I met her by a freak chance.

  The cave was almost forgotten, hidden

  behind a scar of jagged stone. The Flo in Limbo was so dense it

  conjured a heavy fog that clung to everything it touched. I should

  have turned away, but curiosity has always been my best and worst

  trait.

  I’d been wandering for what felt like

  weeks—or was it months?—documenting this place, not even

  scratching the surface of its secrets. It was a good thing I didn’t

  need to eat; I’d finished my supplies days ago and felt no hunger.

  I still had energy. I didn’t even need to sleep. I theorised it was

  this place. What a world.

  The area was full of monsters,

  who would wail and claw at their own heads. Some smashed their faces

  into the stone; others, unable to bear the torment, simply ripped

  themselves apart.

  Looking back, I was thankful for my Synch

  equipment. I remembered entering Limbo, the intensity of the Flo

  hitting me like a physical blow. The frequencies screamed so loud I

  nearly blacked out, my fingers fumbling to dial down my headphones

  just in time. Without them, I would’ve been like them: a mindless

  zombie in constant agony. Or worse, dead.

  I’d named the area the Crimson Mistlands.

  I walked for miles, following a hairline

  crack in the ground, praying it would lead to water. Though I didn’t

  need food, thirst was a constant, grinding companion. Running low, I

  had no choice but to pack up and move on, carefully avoiding the

  monsters. I’d seen what happened when they accidentally touched

  each other. I had no desire to become the target of their pain.

  It wasn’t until what felt like days later

  that I found myself at the edge of a gorge. Below, a shallow shore

  was swallowed by mist, the water stretching into a featureless

  horizon. Relaxing wasn’t an option. The drop was sixty

  feet—impossible for a non-Synch, but usually nothing for us. The

  problem was my frequency output was dialed so low that increasing it

  was too dangerous.

  It was a gamble, but I had no choice. I

  looked up, noticing the pack of giant birds circling in the red sky.

  Suddenly, jumping didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

  “Just a leap of faith,” I muttered.

  For three heartbeats, I fell in silence.

  Then, just before impact, I gritted my teeth and channeled Flo around

  my body. I didn’t account for the raw energy in Limbo,

  supercharging my efforts.

  With a CRACK,

  I hit the shallow riverbed. The force sent water exploding outward.

  If anyone was around, they might have sworn they saw a superhero. Too

  bad pain immediately radiated from every joint. Lying there, gasping,

  I was surprised by how fun it was. A laugh bubbled out of me—at my

  stupid choices, at this whole insane situation. Maybe I was going

  insane.

  I got up, about to check the water, when a

  breeze brushed my neck. Something felt off.

  I turned around.

  And I saw it.

  cave.

  Again, I should have turned away. But

  something—an unnatural calm amidst the chaos—drew me in. I could

  feel it, a stillness so profound it raised goosebumps on my arms. I

  had to know what it was. Curse my stupid curiosity.

  Stepping into the cave, the wind howled as

  if trying to escape. The air reeked of sulfur and decay, but I

  trudged on. The deeper I went, the darker the world outside became,

  until it was practically night, replaced by the cool illumination of

  faint blue patterns on the walls. They glowed with a soft, hypnotic

  light. I couldn’t tell if it was ancient writing or mere scribbles,

  but I documented them anyway, just as I had documented everything on

  my journey. It was a hopeless habit, but it kept me hopeful.

  It was while studying the patterns that my

  eyes drifted to her.

  Through the pulsing of the blue lights, a

  woman knelt beside a stone slab like a graceful statue, a vision of

  contradictions. Her face was youthful, her skin pale and flawless as

  polished marble, yet she radiated an aura of something ancient,

  creepy, and profoundly lonely. A pitch-black veil covered her eyes.

  Her frail, skinny arms that rested on her lap were bound by

  wriggling, liquid tendrils that pulsed with a dark light. She wore a

  simple, tattered grey dress, but

  behind her in a corner as If forgotten, lay

  a suit of armour the same colour as the walls of the cave.

  Everything about her screamed .

  My first instinct was to rush to her,

  yelling,

  But I was drowning in fear and caution. Thoughts danced. Why was she

  here? What had she done to deserve this? How long had she been like

  this?

  Before I could plan my next move, she

  noticed me.

  She couldn’t see, but her head slowly

  turned toward the entrance as if she’d felt a shift in the air. A

  chorus of whispers filled the space, escaping from her, yet her lips

  never moved.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I concluded she was a prisoner. Every

  survival instinct told me to run, but two things rooted me to the

  spot: my curiosity, and the sheer terror of what might be waiting

  outside, especially after the noise I’d made.

  Weighing my options, I did what any sane

  person would do after finding a random, tied-up person in a random

  cave in a godforsaken realm.

  I approached her.

  “Uh..hello?” I said, trying to keep the

  nerves from my voice, “Can you hear me?”

  Her head followed the sound. Her lips, thin

  and cracked parted, but no words came. Only a dry, rasping breath.

  Looking at her closely, from an artistic

  perspective, she was a masterpiece. From the way she knelt to the

  aura she gave off, she looked like a piece of artwork. I couldn’t

  help myself; I took a picture. The soft click of the shutter echoed

  in the silence, a tiny punctuation mark in her endless sentence. I

  set aside my giant, trusty rucksack and searched for my remaining

  water container, almost forgetting the reason I’d journeyed here in

  the first place, but the thought of her knowing something about this

  place, knowing if there was a way back, made me pause. Staring at the

  container in hand, if I gave her this, and the water outside wasn’t

  safe, I was condemning myself to a slow death. It was a heavy gamble.

  One that I would pay for dearly.

  “Here,” I muttered, carefully pressing

  the mouth of the bottle to her lips.

  It startled her fiercely. She jerked back,

  spilling precious drops onto the cave floor. Under other

  circumstances, I would’ve been annoyed, but watching her recoil

  like that… it was oddly human. A reaction that contradicted

  everything about her. She wasn’t a mystery, in that moment she was

  just a startled girl.

  “You’re thirsty, aren’t you?” I

  chimed.

  She hesitated, which I didn’t blame her

  for. If I were stuck in a place, blindfolded for who knows how long,

  and a random voice asked if I was thirsty, I’d be hesitant, too. I

  guess the isolation took more of a toll on my social skills than I

  thought. Tilting her head back, she began to drink. Despite her

  fragile appearance, she gulped the water down. It must have been

  satisfying; each swallow echoed in the cavern. I grew worried the

  noise would draw something toward us, and in my absent-mindedness,

  she grabbed my arm.

  I yelped, trying to pull free, but it was

  no use. She was impossibly strong. It was humiliating. She took her

  time, finishing with a deep sigh.

  “I… give thee… thanks.” she

  whispered slowly, gravely, as if relearning how to speak. “What

  name bears the man who hath aided me…?”

  The way she talked gave me a headache. I

  gave her my name.

  She tilted her head. “What an unusual

  name… What brings thee to this forsaken place?”

  Was she serious? Trying to have a

  conversation as if this were normal? It began to click in my head why

  people say curiosity killed the cat. I explained how I was stranded

  after opening a rift, not knowing it would lead me here.

  She paused before replying. “Thou art a

  Synchrite… art thou not?”

  At that word, my

  blood turned cold.

  The term was so outdated, no one had used it to refer to Synchs in

  centuries. I became increasingly nervous as

  to what I was getting myself involved in.

  I told her I was. I’d always hated the connotations the name came

  with. The

  discrimination, the fear, the admiration, the projection. I wanted to

  escape it all.

  “Should be no great burden… to depart

  as thou arrived, no?”

  She was right. Though I had the ability to

  travel through rifts, I’d used a device that mimicked my power—a

  handy tool crafted by my closest friend. It had broken as soon as I

  arrived after encountering an Arcborne. As I was now, my frequency

  output was too low to create rifts, and I couldn’t risk increasing

  it. If she could sense my Flo signature, to her I must have looked

  like a speck of dust… something that shouldn’t have been able to

  get here. I told her about the device, and she fell quiet again.

  “How long hath passed...since the third

  generation of Synchrites...?”

  That was around the time of Lucius the

  Praised. A bad feeling settled in my gut as I did the maths. “...That

  was around four hundred years ago,” I replied.

  Silence.

  Then the air shifted. A gradual rumble

  built into a tremor that shook the entire realm. The cave vibrated.

  From the distance came howls of pain, so loud and tormented they sent

  shivers down my spine. My eyes darted from the entrance back to her.

  She was shaking uncontrollably, her head lowered, saying nothing.

  I stupidly reached out, “What’s wr-”

  I never reached her. An invisible force

  slammed into my chest, hurling me backward. I crashed into the cave

  wall, my head smacking stone whilst my vision went dark.

  It was strange, dreaming

  of my wife. It was even stranger

  remembering it.

  From her smile to her smell. I was by her

  side, cuddled up against her as she showed me her love. I remembered

  her face, twisted with worry as I told her about my adventure. I had

  put on a brave, confident exterior as she held our son in her arms.

  My selfishness was the reason I was in this place. I would give

  anything to see them again.

  As I pulled my finger from my newborn son’s

  grasp, the dream faded.

  I woke up dazed. Pain flooded my skull as I

  scanned my surroundings, temporarily forgetting where I was. My eyes

  found the lady in the middle of the cave, now sitting on the stone

  slab, staring at a small opening in the ceiling, just large enough

  for a single beam of light to enter. I couldn’t remember if that

  had always been there.

  She slowly turned her attention to me. It

  was then I noticed my own eyes were puffy.

  “Thou art awake...” she said, her voice

  flowing through me like soft knives—enchanting, yet sure of itself.

  “I didst begin to believe thou wert dead...”

  Scratching my head and wiping my eyes, I

  got up, muttering something along the lines of, “You think that’s

  enough to get rid of me?”

  Nothing. Then I noticed the corner of her

  mouth twitch. If I had been talking to myself in my sleep, she kept

  it to herself. A silence stretched between us before she broke it.

  “Something… weighs upon thy spirit,

  aye?”

  She was right. I sat down in front of her

  and studied her. She was ancient. She seemed peaceful and mannered,

  yet she was a prisoner in an unknown realm. She had a connection to

  the third generation of synchs, yet there was no record of anyone

  like her. But the most unsettling thought

  truly crawled under my skin. Every creature I’d encountered here

  was shredded by the frequencies, they tore themselves apart, smashed

  their own skulls. Hell, even I could hear the whispers through my

  dampened gear. Yet she sat at the heart of it all. Undisturbed.

  Regaining my thoughts, I asked the question

  that had been burning in me since the moment I saw her.

  “Who… are you?”