The girl slowly opened her eyes.
She realized she was standing upright, held in that position by a transparent enclosure surrounding her. It was filled with a bluish fluid that held her body in suspension, clear enough to let her see through it. Beyond it, the chamber resembled an abandoned facility of sorts.
Around the pod, flowers grew from the flooded floor and from cracks along the chamber's walls, gathering around the base of the structure in clusters so thick that they nearly covered one another. Some had even climbed onto the pod itself.
Suddenly, the surface in front of the enclosure clicked, and the door opened on its own. The fluid rushed out immediately and the girl's body followed with it, no longer supported by anything. Air hit her lungs and she coughed violently, unable to control that first breath. When her breathing finally settled, she caught her reflection in the water and noticed how pale she was. She had long white hair that clung damply to her shoulders and back, and a grey bodysuit covered the rest of her body.
She slowly stepped out and made a few clumsy steps away from the pod, but she didn't have to walk far for her to feel a pull at her back. She turned and realized she was not free from it at all. Numerous conduits still connected her to the pod, extending from the rear of her bodysuit and back into the structure.
She reached behind herself to pull them free, but her arm couldn't bend far enough to get a proper grip. Before she could try again, a shockwave tore through her entire body, throwing her even further off balance. A buzzing pressure spread through her head, and the chamber seemed to tilt around her, its shape warping continuously at the edges. Through the distortion she could have sworn ash was falling from above. Grey particles drifted silently all around her, soft and weightless, making the moment feel even more unreal.
Then, almost as if responding to her unspoken thoughts, the conduits began detaching from her suit one by one on their own, retracting back toward the pod. She stayed there for a while, breathing unevenly as she waited for the room to stop spinning.
When the buzzing in her head finally faded, she pushed herself up again and looked around. Nothing in that room felt familiar so she tried to remember, hoping her thoughts or memories might offer some sense of grounding. But as hard as she tried, she didn't know who she was or what that place was. She didn't know how she had gotten there, why she had been inside the pod, or even for how long.
As these thoughts cluttered inside the girl's mind, something moved on the wall in front of her. It looked like a stain spreading through the stone at first, then it organized itself into dark marks. They seemed to form from black ash itself, gathering on the wall and dispersing again.
"…Breathe."
She frowned, questioning the reality of what she was seeing, then moved a little closer. She tried to speak, but the first sound that came out was too ragged to form an actual word. She coughed and tried again.
"What is this?" she asked mostly to herself.
The writing then changed shape again.
"My name is Seven," it replied. "You experienced a signal sweep, so you must feel disoriented. Take your time to adjust."
The girl blinked, startled by the realization that those markings seemed to have answered her.
"Who are you?" she asked with a low voice.
"I'm a survivor, like you. I'm searching for signs of life, looking for emergents."
"Emergents?"
"There is a great deal you don't know yet," the writing replied. "It will be easier if you take it slowly."
She touched the wall with her fingertips, expecting the letters to smear under her hand, but instead they dissipated on their own a few seconds later, then reformed a little farther along the stone. "Breathe in slowly."
"Why can't I remember who I am?" she asked.
The answer appeared on a broken and unlit section of the wall. "Your name is Ashe."
The moment she read it, a violent shockwave passed through her. Loud whispers formed out of nowhere, filling her ears so suddenly that she had to press a hand to the side of her head. Light flashed and the chamber blurred, lasting but a moment but leaving her unsteady nonetheless. When it passed, she looked back at the wall.
"How do you know that?" she asked.
"It is written on the pod you came out of."
She turned immediately and looked at the open pod behind her, still draining fluid into the shallow liquid below. She then moved toward it and placed a hand against its surface. There it was.
ASHE.
"What else does it say?" she asked, scanning the glass and the frame around it as though another answer might reveal itself if she searched carefully enough.
"Nothing else."
This time the writing appeared directly on the pod's glass. Seeing this, she looked back at the wall where the writing had first formed and back again.
"How are you doing this?"
"The conduits that were attached to you served multiple purposes," the writing formed slowly. "One of them was ensuring sensory enhancement. I'm not literally writing on these surfaces, it's your perception that is interpreting the signal this way."
"Then… where are you sending this from?"
This time there was a delay in Seven's answer, and Ashe wondered whether the person on the other side had gone away completely, leaving her alone in this strange place.
"Threnos," Seven eventually replied.
"What is Threnos? And this place… what is this place?"
As soon as Ashe landed these questions, everything began to feel more real. The number of things she didn't understand started to gather simultaneously in her mind and she felt her breathing change rapidly.
"How can you see me? Where are you?"
"I understand this is overwhelming," Seven eventually wrote. You should first try to slow your breathing."
She turned away from the pod. The markings had begun to feel like noise in her head, making the chamber harder to bear with each passing second.
"I need to leave this place."
She took a few unsteady steps toward one of the open passages leading out of the chamber. Before she reached the corridor though, her suit emitted a soft series of beeps. She stopped immediately, realizing the sound was coming from somewhere close against her body. Then a sensation moved through her. A tingling along her spine, spreading upward, running along her back and into her arms and legs. As she took another step, the tingling sharpened in one of her legs so suddenly that she had to catch herself against a nearby support beam. She stayed there, using it to keep herself upright while she waited for the pain to subside.
"What's happening?" she asked.
The writing appeared again across the side of the corridor entrance, as if it had moved with her.
"Since the moment the conduits detached from your suit, your vital condition has been declining. You are losing stability quickly."
"I don't understand what that means."
"It means you are dying."
The bluntness of the answer left the chamber quiet. If Seven was trying to frighten her, it was certainly working. And maybe Seven understood that as well, because after a few more moments, during which he might have assessed the effect of his bluntness, he continued.
"You don't yet understand your own condition. The system that sustained you has been removed. Your body is now failing without a replacement support."
Ashe tightened her grip on the beam, trying to center herself.
"Your body needs harmonic seeds," Seven added as a conclusion.
One more thing that meant absolutely nothing to her.
"Where do I find these… harmonic seeds?" she asked.
"I can scan for the nearest source. If you follow my guidance, I can direct you there."
The writing might have offered reasonable solutions, but the circumstances she found herself in were too strange and everything inside her was urging her to distrust them.
"Why would I trust you?"
"You don't need to trust me. But you do need to remain alive. You can question anything else later."
Ashe closed her eyes for a moment and decided.
"Tell me where to go, then," she said, eyes still closed, still unsure whether she was making the right call.
"There is a corridor to your left once you leave the chamber," Seven wrote. "Take it. When you reach the split ahead, I will direct you further."
Ashe looked toward the indicated passage, then back at the writing. She let go of the beam but turned in the opposite direction. She couldn't dismiss the possibility that the writings were genuinely trying to help her. But if they weren't real, following them deeper into this place would be madness. In that moment, she would rather fail, or even die, if that was truly what was happening, than surrender her judgment to something she couldn't understand.
"I'll find my own way," she said quietly, as though reassuring herself of her own decision.
She stepped through another opening leading out of the chamber and into the deeper facility.
She then glanced back from the edge of the passage, part of her expecting the writing to reappear and warn her of some hidden danger lurking within. But nothing happened. The walls remained empty. She turned back and continued walking.