And everyday things designated ‘Hostile Entities’ which for some reason had started turning against him weren’t cursed or haunted like in stories, but sentient, somehow given thought and will by whatever twisted logic this place followed. And the people around him, Sister Margaret, the other nuns, even the kids he shared a room with… they weren’t real either. They were echoes. Memory residues pulled from the real world, or so the voice had said. Hollow copies wearing familiar faces.
June wasn’t completely sure if he had pieced it together right, but it made more sense than pretending things were normal.
Then there were the XP and Radicals—whatever he earned after killing these creatures, like the blender. They felt like rewards, though he didn’t know what he was really being rewarded for. Survival? Progress? Participation?
What he had figured out, though, was that the Free Radicals were being allocated into his intelligence, and that was why his thoughts had changed. They came faster now, cleaner. He could link things that used to drift apart, remember details that would’ve slipped through the cracks just days ago. It was unsettling, he didn’t feel smarter in any special way, but he could feel his brain working differently, like a locked drawer had been pried open.
For now, he pushed all of that aside.
He looked down at what was left of the blender monster. Its tongue hanging out, blood soaking into the floor, broken parts spilling from its body like a metal carcass.
The bathroom was a disaster. Shampoo bottles had been torn open. The shower curtain was missing. Even the soap had somehow ended up inside the thing's gut, though June still couldn’t wrap his head around how that was possible. What mattered now was cleaning the mess before someone noticed. He dragged the laundry basket from the corner, gathered up every piece he could find, plastic shards, chewed cloth, bent bits of wire and dumped them in. Laundry wasn’t done until Saturday, and that gave him two days. If he could stay alive that long, maybe he could figure something else out. Maybe. By the time the room looked halfway decent again, it was still painfully obvious that something was wrong. The toilet’s ceramic base was cracked, its lid missing, the entire fixture slightly off-center like it had been pulled sideways and shoved back. There was no real way to fix it, and no place to hide it. He just had to hope no one looked too closely. No one paid much attention around here anyway.
Still, as he stood in the bathroom doorway, surveying the damage, a single thought bubbled up with more force than before: I should run away.
The dream was clearly trying to keep him trapped, and the house itself had already tried to kill him more than once, and not in ways that could be mistaken for accidents. Maybe escape was the only sane option left. But when he turned to the window, when he looked out at the world beyond the orphanage walls, something in him went quiet.
The sky was dull and colorless. The street beyond was cracked and empty. Buildings leaned at odd angles, like they’d been abandoned mid-collapse. Plants grew through concrete, wild and unchecked, wrapping around street signs and fences like nature had started taking things back. There were no people. No movement. Just a hollow, still silence stretching in every direction.
If this house was dangerous, June had no idea what might be waiting outside. He couldn’t see anyone but who not to say that there might be a monster similar to blender waiting outside. But on the contrary, once he closed his eyes for sleep, who knows May or someone else might be successful in slitting his throat next.
He picked up another towel, soaked it in the sink, and began scrubbing the blood from the floor.
He internally realized that he needed a plan, a safe and foolproof plan as much as it could be.
"..."
Except for all the children at school, only five sisters were home, busy with their chores. But could he simply walk off the front door? He also suddenly remembered the voice's warning that the dungeon was awake, which honestly meant little to him, he had no idea what a dungeon really was, but if something was awake, it also meant it might be keeping an eye on him. He threw the bloody cloth into the laundry basket, burying it deep beneath other clothes, then began washing his face.
He looked up, his eyes focusing again on the glass window. A thought struck him, and he acted on pure impulse, digging through the laundry basket to retrieve the dead blender monster. With a grunt of effort, he hurled it at the window.
Crack!
The glass shattered into a million pieces, and a cold breeze rushed in from outside. He was on the second floor of the house and would need to jump down to the garden that connected to another small street. From there, he could rush away from this nightmare.
One-two-three-four-five—
His heart slammed against his chest, and counting or taking deep breaths did nothing to calm the restlessness surging through him. He was sure the sisters would come soon after hearing the glass crack. He braced himself to jump down. But just as he climbed onto the window and was about to leap, the bathroom walls shifted. The space twisted, like the house was alive, changing like cloth being pulled and folded. The window disappeared from the wall in an instant, and June fell backward onto the floor with a thud.
He landed on his butt and stared at the place where the window had been. Just wall now. Bare and blank.
He wasn’t going anywhere. He was literally trapped. And then it clicked. His eyes widened with a slow, creeping horror.
It was the Orphanage.
The Dungeon wasn’t some buried ruin or forgotten fortress in the wild.
Panic surged through him like a storm, June rushed out of the bathroom and back to his room. He felt increasingly claustrophobic, as if the walls of the house were closing in on him and the roof was beginning to collapse.
He stared down the empty hallway. There weren’t many open windows in the house, but he wasn’t going to test them now. Instead, he remembered the door to the roof was locked, but there was a balcony that faced the front road. No one was in the hallways to stop him. He took two quick turns and pushed open another door. Before him, the town stretched out in its depleted glory with cracked foundation, distant beneath the grey sky.
He didn’t waste time thinking about how dangerous it might be. He took a deep breath, climbed over the balcony rail cautiously, and jumped.
For one breathless moment, he was free falling through open air. The world revolved around him in circles, like he was ball tossed in the air. And then, just as suddenly, his feet never touched the ground. He landed right back on the balcony, exactly where he had jumped from. His eyes widened as he stared ahead. The buildings that had been there before weren’t there anymore. He turned and ran to the other side of the hallway to another balcony, desperate, and nearly pulled his hair out.
The entire damn house had shifted.
June's face was pale, the blood drained from it completely. He was realizing it was better before when he couldn't think, when his mind was slow and foggy. Now that he could think clearly, these impossible situations were making him lose his grip on reality.
His hands trembled uncontrollably in agitation, and his nerves felt like they were being fried inside his skull as he was unknowingly being pulled into the depths of his mind, feeling increasingly hopeless. This orphanage really wanted to make him stay, trapped inside, possibly forever. Yet, out of the darkness, a new thought emerged. The front door, yes... the front door. In the morning, Sister Margaret had stopped him from going through it. Perhaps that was the reason—it was the actual way out. Maybe if he could just open it and step outside. With no sense of his surroundings, he reentered the house and rushed toward the stairs.
The fluorescent light hung overhead in the hall, flickering slightly, and the walls were painted a dark brown that seemed to absorb what little light there was.
His legs pumped frantically, yet the distance between him and the stairs didn’t shorten a bit. It was as if he was running on a treadmill, movement without progress. The harder he ran, the more the hallway seemed to stretch before him, the stairs always remaining the same distance away.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
June quickly realized he had fallen into another trick. Why? Why was it happening? Why was it happening to me. He cried inwardly, yet there was no answer. The house wouldn't let him escape and he was too powerless to do anything but wait for possible death tonight.
His footsteps halted as he heard the sound of shoes on the wooden floor. Soon, the sound revealed itself to be from Sister Fawn. Her brows furrowed as soon as she saw him standing outside his room and not studying. Lucky for June though, he was able to escape the conundrum of not moving.
She glared at him, "Why are you in the hallway again?"
Honestly, June couldn't conjure up any response and only stared at her with a blank face. Till yesterday, he had been trapped in his mind, and today he was trapped in this damn house and dream.
Sister Fawn's face hardened at his silence. "This is unacceptable behavior, June. I told you to stay and study in your room earlier." Her voice carried no warmth, only cold authority. "You'll be punished for your disobedience. Come with me to my office. Now."
She turned sharply, not bothering to check if he was following. June trailed behind her silently, his feet moving automatically while his mind raced with possibilities. He was feeling both scared and exasperated.
...
...
...
[VOICE IN HEAD]
[Hostile Entity: Bible(Sentient) - Dead]
[Echo: Fawn(Memory Residual) - Dead]
[12 XP+ Gained]
[+[3]+ Radical Extracted]
[+[26]+ Available XP]
[+[3]+ Free Radical available to merge]
[You may allocate EXP to increase level and Free Radical to increase personal radicals Points.]
[Recommendation: Distribute Free Radicals to the most beneficial radical for adaptive survival…...]
[Allocating Free Radical…]
[Radical Type Selected: Intelligence]
[INT +3 | New Total: 11]
[Intelligence & Willpower threshold reached for upgrade. Converted into Epithet: (Thinker)(Brave Heart). Further upgrades to Intelligence & Willpower are currently unavailable.]
:::[June]:::
Level: 1
Class: [Unassigned]
Titles: [Preserved]
[PERSONAL RADICALS]
[STR] Strength: 3
[DEX] Dexterity: 6
[VIT] Vitality: 7
[INT] Intelligence: (Thinker)
[WIS] Wisdom: 5
[WILL] Willpower: (Brave Heart)
[CHA] Charisma: 10
[LCK] Luck: 7
[Skills]
[STASIS LOCK]
- Generate a localized temporal stasis field (1m radius). Immune to target above [Level 3]
- Duration: 3 seconds.
- Cooldown: 60 seconds
[DEEP SLEEP]
- Puts the user in a frozen recovery state.
[PASSIVE CHARACTERISTIC]
Cold-Tolerant I
- Base resistance to cryo-environmental conditions and low temperatures.
Cleansed Heart
- Immune to “Decay,” “Rot,” “Fungal Infection.”
[EXPERIENCE]
Total Available EXP: +[28]
Required for Level 2: 100
…
June felt a rush of lightness in his body that he had never experienced before, like chains breaking apart, no longer dragging behind the rest of him. His thoughts were clear, painfully so, sharper than they had ever been. But it didn’t make him feel better. If anything, it made everything worse. He walked out of the room with a heavy heart, the knife clenched tightly in his hand, the metal shaking slightly from how hard he was holding it. His eyes were red and swollen from crying. He didn’t try to hide it. There was no one left to hide from.
Under his breath, he kept muttering the same thing, over and over again.
“I don’t want to do it… I don’t want to… I really don’t want to… She made me. She made me do it…”
But the words didn’t matter. The tears wouldn’t stop. They rolled down his cheeks in silent streams. Each step felt like walking through mud, like gravity was doubling beneath him. He didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t see any other choice left.
Yet, the orphanage dungeon seemed to sense some kind of danger after the death of Sister Fawn's echo. A vibration rushed through the spine of the house, like it was waking up.
Sister Lily had been cleaning nearby room, but suddenly the sound of the vacuum she was holding changed from a steady hum to a hungry growl. June saw the hall twist behind him like a wet cloth being wrung out, and before him, the vacuum cleaner broke out of the door- its nozzle split opened to reveal rows of jagged metal teeth and a long tongue flailing through the air like a whip.
Sister Lily’s hands were still on the handle. She genuinely looked like she was struggling to stop it, but she was a woman with a small frame and little strength.
Faced with immediate danger, June had no time to cry or think about what he had done or what Sister Fawn had forced him to do with the knife. The hallway behind him writhed and closed off like a tightening throat. In front of him, the vacuum monster came barreling toward him, fast and hungry.
His eyes darted, scanning for any possible way out, then locked on the door to the infirmary. His newfound thinker intelligence kicked in, calculating angles and distances even as panic threatened to swallow him whole. He turned and ran. His feet skidded on the polished floor as he flung himself through the infirmary doorway.
The vacuum howled behind him, its metal teeth gnashing inches from his heels. Sister Lily screamed as the machine dragged her along, her knuckles white from gripping the handle.
“Move!” June shouted at himself, diving under the nearest examination table.
But the table wasn’t safe either, it buckled and slammed down, its metal legs screeching across the tile. He only had half a second to roll free before it pinned him. Just then, the vacuums' power cord that acted like tail snagged on the doorframe, and Sister Lily, still struggling to pull it back, gave June one precious second more. His eyes caught a narrow gap between two heavy cabinets. The vacuums' body wouldn’t fit, but maybe he could. Knife clenched in his fist, he dropped to hands and knees and scrambled for it just as the freed vacuum charged into the room.
He was only halfway through the gap when the IV stands around the far bed lurched upright. Their long metal poles bent like limbs, and the hanging fluid bags pulsed like translucent hearts. Clear tubes dangled toward him like dripping tendrils, the fluid sizzling as it hit the floor.
A nearby rolling stool spun in place, then launched toward him. Its cushioned top split open mid-spin to reveal a circular maw lined with grinding metal teeth.
“Hold on!” June gasped, yanking himself the rest of the way through just as the stool slammed into the side of the cabinet behind him.
Above, the defibrillator unit on the wall began to shake. Its paddles tore free with a high-pitched metallic screech, electricity arcing violently between them. The blue current grew brighter with each pulse.
“Clear,” it hissed in prerecorded voice, then fired.
A bolt of electricity exploded from the paddles and struck the wall inches from June’s head, scorching the surface black.
He instinctively reached for his new skill he had gotten to know—STASIS LOCK— he thought of it as a reward for surviving in this dream. It could freeze everything for three seconds. But it came with a sixty-second cooldown, and that was a long time to be helpless in this place.
“Not yet,” he whispered, clutching the knife tighter, knowing he might need that power even more in the next moment.
Then the curtain around the far bed began to ripple. It tore itself free with a rip that sounded almost alive. Floating upward, it twisted and spread, forming a ghost-like shape, a translucent sheet billowing like smoke. It hovered toward him, edges undulating like wings. Behind it, the vacuum monster roared, its intake pulling in everything in its path. The floor, littered with scraps, tools, dust, and debris was being sucked into its maw like it was feeding.
“June, what is happening?!” Sister Lily screamed over the chaos.
June ignored her. She was just an echo, reacting the way she would have in the real world, timid, confused, powerless. She wasn’t real. None of them were. His eyes scanned the room, jumping between the curtain-phantom and the vacuum, and his mind, quicker now, sharper than it had ever been, started making connections.
Vacuum. Suction. Curtain. Fabric.
“Come on…” he muttered, backing slowly toward the doorway while keeping the floating curtain between him and the vacuum. His eyes never left them.
When both threats were nearly upon him, he ducked low and darted sideways. The vacuums' roaring intake followed his motion, just as the curtain drifted directly into its mouth.
The ghost sheet was yanked forward in an instant, sucked into the vacuums' suctioned mouth with a long, tearing scream. Its billowing clothh body twisted and tangled as the vacuum tried to devour it, fabric catching in the teeth, wrapping around the motor. The vacuum monster shrieked and whined in protest, choking on its unexpected meal.
[VOICE IN HEAD]
[Hostile Entity: Curtain Ghost(Sentient) - Dead]
[+[2XP] Gained]
[+[1] Radical Extracted]
With the voice ringing in head, June bolted through the doorway and back into the hallway.