Trapped In Elysium: A Virtual Reality Nightmare-Chapter 141: Pure souls

Liam stared at the old hag, the firelight trembling across her shriveled face as the weight of her words lingered in the air like a fog of ghosts.

He took a slow step forward, the torch in his hand casting long shadows on the wall. "Then tell me," he said coldly, but not without a touch of dread, "the traps... the treasures we saw—the ancient defenses, the passageways, the illusions... why? Who built them?"

The hag lifted her head slightly, eyes gleaming with something unreadable. "Not I," she rasped. "I may be the soul that haunts these walls, but it was the last survivors of this palace... the ones who fled after the blood soaked every corridor... the ones who knew what had happened here. They built those traps. They hid those treasures. To keep people out."

Her voice grew bitter again. "To keep tomb-raiders, treasure hunters, and glory-thirsty explorers from digging too deep and awakening what was buried."

Liam clenched his jaw, Marcus shifting behind him. Jason looked down at Borik’s unconscious form, and Von didn’t blink as Sophia groaned faintly in his arms. The entire group stood tensed, listening, waiting.

The old hag continued. "They feared what lingered after the fall. They feared the curses. And they were right to. But me?" She raised her thin hand.

"My soul was bound to this palace. I tried to leave once, long ago... but pain, unending, tearing pain would strike through me like blades through bone. And I was yanked back. Chained. I was made to wander... made to hunger..."

Her tone shifted into something colder, more detached.

"It took me decades to understand what I had become. Not dead. Not alive. But I could feed. Souls. Desperate. Lost. Curious. Innocent. Guilty. It mattered not. Each one I took made me... stronger."

The room darkened slightly as if her words tugged at the torches themselves.

"For centuries," she whispered. "I have consumed them."

Jason’s face twisted in horror. "How many?" he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

She turned her gaze to him, and though her lips curled slightly, there was no joy in her voice.

"Hundreds of thousands."

Silence fell. Even the wind seemed to die.

Liam’s breath caught in his throat. Mariel stirred weakly in Marcus’ arms, and Sophia, though still limp, flinched in Von’s grip, as if her soul shivered at the old woman’s confession.

"And now you know," she said softly. "Why I can never leave. This palace is cursed... soaked in the misery of those lost. And I am its gatekeeper. Its prisoner. Its queen and its warden."

Liam’s eyes narrowed. "But we hurt you," he said. "The fire weakened you. You couldn’t stop us."

The old hag nodded slowly. "Yes. Fire... blessed fire... it can wound me. Burn me. Reduce me to a whisper of what I once was. But not kill me."

She spread her arms weakly, her voice cracking. "As long as I am within these cursed walls... no weapon, no magic, no flame can destroy me. Not fully. The fire merely weakens me... slows me... drains me. But kill me? No."

Von muttered a curse under his breath.

"And this form?" she added, looking down at her frail, hunched figure, arms trembling and face withered beyond recognition. "You wonder why I look like this?"

No one answered. But she continued anyway.

"The fire stole my strength. I cannot take a beautiful form. The spirit inside me has curled up in pain. What you see now..." she gestured down at her wrinkled hands, "is all that remains. A body on the edge of vanishing. A shape barely held together by dying power."

She looked up.

"A hag, yes... but only because the fire forced me to become something weak. Something almost... finished."

The group stood in stunned silence, faces grim with the knowledge they now bore. Liam stared at her, torch still burning low in his hand, eyes unreadable behind the flicker of light.

"So what do you want?" Liam asked quietly, his voice firm, low, and lined with exhaustion. The fire from the torch in his hand hissed faintly, as if it too was waiting for her answer.

The old hag tilted her head, long strands of silver hair falling over her hollow cheeks. Her body trembled not from fear, but from the weight of what she was about to ask. "I want to be free," she said, voice raspy, dry like old parchment. "Release me. Sever the chain that binds my soul to this wretched place."

Liam’s gaze didn’t waver, but it was Marcus who reacted first.

"Free you?" he spat, taking a step forward, still cradling Mariel carefully. "After all the souls you’ve devoured? After what you did to Sophia? After what you nearly did to Eleanor?" His tone was sharp, furious. "You don’t deserve freedom. You deserve to rot in this cursed pit forever."

The hag didn’t flinch at the words. Instead, she turned her weary eyes back to Liam. "If you free me," she said calmly, "Eleanor will be freed too. Fully. No more forces surrounding her. No pain. No illusions. You have my word."

Jason muttered under his breath, his knuckles whitening around Borik’s unconscious frame. Von shifted his weight uneasily, glancing at Sophia’s pale, limp form. No one spoke. The tension in the air thickened.

Then the hag let out a slow breath and said, "But you should know... this palace, this trial... it is not yet done."

Liam’s eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

She lifted her frail hands, fingers trembling. "The final test awaits," she said. "A test unlike any before. One not of strength or wit or weapon." Her voice softened, darkened. "A test of great temptation."

Nobody moved.

She smiled faintly. "No one has ever reached that test. None have defeated me. Until now." Her eyes scanned each of them—Liam, Marcus, Jason, Von—and then fell on the women. "But you," she whispered. "You came together. You bled together. You made it because of one thing I never anticipated."

Her finger slowly pointed toward the unconscious forms of Sophia and Mariel, then to Eleanor still suspended in invisible magic. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"I peered into their souls," the hag whispered. "Sera. Sophia. Eleanor. I saw what they were made of. High soul purity... more than I’ve ever seen in all my centuries." Her voice trembled now, not with fear, but awe.

She looked back to Liam.

"And you... all of you... you love each other. Truly. You care. You fight not for glory, but for one another. That... is what brought me down."

She paused there, the silence wrapping around them once more—thick, heavy, meaningful.