The door slowly parted under the strength of her arms. As the gap widened, Lorelei's eyes were flooded with a crimson fog, as if blood had evaporated and filled the space with its deep red. Her arms alone couldn't push the door any further, so she leaned her whole body into it and shoved. The door seemed to scrape against the floor beneath it, as if it had never been meant to open. A place a human shouldn't be able to access—but Lorelei wasn't human. With every ounce of strength she had left, she flung herself through the gap as the door violently slammed shut behind her. The wind it produced stirred the still fog, revealing part of the tiled black floor.
She caught her breath and lightly patted down her clothes before stepping into the depths of the fog. In the distance, two round windows set opposite each other lit the room in the same crimson shade as the fog. Their black frames formed a crest that spread across the wall like ripples, carrying outward in the same shape until it reached the ground Lorelei stood on. She tripped over an elevated step hidden by the fog, nearly banging her knees against the higher ones in the process. She pushed herself up and let out a slur of curses, cursing at all the unsettling events that had happened to her since she'd entered the pillar.
"Fuck!"
Her words resonated through the fog before echoing back to her in a distorted loop. The anger with which she'd spoken came back to her as a cry. It was almost as if this place deliberately distorted her words to heighten her uneasiness. She reached the top, where the dim crimson light from the windows merged and revealed, in the center, a sword thrust through the middle of a floating platform.
Lorelei stepped closer and stood before it. Its crimson blade looked rusted and chipped, and the excess wrapping of the hilt twirled in the air like a flame dancing at the mercy of the wind—yet there was no wind current here at all. A black flame, dancing amidst the suffocating crimson, put on stage by a scarlet play of light. Lorelei stood still, watching it quiver in the fog. She reached out to grab the hilt, then stopped, hovering her hand beside it instead.
I shouldn't be rash.
After a series of bloodied phenomena, she had learned to stay on edge at every small occurrence. Touching something at the center of an unknown, fogged room like this could only mean trouble. That much, Lorelei knew.
Instead, she lifted her gaze toward the stone slab at the edge of the floating platform. She took a step forward, past the sword—and her leg slid down a slope. She managed to grab the edge of the flat surface she'd been standing on and pull herself up. A long scream escaped her, swallowed by the fog before returning to her ears as a loud cry. The platform around the sword dove downward, pulsating like a heart. It had come alive. The fog rushed in, condensing into a surging wave of blood. Lorelei clung to the standing platform, defying the current, refusing to be swallowed whole.
The pulsating mouth returned to normal once it had absorbed all the fog-dispersed blood in the room. Lorelei, on the other hand, was left feeling utterly shaken. She still gripped the platform even as her tangled lower body rose back to the level of her upper. Her face was streaked with waves of blood—she'd been in the pillar for a long time, but only now did the blood dye her silver strands crimson. She took her time breathing heavily as she surveyed the cleared room.
Below the rounded windows, a statue stood on each side. Titan-like statues, their hands joined in a worshipping pose, their stone hair running down their torsos, covered at the top by hoods. Between them was a wide gap where the floating platform Lorelei stood on hovered in the darkness. In front of the platform, the wall pressed deeper, each level revealing a portion of a circle engraved with symbols and inscriptions, converging at the deepest point. Lorelei shook herself awake, reminding herself this wasn't a dream but reality. A reality she was living, and a reality she had to face.
She steeled herself and dropped her sword and gun beside the standing sword embedded in the ground. Then she took a step forward, exactly as she had before—but this time, the ground did not open beneath her feet. Steadily, as if walking a tightrope, she made her way to the upright slab at the edge of the platform. Inscriptions were carved into it, and at the top sat the crest that covered the entire room—but now, in its full circular form. Lorelei ran her hand along the slab, checking if anything would happen at her touch. Nothing did, so she made her way back to the sword as steadily as she'd come. She circled it, wondering if she should pull it out.
This has to be it…
She raised a hand to her chin, hesitated, then stepped toward the stairs to see what would happen. As she'd expected, whatever controlled this place wouldn't let her leave either. The stairs crumbled the moment she took a step toward them, collapsing into the endless void below the platform. Even then, Lorelei thought she could gauge how far the fall was—but not even the sound of an impact echoed back to her. She was left staring into the pitch-black, never-ending darkness. She heaved a long sigh before turning back to the sword, which still tempted her to pull it.
She yielded to the dancing black flame and grabbed the hilt. At first, nothing. The empty crimson light only cleared part of the darkness in its path—but as soon as Lorelei gave a slight pull, the circular pattern on the wall began spinning back into place, the symbols and inscriptions lighting up in a bright ruby red. Lorelei instinctively yanked her hands away, but the spinning did not stop. Slowly shedding its three dimensions, the crest flattened into a two-dimensional surface over the wall, connected to the rest of it, and pulsed with ruby light as it stretched across the hall—casting away the darkness, but replacing it with an eerie red.
Above the sword, a red matter appeared and coiled like dough being molded into shape. Once it settled, it dispersed to reveal what seemed to be a human body floating in the air. The statues at opposite sides of the room began to move, shaking so hard the surrounding air trembled, though they broke nothing. One arm stayed frozen in its praying pose while the other reached toward the floating body and stopped a few inches from it. When the crest lit up in every corner of the room, it ran up the statues, making their eyes slide open.
Offer yourself.
They said it in unison. Unlike Lorelei's voice, the space did not distort their words into a plea or a cry; they came out clear and imposing. The body in the middle, once still, began to writhe in the air, almost as if it were alive. Which it was. It turned around, still floating, and fixed its gaze on Lorelei, who had been watching everything. Their eyes met—and tears flooded down his face. It was a middle-aged man, wearing clothes Lorelei didn't recognize. Clothes that did not belong to their world. He cried out and screamed.
"What is happening?! Why am I floating?! Help me, please! Please!"
His face contorted as his body twisted on itself. "I have two children! Please! What is this! Help me, please!"
Just like her own voice, the man's voice reached Lorelei distorted into a distinct plea. It was too late to stop the mechanism once it had been activated. The man's body began spinning on itself. First, his ribs snapped out of place, and his legs wrapped around each other, breaking themselves. He was being twisted like a wet cloth wrung dry—emptied of his blood. His cries faded as his neck twisted fully, the blood dripping from his body covering Lorelei as the platform returned to its pulsating form that had almost swallowed her whole. Lorelei's eyes and mouth twitched as she realized what she had done.
"Stop!"
"Stop this!"
After he was fully twisted dry of his blood, his body was crushed by the hands that closed around him, their fingers locking together and reducing him to a mess of flesh beneath Lorelei's terrified gaze.
Not enough.
The hands retracted to their original praying stance, and the mashed flesh fell into the darkness as Lorelei's eyes slowly followed it down.
More blood.
Their eyes closed, and the crest gradually lost its light as its source retreated into its three-dimensional form, lodged in layers inside the wall. Lorelei buried her face in her hands.
"I…"
She had killed. A living human. In a macabre way.