Days bled into one another.
A blur of gray food, black stone, and the quiet, methodical grind.
The other initiates had mostly settled on their opinion of me.
I was a ghost.
A weird, unnerving glitch they had learned to ignore.
My isolation was absolute.
Almost.
There was Elara.
She started sitting at my table every day.
She never said much.
She'd just sit there, a tiny, trembling mouse, finding some strange comfort in my cold, empty presence.
I didn't encourage her, but I didn't send her away either.
She was… a data point.
A reminder of what happened to the ones who couldn't build a furnace around their pain.
She was a living warning.
"They're making us go into the Echo Chamber again tomorrow," she whispered one day, her voice barely audible over the clatter of spoons in the mess hall.
Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold her fork.
"I don't think… I don't think I can do it again."
I didn't offer her any words of comfort.
