**Chapter 2: The Curtain**
"Why did you delay so long?" My eyes were shut; the darkness I saw was making my head spin. I felt nauseous, and there was a numbness in my body.
"We didn't delay. You weren't expecting me to teleport her to Elysian instantly, were you?" Çağın's voice was faintly echoing in my ears. As my eyelid twitched, my body moved involuntarily. After weakly clearing my dry throat, I cracked open my eyes.
Çağın knelt beside me and pushed from my back to sit me up from where I lay. "Are you okay, are you with us?" he asked, appearing concerned, but I knew I couldn't trust him. I distinctly remembered him knocking me out.
"Not enough to kill you, though," I growled back, recalling the moment he drugged me. Even if I knew he wasn't a bad person, I couldn't ignore the suspicions that had surfaced in my mind just before losing consciousness.
"She's been out for hours; is this really the heir?" I turned to look at the woman speaking while shaking her head in disapproval. The first thing I noticed was her bright yellow eyes. She had a serpent crown on her black bobbed hair. She wore a long, black dress that hugged her tanned skin, cinched at the waist with a thick gold belt, and gold earrings dangled down to her shoulders. Gold tulle extended from the shoulders of her sleeveless dress. As she stepped towards me, a deep slit in her dress revealed itself.
With this sight, I had somewhat grasped the situation. I laughed as much as my lingering dizziness would allow and looked at Çağın. "How much did you spend on this production!?"
"You won't remember now, but the moment we arrived in Elysian, you'll recall everything," Çağın said, helping me sit up straighter and cross-legged.
"I really can't believe you, Çağın," I said, ignoring his nonsense. "You've dressed the girl like a Pharaoh." The woman opposite me could have sworn to be Hatshepsut herself if she had played her role a bit more convincingly. From the temple we were in to the costumes, everything was so flawless...
"The real Pharaoh dresses like me, you foolish heir!" the woman exclaimed, and I laughed at her. My gaze swept over the stone walls covered in cuneiform scripts. The dome ceiling was painted in pastel colors. In the very center of the temple stood a coffin, so realistically crafted that, had I not known Çağın was joking, I would have believed it was made of solid gold. Also, right in front of the stone door, there was an ankh.
"While we're in the Curtain, you won't remember anything, Eva," Çağın said, walking towards the golden coffin. "Take her to Elysian. It will be easier for her to understand everything when she remembers."
As he opened the coffin, I said, "Don't exaggerate, Çağın..." I didn't mind him creating a utopian world in his head and dragging me into it. I knew he had an otherworldly madness, but it was starting to get annoying. Plus, I was still mad at him for knocking me out. I could take a joke, but this joke had a bit of idiocy in it.
When Çağın lay in the coffin and the lid closed by itself, I frowned and stood up. "Enough with the jokes, Çağın, let's go!" I had taken a step towards the golden coffin when the woman Çağın called Eva appeared in front of me. I screamed and stepped back in reflex, then after a few seconds, allowed myself to grasp what was happening. I looked over my shoulder to where she had just been standing. Her ability to move from there to here so quickly...
I swallowed. "How?" I whispered, fear welling up in my eyes. My breathing hastened, causing my chest to heave. There had to be a logical explanation, but I was still shaken.
A part of me knew Çağın was too stingy to hire a magician just for a prank. That voice was right, but the only more logical explanation I could come up with was that the woman in front of me was a magician.
"You're going to hurt a lot..." she said with a smile that showed she was enjoying this. It was as if... the pleasure a killer derived from blood dripped venomously from her tongue.
"Cut it out, Çağın!" I shouted, rushing to the coffin in three steps and pushing the lid. Seeing the coffin empty, tears started rolling down my cheeks. I bent slightly, searching for any hidden compartment, hitting the coffin and yelling, "Çağın, get out of there!"
Feeling Eva's breath suddenly on my neck, I stopped moving and just stood there. I could feel my heartbeat in the tips of my fingers scratching at the coffin. The only sound echoing in the temple was our breathing. When I turned around abruptly, we were nose to nose.
She didn't move back.
Even knowing she was an actor or magician, part of me wanted to confront and defy her. Yet, I couldn't deny the growing fear inside me. Yes, Çağın often talked about what we would do if we were in fairy tales, and turning it into a game didn't seem odd to me, but his game wouldn't be like this. He wouldn't leave me alone in a game.
Lifting my chin, I stared into her bright yellow eyes. "Enough of this. Take your money and leave! If you haven't been paid, leave anyway and settle with Çağın later."
Her lips twisted in unspeakable delight, a mockery alive in her eyes that unnerved me greatly, intensifying my fear in a strange way.
"Get out of my face," I said, trying to push her away in disgust.
She didn't budge an inch. "We need to go," she whispered, making me think I heard the hiss of the serpent on her crown.
Nonsense, nonsense... These are just games.
"Yes, Çağın!" I shouted. "We need to go!"
"Do you want to go to Çağın?" My instinct was to nod excitedly, shouting, "Yes!" but ignoring her, I yelled, "Çağın, come here now, and we're leaving!"
Her chuckles were like music composed of arrogance. "For the first and last time..." I could sense the excitement in her voice. "I will grant your wish, little sister."
Ignoring her, I was about to call out to Çağın again when I noticed a movement around her navel. The bulge growing under her dress stretched the fabric, creating a small hole. The snake that emerged from the hole left me frozen.
I couldn't explain this with magic.
Screams stuck in my throat weighed heavily on my chest. My heart pounded so hard it seemed to be trying to shatter the weight in my chest. The tan snake shedding its skin for a golden hue extended its head, hissing. My petrified movements thawed with fear, and I managed a shaky step back. As I retreated, the snake connected to Eva's abdomen glided
through the air towards me.
Crying hysterically, I yelled, "Enough, Çağın!" Jumping in place, I backed into a wall as the snake began to coil around my waist.
I couldn't hold back the bile rising to my throat any longer. The stench from the vile substance trickling down the side of my mouth made my head spin even more.
When the snake fully encircled my waist, I tried to raise my hands. The sliminess around my waist conveyed my helplessness, causing me to cry uncontrollably. I couldn't even scream while crying. The strange creature tightening around my waist left me with nothing but to weep silently and accept whatever was coming.
Would it hurt a lot when I died?
Suddenly, I found myself on the ground, writhing with the snake around my waist. The sensation of my skin scraping against the floor felt like being flayed with a knife. My meaningless moans increased with the woman's laughter.
"I can't call for help."
I couldn't ask for help.
Her laughter was the only sound bouncing off the stupid room's walls.
She dragged me to the life cross at the door.
I couldn't form words. Help was far beyond my reach.
When I finally found my voice, I was screaming in agony, trying to drown out my pain with my cries.
Opening my eyes in the new universe, I was either going to erase all of humanity's pains or become the source of them.
