Well, the Author is here to tell you that I will be dropping this story.
But don't worry.
I'm not leaving you with a cliffhanger.
So, here is what would have happened next.
After Theresa's death, Abertha lost what little hope she had left.
[In that moment of weakness, she was captured by the Scholar.
He handed her over to the Confessarius and left her in their hands for ten months.
What followed was easily the darkest part of the story.
Those ten months would have involved torture, mutilation, severe bodily injuries, psychological suffering, repeated deaths, and other extremely disturbing material.
Some of the original drafts went much further.
Far too far.
A significant portion of the darker ideas came from a friend after I asked for help making the chapter more brutal. Their suggestions eventually escalated into prolonged torture and extremely graphic descriptions of bodily harm.
One particular draft became so disturbing that it genuinely made me sick.
So I rewrote and cut large portions of it.
And honestly?
If a rogue horror expert ever offers to make your story "darker"...
Do not give them creative freedom.
Some ideas are better left forgotten.
After those ten months, the Scholar would eventually return for her.
But he wouldn't let her go.
Instead, he would hand her over to Rhine Lab.
Another ten months would pass.
And somehow, that second period would be even more damaging than the first.
The experiments, isolation, psychological pressure, and everything else she endured would eventually push her mind beyond its breaking point.
Something inside her would fracture.
Not completely.
Not cleanly.
But enough.
A second personality would emerge.
She would call herself...
Abertha.
And the original personality would finally reclaim the name she had carried before all of this.
Sacrifice.
The name Theresa had once tried to replace would return.
Not because Abertha had disappeared.
But because Sacrifice had finally returned...
Everything changed.
The second personality born from those twenty months of suffering was not bound by the Oath.
And without the Oath...
Sacrifice could kill.
She no longer hesitated.
She no longer cared about the lives of the people who had experimented on her.
When she finally escaped, she carved her way out of the facility, killing numerous researchers who tried to stop her.
Security forces.
Researchers.
Guards.
Anyone who stood between her and freedom.
She didn't distinguish between them.
For the first time in her life, Sacrifice was not acting as a doctor.
She was simply trying to leave.
During her escape, she encountered Saria.
The confrontation was brutal.
Neither side was willing to back down.
The battle pushed Sacrifice's body beyond its limits, and eventually one of her three skeletal structures shattered.
But something unexpected happened.
The damage didn't weaken her.
It changed her.
Her body began adapting to the broken structure, becoming less human and increasingly resembling the true form of a Diαblo.
The transformation gave her something she had never possessed before:
the ability to survive outside a Mobile City.
So Sacrifice left.
She escaped Columbia.
And eventually, almost by accident, she found herself in Yan.
What she didn't know was that Yan was secretly being guided by the Scholar.
For a while, Sacrifice remained there.
She had no grand plan.
No Oath to fulfill.
No King to protect.
No organization to serve.
She simply existed.
And perhaps, for the first time, she had the opportunity to decide what she actually wanted to do with her life.
Eventually, however, Sacrifice left Yan.
Her journey eventually brought her to Chernobog.
And there...
She encountered two people she never expected to see again.
Amiya.
And Ace.
Both of them froze when they saw her.
Because as far as they knew...
Sacrifice had died during the retreat.
Ace stared at her for several seconds.
Amiya couldn't find the words.
And Sacrifice simply looked at them.
She had no idea how to explain what had happened.
Because the person they remembered as Sacrifice had died once already.
And the person standing before them...
was something else.
But despite everything that had happened to her, Sacrifice eventually agreed to help them recover the Doctor.
Not because of some grand oath.
Not because she had suddenly forgiven everyone.
She simply had nothing better to do.
And, surprisingly...
She actually enjoyed being around Ace and the others again.
For a short while, things almost felt normal.
Almost.
Then came the Chernobog disaster.
The reunion with Rhodes Island began in the middle of chaos, with Sacrifice fighting alongside the people she had once known.
This time, however, the outcome was different.
Ace survived.
Scout survived.
And Sacrifice personally dealt with two of the biggest threats in the area.
Mephisto.
Faust.
She killed both of them by melting their faces away.
It wasn't particularly heroic.
It was, however, effective.
During the escape, she encountered someone else from her past.
W.
W stared at her.
For once, the mercenary didn't immediately have a joke ready.
[W]: You're a walking corpse.
Sacrifice simply stared back.
[W]: What the hell happened to you?
Then W noticed who she was standing beside.
[W]: And why the hell are you with the Doctor?
Abertha answered before Sacrifice could.
She attacked.
W barely managed to react.
The confrontation nearly ended with W dead, but Sacrifice intervened and stopped Abertha.
[W]: ...You've got to be kidding me.
And that was their reunion.
Afterward, Sacrifice returned to Rhodes Island.
Kal'tsit attempted to integrate her back into the organization.
It did not go well.
At one point, Kal'tsit began questioning her.
Sacrifice listened.
And listened.
And listened.
Then Abertha punched Kal'tsit.
[Abertha]: Riddle mouth.
And then she walked away to get a drink.
Because apparently, twenty months of torture had not improved her patience.
Eventually, Sacrifice met the other Elite Operators and the newer members of Rhodes Island.
For the first time, they were able to sit down and talk.
They asked where she had been.
Why she disappeared.
How she survived.
And eventually...
They learned the truth.
Sacrifice had not simply vanished.
She had been captured.
She had spent twenty months being tortured and experimented on.
The room became quiet.
Some people struggled to believe it.
Others didn't know what to say.
And Sacrifice?
She simply drank.
She didn't want their pity.
She had already spent enough of her life being treated like a victim.
She was alive.
That was enough.
For now.
And that is where the planning and draft end.
There were roughly ten more chapters' worth of material planned beyond this point.
The story never reached them.
But at least...
It doesn't end on a cliffhanger.
It ends with Sacrifice alive, Abertha still inside her, Ace and Scout surviving, W discovering that the woman she thought was dead is somehow walking around again, and Rhodes Island slowly realizing that their old doctor has returned as something they barely recognize.
[The End.]
[Note: I may return to this story when I have time]