Erika felt Lynus's terrifyingly focused gaze on him. Every nerve in his body felt stretched to breaking point. He was so tense he could barely breathe, his chest aching faintly from lack of oxygen, each weak heartbeat thudding loudly in his ears.
"Do you remember this?"
Lynus's voice was very low, carrying a coaxing, almost intimate tone. He raised the hand holding the burlap sack to Erika's eye level and gave it a gentle shake.
Clatter… clink…
Inside came the cold, hard sounds of metal objects colliding and scraping against each other. Not loud, yet unnaturally distinct, they wormed into Erika's ears, crawled down his spine, raising goosebumps. What? Tools? Parts? Or… something else?
Lynus's face drew closer, so near Erika could see the reflection of his own terror in those pale blue pupils, could smell a faint, peculiar scent on him—like ozone mixed with old metal.
"Do you remember?" Lynus repeated, his voice even softer, his breath almost ghosting over Erika's face. "Do you remember? … Do you remember?"
He repeated the question like an incantation, his eyes locked onto Erika's, trying to dredge up any ripple of memory.
Erika's mind raced frantically in fear, straining to recall. Sack? Metal sounds? Lynus? No… no leads. The fog over his past remained thick. Aside from the recently forced "Merciful Father" etiquette and fragmented sensations of pain, he could grasp nothing.
He couldn't even guess what kind of answer might satisfy this Blue-clad—one who clearly didn't follow normal patterns and whose emotions were wildly unpredictable. In extreme uncertainty and fear, he could only clamp his mouth shut, maintain silence, even his trembling temporarily frozen by over-tension.
Time passed in the suffocating closeness and repeated questioning.
Finally, Lynus withdrew his hand, his face pulling back half a step.
Erika almost unconsciously let out a very faint breath he'd been holding, though it brought little relief.
In the lingering shock, his survival instinct drove him to desperately focus his remaining attention, observing Lynus's expression, trying to catch any slightest tell that might foreshadow the next move.
He failed.
There was no obvious emotional shift on Lynus's face. No annoyance at his silence, no frown of a thwarted plan, not even the earlier focused interest remained. His expression had become a placid blank. Those pale blue eyes were like two bottomless, unreflecting ice lakes, calmly watching Erika, as if the earlier aggressive closeness and questioning had never happened.
This calmness made Erika's heart crawl with more dread than the earlier frenzy.
Just then, Lynus let out a soft "Ah," the sound carrying a slight upward lilt of sudden realization, breaking the silence. He looked somewhat annoyed, but that too was superficial, fleeting.
"So that's how it is," he murmured to himself, his tone calm, as if solving a minor technical snag.
Then, he made a move that made Erika's heart clench again.
With his free hand, he waved it gently before Erika's face, the motion casual, as if brushing away non-existent cobwebs, or performing some invisible confirmation.
Next, Lynus used both hands to pull open the mouth of the coarse burlap sack. The rough texture unfolded in his grip. Slowly, steadily, he brought that black, chilling opening closer to Erika's face.
Lynus said no more, offered no further urging.He simply held the sack steadily, its opening aimed at Erika, as if inviting—or rather, commanding him—to see what was inside.
His gaze couldn't escape.
Erika's pupils contracted. His vision was forced into that patch of shadow.
What would be inside?The end? A beginning? Or the key to a deeper nightmare?
All answers lay hidden behind that stretched-open, coarse darkness.
Erika's head leaned forward within the limits allowed by his restraints.All his attention, his remaining rationality, even his instinct to survive, were seized by that black-gaping mouth of the sack.
He stared unblinking at the darkness behind the coarse burlap, trying to pierce it, to see what was truly hidden there.
Was it the key to unlocking the fragments of his memory?Evidence explaining his missing arm?Or some incomprehensible tool directly linked to his fate at this very moment?
Just as his sight and thoughts plunged deep into that unknown darkness, straining to wring a shred of information from it—
Darkness swallowed him whole.
Not visually, but physically, suffocatingly.
The burlap sack was suddenly yanked over his head, the rough fabric instantly blotting out all light, pressing tightly against his mouth and nose. Simultaneously, the sharp or smooth, cold and solid metal objects inside the sack, under gravity, all spilled out at once, crashing against his face—his forehead, eye sockets, the bridge of his nose!
Thud! Bonk! Clang!
Blunt pain, stinging pain, icy contact exploded instantly! Erika grunted, trying to make sense of the sudden assault, but his mind was battered into blankness by the combined impact.
Immediately after, a huge, brutal force grabbed the bottom of the sack covering his head and began violently, erratically shaking it side-to-side, whipping it up and down!
"AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Lynus's mad laughter at its absolute peak, mixed with excitement and a kind of cruel delight, pierced through the thick burlap and the clanging metal, flooding directly into Erika's ears, making his eardrums ache.
The world completely inverted and spun. Metal objects rolled, colliding and scraping inside the sack against his face. Each shake brought fresh points of pain and vertigo.
The sensation of oxygen deprivation struck swiftly—the coarse cloth pressed against his mouth and nose, the violent shaking preventing him from finding any rhythm to breathe.
Dizziness and nausea surged like tidal waves, threatening to smash his remaining consciousness. The stabbing pain and the omnipresent cold touch were the hateful anchors maintaining the fragile connection between him and this painful reality.
I'm finished.This time, really finished.
The thought surfaced at the edge of his consciousness, as he was about to be completely submerged by darkness, pain, and suffocation, carrying a nearly relieving despair.
Just as the light of his awareness was about to flicker out—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
A sound—not loud, yet unnaturally clear and steady, carrying an undeniable rhythm of authority—penetrated Lynus's mad laughter and the metallic clamor inside the sack.
The sound was like an extremely fine yet unyielding strand of spider silk, suddenly yanking Erika's sinking consciousness back.
Clinging to a last, almost illusory hope, he strained his remaining hearing in the absolute darkness and pain.
The darkness hadn't lifted.The shaking didn't seem to have stopped.
But he thought he heard Lynus's manic laughter hitch abruptly, then transform into an extremely displeased, throaty "Tch," brimming with the irritation of interruption and… a trace of barely perceptible wariness.
The darkness still hadn't lifted.That hopeful thread seemed about to snap with it.
Yet—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The knocking sounded again. The same rhythm, the same force, but this time with a clear, impossible-to-ignore urgency.
Almost the instant the knocks ended, the suffocating envelopment and restraint on his head vanished!
Whoosh!
The burlap sack was roughly torn away, most of the metal inside taken with it. Only a few cold, smaller pieces slid off Erika's face, falling onto the front of the restraint garment or the floor with scattered, faint clinks.
Cool, clean air, mixed with a fresh hint of blood-scent from his scraped cheek or forehead, surged violently into his swollen, aching nostrils and lungs.
"Hhk—! Huh… huh… huh…!!"
Like a dying fish thrown back into water, Erika bent forward violently, greedily, uncontrollably gasping huge mouthfuls of air. Violent coughing and retching followed, tears and mucus streaming freely. Each breath tugged at the pain in his face and scalp, but the life-giving oxygen was more vital than anything.
Through blurred, tear-filled eyes, he saw Lynus muttering curses, holding the now much emptier burlap sack. Without a glance at the collapsed, gasping Erika, he turned and strode quickly toward the back of the room—toward the door from which the knocking had come. His back radiated irritation.
"Someone will remember for you… Damn it," he grumbled under his breath.
The words sounded like a complaint—or perhaps a warning of some sort—cut off as he twisted the doorknob and slipped sideways out the door.
The door didn't close completely, left slightly ajar.
The room held only Erika—slumped in the wheelchair, gasping and coughing violently, face streaked with blood and tears, still in shock—and… Sister Sela, standing motionless in her original spot, as if nothing had happened.
The fresh air filled his lungs, bringing life—but also sharper pain, the collapse of near-death survival, and one enormous question:
Who, with just a few knocks, had halted the mad Lynus?And what did "Someone will remember for you" mean?