Chereads / Grind to Glory / Chapter 17 - Chapter 17: The Other Side

Chapter 17 - Chapter 17: The Other Side

Noah felt himself falling—falling through darkness so deep it seemed to swallow even the concept of time. His mind was a whirl of fragmented images: Alice screaming, the Aberration lunging for her, the sharp crack of the Rift Node's energy tearing apart reality.

And then… nothing.

It was black. All black.

The silence was deafening, yet his thoughts screamed in his head. He saw Dante's broken body, Mira's bloodied form, Lila's lifeless eyes staring at nothing. His team. His friends. Dead. All of them.

Why?

The question echoed endlessly as he floated in the void. It felt like hours, or maybe days. Time didn't seem to exist here. Eventually, he felt the faintest sensation—solid ground beneath him. His body ached, every fiber of his being screaming in protest as if it had been shattered and pieced back together.

Noah's eyes fluttered open.

He wasn't in the tunnels anymore.

The world around him was… wrong.

The sky was an ashen gray, swirling with black clouds that twisted like living things. Jagged, dark mountains rose in the distance, their peaks clawing at the sky like the broken teeth of a predator. The air was heavy, oppressive, and smelled of something sickly sweet and metallic.

The ground beneath him was a pale, cracked surface that pulsed faintly with an eerie light, as though veins of some unknown substance ran beneath it. Strange, bulbous plants grew sporadically, their translucent surfaces pulsating as if alive. Pools of dark liquid dotted the landscape, reflecting the twisted sky above like shards of a broken mirror.

It was a landscape out of a nightmare, an alien world that reeked of death and decay.

Noah pushed himself up, groaning as pain flared through his body. He didn't know how long he had been unconscious, but his muscles felt stiff, his throat dry.

As he sat up fully, he noticed something strange—a warmth on his back. He turned his head and froze.

Behind him, a large puddle of thick, red liquid glistened in the faint light. It was viscous, its surface rippling unnaturally, as though it were alive. Noah's breath caught in his throat.

He forced himself to look closer, his heart pounding so hard it felt like it might burst.

And then he saw it.

The puddle wasn't just liquid. It surrounded something—someone.

His stomach turned to ice.

"Alice…?"

He stumbled to his feet and staggered closer. What he saw would be seared into his mind for the rest of his life.

It was Alice. Or what was left of her.

Her upper body lay on the ground, lifeless and torn. Her once fierce, determined eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the sky. Blood caked her pale face, and her mouth hung slightly open, as if she had been frozen mid-scream.

Around her, her entrails were scattered like discarded ropes, the red pooling beneath her in a sickening display. Her lower half was nowhere to be seen, as though it had been ripped away entirely.

Noah's knees buckled. He fell to the ground, unable to look away despite the sheer horror of it. His breath came in short, sharp gasps as tears blurred his vision.

"No… no, no, no…" he whispered, his voice breaking. "This can't… this can't be real…"

His hands clenched into fists, his nails digging into his palms until they bled. He slammed them into the ground, his screams echoing into the alien wasteland.

"I'm sorry!" he cried, his voice hoarse and raw. "I'm so sorry… Alice… I—"

The tears came freely now, blurring the grotesque scene in front of him. He cradled his head in his hands, his body shaking with sobs.

They had all died for nothing. Lila, Mira, Ezra, Dante… Alice.

And now he was here. Alone. In this hellish place.

Noah didn't know how long he wept, but it felt like an eternity. The oppressive landscape around him seemed to feed off his despair, its twisted beauty only heightening his sense of loss.

Finally, his tears slowed, though his grief remained a suffocating weight on his chest. He looked at Alice one last time, his trembling fingers brushing the edge of her blood-stained jacket.

"I'm sorry," he whispered again, his voice barely audible.

And then he buried his face in his hands, letting the horror of the moment consume him.

End of chapter 17.