Stone stairs climbing out of a dark pit toward a doorway lit by a single torch

Oubliette

A first-person crawl up out of the pit the village throws its dead into. In the making: Alpha 1.

Under the Warden's prison is an oubliette, and the village sends its dead down it. Down there they are forgotten, and the longer they stay forgotten the more they fade, until they can't lift a thing or remember their own names.

You came down whole. The Warden has never been able to forget you.

So you climb. Fire in one hand, water in the other, through rooms the pit shifts around every time you fall. The faded know the way up, and they hold on to what they lost. You can carry it back to them.

Your two hands, one warm and one pale blue, raised in a brick corridor that runs to a single torch
Fire in one hand, water in the other.

The Warden's ledger

He keeps the names of everyone who went down. Four lines have lost theirs.

  1. 311?
  2. 312?
  3. 313?
  4. 314?
A raised stone ledge in a dim room, a ladder against the wall above it
The rooms shift every time you fall. The ladder is always somewhere.