Trapped In Elysium: A Virtual Reality Nightmare-Chapter 117: The Fall

It hovered there—beautiful, but not in any way that comforted the soul. Its form shimmered like fractured moonlight across water, shifting and translucent, as if made of memories and whispers. And yet, there was something deeply wrong. Its beauty was the kind that twisted the stomach. Pale and cold, like a frozen corpse dressed in wedding silk. The face, if it could be called that, changed with every flicker—young, old, sorrowful, laughing—none of them real. All of them terrifying.

The cry it let out again was no longer distant. It was here. In the chamber. With them. Crying like a mother who had lost her children. Crying like a bride abandoned. Crying like a monster who remembered being human.

And then, it moved.

There was no warning. No rush of air. No build-up. Just a sudden, violent streak across the room. Before anyone could blink, it slammed into Sera’s chest.

She screamed once—a high, choked gasp—then her voice disappeared, swallowed entirely. Her feet lifted from the ground, levitating slowly as though some invisible strings held her upright.

"Sera!" Mariel screamed, reaching out in horror, but Jason yanked her back just in time.

But it wasn’t Sera anymore.

Her head tilted back, and her mouth opened wide—too wide. A hiss like boiling steam escaped her lips. Her eyes, once soft and quiet, were now jet-black, oily and bottomless. Her veins pulsed dark under her skin, crawling up her neck, across her arms. Her fingers lengthened unnaturally, nails stretching into sharpened claws. Even her teeth seemed to sharpen in her widening grin, a grotesque mockery of Sera’s gentle smile.

She floated above them, twitching. Shaking. Possessed.

"She’s... it’s inside her," Borik whispered, eyes wide with a horror that could not be reasoned with.

Sophia tried to step forward, but Liam grabbed her arm.

"Don’t," he warned. "That’s not Sera. Not right now."

Sera—or whatever was controlling her now—turned her head slowly to face them, her hair floating in the air like she was underwater. The cry returned, but this time it came from her mouth, warped and inhuman. A mourning wail turned violent. Something ancient and grieving and full of hate.

The walls around them began to tremble, dust falling in thin curtains from the cracked ceiling.

"What’s happening—?!" Marcus began, but he didn’t get the chance to finish.

The floor beneath their feet groaned loudly—crackled—then crumbled.

There was no time to run, no time to brace. In an instant, the stone gave way, and the entire group fell into blackness.

A void swallowed them whole.

Weightless. Soundless. Like the air had been ripped from the world.

They fell. And kept falling.

The last thing they saw was Sera’s floating, corrupted figure watching them plummet. Her blackened eyes staring down with no trace of recognition. The spirit’s puppet. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

And still, even in freefall, they could hear her crying.

Sinister. Hollow. Endless.

It was like the world had been pulled from under their feet.

Sophia’s scream tore out of her throat before she even understood what was happening. Her stomach lurched violently, her arms flailed, reaching for anything—anyone—but there was nothing to grasp. Just air. Cold, rushing air and complete, blinding darkness.

Mariel’s shriek followed hers, higher pitched, laced with panic and disbelief. She wasn’t used to this kind of terror. Her fall felt endless, like she was plunging into a bottomless void, her heart hammering so hard she thought it might explode.

Jason’s voice cracked as he shouted something. The weightlessness made him dizzy, and the sensation of not knowing which way was up or down sent his thoughts spiraling. His fingers clutched his staff, like it was the last piece of reality he could hold onto.

Eleanor didn’t scream. Her jaw clenched, breath caught in her throat as instinct took over—but even her composed mind faltered. She felt helpless, her control stripped away. The fall twisted her body violently, and for the first time in a long while, she didn’t know how to fight what was happening.

Marcus cursed at the top of his lungs. Not out of rage—but fear. Pure, unfiltered fear. He wasn’t used to this kind of vulnerability. Falling without a fight. No weapon could help him now, no strength could stop gravity. The feeling of weightlessness was like a death sentence, and it gripped his chest with icy fingers.

Von roared. Gorr grunted. Borik prayed.

The roaring wind swallowed their voices, a deafening, howling rush that drowned out every sound except the racing of their own hearts.

And Liam—he didn’t scream. His voice died in his throat. He looked up as he fell, watching the shrinking image of the possessed Sera above them, her body levitating, her eyes pitch-black and mouth open in a twisted cry that echoed even louder than theirs.

In that moment, as they all plunged into the black unknown, there was only one shared emotion between them, powerless, soul-wrenching dread.

Liam landed hard—harder than he’d ever hit the ground before. The weight of his body slammed onto solid stone, and a sickening crack tore through his right arm as pain shot up to his shoulder like a jolt of lightning. His breath left him in a brutal gasp, and he rolled onto his side with a groan that echoed weakly into the dark.

Everything was pitch black.

He blinked, trying to adjust, but there was nothing to adjust to—no flicker of light, no shadow, not even the dimmest glow. It was like the darkness had mass, weight, pressing down on him, thick enough to suffocate. The air was stale and cold, the smell of damp stone and something faintly rotting clawing at his nose.

He tried to move, but his right arm throbbed violently with every twitch. Probably not broken, but damn close. He bit down on a curse and sat up slowly, his boots scraping across the hard floor.

Then he realized.

He was alone.

Utterly, completely alone.

"...Sophia?" he called out, his voice hoarse, echoing dully in the confined blackness. "Mariel?"

No response.

Just silence. Thick, unbearable silence.

He cleared his throat and tried again, louder this time. "Eleanor? Marcus! Jason!"

Still nothing.

He scrambled to his feet with effort, leaning slightly to keep pressure off his injured arm. His sword was still strapped to his back—he felt the familiar weight—but the comfort was hollow when he couldn’t see what lay five feet in front of him.

"Gorr? Von! Borik! Anyone?!"

The silence remained. Not dead silence—there was something else now. Distant. Faint.

A cry.

Low at first. A whisper.

Then again—closer, louder, and unmistakably twisted.

Sera.

Or rather, what had become of her.

It wasn’t a normal cry. It was laced with torment. Each wail vibrated with an otherworldly pitch that scraped at Liam’s skull, leaving a bitter chill in his spine. The cry turned to screeches, laughter, weeping—and then silence again, as if it was moving... stalking... waiting.

"Dammit," Liam muttered, looking around, seeing nothing, only hearing the distant haunting echoes of something that had stolen his comrade.

He tried not to think of what had happened to the others—of them crushed in the fall, or taken, or worse. His mind clawed at him with images of Sera’s corrupted face, floating above them, and the ground splitting like it had been waiting for them all along.

He took a shaky breath and stepped forward, unsure of where the ground would lead, every footstep scraping against the stone with eerie echoes.

"Stay alive," he whispered to no one but himself now. "All of you... please."

And from somewhere beyond, the cries returned.