Chapter 6: The Walls Remember

The Walls Remember

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The walls in the Pit didn't just echo screams.

They remembered who made them.

Every crack held a face.

Every stone carried a curse.

Every breath down here tasted like someone else's fear.

Rael sat alone in the silence room.

His visions hadn't stopped since the last strike.

If anything… they had gotten worse.

Now, he couldn't tell what was real anymore.

He saw blood on clean walls.

He heard screams through laughter.

He blinked — and saw a child's corpse where a friend had been sitting.

His power was growing — but it was eating something from within.

And no one else knew.

---

But someone had seen.

A girl.

She was always there — in the corners, in the shadows. Small, quiet. Maybe twelve, maybe younger. Everyone called her Thread, because she never spoke unless it was to whisper names of the dead.

She approached Rael.

Didn't speak.

Just placed her hand on the ground.

The stone floor glowed faintly beneath her touch.

And then—

Rael saw it.

Not through his power.

Through hers.

A memory embedded in the stone.

Two men dragging her down the corridor. Laughing. Her screams muffled. Her face covered. Blood on the wall. A voice saying, "She's too young, but that's what sells now."

Rael looked up, shaken.

Thread looked at him with eyes that no longer had innocence — only understanding.

She wasn't broken.

She was becoming something else.

Just like him.

---

That same night, they found a room.

Buried deep under rusted pipes and fire-blackened beams.

Dust had heard rumors. Of a place called the Core.

They thought it was a storage space.

They were wrong.

---

They broke through the last door.

Inside — not food.

Not medicine.

Cages.

Twenty of them.

Most empty.

Three still occupied.

A boy — bones showing through his skin, missing one arm.

A girl — head shaved, a strange rune etched into her neck.

And another girl — curled up, eyes black with rot, but still breathing.

Rael rushed forward. Dust threw up.

The smell was beyond death. A mix of waste, sweat, old blood, and something else… something magical and burnt.

The room pulsed.

Thread entered.

And the ground itself shivered beneath her.

The boy with one arm spoke first.

"Don't touch the runes. They'll burn you."

His voice was dry. Too calm. Too used to pain.

Rael asked quietly, "What is this place?"

The boy answered:

"They called it a Resonance Room. They tried to make powers awaken by forcing trauma. They thought if they tortured us right, we'd break open."

Rael didn't speak.

He couldn't.

Because deep down… he knew they weren't entirely wrong.

---

They carried the survivors out.

It took hours.

No light. Just blood, breath, and bone.

One of the girls — the one with black rot in her eyes — stopped breathing halfway.

Rael tried to save her.

But Thread stepped forward.

Placed her hand on the girl's chest.

Closed her eyes.

And screamed.

Not out loud — but into the world itself.

For one heartbeat, the walls of the tunnel wept water.

Drips ran down like tears.

A cold wind rose from nothing.

And the girl gasped, her eyes fluttering open.

Dust stared.

"…She brought her back."

Rael stared too.

"No," he said quietly.

"She gave her a reason to wake up."

---

That night, Rael gathered them all.

The Pit was full now.

Dozens of survivors.

All with stories.

All with losses.

And some with… gifts.

Not like Rael's.

Different.

Raw. Unstable. Emotional.

One boy — named Hush — could silence all sound around him when he was scared. Not just his voice — but everything.

One girl — Cricket — would bleed golden sparks when hurt. If those sparks touched others, they screamed with memories that weren't their own.

A teen named Varn could rot metal just by crying.

No one had trained them.

No one understood them.

Their powers weren't clean.

They weren't anime powers.

They were broken.

Pain-made.

Real.

Rael stood before them.

"This isn't war," he said.

"This is revenge pretending to be resistance."

"But if we do nothing — if we run and hide — we become exactly what they want: ghosts that no one mourns."

He looked at each of them.

"I'm not a leader. I'm not a hero. I'm just angry enough to keep walking."

"But if we walk together, we might become something they can't erase."

---

They agreed.

Not because of hope.

Because they had nothing else left.

---

That same week, something worse came.

Not soldiers.

Not drones.

Not mercenaries.

Something older.

Something made from flesh and black magic.

The Capitol called them Corrupts.

Creatures formed from failed experiments — twisted human bodies reshaped by ritual and agony. They had no minds. Just hunger.

The first one came down through a broken metro tunnel.

It smelled like burning teeth.

Its body was stitched with arms that didn't match.

Its head was split open and stitched shut again.

It walked on all fours, but its hands were human.

It had a child's voice… but it spoke backwards.

Dust tried to shoot it.

Did nothing.

Hush silenced its roar — but it kept moving.

Varn tried to rot it — but it had no true metal left to break.

Rael stepped forward.

He reached for his illusions.

But something strange happened.

The Corrupt saw them.

Then laughed.

And spoke in a voice not its own:

> "You show us dreams… we were born from nightmares."

Then it lunged.

---

The battle wasn't heroic.

It was ugly.

Screams. Blood. Teeth on skin. Thread's arm torn open. Cricket vomiting gold sparks that singed the walls. Dust stabbed the creature 17 times before it finally collapsed, oozing bile and black rot.

But they won.

Because they didn't run.

Because Rael wasn't the only one with pain now.

And the world above?

Still silent.

Still watching.

---

Rael stands above the corpse of the Corrupt.

He turns to the children.

And quietly says:

"This world wants to erase us."

"Let's make that the hardest thing it's ever tried to do."

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