“I have regrets, Mother.”

11 flips through the book in her hands, reading none of the words. She’s skimmed through ten so far, and none of them useful. For the last hour, her mind has been wandering to increasingly obscure subjects, and now 11 finds it difficult to read even a single page without thinking of other things. Other people.

God Giers are not capable of having regrets.

11 hums. “I don’t know. I feel pretty capable.”

That is to be expected.

What you are feeling is just an imitation of boredom.

Try completing your task sooner, it may help.

Wow, am I beginning to smell some bullshit. 11 finds the words on the tip of her tongue, but obviously doesn’t say them. She closes her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose, and tries not to smell... something.

Rot, infected tissue, and… is that lavender this time?

11 feels ghostly hands playing with her hair. She opens her eyes, to see the bodiless head of Allastair Argonston floating inches in front of her own.

She sighs. “Not again.”

My dream is to join the King's Dauntless Guards...

The hallucination of Allastair moans at 11, his eyes no longer smiling, or green, but a hard yellowish-white without any pupils, their consistency that of spoilt milk.

My dream wasss to join the Dauntless Guards.

“Goddamnit.” 11 tries to turn away, back to the bookshelves. She grabs a random title, and then one more, stacking them in her arms, trying to block the phantom from her vision. There is nothing wrong with 11’s optical drives or sensors – she and Mother have checked them a thousand times already – yet ever since touching the monolith, 11 can see them floating on the outskirts of her vision; the man in the brown suit, and the two young adventurers of Aralyn’s party, and sometimes even Varnon, the villager leader of Oakroot, too.

All people she's killed, including the brown-suited man, this 11 is sure of now.

"Should I have buried you two?" 11 asks, not hearing or expecting a reply. She had left in a hurry, unable to stand being close to Aralyn and not going to her. She tries to remember how Allastair’s body had looked where she left it, burnt almost beyond recognition as if he fell into a furnace. His eyes were hollowed, his skin cracked and oozing across the grass. Yet despite those injuries, his armor still shone under the rising sun, untouched by fire, as if he’d been cooked from the inside. Like a lobster.

You could have saved me...

11's stack of books is taller than her head now.

She did not kill anyone without reason, this 11 will stand by, and she couldn't have known Allastair and Fennald would die fighting that wraith either. So why then, is her mind playing such cruel tricks on her?

From behind 11’s pile, another ethereal face appears through the stack, Fennald’s this time. The boy’s mouth opens wide in a silent scream, the skin on his cheeks tearing away to reveal grey bones and rotten teeth.

I died, because I saw a God Gier!

Still holding her books, 11 swipes at Fennald’s head with her other hand, only for the ghost to snarl and snap at her fingers. Blood flows from an invisible wound on the boy's head, plastering his fringe to his forehead and running in rivers down his face, into his mouth, staining his teeth. His words pierce deep into 11’s gut like knives.

You could have saved us. But you didn’t!

You can save her. But you ABANDONED her instead!

11 turns away, only to see him, the brown-suited man, standing in front of the monolith. His suit isn’t actually brown, she realizes, but a dark green, stained by the blood flowing from the hole in his chest. The hole, where his heart is supposed to be.

She watches as the man holds out a hand, finger pointed, directly at her.

His mouth opens.

“Enough!” 11 screams, hands pressed against her ears. She drops down, knees to her chest, eyes closed shut, and bites down hard on the inside of her lip to stop from crying out.

Think of something else. Anything else. Make some noise. Drown it out. Noise, noise like that festival. In Oakroot. You went together. With… her…

After a long, long moment of silence, 11 opens her eyes.

She is alone, once more.

Hands trembling, 11 picks up the books she dropped all over the stone floor, and pushes them one by one, back into their homes.

Get a hold of yourself, she thinks, mentally shaking herself, you are a God Gier, for god sake, and you have a job to do here. Focus on that. Focus. On that.

11 stands back, eyes scanning the book covers. There are no words on any of their spines, so she has to trust her gut to know which ones might be informative. In other words, she has to rely on blind luck. And so far, she hasn't struck gold. Or silver. Or anything. She pulls out one of the thickest tomes she sees.

'The complete guide to bread-making!' The leather cover announces in cheerful, rounded letters, 'The process of fermentation, kneading and baking the perfect loaf.'

11 replaces the tome for a smaller, rope-bound notebook. She imagines Aralyn, back at the village, baking.

But what if she leaves? A small voice nags inside her. What if she comes looking for you?

She’s not going to end up like them, she reassures herself, and the ghosts. As long as she never sees me again, she’ll be okay. She opens the book to its first page, where the title is located.

'How to get over a broken heart in 7 days. The secrets of self-love and accepting the past!'

11 can’t help the laugh as it escapes her. “Are you kidding me?”

For hours, 11 tries shelf after shelf, pulling out books purely on random. The process is slow, and with each ludicrous title she reads, 11 finds her patience wearing thinner, and thinner.

'365 ways to pack an adventurer’s lunch pack; How to minimize on bag-space and maximize on nutrients, and fun!'

'The Traveller’s Guide to Gandolia: 50 places you simply must see!'

“What the hell is all this?”

11 swaps book after book, shoving them back almost as soon as she takes them out.

'The Appreciation of the Fermented Wine: Everything you need to know to become the Talk of the Tavern.'

'The Secret to fulfillment: How being grateful to the goddesses can lead to a happier, peaceful life.'

The entire shelf shakes as 11 slams the book back.

“What kind of rubbish…” she stops herself, takes a deep breath. Clearly, what she’s looking for isn’t on this floor. She decides to try the stairs.

The staircase winds around the black monolith like a crawling vine, the rosewood smooth as 11 runs her hands over the railings. The steps are solid, creaking under her steps.

There are no people on this floor either. In fact, 11’s scanners tell her that the entire building is devoid of any life forms, which means there is no one she can ask for directions. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, 11 mopes across the polished hardwood floor, dreading the thought of spending days on end looking for a book that can give her clues either on the history of this world, or on the ten God Giers before her, if one can hope for such a miracle.

11 finds nothing on the second floor either, so she moves on to the third.

The pillars on the third floor are much thinner than the ones on the first and second, and the paintings on them are of plant life and flora, most of which 11 can’t identify.

The shelves here are longer and smaller, and instead of books, rolled-up scrolls and parchments are stashed in neat square holes all along the shelf like bottles of fine wine.

11 pulls one out on random and unrolls it.

'The Alchemical Formula for extracting Essence out of Slime Drops.'

“Interesting,” 11 remarks, not finding the scrawls of numbers and instructions interesting in the slightest. She goes through her memories, flipping through all the Demonic Entities she met during her travels to get to Gargoloth. Did she come across any slimes? She doesn’t remember, because the only D.E. whose Core was worth her harvesting was Gargoloth. And in a twist of irony, she never even saw what it looked like.

'The Recipe and Ingredient List for Potion of Lightning Resistance.'

11 begins to think of Aralyn, tries not to, but fails, and a question occurs to her then. If she had met more people before meeting Aralyn, would the elf girl still be so ingrained into her memories? 11 had come across villages before Oakroot, but she sneaked around all of them, too afraid to meet the descents of her creators. Now it just strikes her as a wasted opportunity. Her eyes scan disinterestedly over the scroll’s contents.

'…add the Yunca berries and Churli fur, stir until mixture turns dark yellow then add the Wyvern Roots over an opened flame…'

She pictures Aralyn’s gorgeous red hair, how it flutters around her like fire. And her eyes, so bright and with so much life in them they burn brighter than the stars.

11 rolls up the scroll, shaking her head. “What am I doing?” she asks like the scroll is a sentient thing that can hear her, before returning it to its rightful place. “This is ridiculous. I’m being ridiculous.”

Scoffing, 11 reaches for another. She’s made her way to the last shelf on this floor now, skipping large sections of what can only be the same kind of gibberish instructions.

11 takes one look at the title of this scroll…

'The Summoning Ritual for a C-Rank Familiaris.'

…and stashes it back.

Proceeding up the spiral staircase to the fourth floor, then the fifth, 11 finds the situation playing out much the same. Holding her fingers to her temples, she tries to wrangle together whatever sanity she has left, and continues onto the sixth floor.

“If I don’t find anything there, I’m taking down the tower,” she promises herself.

11 does find something, on the stairs. She hears it, a childlike voice, faint, echoing from above,

“…consumed in ashes, the sky knew no sunlight. Burnt by smoldering brimstone, the earth knew no rest…”

11 freezes mid-step. It sounds like a little girl is talking. But there shouldn’t even be anyone in this building. She sends out another radar signal through the floors below and above her, while the voice continues,

“…the goddess looked upon her children, saw that their bare feet were charred from crossing the ocean of fire, and their tongues were black from sucking on poisonous plants, and she wept for them…”

11 feels her legs starting to move on their own, like metal gears drawn towards a magnet. She passes the sixth floor without stopping, continuing on to the seventh, and last floor.

No signs of life detected in the vicinity.

Might it be a recording? 11 tries to rationalize, but her thoughts are overpowered by the sheer intensity of voice, its draw on her, its familiarity.

“…and so, Nranhana plucked a pin from her golden hair, and pierced it through the belly of the world, binding the evil to the land. As she did this, the earth stopped shaking, the sky cleared, and the flames receded into the hellish world they had spilled out from...”

11 steps onto the seventh floor, into a warm, brightly lit greenhouse. She looks down at the glossy white tiles, wondering when she’s brought herself here. Above her, the crystal dome arcs across the sky, magnifying the blood-orange rays of the setting sun. In the middle is the flower bulb, the size of a hot-air balloon, its petrified vines clawing across the thick glass like the roots of a stone tree.

The voice is louder, and so close now, somewhere behind the rows of plantation and tropical flora, all planted neatly in wooden troughs. They encircle the monolith like broken halos, reaching all the way to the edge of the floor, where sets of rosewood tables and chairs are lined up against the walls.

“…But Nranhana knew it was not enough, so she stole a crystal from her sister’s abyssal clock and buried it deep into the earth, bestowing upon her children the fires of magic, so that they may protect themselves from the monsters which roam the land...”

11 steps around the ancient Arcadian technology, the one that will not allow itself to be used by her. Pushing through a gap between two towering rose bushes, she spots a little girl sitting at one of the tables, under the milky shadow of the flower bulb.

A huge manuscript is laid flat across the table, next to a pretty porcelain tea set. The little girl seems to be engrossed in whatever she’s reading, so much so that she doesn’t hear 11 emerge from the bushes, or hear her gasp.

"No."

11 stumbles back into the rose bushes, snagging her clothes on their thorns. “This isn’t possible,” she whispers, gaze darting between the girl’s sharp red eyes, her heart-shaped face, and that crown of silver locks, tumbling down the frills of her bleach-white dress…

11 shakes her head, as if to clear away more hallucinations. This is it. I’ve gone truly crazy. She scrunches up her eyes, but the pristine lake, the cloudless blue sky, the girl and the heartless man standing in the midst of everything, loops behind her eyelids like asteroids slingshotting around a planet; going faster and faster until nothing makes sense and 11 thinks she’s going to throw up.

You. Are. Dreaming, she repeats to herself, wrestling against her runaway mind. You’re going to wake up any second now, and everything will go back to normal. And make sense. Be logical.

"...Nranhana's sister, Sharn, was not happy with this betrayal. She threw down her clock in a fit of anger, shattering it across the heavens. The numbers turned to stars, the face turned into the moon, and the gears..."

Noises and images explode behind 11’s eyelids like fireworks, bringing down all the walls of her reality.

A hospital room, crowded with machines… all wired to a single girl, lying in a bed too large for her…

A girl with a heart-shaped face, grinning as she tears apart a bundle of newspapers, revealing the umbrella inside…

"...they flew down..."

11 forces her eyes to open, reality crashing into her, stealing her breath away. The girl is still there, at the table, her tea and book in front of her. But 11 can only see the thing laid across her lap, nestled there in the folds of her white frilly skirt.

"...and turned..."

A steel-pointed, apple-red umbrella.

"... into people."