Ficool

Chapter 3 - Chapter 3 — The Broken Five

The chamber was circular.

Sterile white walls curved inward, lit by humming panels above that flickered like blinking eyes. Five containment chairs stood in a crescent. Restraints wrapped around arms, legs, foreheads. Each chair held a child—barely ten.

The doors opened with a hydraulic hiss. She was marched in.

Her eyes darted across the room, already counting the lights, vents, cameras.

But even calculation couldn't hide the chill crawling up her spine.

They sat her in the center chair.

Restraints clicked around her limbs. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. She tried to mask it with a smirk—half-sane, half-defensive.

Her eyes scanned the other four.

To her far left sat a girl—a large girl. Obese by cruel design, her frame sagged against the metal like it had grown tired of holding itself. Her throat was swollen, lips cracked, stomach distended from constant feeding. Tubes ran from her arms into a slow-dripping bag of slurry.

Her eyes were dull. Her jaw twitched.

She swallowed unconsciously.

Then again.

Then again.

They never let her stop eating.

They called her physique the Devouring Womb. But even she didn't know what it meant.

Only that every attempt to retch failed. They had removed that function from her body. Modified her organs. Transformed hunger into a curse.

Next to her sat a boy with skin so dark it shimmered violet under the lights. Not black. Not even human dark. Absorption-dark—the kind that swallowed light instead of reflecting it.

His fingers tapped out patterns on the metal.

His eyes didn't blink.

He was small. Too small. Thin like a knife, his limbs wiry with tension.

They called him Umbra, a child molded for assassination.

He never spoke.

Then came the poisoner.

His skin was pale, veined with green. Every exhale left a faint mist. His restraints were thicker—sealed with runes. The air around him smelled of acid and flowers, clashing in a way that made your head spin.

He was smiling.

But the smile didn't reach his eyes. His lips were cracked, the corners etched with scars—like he'd torn them trying to speak or scream. His name was never said out loud, only his effect:

Toxic Leech.

He once melted a handler's hand during blood collection.

Then, the last.

A child like a mirror. Pale. Hair thin and brittle, the color of bleached bone. Eyes unblinking, always fixed forward. His hands were clasped tight on his lap, fingernails digging into flesh until blood welled.

His physique wasn't visible.

But the aura around him was distorted. Like heat waves rising from a road.

Phase Mirror, they whispered.

A child that reflected what others became. Their pain, their aura, their fears—all echoed in him. Untrained, unstable, and slowly forgetting who he ever was before.

She looked at them all.

And didn't feel stronger.

Just... more afraid.

She'd kept herself sane so far. With jokes. With memories of a world no longer hers. With observations and riddles.

But the moment the masked man stepped in, something inside her cracked.

He moved like he owned the air.

Like everything here bent to him.

He wore that same Overhaul-style mask—birdlike, impersonal. His voice filtered through it, smooth as static.

"You are not special," he said. "You are fragments. Experiments. Failures in waiting."

The Devouring Girl whimpered.

The Poison Boy exhaled and licked his cracked lips.

Umbra blinked. Once.

The Mirror Boy stared straight ahead.

She laughed.

But it cracked in her throat.

She wasn't okay. Her hands were sweating. Her legs twitched in the restraints.

She wasn't calm. Not really.

But she couldn't afford to break.

Not here. Not yet.

"You are tools," the man continued, circling. "And your purpose is to serve. You are the first generation of the Undying God Physique. The last batch failed. You will not."

He stopped in front of her.

Her breath hitched.

She looked at him, masking her terror behind sharp eyes and a grin that didn't reach her soul.

"Cringe villain monologue," she whispered, barely audible. "Three out of ten."

He heard her.

Paused.

Stepped closer.

Their gazes locked.

And something inside her recoiled.

Not because of fear.

But because she recognized that darkness. Not from this world.

The room felt colder.

His tone dropped an octave.

"You mock me from a chair built to break gods," he said softly, almost amused. "And yet here I am—restraining myself. Isn't that the greatest cruelty? That I have strength... and still choose to let you speak?"

He leaned closer, voice a razor across her nerves.

"In this world, strength reigns. But restraint? That's divinity."

He straightened, gaze sweeping over the others.

"Speak again, and you may learn the difference."

Then he turned.

And she nearly vomited from the pressure in the air.

The relic was wheeled in.

That miniature star in crystal.

It pulsed with slow, ancient breath.

She saw it—and her body locked.

Not in fear.

In memory.

She had seen something like it before.

Back on Earth.

A research facility. Deep underground. Restricted clearance.

They'd called it an anomaly—a fragment that warped magnetic fields, bent minds, made machines dream.

She had spent weeks studying it. Before the explosion.

Before the fire.

Before everything burned.

And now...

It was here.

Her lips parted, trembling.

"Why does it feel like... right before I died?"

She didn't say it out loud.

But it echoed in her bones.

The lights dimmed.

The relic pulsed again.

And something inside her pulsed back.

A scream nearly escaped her lips.

But she swallowed it down.

Not yet.

Not. Yet.

More Chapters