Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 62: The Sad Toy

The silence is absolute.

I don’t answer Lola right away.

I just stand there... frozen in the middle of the ruined hall.

My back is turned to the rest of the group. They are already moving toward the exit, completely oblivious to the crushing truth of this place.

I stare at the dust dancing lazily in the shafts of golden sunlight. My eyes drift to the heavy iron spikes scattered across the cracked concrete—the massive darts the Gatekeeper fired at everyone who entered here.

I close my eyes.

I clench my jaw so hard my teeth ache.

My hand slides into my pocket, my thumb brushing the smooth, warm surface of the Reentry Pearl. A tether to a reality that suddenly feels impossibly far away.

I force my lungs to draw a breath, taking control of my fracturing mind. I turn around and crouch down in front of Lola. Slower than combat allows. Gentler than I’m used to.

I look into her large, watery blue eyes and ask the only question that matters.

"What else did you see, Little Bear?"

She doesn’t answer in narratives or stories. She speaks in patterns.

"The little trains," she murmurs, her fingers twisting the hem of her white hoodie. "They had a rhythm that felt like fun. But the lanterns... they lit up like a quick visit. Someone coming in, then leaving immediately. No time to stay."

She tilts her head, looking past me toward the smoking wreckage of the throne.

"And the clock on the giant’s face. It wasn’t telling time, Uncle. It was a countdown that felt like it had already ended."

Lola hugs her knees to her chest.

"The toy was sad," she whispers flatly. "Toys don’t get sad on their own. Someone put the sadness inside."

I listen to every word without interrupting. And when she finishes, the cold, sickening realization fully locks into place.

Lola didn’t just see the mechanics.

She decoded them...

The entire puzzle was a dying child’s memory weaponized into a dungeon mechanic.

Every lantern was a fleeting hospital visit. Every toy train was a fragmented memory of joy drowning in despair. The clock was the terminal prognosis. And the iron spikes raining down on us... they were the endless, agonizing needles that never stopped coming.

A heavy, suffocating weight settles in my chest.

It is too massive to share. Not now. Not yet.

I make the immediate tactical decision to carry this entire burden alone.

I choose to keep my mouth shut. It isn’t out of coldness; it’s operational protection.

People who don’t see you as a person make bad decisions at the wrong time. If Oliver finds out he spent an entire year trapped in a purgatory built from a dead child’s nightmare, his mind will completely shatter.

And I need him functional.

"Don’t tell anyone, Lola," I say, my voice a quiet, steady murmur. "This stays between us. A secret."

Lola doesn’t process secrets as moral weights. She processes them as logical instructions.

She gives a simple, firm nod. "Okay, Uncle."

I offer her my hand in silence. She takes it, her small grip surprisingly strong, and I help her up.

She hefts the massive black metal case of Lullaby onto her back, adjusting the heavy straps. I stay crouched for a moment, just watching her walk away to join the others.

After a few seconds, I force my legs to move.

I pause.

I look back over my shoulder one last time, staring at the empty, ruined throne where the child’s soul finally went to sleep.

(...)

I turn my back on it and jog to catch up with the squad.

We march down the upward-sloping exit tunnel. The atmosphere shifts with every step. The light filtering in changes from dusty gold to a sickly, unnatural hue. The air grows dense, smelling of salt and wet earth.

We reach the end of the corridor, stopping in front of a massive, mirrored glass archway.

I look up at the transit panel mounted above the heavy doors. The digital display is dead, save for the violent, tearing glitches of magenta and green static pulsing across the screen.

With a heavy pneumatic hiss, the doors slide open. They lock shut behind us the moment we pass through.

There is no concrete platform. There is no procedural train waiting to take us back to the Academy.

We step out onto the edge of a jagged cliff, staring into a distorted, impossible green world.

Nature here refuses to respect the laws of physics. Massive chunks of moss-covered rock float lazily in the sky like wandering islands. Waterfalls bleed out of sheer cliff faces, but the water doesn’t fall—it flows upward, defying gravity, wrapping around the stone in impossible, looping rivers.

In the brush nearby, small, strange animals scurry past, their bodies violently glitching with that same sickening magenta static for a microsecond before stabilizing.

I stand at the edge, wondering exactly where the hell we are. Not just geographically.

Existentially.

If the System is pulling the souls of dying children from Earth and turning them into monsters... what kind of person am I going to be when I finally leave this place?

If I leave...

My jaw tightens. I ruthlessly shove the existential dread into a dark box in the back of my mind and slam it shut. I shift back to my tactical self, because right now, it is the only thing keeping me from losing my mind.

I pull up my HUD, quickly checking my OXI reserves.

[OXI: 1,132/1,600]

I eat some scales to fill my tank and flex my ankles, feeling the pressurized steam chambers of the new Ironwake boots shifting comfortably around my heels.

[Scales: 515 -> 500]

[OXI: 1,132-> 1,507/1,600]

"Weapons hot," I tell the group, my voice deadpan and authoritative. "Check your gear and stay sharp."

Oliver steps up beside me, staring wide-eyed at an upside-down waterfall.

"Dryden," he stammers, his grip tightening on his warhammer. "Where is the train?"

I look out over the impossible, glitching landscape.

"If a world like this exists in Thirstfall," I say, my voice colder than the abyssal depths, "the train is the absolute last thing we need to worry about right now."