Chapter 11: Decisions

 

‘Shit! Don’t tell me the path has a timer?’

The thought barely had time to form before the truth of it became devastatingly clear. Behind her, the stone path was dissolving, melting back into the lava from which it had risen as if it had never existed. The process was silent and inexorable, a slow-motion apocalypse creeping toward her with the patience of eternity.

Ahead, the shore waited. Close. But not close enough.

The multiplied gravity was returning. She felt it first as a heaviness in her wings, then as a tug on her body, then as a full-force pull trying to drag her from the air into the hungry lava below. Even flying, even with her flame blazing, she could feel the weight pressing down, slowing her, claiming her.

‘Shit! Shit! I need to go faster. MORE faster!’

Her flames roared. Not the desperate flicker of survival, but the focused inferno of absolute determination. She poured everything into speed, every dreg of energy, every flicker of flame, every ounce of will. Her cave locust body screamed in protest, muscles straining beyond their designed limits, wings beating so fast they became a blur.

She became light.

A trail of fire through the darkness, a shooting star across a lake of death, a tiny comet fleeing annihilation.

The path dissolved behind her. The gravity pressed down, harder now, making each leap a battle against the weight of worlds. Her vision blurred, from speed, from gravity, from the sheer impossibility of what she was attempting.

And then—

thud..Thud…Thud!!

‘Ouch… Ouch… Ouch!!! Damnit!!’

She had crash-landed. Her locust body tumbled across stone, skidded, flipped, and finally came to rest against something solid. For a long moment, she simply lay there, her compound vision swimming, her mind struggling to catch up with her body.

‘I… I’m alive!’ The realization hit like a wave. She was alive. She had made it.

‘YIPPEE!!’ The mental shout was pure, uncomplicated joy. She had outrun dissolution. She had beaten the timer. She had survived.

She scrambled to her feet, all six of them, and immediately turned to look behind her. The maze hell stretched across the distance, beautiful and terrible in its lethal glory. Lava churned. Lightning crackled. But the path was gone. Completely. As if it had never existed.

A deep, shuddering sigh escaped her.

Then she turned around.

And her mental heart stopped.

Before her stood a door.

Not just any door. A massive door, two stories high at least, crafted from some dark stone that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. It was built into the rock face, flanked by pillars carved with symbols she couldn’t read but somehow felt Ancient.

But it wasn’t the size that made her heart skip.

It was the words carved into its surface. Bold and impossible to ignore.

‘OBLIVION’

And beneath it, in smaller but no less ominous script:

_________

All Fates Lead To

Oblivion!
_________

Jessica gulped. The sound was mental, but it felt real in her throat.

‘Oblivion.’ She tasted the word. It was cold on her mental tongue. ‘I’m about to walk through a door labeled ‘Oblivion.’ Like it’s a hotel lobby.’

She stared at the door. The door stared back, silent and patient, utterly indifferent to her existential crisis.

‘Maybe… maybe I should think about this. Maybe there’s another way around. Maybe I—’

The door shuddered.

Not a collapse. Not an attack. A slow, deliberate movement, as if responding to her presence, her hesitation, her very existence. The massive slabs of stone began to part, grinding against unseen hinges, revealing darkness beyond.

Pure darkness. Not the friendly dark of a cave or the familiar dark of a tunnel. This was the dark of absence, the dark before creation, the dark after the end. Jessica’s flame, which had lit every space she’d entered since her reincarnation, barely penetrated the threshold. It was swallowed, absorbed, ignored.

‘I’m going to die in there.’ The thought was calm. Clinical. ‘I’m going to walk through that door and something is going to eat me, or trap me, or sneeze me out, and that will be the end of Jessica, Flame and Former Human.’

But beneath the fear, something else stirred.

Resolve.

She had come too far. Fought too hard. Survived too much. Wolves and mushrooms and swamp monsters and lava snakes and an ancient chained entity who might be a god or might be something worse. She had burned and drained and leveled and grown.

And somewhere in this darkness, a lever waited. A body waited. A reward waited.

She leaped forward.

Into the dark.

Behind her, the door began to close. Slowly. Inevitably. The grinding of stone on stone was the sound of a path closing, a choice made final.

The darkness swallowed her completely.

***

 

For a long moment, there was nothing. No light. No sound. No sense of up or down, forward or back. Just the void, and within it, a tiny flame burning against the infinite.

Then, the door finished closing.

And the words on its surface trembled.

They rippled, shifted, changed. The bold declaration that had greeted Jessica: All Fates Lead To Oblivion!, wavered like heat distortion, then dissolved entirely. New letters formed. Ancient letters. Letters that had been waiting, perhaps, for this very moment.

When the transformation finished, the door bore a new message:

_________

And Only The Ancient Flames

Shall Remember The Tale!
_________

*****

 

The door shut behind her with a final, echoing boom..! that seemed to vibrate through the very stone. Darkness claimed everything.

Not the friendly dark of a cave with distant light. Not the threatening dark of a monster’s hunting ground. This was something else entirely, a profound absence that pressed against her from all sides. It was familiar, in a way that made her flame flicker with recognition.

This was the darkness she had felt when she died.

Before the truck. Before the void. Before the cheerful “Transmigration Complete” screen. There had been this, an empty, infinite darkness that cradled her like a womb. No pain. No fear. Just stillness.

She should be afraid now. Every instinct, every lesson from the past five days, screamed that darkness meant danger. Darkness meant things that lurked and pounced and ate. Darkness meant death.

But she couldn’t find the fear.

Instead, something else bloomed in her mental chest, a warmth that had nothing to do with her flames. In this darkness, in this absolute void, she was the light. The only light. A small, flickering, defiant flame burning against the infinite.

And in that darkness, with that light, she felt something she hadn’t felt since her reincarnation.

Safe.

At peace.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Alive.

Her flames grew brighter. Not from effort or desperation, but naturally, as if responding to the darkness itself. The glow pushed back the void inch by inch, revealing stone floor, then walls, then..

The chamber ignited.

Torches burst to life along the walls, not gradually, not flickering to existence, but instantaneously, as if they had been waiting for her light to give them permission. Flame after flame after flame, until the entire chamber blazed with warm, welcoming fire.

‘Hehehe… just in time.’ Jessica prepared to leap forward, to explore this new space, when her compound eyes finally registered what she was seeing.

‘FLAMING HELL!!’ The mental gasp was involuntary.

Three statues dominated the chamber.

Not small statues. Giant statues, each one easily twenty feet tall, carved from some dark stone that seemed to absorb the torchlight even as it reflected it. They were armored knights, massive, imposing, terrifying in their detail. Each sat upon an individual throne, positioned along three walls: left, right, and directly ahead. Only the wall behind her, where the two-way door stood, was empty.

Their poses were identical. Each knight sat forward slightly, armored hands resting on the arms of their thrones, helmed faces tilted downward. And their eyes, empty, carved eye sockets all stared at the same point.

The center of the chamber.

Below them.

Jessica followed their gaze.

And her mental eyes widened in delight.

There, in the exact center of the chamber, bathed in the silent attention of three giant knights, sat a single object. It was unremarkable in appearance, a simple lever, ancient and worn, protruding from a stone base. But Jessica knew, with the absolute certainty of a system notification, exactly what it was.

 

[ITEM]

+

Name: The Nameless Lever

Rank: ???

Description: Once upon a time, in the [Age Of The Gods], a seal was forged by an oath unbroken. To turn the switch is to end the oath. And only at the appointed time can the oath be broken. And when it does… calamity that defies reason shall befall the world.

Usability: One-time

+

‘THE LEVER!!’ Her mental shriek was pure, triumphant joy. ‘It’s here! It’s actually here! Old Gramps wasn’t bluffing!’

But the joy flickered as she reread the description.

‘Calamity that defies reason shall befall the world.’

The words hung in her mind, heavy with implication. She was here to free Arafel. She had agreed to this mission, accepted the terms, committed to the path. But this… this was a warning. A strange prophecy. A promise of consequences she couldn’t begin to imagine.

‘Am I doing the right thing?’ She stared at the lever. The lever, silent and patient, stared back.

In the end, she shook her head. Not because the question was answered, but because the question didn’t matter. Arafel had done his part, saved her life, given her the bone, trusted her with this mission. She would do hers. That was the rule of a two way trade. That was the bond.

‘A deal is a deal.’ She leaped closer. The lever was far bigger than her, designed for human hands, not locust legs. But she didn’t need to pull it. Not yet. First, she needed to take it.

Poof!

The lever vanished from its base, transferred directly to her inventory.

[Item Received: [The Nameless Lever]]

‘One down.’ She allowed herself a moment of satisfaction. ‘Now for the rewards.’

She turned from the empty base and finally, really looked at the chamber.

And gasped.

‘REWARDS!! LOTS OF REWARDS!!’

Piles of gold coins glittered in the corners. Rubies the size of her entire body caught the torchlight and threw it back in crimson sparks. Diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, more wealth than she had ever seen in her thirty-four years of human life, lay heaped in careless mounds, as if the previous occupants had simply abandoned them.

But Jessica ignored it all. That wasn’t what she was here for. That wasn’t the reward Arafel had promised.