𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬

𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒓𝒊𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔
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The pools.

They had used the pools on her, caging her beneath water until she was a sliver away from drowning, you knew after she came back from the basement with Mother Justine soaking wet and trembling. All of that to make her colder, less emotional, less "hormonal" as the nuns put it. You knew it was just to keep her subordinate, obedient, to break that beautiful rebellious nature that she had, that had been bugging them since the beginning.

You felt hideous, sick and unclean after spending a week in the Black Room, almost starved to death and weak and cold, yet still knew that your fate wasn't as horrible as hers had been. She wouldn't even look at you.

The next and last time you looked into those blue eyes, now dull and empty, was when you went to visit her at Beacon. You went into her room as the friend you wanted to remain as, and was met with claws against your skin.

She made you bleed that day.
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You hadn't heard them until now.

The bells, high above the Institute's roof in a tower no one had ever gone to, holy bells that were supposed to toll the time of the day and to call everyone for holy masses. When you were young their sound felt meaningless although dreadful, now it felt like they tolled every tear that had fallen from the eyes of every child that crossed those halls, every time someone spent time in the Black Room, or knelt on rice or had the pools used on them, every slap of the nuns' hand. You wanted to turn around now, you wanted to vomit in fear and regretted leaving the dooming yet welcoming nature of the room you had woken up to.

Looking back, however, nothing was familiar anymore. As soon as the door closed behind you, it glitched into the wall like it was never there and left you at the mercy of the Institute. You swallowed your bile and gripped your baseball bat with white knuckles and trembling hands. You assured yourself; you've already been here and you've already killed a lot of the horrors of this place including one that came from the deepest corners of your mind. Now you could only push forward.

And so you did.

It took you long enough to regain your confidence in donning your bat and bashing the heads of your enemies with it, staining the clean clothes you wore with dark and sticky blood. Your arms and back hurt, you were running out of bolts. A curse left your lips when another one of the Haunted came to attack.

And so, soon you realized the ascension this place was forcing you to make with its glitching walls and doors that never stayed open; as the bells rang louder and the Haunted took in the appearance of nuns, you realized you were making a walk of damnation towards Mother Justine's office. You swallowed hard. It was horrible how you had to take lives for yours to remain standing, but you understood these beings as not human anymore, and like the abominations they were they deserved excommunication from this life. And so, you reached the last floor, with no way to turn around and only one way forward; through the wide, wooden doors that led to that horrid place.

You pushed them open.

It was wider than you remembered it, its ceiling so tall that you really couldn't see the end of the pillars that held up the place, as it was shrouded in darkness. On the stone walls, unlit torches that provided an antique atmosphere that you would've found beautiful in another situation, and on the opposite side of the door was a great window, made of an expensive stained glass that depicted the Goddess of Cedar Hill, lit by moonlight and the only way you had to orient yourself. The desk where she sat everyday stood in front of you, neatly littered with books and papers and quills just as you remembered, and a clasp on the stained glass that led to the balcony where she had stood to overview the courtyard with her all seeing gaze. A door.