Syllian lent Allen his shoulder; they stood side by side with their backs to the broken wall beside the shattered door.
Allen grimaced as he slid down the wall to rest on the drenched deck.
No corpses littered The Adler, it had all been picked clean by the Mutants. The Mutants had also disappeared from the deck, leaving only their black blood swishing with the water on the deck as the ship swayed side to side.
Just like before, the ship was now sailing without a goal in sight.
The night returned with only the occasional flashing lightning bolt to light up the place. Other than that, they were surrounded by nothing but the sound of rain.
It was silent today.
The usual boisterous atmosphere of the deck was gone.
'Empty...'
They weren't alone though.
Syllian looked to their left, and on the other side of the broken door, 5 others sat with their backs to the wall.
Everyone sat in silence.
Perhaps they were thinking of their lost friends, or replaying the trauma in their mind.
Or, they were thinking of nothing.
Just like Syllian.
Time passed like that for god knows how long.
Syllian had even fallen asleep again with Allen.
To the left only Crude remained awake, watching over the rest of them with tired eyes.
It was a well-deserved rest.
---
Groggily waking back up, Syllian felt the rain pelting on his skin under the watch of darkness.
Allen left his side at some point.
Rumble...
A flash of lightning brightened the deck, revealing to Syllian the sight of the other survivors throwing out water from the deck as they cleaned up.
Ideally, Syllian should have slept on his hammock or a hospital bed, but he was too tired to care and the others were too busy to carry him there.
'Cold.'
Shivering up, Syllian belatedly realised that his torso was still completely exposed alongside his left thigh.
Biting down together with his teeth, the boy held onto the wall next to him for stability and stood up.
He had to get inside and find some clothes.
"Finch."
Syllian turned to the voice.
The older, composed man stood with blood-drenched clothing.
"Fix yourself up for now, meet at the food hall right after you're done."
Syllian nodded, remaining silent throughout the conversation.
Crude nodded to the boy and returned to work, a lot had to be done and there was no time for chit-chat.
Syllian pulled his body by its strings and entered the desolate innards of The Adler.
Walking through, he stepped on the spot where they fought off the horde.
Looking at the ground where he stood just hours ago, Syllian lifted his head and turned his eyes to the broken door in the distance.
Walking down the blackened veins of this bleeding steed, Syllian thought of that man who spoke to him before he entered these Trials.
Survive.
He told Syllian to survive.
Wanting to survive, however, wasn't enough to actually survive.
Maybe if the Trial had been easier, then sure.
But that 'maybe' was irrelevant now.
Syllian had survived and completed the Second Trial through sheer luck.
And maybe some hard work.
But...
Feeling that silence reigning over his heart...
Had he survived in one piece?
And knowing that he had two more trials to complete...
Will the pieces fall apart further?
The candle in the hospital room flickered, the corpse of Mr Rinton was gone. The area was in a complete and utter mess, most of the medical supplies were beyond salvaging too.
It was silent.
Other than the candle, the metallic string sat on the ground in pieces.
It had been smashed into pieces by the Mutants at some point.
But one corpse remained.
The Source.
Even the Mutants had avoided it, leaving that single bed intact with a decaying corpse lying on it.
Syllian wasn't too interested though, so he left.
---
Turning through many corridors, Syllian held himself upright through a couple of powerful crashing waves.
The density of human blood had drastically increased at some point, whereas a relatively low volume of black blood merged into the pool.
A putrid stench wafted through these corridors, but...
Syllian smelt nothing.
To him, the world was still.
Silent.
Nothing felt real, even he didn't feel like he was real...
Maybe it was all just a bad dream.
Yeah right.
Syllian knew otherwise.
He was just too tired, too mentally fatigued, and too shocked to process anything.
The worst Syllian had seen before this Trial of Ruin was people dying on the sides of the street from starvation, or a woman dragged into a broken house as she screamed for help;
Or that time...
...It was bad, sure.
But it felt so insignificant now.
A portion of his brain even wondered:
'Is it worth it?'
And another portion muttered:
'Hope? This?'
While another retaliated with:
'What did you expect?'
Syllian remained silent to the questions.
---
Removing the pants and tunic from his body, Syllian looked at the wounds that riddled his body.
'How am I still alive?'
A chest wound that almost ripped his ribs out; a wound that ran below his eye when a claw had almost punctured his brain, the gash on his left thigh, and dozens of smaller cuts.
All of this on a 165cm tall body.
On his frail, bony physique.
Even the wound below his eye melted perfectly into his heavy eyebags.
Syllian picked up another long-sleeve brown tunic from below his hammock and black pants. But first, he rummaged through some other deceased crewmates' storage.
From there he picked up a flask of water for him to drink from, and a warm shirt to wear below his tunic.
Dressing back up in dry clothing, Syllian's hair dripped onto the ground, filling the quiet room with noise.
Syllian raised his hand and picked one of his strands of wet hair, 'It's getting long.'
He returned to searching through the stores beneath the hammocks until he found what he was searching for.
A hairband.
Picking up his hair, he tied it behind his head into a short, messy ponytail.
Then, uncaring of whether the look fit him or anything of the sort, Syllian left the room behind him and left.
He was back in the dim corridors, back in the silence with his dripping hair.
Syllian should have headed for the food hall, but he took a different direction. One he was only familiar with because of his untimely bathroom break from before.
The route to the Captain's Cabin.
---
He arrived.
It was eerily silent, not even the floor was drenched in blood here; as if the location remained unaffected by the deaths.
And it wasn't just his imagination, the area truly was unaffected.
Other than the slightly wet flooring from the constant rain that flooded the ship, the place was peaceful, quiet...
Silent.
Syllian struggled up to the door, his legs felt ready to give out at any moment. He had overdone himself in this short time and then overdone himself again.
He raised his hand to the door and knocked.
Knock- Knock-
Silence returned to the dim corridor.
But Syllian just waited, he had a feeling that she wouldn't die that easily.
And low and behold-
Creak...
-the door slowly swung open, and a tip-toeing little girl swung with the door as it opened.
'Not surprised.'
There was no reason to be surprised either, the Captain would definitely send his daughter to the most secure location on the ship before the battle began. And if a location was going to be secure, it was most certainly the Captain's Cabin.
"It's the stick-like idiot!"
Helen looked up at him with an unpleasant gaze, there was no reason to be surprised there either...
Nodding to her, Syllian was too tired to reply.
"What, gone mute now? Apologetic?"
Syllian frustratingly sighed, pointed at the girl, then at himself, crossed his hands over each other and finally, nodded at her.
"Are you saying that I'm ugly again?!"
Syllian wanted to punch the idiot.
Waving her hand, she scoffed as she clicked her teeth, "I'm messing with you, I get it. You don't want to fight with me for now."
Glad that the little idiot understood what he meant, Syllian suddenly paused.
And noticed something else.
He wasn't talking.
It wasn't that he couldn't, he just didn't.
'Why?'
...It was more comfortable for now?
Maybe?
"Hey, you... If you start staring again..."
Syllian was roused from his daydreams again, but this time, he didn't panic nor run. He actually just didn't care anymore.
So, he turned away from her and walked away.
Was it rude?
Sure.
Did Syllian care?
No?
Why would he?
He was never one to be very nice to others in the first place.
However, he did find it odd.
Because Helen didn't attack him for it.
Surprisingly, she followed him obediently without making any noise or pestering him relentlessly.
It didn't take much thought to realise why, but to the current, silent Syllian, it was a wonderful surprise.
If he had been paying attention, he would have figured it out quickly.
The stench singing the corridors of The Adler.
The blood that covered every inch of the corridors.
And the silence, the palpable silence that sifted through The Adler's veins.
Syllian, however, ignored it all, his brain filtered away the violence and murder that surrounded him; leaving him with nothing to look at but the usual dark corridors.
How fickle the human brain was, when surrounded by trauma, it simply removed it.
Covering it up with stickers and fireworks.
Or silence.
Aching silence.
---
Helen stood beside Syllian with her hand clasping his dry tunic, in front of her was the door to the food hall.
From behind the doors, she could hear a noise that was missing from the rest of the ship.
The noise of life, while usually comforting, was now spine-chilling.
The comfort of silence gradually drifted away.
Taking a deep breath, Syllian clenched the handle to the food hall.
Opening the door should be easy.
'But why isn't it?'
The handle felt heavy, wrongly so.
Just like the door that held back a corpse a few nights ago.
But this one held no death behind it, just a serene visage life.
Still, his mind told him otherwise. It fired warnings at him as it screamed:
[Don't open.]
So, he opened it.
Behind the door were 6 other crewmates, Crude, Allen, and 4 other familiar faces that Syllian had yet to learn the names of.
"Finch, you're here..." Crude's sentence drifted off when his eyes landed on the girl beside him.
He then turned his eyes back to Syllian, almost as though asking:
'She's alive?!!'
Syllian simply nodded, patted Helen's back to push her in, and then shut the door behind him.
Thud.
Ending the silence.