controlling your body, as it is growing weaker and weaker. You have yet to figure out what exactly that means, but you can only pray it is for the better.
You make your way to the second floor for your final task of the day. You force yourself to look ahead and not at the cloaked figures monitoring the hallways, but you can still tell that they don’t just ignore you - they refuse to look at you.
What did you do?
With no one in the room to watch you, you spend the bare minimum amount of time dusting and making the beds of the rooms, starting with the room at the end of the hall. The rest of the time you typically spend in one room is instead used to comb through it in search of information or evidence about where you are and why you’re here.
Why are you here?
You finish with the room closest to the stairs, but you are only left with more questions than answers. The storage furniture in the rooms you searched through are completely unusable. There were no shelves or drawers - instead the wardrobes and desks were either completely hollow or the handles were just for decoration, not being able to open since the furniture wasn’t even carved out.
Who do you serve?
You want to stay in that room to continue questioning everything, but you know that spending any more time surrounded by the falsity of its functionality would drive you insane. So at 7:00 pm, you return to the servants’ quarters, breathing heavily and eyes cast downwards to prevent you from breaking down on the way.
You were tired of keeping up the robotic act, but when you returned to your room, you took one look at the side still left empty before picking up the items you needed and heading to the shared bathroom.
Are you even real?
This morning, you woke up with hope. Hope that you would find out what is happening. Instead, all you were met with was lies, lies, and lies. You don’t know what is real and what isn’t. You don’t know why nobody acknowledges you, even now in this bathroom where you can see the stares and distance others give you in the mirror.
Who are…
Returning from the bathroom, you freeze before the stone door of your room.
Who are you?
…
“Who… who am I?” your unused voice croaks out, and a gasp from behind you is the last thing you hear before your reality shatters and the alarms start blaring.
“-and that is the end of the monitoring feed. I guess it was here when she broke out of the loop.” A man in white lab coat with gloves gestures to the tablet in front of them.
The group of researchers gathered in the room look at each other, the evidence undeniably confirming the worst-case scenario they had been hoping against. Calm, yet heavy footsteps echo from the back of the room, moving to the researcher at the front.
From the shadows emerges a woman with blonde hair and the kind of smile on her lips that is far from friendly. The crowd of scientists tense up, each clack of her heels adding to the looming sense of dread. Illuminated by the replay of the subject’s last moments before losing connection, she approaches the nearby desk that had reports strewn across.
She picks one up, scanning the information it holds.
“The data on this paper evidently shows unusual brain activity starting nearly two weeks ago. This data is recorded on paper live, and the error margin is close to zero.” she says, her smile dropping and tone hardening as she turns to face the group of trembling researchers.
“Why was nobody able to catch this?”
They couldn’t utter a word, their throats closing up in front of one of the most brilliant, but ruthless researchers and alchemists in Khaenri’ah.
“Apologies, Rhinedottir. In the end, this was due to an uncalculated move on our end.” Another voice speaks up, cutting the tension as he enters the room. The man gestures for the rest of the people to leave, leaving him with ‘Gold’ as the last researcher hurriedly exits.
“Oh?” She asks, “The Rächer of Solnari is the one that slipped up this time?”
Rerir grimaces, “In our drive to hunt those from the Crimson Moon dynasty, the king ordered us to first prioritise this particular experiment. Our mistake was starting with the actors, who were directly involved with the subject, but-”
“That gave an opportunity for someone indirectly involved to escape. Someone behind the scenes.” Gold interrupts with a hum of understanding, “A shame that it had to be the one person keeping tabs on the subject’s brain activity.”
They both turn back to the tablet, which is frozen at the last frame - the moment the subject’s eyes widen in realization. There was a reason this experiment held the king’s curiosity and priority. He is certainly not going to be happy about this.
Rerir sighs, “Still, from my understanding, this should not have been possible.”
“I agree.”
He turns to Gold, who has that gleam in her eyes. Not one of curiosity, but one of a mad scientist both excited and irritated by an experiment acting unpredictably.
“Regaining the capacity to think and feel is impossible for someone who had their soul completely obliterated.”