Chapter 9: Insanity 2
Nafees stopped trying to measure time. There were no changes, no markers, just the endless hum of despair that soaked into the air like damp rot. His thoughts became a blur, looping and shuffling like broken cards in a deck.
He counted stones on the wall to keep himself grounded.
One. Two. Three.
Then again. And again.
But the number always changed. Were there more stones today? Or fewer?
Had he miscounted? Or were the walls alive, shifting when he blinked?
Sometimes, he swore he heard his name.
"Nafees..."
Not in a voice he recognized. Not Ciel. Not anyone.
Just...a breath. A brush of sound.
Like a thought that wasn't his.
He stopped sleeping. He couldn't tell if it was insomnia or if sleep simply ceased to exist here. When he closed his eyes, he saw things. Smiling masks. Eyes with no pupils. Rooms that stretched into infinity, filled with whispering shadows.
One night, or what passed for night in this place. he laughed. Loudly. At nothing.
It echoed off the stone walls, sharp and jagged, until it didn't even sound human.
"Ah… ahaha… AHAHAHAHAHAH—!"
The others flinched. Some turned away. Some didn't move at all.
It startled even him. Like the laugh didn't belong to his mouth. Like something had burrowed inside him and was trying him on for size.
He bit his knuckle until it bled, just to feel something.
He began to talk to himself, not in desperation, but in habit. His own voice was the only one that hadn't betrayed him yet.
That was when he noticed it.
A shape, barely moving, in the cage beside his.
He hadn't seen it before. No one had. It had been buried beneath a mess of filthy blankets, tucked so still it could've passed for part of the floor.
But now, the blankets shifted.
Slowly. Carefully.
A pale arm emerged—delicate, almost skeletal. Then a faint breath, quiet as snowfall. And just for a moment, as the blanket slipped, he saw it.
A pointed ear.
Elven.
He froze.
An elf? Here?
She hadn't just been hiding. she'd been surviving. Barely.
As more of the blanket slid away, he saw her fully, and his breath caught in his throat.
Her limbs were rotting. Gangrene clung to her legs and fingers like mold devouring dead wood. The skin was cracked and blackened, too painful to look at for more than a second. Whip marks crisscrossed her back, fresh and infected. Her body was a canvas of torment cuts, bruises, deep lacerations that hadn't been treated. Most of her fingernails had been ripped out. Her teeth were missing too almost all of them, save for a few molars left in the back.
And then... her eyes.
She didn't have vision. Not anymore.
Her left eye was gone entirely, an empty, hollow socket. The other glazed, unseeing blinked slowly, blankly. But her ears twitched at the sound of his ragged breathing.
At least she could still hear.
But gods... her body. That wasn't just neglect. That was deliberate. Systematic.
Torture.
Nafees clutched the bars between them, his knuckles white.
He couldn't look away.
He didn't know her. Didn't know why she was here. But he knew one thing for certain.
If he turned his back now… if he ignored her like the cultists wanted them all to ignore each other… she wouldn't survive much longer.
Even in this pit of rot and madness, something inside him still pulsed .something fragile, flickering.
Humanity
Before he could say something, the ragged elf parted her lips.
Her mouth moved slowly, like she was dragging each word up from somewhere deep and broken. Her voice was barely a whisper, dry and cracked. The words stumbled out, blurred by weakness and pain but still, they reached him.
"Why are you... cough... pretending to be imprisoned...? Are you looking for someone...?"
Nafees blinked, confused. His hands tightened around the cold iron bars.
"What...?"
She didn't pause.
"Your mana... it's way too pure for you to be pretending. You can take those guys in one go..."
He stared at her, his blood running cold.
Mana?
What was she talking about?
He hadn't possessed any magic . he was just an ordinary university student, juggling part-time work until yesterday. But then, he was thrust into this world of magic. And before he could even begin to understand it, he was kidnapped.
he would've escaped already. He would've fought back, saved Ciel, ended this nightmare before it ever began.
"I think you're misunderstanding elf. Im just....an ordinary guy.Not that you can see."
Nafees said this in a voice full of despair, his words barely escaping his lips. His face was empty, drained of all emotion, as if he had given up on ever being understood.
"!!!"
The elf went silent, her lips parted as if she was about to say something. But before she could, the door to the imprisoned room creaked open
Creeeak....
A group of cultists stepped inside, their presence as cold and unnerving as ever.
But something was off.
Instead of their usual grim, lifeless faces, they carried food in their hands. The sight felt wrong, a strange shift in the air that made the moment even more unsettling.
They began serving the food, placing it in front of the imprisoned figures with a cruel, almost playful ease.
The sight of food sent the prisoners into a frenzy. After days of hunger, their instincts took over. They attacked the plates like starving beasts, tearing into the food with wild desperation, as if they hadn't eaten in years.
Even Nafees couldn't resist. As soon as the cultist tossed a plate into his cage, he moved instinctively, his hands grabbing the food before his mind could fully process what was happening.
The plate contained plain rice with a thin, watery meat curry. The meat, if it could even be called that, was almost nonexistent, just a few scraps that barely added substance to the meal.
In the midst of the chaos, one cultist, his voice dripping with dark amusement, spoke up.
"So, how does the flesh of a human taste?"
"..!!!!!!"
The cultist eyes glinting with malice as he watched the prisoners devour the food, their hunger and desperation turning them into ravenous animals.
"What are you talking about, sir?!"
a prisoner shouted, his voice muffled as he stuffed food into his mouth, his hands trembling with hunger.
"Hum. I don't like to repeat myself, but I'll repeat. What you're eating... is human flesh."
!!!!
Nafees's eyes widened in horror, his body freezing as the blood drained from his face.
His gaze locked onto the plate in his hands, the rice and curry suddenly turning sickening in his mind. Panic surged through him, his thoughts spinning into chaos. The edges of his sanity began to fray, his breath quickening as a wave of nausea and fear gripped him.
"Aahhhhhh... AHHHHHH!"
A scream tore from his throat, raw and desperate, as the world around him seemed to blur into madness.
To be continued...