Chapter 13: The Secluded Cell
Following Nepheli through Stormveil's bowels felt like descending through the digestive system of some architectural beast. The walls pressed closer here, stones weeping moisture that smelled of rust and desperation. Torch brackets held no torches—only empty iron hands reaching toward shadows that seemed to swallow light before it could illuminate what lurked in the darkness.
Nepheli moved with confident precision, her enhanced senses mapping safe paths through corridors that had been designed to confuse and trap. But even she paused when they reached a section where the architecture turned genuinely impossible—passages that folded back on themselves, stairs that led to walls, doorways that opened onto solid stone.
"Grafted masonry," she muttered, studying walls that seemed to shift when observed peripherally. "He's been experimenting on the castle itself."
The hidden cell revealed itself only because Gara spotted movement where movement shouldn't exist—a gap between stones that hadn't been there moments before, concealed by optical illusions that hurt to look at directly. Whispers drifted from within, soft and desperate, words meant for ears that couldn't answer back.
Inside, a young woman huddles in crimson robes, hood pulled tight against horrors that lived inside her head as much as outside it. Her hands moved in patterns around objects that weren't there, conversations with presences only she could perceive. The air around her shimmered with something that might have been heat distortion or might have been spirits.
Roderika startled at their approach, brandishing a dagger with hands that shook like autumn leaves. The blade was ornamental rather than practical—ceremonial metal designed for display rather than defense. But desperation could make anything dangerous, and her desperation was absolute.
"Stay back!" Her voice cracked with exhaustion and terror. "I won't... I can't let you take me too!"
Gara immediately raised empty palms, movements slow and deliberate. Something in her panic resonated with memories of his own awakening—the confusion, the fear, the absolute certainty that reality had betrayed him personally.
"We're not going to hurt you," he said, his voice carrying the gentleness of someone who understood what breaking felt like. "Promise. We're just... trying to get through. Like you."
The exhaustion in his tone did what aggression couldn't—it reached past her panic to the rational person underneath. The dagger lowered slightly, though her grip remained white-knuckled.
"You're Tarnished," she observed, studying their mismatched equipment and battle-worn appearance. "But you're... different. Most warriors who reach this deep in the castle have eyes like stones. Yours are..." She paused, searching for words. "Tired. Sad. Human."
Nepheli shifted behind him, uncomfortable with vulnerability displayed so openly. But Gara found himself drawn to this girl who saw past his accumulated competence to the exhaustion underneath.
"What happened here?" he asked gently. "Why are you hiding?"
The story poured out like water through a broken dam. Roderika's convoy—merchants and pilgrims seeking shelter in Godrick's domain. The soldiers who'd welcomed them with professional courtesy and led them deeper into the castle than guests should go. The workshops where grafting happened, where people became materials for someone else's vision of improvement.
"They took everyone," she whispered, tears cutting tracks through dirt on her cheeks. "My friends, my guards, everyone who'd sworn to protect me. I ran. I hid. I left them to... to whatever Godrick does in those rooms where the screaming never stops."
"Survival isn't cowardice," Gara said with conviction that surprised him. "It's the hardest thing you can do. Anyone who tells you different has never had to choose between living and dying badly."
Nepheli's sharp intake of breath told him the response had revealed more about his own experiences than intended. But Roderika nodded with the fervent agreement of someone who'd wrestled with that exact shame.
"You understand," she said, studying his face with new intensity. "You've had to make that choice too."
"More times than I care to count."
"But you kept going. Despite the fear, despite the shame, despite knowing that every choice might be the wrong one. You're terrified too—I can feel it. Your spirit is fractured, like you've died over and over, but somehow you're still here. Still fighting."
The observation hit like a physical blow. Gara's carefully constructed mask of competence cracked, revealing the exhaustion and accumulated trauma underneath.
"She can see it. Somehow, she can actually see what the deaths have done to me."
"Yeah," he admitted, the word carrying more weight than entire conversations. "I have. But I keep getting up because... because maybe the next time will be the one that matters. Maybe the next fight will be the one that saves someone. Maybe the next death will teach me something that makes all the previous ones worthwhile."
Roderika's understanding was immediate and complete. They were the same—powerless people forcing themselves forward through worlds designed to break them, held together by nothing more substantial than stubborn refusal to quit.
Nepheli watched this exchange with growing fascination and concern. This was vulnerability she'd never seen from Gara before, admission of fears he'd kept hidden behind humor and false confidence. The warrior she'd been traveling with wasn't strong—he was just too broken to fall apart.
POV: Roderika
His spirit was shattered into hundreds of pieces, each fragment carrying the weight of violence experienced and violence witnessed. She could perceive them like broken glass held together by golden thread—deaths upon deaths upon deaths, all somehow contained within a single mortal frame.
No Tarnished should be able to hold themselves together like that, she thought, her developing spirit sight revealing truths that normal perception would miss. The human soul isn't designed to process unlimited trauma. He should be hollow, should be mad, should be lost in the spaces between life and death.
Instead, he was here. Offering comfort to a stranger, extending protection to someone who could offer nothing in return, choosing kindness when efficiency would serve him better.
He's not strong, she realized with crystalline clarity. He's just too broken to fall apart. And if this fractured man can fight, maybe I can find courage too.
POV: Gara Smith
The chrysalids attacked without warning—grafted horrors that had once been human but were now caught in transitional states between person and weapon. They moved with insectile coordination, limbs that no longer fit together properly, faces that still held traces of who they'd been before Godrick's workshops claimed them.
Their screams were the worst part. Not the aggressive roars of monsters, but the confused cries of people who didn't understand what had been done to them.
Gara threw himself between the creatures and Roderika without conscious thought, his body moving on protective instincts that bypassed rational calculation. The first chrysalid's claws punched through his chest like paper, but he managed to grab its limbs and hold it long enough for Roderika to scramble toward safety.
Death #99: Grafted Chrysalids. Chest punctured. 6/10 for heroic sacrifice, 2/10 for tactical planning.
He returned from the nearby Grace in seconds—so fast that both women were still processing his death when he charged back into the chamber screaming instructions.
"RUN! Get to the corridor behind me! Nepheli, flank left when they cluster!"
The resurrection had been instant, impossible, undeniable. But there wasn't time for explanations while monsters filled the air with violence and confusion. Nepheli's axes carved through chitin and malformed bone while Gara coordinated their attacks with knowledge that could only have come from experiencing the chrysalids' capabilities firsthand.
Victory came soaked in ichor and mystery.
"You died," Roderika whispered when the last chrysalid fell. "You died, and you came back in seconds. How?"
Gara wiped alien blood from his blade while his mind raced through possible explanations that wouldn't reveal everything. The Grace had been close—maybe fifty meters. Fast respawn times were theoretically possible if someone died near a Site of Grace. It was weak as excuses went, but better than admitting the truth.
"Stubborn, I guess," he said with false lightness. "Really, really stubborn."
Nepheli's silence was deafening. She studied him with the intensity of someone solving puzzles that threatened to reshape her understanding of reality. Two witnesses to impossible resurrection. Two people who now knew he was operating outside the normal rules that governed Tarnished existence.
Ninety-nine deaths. One away from triple digits. One away from whatever milestone waits at death number one hundred.
The thought should have terrified him. Instead, it felt like approaching completion of some cosmic education, the final lesson in a curriculum written in pain and repetition.
They escorted Roderika toward Stormveil's exit, Gara explaining the path to Roundtable Hold while carefully avoiding details that would require revealing his meta-knowledge. She listened with the focused attention of someone who'd learned that survival depended on remembering everything.
"I'll find my strength," she promised as they reached the castle's outer walls. "Like you found yours. I won't let fear define me forever."
Gara didn't have the heart to tell her that his strength was just accumulated corpses, that his courage was built on the foundation of consequences that didn't stick. Instead, he squeezed her shoulder gently and watched her walk toward whatever future awaited beyond Stormveil's shadow.
Nepheli's silence stretched between them as they turned back toward the castle's depths. When she finally spoke, her voice carried undertones of questions she wasn't ready to ask directly.
"She saw something in you. Something I missed. What was she talking about—your spirit being fractured?"
"Old family techniques," Gara said, the lie flowing with practiced ease. "Meditation practices involving death and rebirth metaphors. Leaves... impressions."
"Impressions," Nepheli repeated, her tone suggesting that impressions was insufficient to describe what she'd witnessed. "And the resurrection speed?"
"Grace was close. Lucky timing."
"Lucky timing."
The conversation died there, but Gara could feel her watching him with new awareness. The mystery was deepening rather than resolving, his secrets becoming more obvious rather than better hidden.
But Roderika's recognition had given him something unexpected—confirmation that his struggles weren't invisible, that someone could look at him and see past the accumulated competence to the exhaustion underneath. He wasn't alone in his brokenness.
The question was whether that realization would make the next phase easier to bear, or whether knowing others could see his fractures would make holding himself together that much harder.
Death number one hundred waited somewhere ahead in Stormveil's depths. The milestone promised revelations, changes, consequences he couldn't predict. And with each step deeper into Godrick's domain, Gara found himself wondering whether the thing that emerged from death #100 would still be human enough to care about the answer.
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