Chapter Four: The Ones Who Never Made It Home
Time passed.
Days turned into weeks, and weeks slowly became months. Though the little girl remained trapped in the physician's lair, she gradually became acquainted with the children who shared her suffering.
If she thought about it, this was the first time in her life she had ever been surrounded by so many people.
They were all victims of the same madman, bound together by pain and the desperate hope that one day they might escape. Most of them could barely stand, let alone walk, yet they still found the strength to comfort one another whenever the physician's experiments pushed someone to the brink of madness.
When one child screamed, the others would whisper words of encouragement.
When someone trembled in agony, another would reach out a weak hand to hold theirs.
And when the pain finally subsided, they would lie quietly in their beds, drawing what little comfort they could from one another's presence.
It was a miserable existence, but at least they were not entirely alone.
Over time, the girl learned more about their captor.
Outside these walls, the man was known as a physician. He treated illnesses, prescribed medicines, and maintained the respectable appearance of someone who had devoted his life to saving others.
But behind that respectable facade was a monster far more frightening than the three-headed fox that had nearly devoured her.
He kidnapped poor children and used them as test subjects for the various poisons he created.
The building in which they were imprisoned was a secluded house near a forest known as the Pathway of Ascension. It was there that the physician had found her, lying at death's door while a three-headed fox prepared to make a meal of her.
Rather than save her out of kindness, he had seen an opportunity.
And so, he had brought her here.
The girl learned that the Pathway of Ascension was a place where people began their journey into cultivation.
She had no idea what cultivation meant, and when she asked, the boy in the bed beside hers could only stare at her in disbelief.
"You really don't know what cultivation is?"
She shook her head.
The boy studied her for a moment before letting out a weak sigh.
"How can someone be so ignorant of the world?"
She did not answer. She had spent most of her life in a dilapidated hut at the edge of a village, caring for her dying mother. She had never attended school, never played with other children, and never had anyone to teach her about the world beyond her immediate surroundings.
How could she know things no one had ever told her?
Eventually, the boy stopped being surprised by her lack of knowledge. Instead, he began explaining things to her whenever he was conscious enough to speak.
He told her about the little town he had come from, the people who lived there, and the things he had heard about the world beyond it. He also explained that the Pathway of Ascension was filled with monsters, and the deeper one ventured into the forest, the more dangerous those monsters became.
According to him, it was a place where aspiring cultivators could test themselves and begin their journey toward greater strength.
The girl listened quietly.
She did not understand most of what he said, but she remembered every word.
She had always possessed an unusual memory. Even now, as she lay in a room filled with suffering children, she could recall the smallest details of their conversations.
Perhaps that was why the boy enjoyed talking to her.
Or perhaps it was simply because, despite everything, she listened.
When she eventually told the children that she did not have a name, they were all taken aback.
After a brief discussion among themselves, they began calling her Little One.
The name stuck.
Some of the children had been kidnapped when they were barely ten years old. Others were in their early or late teens. Yet none of them were adults.
As far as the girl knew, she was the youngest child the physician had ever brought into his lair.
She had been only four years old when he found her.
Four years old.
She was so young that she could barely comprehend the cruelty of the world she had been dragged into. Nevertheless, she was expected to endure the same horrors as children several times her age.
Every day, the physician tested new poisons on them.
Some caused unbearable pain. Others made their bodies tremble uncontrollably. A few left them unable to move for hours, while others brought them so close to death that the children would spend days wondering whether they would wake up again.
The physician showed no concern for their suffering.
To him, they were nothing more than test subjects.
Occasionally, he would disappear for several days at a time. Those were the only periods of respite the children received. Without him, they were free from his experiments, though their bodies remained weak from the poisons already in their systems and the meagre food he provided.
Whenever he returned, their brief peace ended.
And so, the days continued.
Until the day the little girl turned five.
---
She had known it would happen.
Somewhere deep inside, she had always known that the children would not survive for long.
They were poorly fed, their bodies were already weakened, and each new poison pushed them closer to death. Even without understanding medicine, she knew that no body could endure such suffering forever.
Still, knowing something would happen did not make it easier when it finally did.
The girl who died that day had been especially kind to her.
Despite her own suffering, she had often comforted Little One whenever the pain became unbearable.
"Little One, don't give up," the girl had whispered to her one day, her voice trembling as she fought through the effects of a poison. "When we get out of here, I'll take you to my village. My parents are waiting for me there. I'll ask them to take you in, and then we'll be sisters, okay?"
Little One had looked at her for a long time before nodding.
She had never had a sister.
The thought of having someone who would stay beside her had filled her with a strange, unfamiliar warmth.
For a little while, she had allowed herself to believe that such a future was possible.
But the girl never returned to her village.
The poison the physician administered that day was too much for her weakened body.
Her blood vessels ruptured one after another. Blood poured from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, and the remaining openings of her body. She writhed on the bed, her small frame convulsing as she struggled desperately to draw another breath.
The children could do nothing but watch.
Some turned their faces away, unable to bear the sight. Others clutched their blankets and wept quietly.
Little One stared at the girl, unable to move.
She wanted to help.
She wanted to do something.
Anything.
But what could a helpless child do against a man who treated human suffering as an ordinary part of his work?
The girl's movements gradually slowed.
Then, at last, they stopped.
A moment later, the physician clicked his tongue.
"Tsk, tsk. It seems this batch is a little too strong."
He examined the lifeless body with the mild disappointment of a man whose experiment had failed to produce the result he wanted.
Then his expression changed.
"Perfect."
A smile spread across his face.
He lifted the girl's body from the bed and carried her away to dispose of it.
He did not spare a glance for the other children.
Nor did he notice the little girl staring at the empty bed long after he had left.
Little One did not cry immediately.
She simply lay there, staring at the space where her friend had been.
The girl had promised to take her home.
She had promised they would become sisters.
Now, she was gone.
The familiar tightness in Little One's chest returned.
It had been there ever since she had lost her mother, a dull, suffocating feeling that never seemed to disappear completely.
She had hoped that being around other children might make it go away.
Instead, it grew worse.
---
A week later, two more children died.
The physician disposed of their bodies just as carelessly as he had disposed of the girl's.
Then he returned to his work.
Another poison. Another experiment. Another child screaming in agony.
Nothing changed.
Two weeks after that, only six children remained from the group that had once occupied the room.
Among them was the boy who had spoken to Little One the most.
His name was Enan.
He had become her closest companion in that miserable place, telling her stories about the outside world whenever he had enough strength to speak. Sometimes, he would even tease her about how little she knew.
He was the one who had explained the Pathway of Ascension to her.
He was the one who had told her about cultivation.
And he was the one who had patiently answered her endless questions, no matter how strange or simple they seemed.
Now, he lay beside her, growing weaker with every passing day.
Little One watched him struggle to breathe.
She could do nothing but wait.
When Enan finally breathed his last, something inside her broke.
A heart-wrenching sob escaped her lips.
She clutched the edge of her bed and cried until her throat hurt. Tears streamed down her face as she stared at the boy who had been the closest thing she had to a brother.
He was gone.
Just like the others.
The physician entered, examined the body, and carried it away without a second thought.
Enan had spent his final days telling her about the world outside.
He had spoken of towns, villages, cultivation, and a future in which he would return home.
Now, he would never see any of those things again.
And the man responsible simply continued with his day.
Little One spent the remainder of that day in a daze. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes she stared blankly at the ceiling. At other times, she lost consciousness from exhaustion, only to awaken and remember everything all over again.
She began to wonder whether the world had ever intended to show her anything other than misery.
First, her mother.
Then the girl who had promised to become her sister.
And now Enan.
Why did everyone she grew close to leave her behind?
Why was she always the one left alone?
She had no answers.
She only had the suffocating feeling in her chest, which seemed to grow heavier with every death.
---
A year passed.
Little One was six years old.
She was the only survivor from the original group of children who had occupied the room when she first arrived.
Every other child had died.
The physician, however, showed no intention of stopping.
He replaced the dead children with new captives, eventually bringing the number in the room to fifteen, including Little One.
The new arrivals were just as miserable as those who had come before them.
Some cried for their parents. Others begged to be released. A few remained silent, too frightened or exhausted to do anything else.
Little One watched them with a growing sense of dread.
She knew what awaited them.
She had seen it happen too many times to pretend otherwise.
One by one, they would be subjected to the physician's poisons. Their bodies would weaken, their suffering would increase, and eventually, most of them would die.
Then their beds would be occupied by someone new.
The cycle would begin again.
Yet there was something strange about Little One.
She survived.
No matter what poison the physician tested on her, no matter how much pain she endured, she refused to die.
At first, she had suffered just as terribly as the others. Her body had convulsed, her muscles had seized, and the agony had often driven her to the brink of unconsciousness.
But with time, something changed.
The pain caused by the poisons did not disappear, but it gradually became more bearable.
Compared to the mysterious wailing that had tormented her mind since the day she entered the cave, the physical agony seemed almost insignificant.
The wailing had once been so unbearable that she thought it would drive her mad.
Now, after a year of enduring it, she had grown accustomed to its presence.
The same could be said of the strange pressure she sometimes felt weighing upon her.
She could not explain either phenomenon.
She did not know where the voices came from, why the pressure followed her, or how she could survive things that killed the other children.
She only knew that she was still alive.
And that everyone else kept dying.
---
Another year passed.
Little One turned seven.
The children around her continued to change. Some stayed for a few months, while others died much sooner. Every time she began to grow accustomed to a new face, the physician's experiments took that person away.
Four groups of children had come and gone over the course of the year.
Little One remained.
Even death seemed unwilling to claim her.
At first, she had desperately wanted to die.
She had wanted to escape the physician's cruelty, the endless pain, and the unbearable loneliness. More than anything, she had wanted to see her mother again.
She had even forgotten, for a time, the promise she had made to return to her mother's body and give her a proper burial.
The memory had become distant, buried beneath years of suffering.
What meaning did a promise hold in a world where everyone she loved was taken away?
What meaning did living have when each new day brought nothing but pain?
She no longer understood.
She had tried making friends, only to watch them die. She had tried to hold on to hope, only to have it crushed again and again.
Eventually, she stopped asking why.
She simply endured.
Yet beneath that exhaustion, something else began to grow.
A quiet, bitter resentment.
It was directed at the physician, the man who had turned her life into an endless nightmare.
She hated his voice.
She hated his footsteps.
She hated the way he looked at the children as though they were nothing more than objects.
And she hated the way he smiled whenever one of his experiments produced an interesting result.
She hated him so much that, at times, it was the only feeling she could clearly recognize.
---
By the time Little One turned eight, her hatred had become the one thing she could hold on to.
She no longer cried as often as she once had.
She had learned to endure the pain in silence, to suppress her fear, and to wait for the physician to finish his experiments.
But she had not forgiven him.
Nor would she ever.
The physician, meanwhile, had become increasingly fascinated by her.
At first, he had considered her a promising test subject. Now, he regarded her as something far more valuable.
A treasure.
He could not understand why she continued to survive.
He had tested poisons that killed other children within minutes, yet Little One remained alive. He had pushed her body beyond what he considered its natural limits, yet she continued to draw breath.
Even starvation failed to produce the result he expected.
He had once left her without food for months, convinced that she would eventually succumb to hunger and exhaustion.
She did not.
Her body grew frighteningly weak, but somehow, she survived.
He had tried poisons of increasing potency, each more dangerous than the last.
She survived those, too.
The more he experimented on her, the more convinced he became that there was something extraordinary about the girl.
He simply did not know what it was.
And that ignorance irritated him.
One day, he decided to test the limits of her endurance in another way.
He cut off her left forearm from below the elbow.
The pain was beyond anything she had ever experienced. For a time, the world around her became a blur of agony, and she could barely tell whether she was screaming or simply imagining the sound.
The physician watched with a smile.
A smile that sent a chill down her spine.
He had destroyed a part of her body as casually as someone might remove a diseased branch from a tree.
To him, it was merely another experiment.
To her, it was another piece of herself that she would never recover.
As she lay there, trembling and drenched in sweat, Little One stared at the man standing over her.
She had once wanted to die.
She had once begged the world, silently and desperately, to let her escape her suffering.
But as she looked at the physician's smiling face, she felt something change.
For the first time in years, she no longer wished for death.
She wanted to live.
Not because she believed happiness awaited her.
Not because she thought the world would become kinder.
She wanted to live because she wanted to see this man die.
She wanted to watch the smile disappear from his face. She wanted him to experience the fear and helplessness he had inflicted upon so many children.
And she wanted to be the one standing over him when his life finally ended.
It was a bitter promise, born from hatred and years of suffering.
But it was a promise all the same.
She would survive.
No matter what he did to her.
No matter how much pain she endured.
She would survive long enough to witness his end.
From that point onward, the physician gradually reduced the number of children he kidnapped.
There was little need to acquire new test subjects when he already had someone who could endure almost anything he threw at her.
He still brought other children into the lair from time to time, particularly when he wanted to observe how a poison affected an ordinary human body.
Their deaths became another source of information for him.
And Little One continued to watch.
Another child would arrive.
Another would suffer.
Another would die.
And she would remain.
---
Years passed beneath the physician's cruelty.
Little One turned nine, then ten, then eleven.
Eventually, she reached the age of twelve.
Eight years had passed since the day the physician had taken her from the Pathway of Ascension.
Eight years since she had last seen the sky beyond the forest.
Eight years since she had lost her mother.
In all that time, she had never escaped the physician's lair.
She had never returned to her village.
And she had never fulfilled the promise she had made to herself as a little girl.
She had not buried her mother.
She had not given her a proper farewell.
The memory still existed somewhere inside her, but it had become buried beneath so many years of pain that she could barely reach it anymore.
Now, she had only one clear purpose.
To survive.
And to kill the physician.
By the time she turned twelve, only four children remained in the room, including her.
The others had been replaced countless times, each new group suffering the same fate as the last. Little One had long since stopped trying to remember every face. Doing so only gave her more people to mourn.
The physician had been absent for almost a month.
Before leaving, he had brought three new children into the lair and subjected them to his experiments. Then, for reasons unknown to her, he had departed without returning.
It was the longest he had ever been gone.
For the first time in years, the children could breathe without constantly fearing his arrival.
No new poisons were forced down their throats.
No needles were driven into their bodies.
No one came to inspect their suffering with cold, curious eyes.
Their bodies were still weak, and the effects of the previous experiments had not disappeared. They continued to endure pain, fever, and exhaustion.
But at least, for a little while, the physician was gone.
Little One had grown so accustomed to suffering that the silence itself felt strange.
She spent her days lying on her bed, listening to the faint groans of the other children and the occasional rustle of blankets.
Sometimes, she wondered whether the physician had finally died.
The thought brought her a brief, unfamiliar sense of satisfaction.
But she knew better than to hope.
A man like him would not disappear so easily.
Still, she allowed herself to enjoy the quiet.
Even a moment of peace was precious in a place like this.
Then, one day, something interrupted it.
At first, Little One thought she had imagined the sound.
She lifted her head slightly and listened.
There it was again.
The steady clatter of hooves.
Her eyes narrowed.
The sound was coming from outside the lair.
A moment later, she heard voices.
Several people were approaching.
She could not make out what they were saying, but the sounds were unmistakable. There was movement beyond the walls, the occasional sharp call, and the rhythmic pounding of hooves drawing closer.
Little One slowly sat up.
For eight years, the physician had come and gone as he pleased, and no one had ever come looking for the children.
No one had ever found them.
No one had ever interrupted his work.
Yet now, people had arrived at the very place where he had hidden his crimes.
She stared toward the door, her expression unreadable.
Perhaps the physician had finally made a mistake.
Perhaps someone had discovered what he had been doing.
Or perhaps this was simply another misfortune waiting to fall upon her.
She had learned long ago not to trust hope.
Still, as the sounds of hooves grew louder, a faint feeling stirred in her chest.
For the first time in years, something was happening that she had not expected.
And she had no idea what it would bring.
For the first time in eight years, the physician's lair was no longer silent.