Chapter 567

The rain hammered against the cobblestone streets of Vienna, each drop a cold sting against Erich's face as he rushed home from his shift at the bakery. The city was his, every corner filled with a memory, a feeling of security that he cherished. Tonight, though, the familiar alleys felt different, as if the shadows held a waiting breath.

He fished in his pocket for his keys, the metal cold to the touch. Just a few more steps, and he'd be inside, away from this creeping dread. He reached his door and put the key in the lock.

Then the world tilted.

Not physically, but as if the very reality around him shuddered. The alleyway, moments before cloaked in shadow, now blazed with an unnatural light. A structure – no, a thing – of impossible smoothness stood where nothing had been before. A wall. Black, seamless, unbreakable.

Panic clawed at his throat. He turned to run, to escape this nightmare, but found another wall had formed behind him, mirroring the first. He was boxed in. Trapped.

A scream clawed its way out of him, raw and desperate. "Help! Someone, please!"

His shout was swallowed by the city, by whatever had made this unnatural place. The walls hummed, a deep resonance that vibed in his very bones. He beat against the fronting plane, the impact jarring his hand, leaving not even a scratch.

He was not alone.

To his left, a young woman stared in utter disbelief at the dark structure. Across from him, an old man babbled prayers. Erich was not the only victim of this impossible event.

"What…what is this?" the woman stuttered, her eyes wide with terror.

Erich had no answer, only the grinding weight of dread. "I…I don't know. A dream, maybe?"

The old man, clutching a rosary, shook his head. "This is no dream. This is… judgment."

Judgment? Erich scoffed, even as a part of him knew the man's words carried a dark weight of possibility. Judgment for what? For a life spent baking bread? For wanting nothing more than the simple pleasures of Vienna?

More joined them; a young couple, a businessman still clutching his briefcase, a gaggle of teenagers laughing one second, silenced by stark terror the next. All randomly pulled from their ordinary existences into this impossible prison.

Days blurred into a hellish tableau. Hunger gnawed. Thirst tormented. Hope died slowly, agonizingly. The black structure offered nothing, yielded nothing. It simply was.

Some cried. Some raved. Some went silent, retreating into a private world of madness. Erich tried to keep his sanity by rationing the few coins he had, imagining them buying crusts of bread in his bakery.

The woman, her name he learned was Clara, possessed an unbroken spirit. She organized small gatherings to maintain morale. "We need to work together," she urged, her at first shaking then becoming more assured. "We need to figure this out. There has to be a way."

The old man only rocked back and forth, muttering prayers that seemed only to echo their despair. He went quiet after a few days, staring at a single point on the dark surface.

Erich's initial desperation gave way to a cold resolve. He examined the planes constantly, searching for a crack, a flaw, anything. Nothing. The surfaces remained perfectly even and unbroken, like obsidian mirrors reflecting only their fear.

Then the screams started.

Not the screams of panic or hunger, but screams of agonizing pain. A sound that stripped sanity and left only bone-deep terror. One by one, individuals began to scream, convulsing on the ground, unseen torture that drove the others to their knees in dread.

Clara found him huddled against the cold obsidian, his face buried in his hands. She sat next to him, her presence a small beacon of warmth in this abyss.

"It's not fair," he croaked, his voice raw from disuse.

"No," she agreed, her eyes moist. "It isn't. But we can't give in. We have to fight."

Fight? Against what? An invisible tormentor? Walls that defied physics? How could they possibly win?

The answer, when it arrived, was even more horrifying than he imagined.

One evening, as the unnatural light intensified, patterns appeared on the structure's face. Not cracks or breaks, but images, symbols unlike anything Erich had ever witnessed. They shimmered with an internal fire, pulsating with terrible power.

As they looked, an understanding bloomed in their minds.

They were not prisoners, not exactly. They were pieces on a board, pawns in a game played by entities beyond human comprehension. The torture, the walls, the utter hopelessness – it was all for their entertainment. Their amusement.

"They're watching us," Clara whispered, her body trembling. "This whole time… they've been watching."

Erich looked at her, the last spark of hope dimming inside him. "We're toys," he managed to say, his voice hollow. "Just… toys."

He was right. With awful insight, they now perceived how their terror fueled the symbols. Each scream, each desperate prayer, each tiny spark of defiance was energy for them.

Erich closed his eyes, picturing his bakery, the warmth of the oven, the smell of yeast and flour, a taste of something ordinary. He held that image close, a last defense against the encroaching horror.

Then the shapes on the dark structure intensified, focusing around Clara. She stared at them, her expression transforming from terror to something akin to understanding.

"I see it," she breathed. "I see how it works. There is a way."

Erich didn't understand. Before he could speak, Clara turned to him, a sorrowful smile on her face.

"Remember me," she said softly. Then she shattered.

Not physically, but her being, her very existence, unraveling into the symbols that surrounded them. The shapes flared with newfound intensity, and then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

The symbols disappeared. The unnatural light softened. The torture stopped. But Clara was gone, her sacrifice incomprehensible, terrible.

Despair settled over Erich like a shroud. He knelt beside the spot where Clara had stood, but there was nothing left, not even dust. The others looked at him with a mix of hope and horror, expecting him to know something, anything. But he was empty.

Time lost all meaning. The remaining humans slipped away, claimed either by starvation, insanity, or those torturous waves of pain. Eventually, only Erich remained, alone in the dark cell.

One day, Erich stopped feeling hungry. The horror, which for so long had occupied his mind, turned dull, even somewhat distant.

He could only remember brief moments of clarity. Moments that usually contained something from his former home of Austria, and his bakery. A certain type of coffee cake, or a familiar street sign, were usually his focal points.

He barely noticed when the dark wall finally disappeared.

He stepped out into a street, no longer the familiar streets of Vienna. The sky overhead wasn't blue. The light, whatever celestial body produced it, had no familiar warmth or comfort to it. Still, Erich found that he was surprisingly unfazed.

He walked without direction or intent, until, eventually, he saw the outline of a distant village. A part of his mind hoped he would find something recognizable there.

When he arrived at the village, the place was deserted, but, again, this had very little impact on him. It wasn't long after entering, however, that Erich heard a child's high-pitched scream not far away. His first thought was, was this his torture from earlier? Why had it returned? Was he back on that structure again? But when he approached, it wasn't what he expected.

Around a dilapidated house in the town square, he found a group of young children tormenting a small kitten, by kicking and throwing rocks at it. Its screams were pitiful and heartrending. Before the structure and whatever followed, Erich might have done nothing or moved them along their way.

But, instead, Erich found that a newfound feeling of intense anger welled up inside him as the scene played out. The anger quickly evolved to fury. A guttural sound came from deep inside, as if an animal clawed at his insides.

He took a hold of the closest child, the kitten's aggressor. "Stop it! You mustn't cause harm!"

The child just laughed, the dark socket inside of it looking upward as it echoed with more. "Just a game!" it hissed.

With inhuman force, Erich raised his hands, his strength far beyond any mortal. Erich ended their suffering without the bat of an eye. Their bodies fell as he looked for others.

Those outside the ring did not step back but hissed with pleasure at Erich for assisting with the game. So they followed too. The bloodied outline now surrounding him as an unnatural structure closed once again.

Erich's vision began to fade as he heard voices close by. Louder, stronger than his own. "Hm. This one is special indeed. They do enjoy causing harm," one droned.

The voices grew louder, the light stronger. A shape came forth, of a being much bigger than he. "Continue!"

Erich looked downward and noticed the small kitten. Its frail outline with visible scratches and eyes of horror looked up at him with innocence. Again, something happened within. He quickly snatched the young creature from the floor. Something protecting something else.

"No!" Erich screamed.

Erich found no response, for as his pain heightened again, all existence of being disappeared once more.