The straw ceiling stared back at me again, same as always.
I lay there for a long minute, letting the familiar stale air fill my lungs. The phantom burn of the barrier still tingled across my skin even though there wasn't a single mark on me. Eleven thousand four hundred and twelve deaths, and the system still couldn't be bothered to leave a scar. Clean. Efficient. Mocking.
I sat up slowly. Most of the shed was deep asleep, bodies curled on the floor like discarded sacks. Soft breathing mixed with the occasional cough or whimper. But in the far corner, where the shadows gathered thickest, one pair of eyes was wide open.
Mags.
She was watching me, her eyes were burying holes into my skin and a question creeped up my spine. Was she always watching me? now that the thought had formed i did ignore it often but she did always watch me.
I'd never spoken to her directly before. Not once in all the times I'd respawned in this place. I didn't care so it was fine. Tonight felt different. Maybe it was the way Dort had repeated her words earlier. Maybe it was the way the number in my head kept ticking higher. Either way, I stood and moved through the sleeping bodies until I lowered myself beside her.
The old woman smelled like dust and dried berries. Her white hair fell in tangled ropes over her shoulders, and her eyes milky and unfocused—still somehow seemed to see everything.
"You keep walking into the Barrier," she rasped without greeting. Her voice was quiet, like dry leaves scraping across stone. "Again and again. Count, count, count. Always counting."
I didn't deny it. "Someone has to."
Mags let out a low, rattling chuckle. "The ground here remembers, girl. It remembers what was buried underneath all these pretty bushes. These fields weren't always here. Nothing was always here."
I watched her carefully. Most people thought Mags had lost her mind years ago. She spoke in pieces, never full sentences, always circling around something just out of reach. I usually dismissed it. Tonight I listened.
"They planted the berries over the bones," she continued, eyes half-lidded. "Over the old stones. Over the place where the sky first cracked open. This whole cage… built on top of something older. The dirt knows. It whispers when no one listens."
Her hand moved slowly, fingers tracing invisible patterns on the cold floor. "You feel it sometimes, don't you? When you die and come back. That little wrongness. Like stepping on a grave that doesn't want to stay buried."
I shifted. "You're saying the fields were built over ruins?"
Mags smiled, but it wasn't warm. It was the smile of someone who had seen too many sunrises in the same cage. "Built. Planted. Stolen. The words don't matter. The ground remembers. It keeps the old shapes. The old names. The System just… covered it up. Made it neat. Made it useful."
She fell quiet for a while. I counted her breaths—thirty-seven slow ones before she spoke again.
"Most of them forget," she whispered. "They wake up, pick, die, wake up again. Numbers eat their minds. But you… you count too much. That's dangerous."
I leaned in closer. "What do you mean?"
Mags turned her head toward me. For a moment her cloudy eyes seemed almost clear.
"The System lies about what you are."
The words landed heavy between us. Clear. Sharp. Not wrapped in riddles this time.
I felt something cold settle in my stomach. "What do you mean by that? COuld you not talk in riddles? If you know something then tell me!"
She closed her eyes. Just like that. Her breathing stayed steady, but she didn't open them again. No more answers. No explanations. She simply withdrew back into whatever long silence she lived in.
I sat there beside her for nearly an hour, counting the cracks in the wall, counting her breaths, counting my own growing frustration. The System lies about what you are. The sentence kept repeating in my head like a new counter I couldn't turn off.
Eventually I moved back to my usual spot and lay down. Sleep still wouldn't come. Instead I stared at the ceiling and ran calculations.
If the fields were built over something older… If the ground remembered… If the System was lying about our very nature…
Then my count—my precious, perfect count—might be measuring the wrong thing entirely.
Morning came with the usual harsh horn blast.
I stood with everyone else, joints stiff, eyes gritty. The overseers moved along the walls, counting heads like always. I glanced toward Mags' corner.
It was empty.
Not just empty of her body. Empty of everything. No pile of rags. No indentation where she always sat. The floor looked exactly like every other patch of stone in the shed, as if no one had ever claimed that space.
A cold feeling crawled up my spine.
I moved closer, scanning the area. Nothing. Not a single trace.
Dort appeared beside me, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "What are you looking for?"
"Mags," I said quietly. "She was right there last night."
He frowned. "Who?"
I stared at him. "Mags. The old woman. White hair. Always talking about before the System."
Dort gave me a strange look, half confused, half worried. "Nara… there's no old woman like that here. Never has been."
My mouth went dry.
I walked straight to the shed register—the faded wooden board nailed beside the door where the overseers kept the ownership list. Every slave's name was carved or burned into it. I ran my finger down the lines I had memorized long ago.
Mags' name wasn't there.
It had never been there.
No empty slot. No erased mark. Just… absence. Like she had been edited out of reality itself.
One of the overseers walked past, crop tapping against his leg. He didn't even glance at the empty corner. No confusion. No questions. To him, nothing was missing.
I stood there, heart beating faster than it had even when facing the barrier.
Eleven thousand four hundred and twelve deaths.
And this was the first time something had truly frightened me.
Because if Mags could be erased like that—if the System could remove her so completely that even memory bent around the empty space—then what else was it lying about?
What else had it taken from me that I didn't even know was gone?
I looked out toward the berry fields as the morning light painted them in soft gold. The blue barrier shimmered on the horizon like it always did.
For the first time in a very long while, my count felt… incomplete.