Chapter Text
2
The cell felt smaller when Wemmbu woke up.
Not physically. He knew the walls hadn’t moved, but somehow the air sat heavier, thicker, like the room itself had shifted closer while he slept.
The demon hybrid lay staring at the ceiling, blinking slowly as the stiff mattress underneath him creaked with every shift, every breath. For a moment, he forgot where he was, blinking slowly as the last remnants of sleep clung to his lashes.
Then the memory hit.
Spoke stepped back as he sighed, black particles forming around him, feeding off his stressed energy and movements.
“But, that’s gonna be really hard to beat him.” He muttered, “ He has a lot of—he has all of law and all of that working with him. He already has a very good moral story of a thousand players dying through these evil players,” He made exaggerated air quotes. “So like- he already has everything going in his favor. If we’re tryna stop him from becoming king, we’d need to do a lot.”
The voidling’s pacing sped up as his tone became more stressed.
“We need to work together here,” he stated bluntly. No sarcasm, no jokes, just tired honesty. “So I just need to trust that if I press this button, you’ll— you’ll help me.”
He held out a hand through the bars. An offer. A plea.
“And- And, I have to know you’ll have your power still.” Spoke rushed out, words tripping over each other.
“I can’t just let you go out and have a naked-ahh Wemmbu.. Okay? Uh- What do you think?”
The memory dissolved as Wemmbu blinked up at the ceiling, Spoke’s voice fading like an afterthought.
The offer.
The button he never pressed.
The quiet felt sharper because of it.
He groaned, dragging an arm over his eyes as he looked around the empty, dusty-choked stone cell for what felt like the hundredth time that day.
Spoke’s words threaded through his thoughts like barbs he couldn’t pull free. Regret—-quiet, unwelcome, and immediate—-pressed at the edges of his chest, tangled with the stubbornness he knew far too well.
His fingers twitched.
Was he regretting his decision already?
On the second day of solitary confinement?
Wemmbu huffed, rolling to his side and facing the wall like it could block the thoughts clawing at his head. Closing his eyes didn’t help. Sleep didn’t help. Nothing did. Exhaustion tugged at him, heavy and constant, but his thoughts only sharpened in the stillness.
He forced himself upright with a grunt, jaw tightening as fragments of last night’s conversation replayed without his permission.
The offer.
The accusations.
The weird mix of pity and excitement in Spoke’s voice.
He didn’t regret telling him off.
He didn’t.
…Probably.
His hands curled into fists, fixed at the opposite wall. Why did everything feel heavier today? Why did the damn conversation keep circling back, sticking to his ribs like something rotten?
Was it the silence?
Or was it the constant effects of mining fatigue washing over him every 5 minutes, turning his brain to mush?
His throat felt dry as he leaned back against the wall, allowing his head to thud softly against the stone. The silence, thick, heavy, and unnatural, pressed into his ears, throbbing as his own breathing sounded too loud.
And then, somewhere in the far corner of the cell, he heard it.
A drip.
Just one. Sharp, out of place.
Wemmbu flinched, brows furrowing as he lifted his head. He waited, listening, but nothing followed. No second drip. No steady rhythm. Just the suffocating stillness, swallowing the sound like it had never existed.
Maybe his brain was just filling the silence however it could.
He exhaled slowly, rubbing at his temples as the memory of Spoke’s voice tugged at him again, persistent just like the voidling was.
“Great,” he muttered under his breath. “Now I’m imagining things.”
But even as he lay back down, exhaustion finally tugging him towards a restless sleep, he found himself listening,
Waiting,
for that sound to return.
3
When Wemmbu woke up once again, he was greeted by a dark cell and a throbbing pulse in his skull that had only gotten worse overnight. Despite it only being day 3, the demon hybrid’s patience was already wearing thin. When he had tossed that extra mace down the hole after his fight with Flame, this was not what he considered to be a “fresh start”.
Time inside the cell had started to warp. Every minute felt both slow enough to drag claws across his nerves and fast enough to disappear the moment he blinked. The constant chime of mining fatigue—annoying at first—had faded into a background noise by now, a dull nuisance compared to that other thing.
The leak.
Just like yesterday, every now and then, a drop of water would hit the floor. Soft, barely audible, but impossible to ignore. Each drop landed with irregular timing, leaving just enough tension after the last.
Drip…
Wemmbu winced. Even though he tried not to, he braced for the next one. Silence enveloped the room once more—minutes dragging by— broken only by the occasional recast of the Elder Guardians’ spell as the purple-haired hybrid slouched onto the bed.
Nothing.
He clenched his jaw. Somehow, not knowing when the next sound would come was worse than the sound itself. His headache pounded harder, old blood drying itchy against his scalp as the wounds on his head pulsed and pulled at his skin—another throbbing warning from his body.
Wemmbu swallowed hard, but the motion only made the pressure behind his eyes twist. The anticipation crawled under his skin, coiling low in his stomach as each second stretched thin.
He hated it.
…..
Another moment of silence; Still nothing. His breath hitched anyway.
Out of all the battles, won and lost, this had to be the worst. His body reacted as if the sound had already happened— as if it were inevitable—and the nausea swelled up in his throat in a slow, consuming wave. He pressed a hand to his stomach, hands shaking and fingers trembling, as the hybrid tried to stay composed.
“Fuck.” He muttered harshly, a rare swear escaping his mouth, his voice hoarse from disuse.
But that steadiness he tried to cling to cracked almost instantly.
The dizziness worsened. His skin felt like it was burning underneath the uniform—every shift of movement and brush scraped like sandpaper as he gagged. Even the tiniest turn of his head made the world tilt unpleasantly. His pulse jumped, too fast, too loud, pounding in his ears until it drowned out everything else. The stale air suddenly felt too warm, too thick–yet also so dry. Thick enough to choke on and yet somehow too thin to breathe.
His breath hitched.
Then hitched again. A sob escaped.
A tightness wrapped around his ribs, refusing to let go. It made his throat close, made his chest feel like it was collapsing from the inside out. Every inhale felt wrong—too shallow, sharp as needles—and every exhale came too quickly, his lungs struggling to keep pace with his quickening breaths.
The lighting—dim, but flickering just enough—stabbed his eyes. Even the soft hum of the mining fatigue, something he’d gotten used to by now, grated against his skull like metal scraping stone.
Too much. Too bright. Too close. Too still.
Even thinking hurt.
Wemmbu pressed his hands tightly against his eyes, squeezing them shut as if to negate the pain and ground himself as dots danced behind his eyelids. The nausea surged. A cold sweat broke across his skin, the pressure in his chest climbing higher and higher—tighter—until it felt like his own heartbeat was misfiring.
His fingers clawed weakly at the thin mattress as he curled forward, trying to ground himself, trying to breathe as he tried to stop his spiraling.
He braced for another drop that never came.
He grit his teeth, the sharp drag of enamel along with the taste of iron exploding in his mouth as Wemmbu flinched hard.
He wasn’t sure if he was shaking from the nausea, the panic, or both, but he knew one thing for certain:
He couldn’t make it stop.
His jaw snapped shut a second time before he could stop it, biting the inside of his cheek so sharply he felt skin tear. The pain flashed bright— metallic and almost sweet—grounding him just enough to cling to.
It was awful, but it gave some clarity; something sharp to focus on.
So he bit down again. And again. A small, desperate habit forming in the dark—one that left a copper tang on his tongue and a sting to chase away the dizziness, just for a second.
Just enough for a breath. Just enough for air to rush back into his weeping lungs. Just enough to make the silence bearable.
It didn’t help for long.
By the time his trembling had eased into exhaustion and the panic dulled into a throbbing headache, the cell had gone quiet enough that he could hear his own heartbeat echoing in his skull–along with the ragged, uneven pants that escaped his mouth.
The hours blurred together—pain, silence, and the sting of his cheek—and eventually, without noticing, Wemmbu slumped sideways on the mattress and drifted into a shallow, uneasy sleep.
When he woke up again, the old mattress felt stiffer—colder—the air heavier, and the dried blood on his tongue was the first thing he tasted.