The walk back to the temple was silent.
Not the comfortable silence of allies who understood each other. The heavy silence of people who no longer knew what to say. Who were afraid that speaking would reveal too much fear, too much doubt, too much horror at what they had witnessed.
I walked ahead of the group. Alone. Not by choice—they simply would not walk beside me anymore.
My Essence Detection showed me their signatures trailing behind. Kael's essence flickered with uncertainty. Gery's pulsed with suppressed aggression—the instinct to attack a threat warring with loyalty to a friend. Chen and Victor radiated pure fear.
Only Somi's essence remained steady. Clinical. Her Magic Seeker mask stripped away emotional response, leaving only tactical analysis. She was not afraid of me because fear was no longer accessible to her.
I wondered if that was better or worse.
The grey water lapped at the bone bridges as we crossed them. The flesh beneath our feet breathed with that eternal rhythm. In the distance, the Mother's mountain of arms rose from the flooded ruins, her serene face visible even from kilometers away.
She was watching. Waiting. Proud, perhaps, that her First Child had passed the trial.
You are different now, my mask observed. Changed. The trial transformed you in ways beyond just power. Can you feel it?
"Yes."
Your emotions are muted. Distant. You watched Lucy cry and felt nothing. You heard your friends' fear and did not care. The corruption has taken your empathy. Soon it will take more.
"I know."
Does that frighten you?
I thought about it. Tried to summon fear. Tried to feel anything resembling concern about losing my humanity.
Nothing came. Just cold awareness. Clinical observation of my own deterioration.
"No," I admitted. "And that is what should frighten me. But it does not. The fear is gone too."
Good. Fear is weakness. You are becoming strong.
"Or I am becoming nothing."
There is no difference.
Lucy was waiting at the temple entrance when we arrived. She had been pacing, her Lightning Wand crackling nervously in her hand. When she saw us approaching, relief flooded her face.
Then she saw me properly—saw what I had become—and the relief died.
"Sidd," she breathed. "Your face..."
The veins had spread across my entire face during the trial. Black-red patterns covered my cheeks, my forehead, my chin. They pulsed faintly with each heartbeat, creating a rhythmic glow beneath my skin.
Combined with my pure white hair, my void eyes, and the devil-horned mask fusing with my skull, I looked less like a person and more like some cursed artifact given human shape.
"The trial was successful," I said. My voice was different too—deeper, with an edge that suggested something predatory lurking beneath. "I am Ascended now. Tier 3. The First Child of the Flesh Cradle."
"At what cost?" Lucy asked quietly.
"Fifteen percent corruption. I am at sixty-two percent now. Past the fifty percent threshold. Into Fallen territory."
She flinched. "That much? From one trial?"
"Tier 3 power is not given lightly. The price was appropriate to the reward."
The clinical way I said it—appropriate to the reward, as if I were discussing a transaction rather than the loss of my humanity—made her eyes water.
"You sound different," she said. "You sound like... like Somi. Cold. Analytical."
"The corruption has taken my emotional responses. They are dulled now. Distant. I observe them happening but do not feel them fully." I tilted my head, studying her tears with curiosity but no empathy. "You are crying. I recognize this means you are in emotional distress. But I cannot connect to that distress. Cannot share it. The part of me that would care has been... reduced."
"Sidd, please—"
"However," I continued, "I retain logical reasoning. And logically, you are my ally. My friend. Someone whose survival increases my own probability of success. Therefore, I will continue to protect you and fight alongside you. Not because I feel friendship, but because it is strategically optimal."
Lucy looked like I had struck her.
Kael stepped forward. "Sidd, what you are describing is not protection. It is calculation. You are treating us like assets rather than people."
"Is there a difference? Assets are valuable. People are valuable. The terminology does not change the functional relationship."
"The terminology changes everything," Gery said harshly. "Assets can be discarded when they stop being useful. People cannot."
I considered this. "An interesting distinction. I will remember it."
But even as I spoke, I knew I would not remember it. Not in the way they meant. The part of me that understood the moral difference between people and assets was fading. Becoming abstract. Theoretical rather than felt.
This was the corruption working. Stripping away the pieces that made me human and leaving only the efficient, calculating monster underneath.
We gathered on the second floor of the temple. All twenty-eight surviving bound individuals. The nine unbound had either died or finally accepted binding out of desperation.
Kael stood at the center, addressing the group. "We need to discuss what happened today. Sidd completed a trial—something called the Trial of Hunger. He gained Tier 3 power and the title of First Child."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Fear. Awe. Uncertainty.
"But the cost was severe," Kael continued. "His corruption increased dramatically. He has crossed the fifty percent threshold and is now in Fallen territory. His personality has changed. His emotional responses are compromised."
"He is becoming a monster," Darius said from where he sat against the wall, still recovering from when I had drained him yesterday. "I told you all. The corruption takes everyone eventually. Sidd was just faster than most because of his power."
"I am not a monster," I corrected. "Not yet. I am approximately sixty-two percent monster and thirty-eight percent human. The balance is shifting, but I retain enough humanity to function as an ally. For now."
"For now?" someone asked nervously.
"Corruption progresses with essence consumption and power usage. However—" I paused, analyzing the information I had received during the trial. "I have new data about the corruption mechanics."
Somi's tactical mask glowed. "Explain."
"The corruption does not progress linearly," I said. "Regular essence consumption causes minimal corruption increase—approximately point-five to two percent per feeding, depending on the source. Using Attributes causes negligible corruption. The major increases come from trials, bindings to new Anchor Points, and transcendent power usage."
"So the fifteen percent jump was abnormal?" Kael asked.
"Specific to the trial. The Throne of the First Child required absorbing the accumulated essence of hundreds of failed challengers. That level of consumption naturally caused significant corruption. However, now that the trial is complete, my corruption will slow dramatically. Based on calculations, I will need approximately three to four weeks to reach the seventy percent warning threshold through normal consumption patterns."
Relief was visible on several faces. Three to four weeks was significantly longer than they had feared.
"And there is more," I continued. "The Anchor Point system is permanent. The powers we gain here—from bindings, from trials, from becoming Awakened or Ascended—these remain even after we leave the Flesh Cradle."
Silence.
"What?" Lucy asked.
"The corruption is tied to our souls, not to the Mirror World. When we kill the Mother of Limbs and escape this place, we will keep our Attributes. Our Flaws. Our physical changes. Everything. It does not reset. It does not fade. We carry this with us forever."
"That is impossible," Victor protested. "If we leave the world, we should leave its influence."
"The bindings are soul-deep," Somi stated, her mask confirming my analysis. "They modify the fundamental structure of our essence. Leaving the physical location does not undo the metaphysical transformation. Sidd is correct. This is permanent."
The implications settled over the group like a heavy blanket.
They would never return to normal. Even if they escaped the death game, even if they somehow made it back to the real world, they would carry the marks. The veins. The changed eyes. The corrupted essence.
They would be marked forever as survivors of the Flesh Cradle. As people who had bound themselves to eldritch power and paid the price.
"But the power remains too," I added. "Which means we will be significantly stronger in future Mirror Worlds. The Awakened among us are roughly equivalent to what would normally be Master-level survivors. I, as an Ascended, am at what would be Saint-level. This advantage will carry forward."
"So we become weapons," Darius said bitterly. "We sacrifice our humanity and become weapons for whatever comes next."
"We become survivors," I corrected. "Survival requires adaptation. We have adapted. Now we use that adaptation to continue surviving."
Later, when the others had dispersed to rest, I stood alone at the third-floor window.
The grey twilight painted the Flesh Cradle in shades of melancholy. The endless ruins. The still water. The breathing bridges. The distant Mother watching over her domain.
It was beautiful, in a twisted way. Honest. This world did not pretend to be anything other than what it was—a nightmare made manifest. A prison of flesh and hunger.
Unlike the real world, which hid its horrors beneath civilized veneers.
"You are thinking again," Lucy's voice came from behind me. She had approached quietly, but my enhanced senses had detected her footsteps long before she spoke.
"I am always thinking. The corruption has not taken that. If anything, my thoughts are clearer now. Unclouded by emotion."
"Is that better?"
"I do not know. Clearer does not necessarily mean truer. Emotion provides context. Without it, truth becomes sterile. Observable but meaningless."
She stood beside me, looking out at the same view. "You sound more like yourself when you talk like this. Philosophical. Thoughtful."
"Perhaps philosophy is what remains when everything else is stripped away. The core underneath the performance." I glanced at her. "I have been thinking about names. True Names. The system assigned me 'The Lost One,' but I wonder if that is accurate. Can you be lost if you know exactly where you are going?"
"Where are you going?"
"Toward oblivion. Toward transformation. Toward becoming something that is no longer me. I know the destination. I can see the path. So am I truly lost? Or am I simply walking a road I do not want to walk but cannot abandon?"
Lucy was quiet for a moment. Then: "In my old life, before this nightmare, I read a lot. Philosophy. Literature. One quote always stuck with me—'Not all who wander are lost.' Maybe that applies to you. You are wandering through corruption, but you still know yourself. You are still making choices. That is not the same as being lost."
"An optimistic interpretation."
"You need some optimism. You have enough despair for both of us."
I almost smiled. Almost. The emotional response was there, distant and muted, but present. "Perhaps you are right. Or perhaps the question 'Am I Lost' is not meant to have an answer. Perhaps the uncertainty is the point. The moment you answer definitively—yes or no—is the moment the question becomes irrelevant."
"Deep thoughts from someone who claims to have no emotions."
"I have emotions. They are simply... elsewhere. Like hearing music through a wall. I know it is there, but I cannot feel the rhythm."
She reached out and took my hand. Her skin was warm. Mine was cold—the corruption had lowered my body temperature slightly.
"For what it is worth," she said quietly, "I still see you. Beneath the corruption. Beneath the veins and the white hair and the mask. You are still Sidd. Still my friend. And I will keep believing that until you prove me wrong."
I looked down at our joined hands. Studied them with clinical detachment. Noted the contrast—her unmarked skin versus my corrupted flesh. Her warmth versus my cold. Her humanity versus my transformation.
And somewhere, deep beneath the corruption, something stirred.
Not emotion exactly. But the memory of emotion. The ghost of what I used to feel.
"Thank you," I said. And meant it, even if I could not feel it.