All of them folded in on themselves, knees clutched tight to their chests, faces buried in their arms. Their hair drifted weightless in the water. They wore identical clothing, indistinguishable, ghostly silhouettes behind the glass.
There were six tanks in total.
Five of them were occupied.
The sixth stood waiting.
As I leaned closer, my eyes caught a raven inked along the curve of a woman's neck. A chill struck me. "Robin…" The name tore itself from my lips in a gasp. How had I forgotten her?
Each tank gleamed with an eerie, liquid shimmer. On top of them sat black lids fastened with thick belts—two of which bore keyholes. One held a man suspended inside, his body drifting like a corpse that refused to sink. The other stood empty, its surface rippling as though waiting. I clawed at the lids, yanked at the locks, but they wouldn't budge.
Then the air shifted. Silence pressed against me. I turned—and Liam was gone. My stomach dropped. My eyes darted back to the tanks, and ice crept up my spine. The empty one was no longer empty. Liam floated inside, his face pale against the distorted glass.
I staggered back, forcing myself through the door. Laughter greeted me—soft, careless giggles. Hector and that girl sat together, as though nothing in this nightmare was odd. My voice cracked with fury. "What is this? My friends are trapped in tanks, and now my brother too? What kind of twisted spectacle is this?"
The girl rose slowly, her movements graceful, deliberate. She touched my shoulder with unnerving gentleness. "Forgive me—I never introduced myself. I am Grace. Grace Willow." Her smile was sweet, almost tender. "And this isn't a game. You can take your friend out of there."
The name struck me like lightning. Grace Willow. My eyes snapped to Hector. "So it was you. You kidnapped her."
Her laugh was light, disarming. She stepped between us, shielding him. "No. I came to him. I chose this."
"She's telling the truth," Hector murmured, rising to his feet. He threaded his fingers through hers, his eyes soft, his smile reverent. "We're in love." She blushed under his gaze.
Catching his attention, I forced the words out through clenched teeth. "You said I can free them. How?"
"Oh, of course." Hector slipped a key from his pocket, its metal glinting dully in the light. He pressed it into my hand with infuriating calm.
I stared at it, bitter laughter bubbling out of me. "One key? Just one?"
"Yes… only one key," he said, his voice curling like smoke in the air. "And it depends entirely on who you free. If you choose your brother's tank, he will be the only one you free. But if you choose the other… then all your friends are released—except him." He leaned back in his chair, the smile never leaving his lips, and with deliberate calm, raised his fork and knife to continue eating.
Rage surged through me as I forced my voice to stay firm. "I don't want to choose. I want all of them to come home with me." I turned sharply toward the door, refusing to play his game.
Before I could even brush the knob, his laughter burst across the room, sharp and jagged. "You think you can outwit me with that single key? That you can unlock all their cages with one turn?" His cackle grew, filling every corner. "Go on, girl—good luck with that."
Grace's voice slipped in, soft and almost pleading. "Think carefully, Zinnia… once the key is used, it is gone. You only get one chance. Please… don't waste it."
Her words lodged in me like thorns. I froze, thoughts tearing themselves apart inside my head. The weight of the choice smothered me—I wanted to save them all, yet the walls of the room pressed tighter, whispering that I couldn't.
"Sleep on it, perhaps?" he suggested lazily, dabbing his mouth with a white handkerchief, crimson wine staining its edge. "But do not wait too long. Their suffering grows with every heartbeat you waste." He stood, his chair scraping the stone floor, and with an unsettling gentleness, he took Grace by the hand and led her out. The door closed behind them, leaving me in the silence.
This was my chance.
I scoured the room like a madwoman—pressing against the walls, shoving at bricks with bloodied fingertips, pulling at the carpet until it tore. I crawled under the table, searched beneath the chairs, and clawed at anything that might conceal a lever or switch. Nothing. The room mocked me with its emptiness.
Then a thought burned through the haze: *What if I break the tanks?*
My eyes darted to a heavy vase resting on the mantle. I seized it, feeling the weight strain my arms, and crept toward the room of glass prisons. Standing before one of them, my breath quickened.
"But what if I hurt them?" I whispered to myself, clutching the vase tighter. The doubt clawed at me, but then I remembered—we had a healer. And hesitation was no longer a luxury.
I got back and threw it on the glass only to feel the jolt tear up my body as if pushing me back, but the tank, on the other hand, didn't even have a crack. Frustration knotting in my chest. A guttural sound escaped me as I dug my fingers into my scalp, tugging so hard it felt as if I might rip the hair clean from my skull.
Then it struck me—the memory of her, the other me. The way her eyes widened in disbelief when she saw Liam alive. She hadn't saved him. She'd freed the others, lost him, and then… something inside her had rotted. She turned cruel, violent, mad.
My eyes slid to the rows of tanks. Shapes of my friends floated within, pale and suspended, waiting for me to decide. My throat tightened. "I'm sorry," I whispered, though the words felt useless, drowned in shame. I had chosen, and in choosing, I had condemned them. "I have to save the future of our school."
My hand trembled as I fit the key into Liam's tank. The lock gave with a sharp click—then the world lurched. A deep groan reverberated through the chamber as the walls split and stones rained down from the ceiling. I stumbled back, staring as the tanks dissolved, vanishing into nothingness. Only Liam staggered out, gasping, alive.
I caught his hand, gripping it tight, and together we bolted for the door. But when we stepped through, the air changed. Ash stung my lungs as the ground crumbled beneath us. The chamber was gone. The tanks were gone. Instead, a wasteland stretched endlessly around us, cracked earth beneath a sky smothered in bruised clouds. The horizon burned without any sun, casting everything in blood-orange light.
"Where is everyone?" Liam's voice trembled, thin against the desolation.
I didn't answer at first. The silence pressed heavily, as though the world itself waited to hear my reply.
Finally, I forced the words out. "I made a hard choice. A better choice." My voice broke, but I swallowed it down, keeping the truth buried where he couldn't see. "Now… we have to run."