And how do you know that? I asked.
I have a cursed habit—every hour, without fail, I acknowledged the poison or a curse in my system. A reflex I couldn't shake. And now, the moment I admitted, I felt the symptoms flare. Nausea. Tightening breath. Like clockwork.
Every hour? Talk about being cautious, I muttered inwardly. I acknowledged I was poisoned, and now I feel it again… I need to learn what this thing actually does before it kills me.
But learning wasn't an option. Not now. Not here.
We weren't even using Clarion. The reason was simple—if we so much as looked like a threat, we'd be marked.
After all, we were inside something incomprehensible. A god's body—or at least, something grotesquely close to it. If that assumption was right, then this "body" might treat us like pathogens. Like a human immune system attacking a foreign object. White blood cells for a divine entity? Sounded insane, but plausible.
And us?
We were the pathogens.
So we kept our heads down. Tried not to get noticed. Still, poison was real. If we were poisoned, it likely started when that bell rang.
And if I'm right, the next bell won't just mark the hour—it'll trigger the next symptom.
"Ah, fuck," Wanora said, breaking my thoughts. "Well, I think I figured a bit."
"Hm?" I turned toward her.
"The snake," she said. "It's poisonous."
"Depends, yeah?" I replied, still half-focused.
She shot me a sharp look of annoyance. "Well, if it is poisoned, then according to that painting, something will happen to our sight. Could be next. And I'm a vision-based Clarion user. It's the worst-case scenario for me."
"True, true," I nodded, empathizing.
She hit me on the head.
"Ow."
"At least we know the poison's real," she muttered. "And if what you said is right, then the next bell will probably make us drown, burn, or go blind."
"Haah…" I let out a breath, collapsing onto a nearby bench. "This poison will slowly kill me…"
Wanora approached, still calm. "Listen, shouldn't we put this coin into one of the altars? There's only one, so we have to choose carefully."
"Gotta think it through," I said, shifting my gaze. That's when I noticed the candles in front of the stained glass.
"Hmm. Wanora, can you light those up?"
She stepped forward and summoned a small flame with her artifact. The first candle lit—marked War. Then she moved to the second—Famine—and it caught as well. But as she reached for the third, the first candle suddenly blew out. Wanora grimaced, went back to relight it, and this time the third candle—Death—extinguished.
Frustration lined her face.
Then, as she went for the fourth candle—star—the second one flickered and died.
"It's not working," I muttered. "Only two candles can be lit at once."
She straightened up, annoyed. "Well, what's the use of it?"
"Might be a trap. Some kind of resource waster. But you can summon fire freely, so we've got an edge."
"Then let's light them one by one and check for a pattern," I suggested.
She did just that.
First candle: The sun scorches your worries.
Second: The eye closes for slumber.
Third: The snake bites through the silence.
Fourth: The droplet roars like an ocean.
It didn't make sense yet, but we jotted it down mentally.
Then—
GONG.
The second bell. The air tightened.
"Well, now what?" I asked.
"I acknowledged I was cursed and poisoned again," I added, half-dreading the consequences. "And… nothing happened."
"Maybe nothing happens?" I ventured hopefully.
Wanora suddenly said, "Hmm? Hey Heide… was that painting always blurry?"
"Blurry?" My eyes snapped toward the wall of paintings. My heart stopped.
"Ah, fuck."
Our vision—
It was fading.
Not gradually. Rapidly. The edges dulled and warped like smeared ink on wet paper.
Wanora noticed it too.
We ran, stumbling toward the area where the snake painting had been. It had changed. A new one had appeared—an eye, twisted in a spiral. It wasn't just an image. It expanded.
Snake.
Eye.
A sequence?
But why? What was the logic?
I stumbled into the confession booth, collapsed into the seat, vision pulsing. The whispering returned, low and ceaseless:
Only Death saw clearly. Only Death remains.
I coughed hard—blood. My body was done pretending. If the snake came first… and the eye with a tear second… then were they connected?
What if the snake bit the man… and the man cried out of pain?
Tears for the bite. A logical flow.
Then what? Drowning? The droplet? The sun?
"No, wait… THAT'S IT!" I jumped up.
I staggered toward Wanora, who was still upright, though her skin was turning a sickly shade of purple like mine. Better resistance.
"WANORA! THE WAY TO GET OUT IS—"
My throat seized up.
The words stuck.
Dry. Burning.
My vision fragmented, then collapsed in on itself.
Blank.