Chapter Two: The Crown of Thorns
Elias stumbled out of the Mirror Hall, shaken and raw. His pride had been pierced, but not broken. Not yet.
Before him stood the Second Veiled—this one smaller, cloaked in silver flame. Its voice was gentler, but colder.
> "You still carry pride like armor. Now you will wear it as a curse."
A new chamber unfurled: a vast cathedral of thrones—each lined with thorns made of bone. In the center stood one throne alone, gleaming gold, waiting.
> "Welcome to the Throne of Thorns."
Elias was drawn forward. With each step, the room whispered with voices—praise, flattery, awards, applause. Everything he was ever told. Everything he believed.
> You saved lives.
You're the best.
They were beneath you.
You were a god in white.
He sat.
The moment his body touched the throne, the thorns coiled, piercing his flesh. His own heartbeat echoed in his ears like a war drum. Blood seeped between the spikes, but he could not rise. His pride had rooted him.
Every arrogant thought he'd ever had, every moment he looked down on someone, played out loud. Ghosts of interns, nurses, and patients surrounded him, replaying the moments he dismissed them, mocked them, or ignored their pain.
And the worst part?
They weren't angry.
They were disappointed.
The throne whispered directly into his mind:
> "What greatness is there in healing when you forget the human behind the wound?"
He tried to scream—but his mouth was full of ash.
The Second Veiled stepped forward.
> "You have been measured again. The third gate awaits."
With a hiss, the thorns retracted, leaving his body bloody but whole.
A door of pale bone opened in the cathedral floor, descending into blackness.
And Elias—still gasping, still proud—was pulled into the next veil.
How Everything began.....
Elias Marek – Backstory (Flashback Section)
Setting: A memory bleeding through during his descent into the third veil.
He begins to relive moments from his life—not the grand successes, but the quiet, defining ones.
---
Scene: The Boy with the Plastic Stethoscope
Elias was six the first time he said he wanted to "fix people." His mother bought him a plastic stethoscope, and he used it on his stuffed animals. Back then, saving lives was about kindness, not accolades.
But that boy disappeared somewhere along the way.
---
Scene: Medical School
At university, Elias was brilliant—but not warm. He learned fast that arrogance was armor, and humility made you vulnerable. The world rewarded results, not empathy. He cut off friendships to study more. He laughed at classmates who cried after failed surgeries.
> "Emotion clouds the hand," he once told a professor. "I prefer precision."
---
Scene: The First Patient Death
It was a child. A complication during a routine procedure.
Elias made a small mistake. He knew it. But when the board asked questions, he pointed to a nurse. She was fired. He got promoted. The guilt came at night, but he buried it under more work. More wins.
> "Guilt doesn't heal patients. Results do," he told himself.
---
Scene: Awards and Isolation
He became "Doctor Miracle"—head of surgery by 38, keynote speaker, interview darling.
But his phone never rang unless it was for work. His colleagues admired him, but no one truly liked him. Patients called him cold. He stopped attending funerals.
Even his mother—now old, frail, in a care home—stopped asking him to visit.
> "I'm busy," he'd said.
"You always are," she replied, quietly.
---
Emotional Undercurrent
These memories now echo as whispers as he descends toward Stage Three.
> "You used to want to help people."
"You became more scalpel than soul."
---
The Pit of Screams.
The bone door closed above him.
Elias fell—not through air, but through sound. Screams, whispers, cries for help. They weren't distant. They were personal. Familiar.
He landed hard on cracked stone.
It was dark, but not silent. The chamber echoed with the voices of those who suffered because of him. Not only those who died—but those who lived wounded. The mother whose son he misdiagnosed. The intern he broke in front of a crowd. The patient he mocked for crying.
The Third Veiled stood in the distance. It wore a cloak of stitched mouths. No eyes. No limbs. Only a thousand lips sewn shut.
"This is the Pit of Screams," it said, every mouth speaking at once.
"Here dwell the voices you silenced. The pain you deemed insignificant."
Around Elias, shapes emerged—writhing human shadows with mouths stretched wide. They were screaming, but no sound escaped. He tried to step back, but hands of ash gripped his ankles.
"They screamed in pain. You prescribed indifference."
One shadow leapt forward. It was the young nurse he'd humiliated into quitting. Another came crawling—the mother he waved off, her child clinging to her ghostlike form. She wept silently.
"Help us," she mouthed.
Elias turned to the Veiled. "I did what I thought was best."
The Veiled didn't answer. Instead, it raised a hand—and his own voice boomed from the walls.
"She's overreacting. Tell her to calm down."
"We'll treat the symptoms and hope for the best."
"You don't know what pressure is. I'm saving lives."
He dropped to his knees.
Then the floor split.
From the crack emerged Elias's own scream—ripping free from his soul like tearing flesh. It poured into the room like a flood, echoing off the walls.
The Pit of Screams went silent.
"You have heard them now," the Veiled said. "But will you listen?"
The ash hands released him. The floor sealed. And in the silence that followed, Elias wept—not out of fear, but because he finally heard them.
The Veiled opened a fourth gate, black and wet with ink-like sorrow.
Elias looked once more at the shadows.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
But the shadows did not forgive.
They simply vanished.
And the Fourth Veiled waited beyond.