Mercy isn't kindness. It's judgement without cruelty.
---
The portal shimmered like liquid glass—still as death, deep as guilt. When Kayaks stepped through, it felt like falling. Then floating. Then drowning.
He awoke on his knees.
Water flooded the stone courtyard beneath him, rippling with each breath. Mist slithered across ruined streets, and twilight hung eternal in the sky. Ancient marble pillars stood cracked and weeping. Statues of forgotten saints loomed from mossy pedestals, their stone faces worn away, their sockets full of stagnant tears.
And the air sang. Not quite a melody. Not quite words.
> "Where... are we?" Merris asked, slowly spinning in place.
> "It's like a city that forgot it drowned," Lena murmured.
> "This is a judgment ground," Iris said, voice low. "But the judge is guilt. And the jury is regret."
Welcome to Mercy's Rest.
---
Unlike the chaotic Dreamspire or the shifting halls of Judgment, Mercy's Rest felt heavy. Emotion weighed the air down. Time didn't move forward—it sank.
Each contestant was followed by a floating lantern—a spectral orb pulsing with memories only they could see. They didn't need to ask what it meant.
Every lantern held a wound they had inflicted on someone else.
Kayaks' lantern flickered with an old memory: a younger version of himself, ragged and starving, stealing from a woman's food stall. She had been old. And hungry too.
She had cried.
> "I never said sorry," Kayaks muttered.
> "You can't," said Merris, his own lantern flickering like a dying star. "That's the point. We don't atone by undoing. We atone by enduring."
Then the game began.
---
They found it beneath a collapsed stone chapel. Stained glass windows showed angels with blank faces, arms outstretched as if pleading.
The floor was flooded. Seven masks floated in the water—each different. Some were cracked. Some smiled.
A voice, disembodied and sorrowful, echoed around them:
> "Choose the mask of the one you hurt most. Wear it. Speak as them. Only truth passes through these waters."
Contestants hesitated. The water was bone-chilling, and the memory it carried was colder.
Kayaks dove first.
The pain hit instantly—like knives under the skin. His mind blurred with the past.
He found the mask of the food-stall woman.
He surfaced, gasping. Slid the mask on.
> "I was hungry," he spoke in her voice, "but I thought *your* hunger didn't matter. I thought I was the only one who deserved to live."
The mask dissolved.
The water warmed.
The path ahead opened.
Others followed—but not all succeeded.
One contestant, a boy named Rhyl, picked a mask. But when he spoke, he lied. His voice trembled with half-truths.
The water churned.
It pulled him under.
He never surfaced.
> "You can't fake remorse here," Iris whispered. "Mercy's Rest doesn't punish sinners. It punishes liars."
---
Every district in Mercy's Rest had an Echo Shrine—a haunted monument where each contestant faced their *Phantom*, a spectral embodiment of their darkest moment.
Kayaks entered his alone.
His phantom wasn't a person. It was *himself*—older, colder. Hunched with survival instincts sharpened like blades. The boy who learned to trust no one and steal from everyone.
> "You think godhood will erase your past?" the phantom sneered, circling him. "You'll just be a starving rat with a golden crown."
> "No," Kayaks replied, fists shaking. "But I'll be a starving boy who *tries* to be better."
He lunged. The fight wasn't physical—it was emotional. His phantom mocked his attempts at kindness. His doubts fought back. His guilt screamed louder than fists could.
But he stood his ground.
He endured.
He won.
As the phantom faded, it whispered:
> "We all echo, Kayaks. Even gods."
Some contestants didn't survive their phantoms. A woman from the earlier group froze in place, unwilling to speak. Her phantom consumed her in silence.
Her lantern dimmed.
Her name was erased from the Mercy Gauge.
---
Above each contestant's wrist hovered a spectral counter—a Mercy Gauge, carved from glowing script.
Kindness raised the gauge.
Violence, deception, or denial lowered it.
If the gauge reached zero? You weren't just expelled.
You became part of the shrine.
More than a dozen contestants were lost by the second day. Their forms wandered Mercy's streets as half-remembered ghosts, draped in shadows, whispering their failures to the mist.
One such ghost reached out to Kayaks. Its voice was hollow. Familiar.
> "Don't lie to yourself... and you might survive."
He didn't recognize the face.
But he recognized the guilt.
---
On the third day, in a quiet plaza filled with bleeding lilies, they found her.
A small girl with hollow eyes too ancient for her young face. Her lantern flickered violently—unstable. Unending.
> "She's not part of the game," Lena said, stepping back.
> "No," Iris corrected. "She is the game."
The girl turned to them. Her voice was small. Flat.
> "Will you carry my sin, stranger?"
Everyone hesitated.
Kayaks stepped forward.
> "Yes."
She placed a stone in his hand. Black. Warm. Heavy.
> "Now my guilt is yours."
His Mercy Gauge surged. Then glitched.
Symbols distorted. A second ring formed—a hidden layer.
> "You absorbed her burden," Merris whispered, stunned. "That's not supposed to be possible."
> "I don't want power from this," Kayaks muttered. "I just... didn't want her to carry it alone."
From then on, his lantern pulsed with two sets of memories.
One of his own.
One that wasn't.
---
In the golden halls outside time, the Patrons of Mercy watched through mirrored pools.
One, cloaked in flowing blue feathers, leaned forward.
> "The boy does not bend like the others."
Another—a faceless judge with a thousand silver hands—replied:
> "Then let us see if he breaks instead."
They dropped a shard of judgement into the next chamber.
A new trial.
Conflict.
This time, not with phantoms.
With each other.
---
At the heart of Mercy's Rest stood a massive stone scale. One end bore a throne of thorns. The other—a polished mirror.
A voice, calm and ancient, whispered:
> "One of you must sit. And one must confess.
> The scale will balance… or collapse.
> There are no tricks. No powers.
> Only truth."
> "I'll sit," Lena said without hesitation.
Kayaks stepped forward, facing the mirror.
> "I let someone die once," he said. "I watched. I could've helped. I didn't.
> I told myself it was survival.
> But really... I was afraid."
The mirror cracked.
The scale trembled.
Then—it balanced.
The door opened.
They passed.
---
As they crossed the threshold, Mercy's Rest trembled. Lanterns drifted upward into the twilight sky, like fireflies returning to the stars.
The girl stood on a crumbling bridge.
She smiled.
Waved.
> "Thank you," she said. "Now I can rest."
Their Mercy Gauges glowed white.
> *In any conflict, you may choose to listen.
> Listening reveals a hidden path forward.*
They returned to the Nexus—not stronger in power.
But in resolve.
---
Leaderboard Update:
Kayaks – 2 Games Cleared – Aspects: Dream, Mercy
Lena – 2 Games Cleared – Aspect: Mercy
Merris – 1 Game Cleared
Iris – 1 Game Cleared
Eli – 1 Game Cleared
Remaining Contestants: 65
End of chapter 11..