Virumi's voice was heavy, like the sky moments before a storm unleashes its fury. Her eyes held a quiet madness, the kind born not of delusion but of having seen the cold truth of the world, and it grated against her very soul.
"Mertromath is a group of royal families noi," she began, the words sounding less like an explanation and more like a confession. "And as all are royal, they chose to support the King's decision. That's why they sit at the top of the staircase, looking down on everything noi. It's the ultimate irony—betrayal led to their elevation, while those who clung to honor were cast into the dirt."
Griswa, Yesdar, and Malaes sat still, their silence thick with the weight of her words. They listened not because they were compelled, but because the severity of her reality demanded their attention.
"The Ondra Hadrakshis were completely cast out, no longer even considered Shulvris. Stripped of everything, they remained on the ground—below us, beneath us, where they were left to rot. But even after all these centuries, their hatred hasn't faded. If anything, it's grown stronger. And who do they hate the most noi?" Her voice quivered, the bitterness bleeding into every syllable. "The King's family? The Mertromath Shulvris? The true supporters? No, they hate everyone above the ground."
She let the words hang in the air, each one a sharpened blade digging into her own flesh.
"They proved their hatred to me," she said, her voice a deadly whisper, "by killing my comrades here, on the real ground."
Her words dropped like stones into a bottomless pit. The trio felt the impact, a silent explosion in their minds. But it was Yesdar who broke the silence, the words leaving his lips with deliberate force. "If you belong to Mertromath, then for what reason did you come down to the ground?"
He asked not because he didn't know, but because he wanted to hear those delighting words. It was an answer Virumi had been holding onto for years, her only truth in a world full of lies.
"For freedom," Virumi answered, her tone flat, as if the word had lost all meaning. The simplicity of it only added to the gravity.
The trio nodded in unison. It was clear now—this was why Virumi wasn't free.
Virumi looked at them with a sadness so deep it seemed endless. "When I learned about the past, when I finally understood why the Ondra Hadrakshis hated us so much, I felt like my mind was torn in two, noi. I kept asking myself, 'Who was really right? Us, who understood the King's decision to betray Amaulyans to protect the clan, and making some secret pact with the Yahunyens? Or the Ondra Hadrakshis, who believed that betrayal was unforgivable?'"
She laughed then, a hollow, humorless sound, the kind that echoed in dead chambers where hope had been long forgotten.
"I couldn't find an answer noi. The question devoured me. I didn't care about right or wrong anymore noi. I started to think… what if the Ondra Hadrakshis didn't deserve the hatred? What if, after all this time, they deserved the unity of all the Shulvris? Like how we people, the king's and the royal families living in the present aren't guilty of the king's decision, the same way the present Ondra Hadrakshis aren't guilty of what their ancestors did, that is killing the people of the Mertromath before the higher grounds were established."
Her voice wavered. "I wanted to bring the people together, to undo the damage. I thought maybe—just maybe—we could all be free. I wanted to see what the real ground was like. What the sea looked like. I wanted to know what lay beyond Aximia, below the higher grounds that had trapped us for thousands of years."
Griswa could see it now—the endless ambition in her eyes, the same hunger that had driven countless dreamers to ruin.
"My father tried to stop me," she continued, her tone laced with regret. "He told me I was a fool, that I didn't understand the weight of the past. But I didn't listen. I gathered my comrades, those who shared my dream, and we escaped. We fled the Mertromath territory. Even though my comrades agreed to me, I finally understand, it was all my selfish desire, noi."
She paused, her hands trembling slightly as she recalled the memories of her long journey.
"It took us seven years to reach the ground," she said, her voice tight. "We moved from territory to territory, gathering more people who were tired of living in the higher grounds, tired of the life we'd been forced to live. They wanted freedom too noi. They wanted to see the world below, to see the sea, to feel the earth under their feet noi."
Her words grew faster, more urgent, as though she were reliving every moment. "We planned everything noi. We bribed guards, smuggled weapons, forged papers—anything to escape noi. And we made it. We reached the ground noi."
For a brief moment, a flicker of pride crossed her face, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
"But before we could even make peace with the people here, they attacked us noi." Her voice was thick with disbelief, even now. "They didn't care about our dreams or our plans noi. All they saw were outsiders—people from above, people they despised noi."
She gripped her head tightly, as if trying to physically hold back the onslaught of memories. "All we did was run. We ran because we had no other choice noi. Their eyes… their eyes were full of hatred. The eyes that haunt me even now, noi. They weren't just angry at us for being different by clothes, accents, looks or hair. They wanted to tear us apart, to destroy us noi!"
Yesdar felt his stomach twist. His gut was punched by her words.
"They lived like animals!" Virumi said, her voice rising in pitch. "We thought that by coming down here, by seeing the real ground, we'd find a better life noi. But what we found was chaos. They lived like cannibals, like monsters, like demons eating away at each other's lives noi! Clinging to their hatred like a lifeline. For seven thousand years, they lived like this. Seven. Thousand. Years!! When I thought that civilization would be better on the ground. The real ground noi. I thought they might hate us, but they enjoyed their freedom on the ground at least, and had better lives than us noi. And everything I thought went down the gutters as I realized my stupidities noi."
Her words hit the trio like a hammer to the chest. Seven thousand years of hatred after the complete establishment of the Staircase System, festering, growing, until it had become a twisted part of their very existence.
"And what did they hate us for noi?" Virumi's voice cracked. "For leaving them behind. For abandoning them in the dirt while we rose higher and higher, leaving them to rot noi. And now, they live in the filth and blood of their own making noi!"
She laughed again, that same broken sound, her mind teetering on the edge of collapse. "We thought life would be easier on the ground. But it wasn't. It was worse. And when we realized that, we tried to go back noi. But it was too late."
Her hands clenched into fists, her knuckles white. "The lifts... they didn't send them down noi. We had no way to return. The moment we left, we were cut off noi. The lifts only work for those with permission, the ones with a proper license, the ones with a proper reason. And freedom? THAT IS NO REASON. Once you leave, you're gone forever."
Her voice grew quieter, more subdued. "We were trapped. We had no home, no place to return to. We were outcasts—lost between the world we fled and the one that rejected us."
Griswa, Yesdar, and Malaes listened, their hearts heavy with the realization that Virumi's dream had led her to this moment, this terrible, inescapable fate.
Virumi's breath hitched as she fought to keep herself from breaking. "I should have listened to my father. He warned me. He told me that this dream of freedom would destroy us all noi. And I didn't listen. Instead, I lit the fire of freedom in their hearts... and I watched it burn them alive noi."
Tears welled in her eyes, but she didn't let them fall. Instead, she listened to the storm outside, the wind howling as if adding fuel to her pain, haunting her, making her regret, why did she try to seek freedom?
"Now I know noi," she whispered, "freedom is hopeless noi. Trying to wish for it... is hopeless."
The trio felt the full weight of her words crash down on them like an avalanche, suffocating, crushing. Freedom was hopeless? The very thing they had come to Aeartha to fight for, the very thing they were willing to die for—how could that be hopeless?
But in this moment, they couldn't argue. They could only listen.
Malaes' mind churned like the darkening clouds outside the cave, the storm mirroring the questions swirling in her head. She understood Virumi's pain, but doubt gnawed at her like a persistent parasite. Even as Virumi's tears slid down her cheeks, Malaes could not shake the overwhelming suspicion rising within her. The story had holes, gaps that didn't add up, and the silence stretched out as she tried to piece together the fragments of truth scattered in Virumi's words.
Yesdar's frustration was palpable, his face twisted in silent disagreement. The idea that freedom itself could be hopeless munched at his core. The very foundation of everything he believed was rooted in the fight for freedom. His jaw clenched, his fists tightened, but his voice remained trapped, knowing that anger now wouldn't help anyone. His desire to argue, to refute Virumi's words, burned within him, but the sight of her broken state made him bite back those words. He couldn't rage at someone already crushed by her own demons.
"Freedom isn't hopeless."
Griswa's voice cut through the tension like a whisper caught in the flames of the fire. It wasn't loud, but it was clear, a statement that hung in the air like a challenge to the despair gripping Virumi's heart. His multicolored eyes reflected the two fires burning before them, casting flickering shadows across his face as he lowered his head, letting the weight of his words sink in.
For Yesdar, those words were like a release valve. He wanted to scream them himself, but Griswa's calm, composed tone gave them a different power. There was no anger in Griswa's voice, no desperation—just an undeniable truth, one that stood in stark contrast to the darkness of the cave and the storm raging outside. It was a quiet defiance against the idea that all hope could be lost.
But for Virumi, those words—Freedom isn't hopeless—felt like an illusion, a cruel trick her mind was playing on her. Her gaze lingered on Griswa's eyes, the strange glow of multicolored light reflecting in the dim cave. Just some moments before she thought she saw something—hope, maybe. Some spark hidden deep in those eyes, buried beneath layers of darkness. But her logical mind pushed back. No. It couldn't be real. How could hope exist in a stranger's eyes? She had only just met them, after all. It was absurd to think she could find salvation in the eyes of someone she barely knew.
Virumi grimaced, pushing the thought away. She wasn't some naïve child, grasping at illusions in her time of need. She had lived through hell, and no flicker in Griswa's eyes would convince her otherwise. Her mind was desperate for hope, yes, but this was not it.
Her voice trembled with the weight of her disbelief as she replied, "I don't even know how you guys came here. Why you're here, noi. Or why I chose to spill my entire soul out, knowing you can't help me. How were you not hunted down by the Ondra Hadrakshis? It doesn't make sense, noi. The first thing I was going to do when I opened my eyes was scream. I was about to scream when I saw two strangers sitting beside me, noi. But then... I thought I was still with my comrades."
Her hands pressed tighter against her forehead, her voice growing more strained. "I don't know what's wrong with me."
Malaes, sensing the turmoil swirling within Virumi, placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Calm down," she whispered, her tone soft but filled with concern. But her mind was racing with questions, all waiting to burst forth. Something was wrong with this whole situation, and the pieces just didn't fit.
Yesdar was the first to speak, breaking the tension with a more focused, practical question. "Is that why you spoke in a different language when you woke up?"
Virumi nodded, her voice low and filled with a self-deprecating edge. "That's my native tongue. I spoke with my comrades that way. Maybe my head's just... wrong noi."
She paused, glancing between them, her face now etched with worry. "You should leave. Go back the same way you came noi. I don't know what route you chose or how you managed to survive out here without being hunted by those demons, but your luck won't last. Leave me here. Get out of this country. It's no place for travelers. Save yourselves... you still can noi."
Virumi's voice trembled, not from fear, but from the crushing weight of regret that had settled in her chest. "If luck's on your side, you'll have better lives than the rest of us who are already dead or dying noi. My end is already here."
The words hit Malaes like a knife to the gut, sharp and cold. The hopelessness in Virumi's voice made her stomach churn. It wasn't just the words themselves; it was the absolute certainty behind them. Virumi had accepted her fate, had resigned herself to a life where freedom was nothing more than a fool's dream.
But Malaes couldn't let that slide. "What're you saying?! We can't just leave you here! That's not right!" Her voice was filled with urgency, the injustice of it all twisting her insides.
But Virumi's frustration boiled over. Her voice cracked as she shouted, "I SAID LEAVE ME ALONE! I DON'T WANT ANYONE ELSE TO DIE BECAUSE OF ME!" Her hands clenched tighter around her head, as though trying to crush the thoughts that were eating away at her mind. "I DIDN'T KNOW THE ONDRA HADRAKSHIS WOULD STOOP SO LOW! SO PLEASE, GET OUT OF HERE! DON'T THINK ABOUT RIGHT AND WRONG, THERE'S NO PLACE FOR EITHER HERE! YOU WON'T FIND THEM!"
Her words rang through the cave, loud enough to drown out the storm outside. For a moment, everything fell silent, as if even the wind was stunned by the force of her outburst.
But then, like a sudden crack of thunder, Malaes' voice pierced the stillness. "HOW ARE YOU SO SURE THAT THEY'RE EVEN THE ONDRA HADRAKSHIS?!" Her voice was sharp, cutting through Virumi's rage with a suddenness that silenced the entire group.
Virumi froze, her anger momentarily eclipsed by confusion. Yesdar and Griswa both turned to look at Malaes, their minds struggling to process her words. What did she mean?
Malaes, sensing their confusion, forced herself to take a deep breath. Her anger began to subside, replaced by a calm determination. "Your story is fine, but there's a big flaw," she said, her voice quieter but no less intense.
"A big flaw noi?" Virumi's mind raced, trying to understand what Malaes was getting at.
"You came down to the ground without ever considering whether the Ondra Hadrakshis even live here anymore." Malaes' voice was steady now, coldly logical. "If the Ondra Hadrakshis were cast out, if they were given the ground and the freedom to access the sea, what's to stop them from moving elsewhere? From leaving this wretched land behind?"
Virumi's eyes widened as Malaes continued.
"Why would they rot here for seven thousand years?" Malaes's tone was sharp, cutting into Virumi's beliefs. "Even if they were left to die, who in their right mind wouldn't think to develop, to build, to survive in some better way? You've painted them as creatures of hatred, but that hatred doesn't make sense. People evolve, they adapt. Why would the Ondra Hadrakshis stay here, festering, when they had the entire sea at their disposal?"
Malaes leaned forward, her voice taking on a harsher edge. "They were cast out because they wanted to fight the Yahunyens, right? Then why wouldn't they go somewhere where they could prepare for war? Why would they just sit here, for seven thousand years?! Huh?! For you to come down here and shit about unity?!!"
Her words sliced through the room, leaving Virumi speechless. But Malaes wasn't done.
"What if these aren't even the Ondra Hadrakshis? What if you've been running from the wrong enemy? What if the people you encountered here are some other tribe, some other group, who migrated here long after the Ondra Hadrakshis were gone?"
Virumi's heart pounded in her chest, her mind reeling from the possibility. She had never questioned it before—never tried to wonder if the people hunting her were really the ones she had once read about. But now...
Malaes's voice grew colder, more unsettling. "Maybe the people who attacked you weren't the Ondra Hadrakshis at all. The hatred in their eyes.... maybe they're just... animals. Animals who love to kill."