Turn 8 of 13

Propose that R. might be using the Warren as a testing ground for sabotaged stats

The path narrows until you're walking single-file, Ordwin's breath audible behind you, the mushrooms thickening to a carpet that crunches softly underfoot. Their glow provides the only light now, green and intermittent, casting your doubled shadow on walls that have ceased to be earth and become something worked—goblin architecture, deliberate and old.

"The Empathy victim," you say, not turning around. "She felt other people's pain. Drowned herself because she couldn't stop feeling." You pause at a junction where three tunnels branch, each marked with the same carved R, and the Spite stat flares hot behind your sternum, pointing unerringly toward the leftmost passage.

"The Stubbornness victim refused to adapt. Starved rather than change course."

"What are you saying?" Ordwin's voice comes careful, testing.

"I'm saying Rachel didn't just want us dead." You step into the left tunnel, and the air changes immediately—colder, thicker, carrying a faint organic rhythm like distant breathing.

"She wanted to see what happened when human nature became arithmetic. Guilt ninety-nine, Empathy ninety-eight, Stubbornness ninety-seven, Spite ninety-nine. She gave us stats that weaponized who we already were, then built something that responds to them."

The tunnel opens into a chamber, and you both freeze. The walls are lined with crystalline growths, each one containing a frozen figure—goblins mostly, but two human shapes among them, their faces twisted in expressions of overwhelming sorrow, absolute refusal, desperate compassion. The crystals pulse with faint light, and as your Spite stat screams its presence, the nearest crystal flickers in answering rhythm.

"They're not dead," Ordwin whispers, horror and wonder mixed in his voice. "The records said they died, but they're—"

"Stored," you finish, and the word tastes like Rachel's efficiency. "She's collecting data. Forty-seven failures who didn't have the right stat, three successes who did, and now me. The question isn't whether I'll die here." You raise your bent spoon like a conductor's baton, feeling the Spite stat gather and focus.

"The question is whether I perform well enough to meet her standards."

Something in the chamber's depths shifts, responding to your presence, and the crystals brighten in sequence like theater lights coming up.