DUNGEON FILE 001:
"DEATH'S NOT EVEN A GOOD EXCUSE"
It seems I have had the misfortune of waking up alive.
How terribly inconvenient…
My eyes fluttered open, gritty and sore. It would seem I woke up in a cavern, which can only be described as an endless misty ravine I cannot see the surface of.
The cell I was currently in clung to the cliff's edge like a stubborn barnacle, and behind the bars, other ruined cells all just as rusted as my own stretched on for fathoms. Cold, silvery light filtered through the cracks, like moonlight filtering through a shattered sky thousands of miles above.
Honestly, it was beautiful.
Like the elegance in the way a corpse is beautiful after its final breath—Brutal, pale, motionless.
Oh. That's right.
Speaking of corpses,
I was meant to be one!
I had died in the summer today. I remember this because the leaves had curled inwards as though cowering from the heat, and the sky was cracked open into a mournful grey from Mt. Popōca's ashen plumes on this particular day.
This day, the Golden Sun Temple in our capital city burned brighter than the rest, not in temperature, but in tension from the announcement: A noble was to be executed in the midday.
Yes, this noble… was yours truly.
In all the countries upon the Continent, including the Obsidian Empire which I hailed from, people who were sentenced to death were executed by hanging. Hangings were public ceremonies, and strange as it may seem, there was a carnival-like atmosphere to those types of events, as the Continent was typically a peaceful place and violence or death of any kind was more… exciting than dreadful.
My name was cheerily stripped from the Temple walls. My crimes were read aloud. They bound me in golden cords like common livestock, shoved me in the back of a rickety horse-drawn cart, and took me to the execution site. Prayers were offered, sermons and confessions were made. Then, I was made to kneel and branded with a hot iron (as is tradition for one deemed a heretic) before being taken to the gallows. The obsidian altar was warm with old blood, yet when the rope at last let me go…
…It did not grant me peace.
My last memory was of that noose around my neck... I died a shameful death under the gaze of the other nobles of the Obsidian Kingdom who had once bowed before my crest. I remember the laughter, the jeers, the people deeming me a 'heretic', my fall, and finally my ignoble end.
But if that was the case, if I truly had died,
Why in the name of the Gods am I still breathing?!
Shakily, I rose to my feet. Trying to make sense of that thought gave me no answers and only a terrible headache, and I clearly had much worse things to worry about.
My limbs felt like fragile twigs, and my once crimson gown was now torn and tattered beyond repair. The delicate silver hairpins that had once held my beautifully lengthy crimson hair in place were gone, leaving strands of damp hair sticking to my face in an ugly tangled heap. I pushed it back in an attempt to at least keep some of my dignity in tact here.
Right.
Assess the situation.
I glanced this way and that, but the situation still didn't make any sense: The rusted grates of my cell. The silvery light rubbed from the cracks above. I inhaled, and a putrid smell that pierced me like broken glass wafted through the air.
And then suddenly, despite my confusion, I had quite a clear idea of where my men might have dumped my body…
The Great Well—or a Puticuli, as the Marble Land's haughty scholars liked to call it—was the Continent's trash can. A final resting place for those society deemed unworthy of burial. Bandits. Heretics. The contiguously sick. In short, those who were no longer needed.
It was easier to dump them all in this hole in the middle of the Silver Country than to occupy space on the rest of the Continent's limited amount of land to give them a decent grave. We only had so much land to work with, after all.
Perhaps they thought this was justice.
Let the traitor rot, let her suffer, I'm sure they would claim. Let her beauty be spoiled in the dirt where she belongs.
Even with my former status, my 'treason' had earned me the same burial as the lowest dregs. Charming.
There could be no living thing here.
There should be no living thing here!
Truly, the Gods have a twisted sense of humor; Allowing me to live only for me to end up in a pile of criminal's corpses 10,000 meters beneath the ground until I inevitably died myself.
…Apart from the muttering of my unpleasant thoughts, not a sound can be heard from outside this damned cell. Actually, why was I in a cell at all? The bodies were just dropped down the hole, weren't they? Shouldn't I have landed in the open?
None of this makes any sense!!!
Well, realistically, my body should have smashed into pieces on impact. Perhaps I'm applying way too much logic to this…
I exhaled again into the acrid air and coughed so hard my ribs hurt. Every muscle in my body gnawed violently, as if it hadn't yet processed the sensation of this terrible fall—and given the way my head throbbed, perhaps it has not. My back ached especially badly.
Ah, yes, the brand. As if just to make sure if it was there or not, I reached for my scapula, my fingertips brushing against the raw, uneven pieces of flesh on my shoulder blade.
"...Still there, huh?" I sighed to myself.
The brand. The brand burned into my back. It depicted a coiled serpent crowned with thorns—the official seal of heresy in the Obsidian Empire. A symbol burned onto condemned criminals before their execution, as if death with dignity were too lenient a sentence.
My fingers stroke the mark. The edges of the mark are softer than the rest of the skin, the raised tissue sensitive to the slightest pressure. It is not so much painful as it is intrusive, really, but it's still so embarrassing!
Then, my hand drifted upward, to the nape of my neck. My fingers felt a new scar, one that wasn't there before my death at all. It was a thick ring of fused tissue, slightly puckered, jagged in places. A grotesque collar made not of silk or steel, but of mutilated skin.
I can feel the contours, the raised tissue, every tiny indentation.
This scar is no ordinary wound. It must be the indentation of a noose! No, had I been beheaded by the rope the moment I fell?! This mark was now a disgraceful, repulsive collar completely visible around my neck!
I want to scream. I want to shriek until my throat tore, but I can't.
No sound except a pathetic, choked sob escaped.
My legs move, but they feel heavy and awkward. My trembling legs adjust forward, stumbling on their own, through the rusted cell gate that opens as easily as a yawning jaw.
Clang.
With each step, the stone floor scrapes against me. My knees buckle, and I reach for the jagged wall for support, but there is no balance, no ground.
I just... desire to fall off of this edge. Just keep falling.
I couldn't stop shaking. I couldn't breathe. My lungs went numb. It was as if I had forgotten what it meant to be human. My chest cried out with pressure. I knew then how much I had been holding, from the way my chest ached with the effort to breathe. So much, for so long—the grief, the fear, the sickening horror of having survived.
My body couldn't contain it any longer.
Blood seeped through my fingers, and I was hunched in my arms, trembling, unable to feel my nails harshly pressing into my skin. My breath wouldn't come. My heart wouldn't slow. My hands balled into fists, my nails digging into my flesh. I wanted to claw my way out of my body, to be free of this pitiful, unnatural existence.
The edge of the ravine stretched on and on.
I might fall. I might be swallowed up.
I wanted to disappear.
Please, please, just let me disappear.
And for a blissful split second I thought I was gone, that I'd come so close to the edge that the darkness had swallowed me whole.
Unable to bear the weight of the sky, the vastness of it all, I closed my eyes and hoped that when I opened them… There might be nothing left to see.
But then I heard a calm, soothing voice.
"I would not."
Gloved fingers gripped my waist with force.
"Step any further, that is. You wouldn't find the end you crave, nor would I bother retrieving your remains again."
I squirmed, a choked, violent cry escaping my throat, but the hand held firm, relentlessly pulling me back. My body slammed into cold metal, the weight of the man in silver armor pressed against me. Before I could resist, before I could force myself away, something thin and sharp slid into my wounded throat.
"Be still!" the man commanded. "If you continue to thrash around, you will throw yourself upon my blade."
I stopped moving, for I had no other choice. My breathing became heavy and broken. "Then kill me!" I hissed.
A pause.
"What was that?" he muttered, sounding genuinely surprised.
"Wow. You seem awfully prepared to play executioner. But now that the chance is here, you falter?" I tilted my chin, ignoring the blade.
"Wait. You... just found out your alive, and your first instinct is you want to die...?" The stranger stiffened, and gripped my shoulders slowly and heavily. He stood, staring, thinking, hesitating, he seemed to be studying me for a while, then finally he dropped this strange hesitation and spoke again. "I see... you really don't know anything."
"Huh?"
He exhaled like a tutor for a failing student and shook his head dramatically. "I should have realized when I dragged you out here and saw your crumpled little body, wrapped in cotton and silver that could be mistaken for royalty. Honestly, how does a noblelady like you survive a day on your own?"
"I didn't," I facepalmed. "That's rather the point. You're speaking far too brazenly for someone I've just met, do you think we are familiar or something? It's quite annoying!"
He ordered me around with an odd sort of familiarity, like he already knew I'd argue but also expected me to eventually comply. It was strangely… predictable?
Ugh, maybe I'm just easy to read.
Maybe he's just a sadistic control freak.
"Well yes…" the stranger squinted his eyes, as if trying to read my thoughts. "...I'm the one who dragged your pâté'd corpse from the bottom of this ravine here to this lovely little gaol until it regenerated. Now, you don't want to die. Not really. You want peace. You want closure. You want a reset button. And you think death will give you that. But…"
A bitter thought pierced my hazy skull. This the bastard who dragged me to that accursed cell!?
Was he waiting for me to wake up, and then planning to cruelly kill me himself?
A sigh swirled around my stomach. Resisting the urge to collapse, my hands pressed against the solid rock, trembling.
"So that's your intention! I don't care if you don't think that's what I want, just kill me!" My voice trailed off. I pressed my neck against the blade of the man's sword. "Do it. End it. Or let me go, and I'll throw myself off of this ledge. The world has already taken everything—why not this last scrap of dignity? Either way, just do it! I don't care anymore, and you damn sure cannot know what I want."
"Please don't jump off. It would be such a waste if you fell that far and I had to walk to retrieve your body. It would be exhausting."
"Who cares? I'd rather die than live again!"
"Then that is a pity."
"Why? Because you're a weirdo who would lock people in cells? Haven't I suffered enough? You're here in the Great Well too, so you must be a damn criminal! Don't try to act like you're above any of this…"
"That's a pity," the man interrupted coldly. "You still don't understand one simple thing." He took a step back. The blade left my throat. "You can't die in a place like this. This is the 'Deathless Dungeon' beneath the Great Well! …The first layer, at least."
The… huh? I immediately felt something inside me break. A deep, raw crack of thought appeared.
What kind of madness is this?
What kind of joke are you trying to make?!
"You can throw yourself off this cliff again. You can cut your throat, or jump into the chasm, or let me run you through right here and now. You will wake up in this hole again. Again and again and again. You are cursed! Everyone here is cursed. You will never truly die."
What on earth, on earth do you mean, "can't die"?!