CH3
I couldn't take it anymore.
The darkness of that room… the silence… the walls. Something about them pressed in too close, as if they were waiting for me to speak—to make a mistake.
I had to get out.
I stumbled to the door, barely thinking, hands cold with sweat. I needed air. I needed space. I needed anything but that suffocating room.
But as I stepped outside, I noticed something at my feet.
A piece of paper.
Crumbled and worn, like it had been there for years, and yet the ink was fresh—too fresh.
I bent down and picked it up, hands trembling slightly. In the middle of the page, written in uneven letters, was a single message:
"Find the Twelfth Wall."
No signature. No explanation. Nothing else.
I looked around the empty alley, heart pounding. No footsteps. No shadows. Just the wind whispering across the broken stones.
Why did this feel like a warning?
Or maybe… a command.
I didn't know what I was doing. I just walked.
The cold air bit at my skin, but I barely felt it. My eyes scanned every surface, every corner. My pulse refused to settle. This place—Oustaria—wasn't just broken. It watched.
Then I saw her.
A figure, slight and silent, standing at the far end of a ruined street. A girl. I couldn't make out her face under the hood, but I felt her eyes on me.
She raised a hand.
Pointed.
And vanished behind a collapsed wall.
I followed.
Why? I still don't know. But something about her presence silenced the fear for just a moment.
She led me through the gray maze of Oustaria—past rusted gates, hollow homes, and shattered statues. The deeper we went, the quieter it became.
Until we reached it.
A monolithic wall. Darker than the others. Thicker. Dead still.
At its center, a barely visible mark:
XII
The Twelfth Wall.
She didn't speak. Just nodded slowly, then stepped back and disappeared into the shadows once more.
I stood alone.
And I was shaking.
There was something wrong about this wall. It wasn't just built from stone—it felt. A slow, rhythmic thrum vibrated through the ground beneath my feet. Like it had a pulse.
I reached out.
As soon as my fingers touched the surface, warmth spread through me. The wall's texture shifted—veins of pale white light crawled across it like glowing roots.
A pattern emerged. Not words, not quite—but symbols, shifting too quickly to understand. They burned themselves into my mind, and yet refused to stay.
Then came the voice.
No, not a voice. A thought.
"You chose to listen."
I stumbled back, breath caught in my throat.
My heart was hammering, my skin ice.
What was this place?
Then it was gone.
The light vanished. The pulse faded. The wall was still again—lifeless, cold.
And I was alone.
When I returned to my room—if you could even call that empty black hole a room—I found another note waiting beneath the door.
Shakily, I unfolded it.
Three words.
"Don't forget your voice."
I looked up sharply, chest tight.
Across the ruined street, near the broken well, stood the girl again. Watching. Silent.
She didn't move. Didn't wave.
And then—she was gone.
Just like the wall.
Just like everything else in this cursed place.