Trapped In Elysium: A Virtual Reality Nightmare-Chapter 168: Agonizing Past

The field was gone.

What replaced it wasn’t darkness.

It was worse.

It was a white void — blinding, disorienting, endless. Like the inside of a mind being unspooled thread by thread. There was no sky. No sound. No gravity, and yet Liam felt his weight tenfold. He stumbled forward instinctively, but his feet didn’t land. It was as if he walked on memories, on the smoke of thought.

Then he heard it.

A voice.

Familiar.

Childlike.

"Liam? You forgot me again..."

He spun.

The white haze coiled, shifted — and then parted.

A small figure appeared. A little girl. She couldn’t have been older than eight. Her hair was dark, tangled. Her dress was soaked in something red. Her eyes—those eyes—were wide and broken.

Liam’s heart dropped.

He took a step back.

"No," he whispered.

"You said you’d never leave me," the girl said. "You said I was safe."

His breath caught in his throat. He didn’t need to ask who she was. He already knew. His mind screamed to forget, but the void wouldn’t allow it.

"Anna..." he breathed.

The name punched its way out of his gut like a sob. A memory long buried — no, locked — because it was too painful to face.

His sister.

Dead.

Gone.

Because of him.

"I didn’t mean to—" Liam began, but his voice cracked.

"I called for you," the ghost said. "You didn’t come."

Blood now ran down her arms. Her fingers bent wrong, twisted like snapped branches. The void rippled behind her, forming the outline of a shattered house. Fire. Smoke. Screams.

"I was just trying to save you," Liam choked out, backing away, hands shaking.

"But you didn’t," she said simply.

And then she was gone.

The void swallowed her whole.

Liam fell to his knees, gasping.

And the void pulsed again.

From a distance, he heard the queen’s voice. It was faint — strained, as if calling from underwater.

"Liam... Liam, don’t fall to it!"

But he couldn’t speak. Not yet. The pain was too raw.

It had been the coldest night that winter.

The kind of night where the frost crept silently over the windowsills, and the air outside carried a stillness that felt unnatural. The Wayne family’s old house stood at the edge of a forest—quiet, tucked away from the chaos of city life. Isolated. Liam’s parents were out that evening. They had gone to see a friend at the hospital. He remembered that clearly. Said they wouldn’t be gone long.

So Liam, barely twelve at the time, was left to watch over Anna. She was eight. A bright little thing, with boundless curiosity and a voice that never stopped asking questions. That night, she’d begged him to build her a blanket fort. He rolled his eyes, as any older brother would, but eventually gave in. He always gave in to Anna.

They’d made it right in the living room—between the old couch and the coffee table. He remembered her giggles, how proud she was when the final corner was tucked in. They even brought a flashlight under the blanket and told stories. That part... that was the last happy moment.

The power went out sometime past nine.

The whole neighborhood was dark, swallowed by the winter storm. Liam checked his phone. No signal. No flashlight. Just the little toy lantern Anna had. She didn’t seem scared—she thought it was fun.

Liam thought he smelled something strange a little after ten. He got up. The fireplace. Something about it didn’t feel right. It had been left burning, a small one. Nothing major. But the flue was clogged. The smoke wasn’t escaping.

He remembered coughing. Eyes watering. Panic rising.

He rushed back to the fort. "Anna, we need to go upstairs!"

But she looked at him, confused. She didn’t smell the smoke yet.

That’s when they heard it.

A crack.

Not thunder. Not ice.

Wood.

Above them, near the kitchen, something heavy had shifted. A support beam—old, probably soaked from a hidden leak in the ceiling—gave way as the fire began to spread.

In seconds, everything turned to chaos.

Liam grabbed Anna’s hand and pulled. They ran to the stairs, smoke thickening. He told her not to let go. She squeezed his hand tight.

They reached the second floor, stumbling into their parents’ room—trying to get to the balcony. That was the only way out. He thought he could climb down. Get her out.

But Anna was coughing badly now.

She stumbled.

Her small hand slipped.

She fell backward, hard, hitting the floor as flames reached the hallway.

Liam screamed.

He turned back, tried to go for her. But the smoke was everywhere.

His eyes burned. His lungs screamed.

He couldn’t see.

He couldn’t breathe.

Something collapsed above him. Instinct took over. He stumbled onto the balcony and screamed into the night.

When the fire trucks arrived, it was too late.

They found him unconscious in the backyard, where he must’ve leapt or fallen. They found her body beneath the stairs.

They told him she had died quickly.

He never believed that.

From that day forward, he carried it. That guilt. That torment. It etched itself into every part of him. And when no one was looking—when he was alone—he’d whisper, "I should’ve gone back for her."

And no one could convince him otherwise.

Anna’s voice. Her laughter. The way she used to sneak into his room when she had nightmares and whisper, "Can I sleep here tonight?" He never said no. Never once. No matter how annoying she could be, no matter how loud or talkative or nosy she was... she was his little sister. His shadow. His bright, fearless, joyful shadow.

His heart squeezed.

The blanket fort. The toy lantern. Her small hand slipping from his fingers in the smoke.

He dropped to his knees.

The weight of it was too much. His head fell into his palms, and the tears came—not slow or silent, but hard and ugly. His chest heaved as he sobbed, gasping for air like he was drowning all over again.

"I should’ve saved her..." he whispered. Then again, louder. "I should’ve saved her."

The queen stepped toward him, confused at first. But then she froze. She knew. She didn’t know the full story, but she could feel the crack in his soul. The kind of wound time didn’t heal. The kind that grew roots in the marrow of a person and never let go.

Liam looked up at nothing, tears trailing down his cheeks. "It’s my fault. I was right there. I was holding her hand. And I let go. I let go."

His voice broke at the end, and he bent forward again, knuckles clenched against the stone floor.

The king remained silent. Watching.

The queen knelt beside Liam but didn’t touch him. She understood something sacred was breaking here—something that had been buried deep. And sometimes, the only way to face it was to let it burn.

"I’ve lived every damn day," Liam said, "thinking if I had just held tighter... if I had run faster... she’d still be alive."