The prose version of a NEVER Stop Smiling solo playthrough. Read Part 1.

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Entry 5: Deep Shadows are Hungry

We found the hole.

A crack in the rear of an abandoned bakery, hardly worth a glance, just another scar on the skin of Silver Throat, its grit and decay blurring together like a nightmare you can’t quite escape. But this one… this one seemed to pulse with something beneath the surface. As if the city itself had exhaled, and this was its exhalation, exhaling us into the depths. A thing you wouldn’t notice unless you were already slipping into madness, unless you had already started to forget what it meant to be… human. And I’m afraid I had.

The passage behind the crack opened into a tunnel, but not one made of stone. This was alive, its walls a dark and viscous thing, shifting like muscle beneath skin. I couldn’t even describe the way it moved. It was like walking into the hollow of a beast, its innards dripping with unseen fluid, pulsating faintly, as if the tunnel itself was breathing.

Every footstep we took was swallowed, the sound twisting and stretching unnaturally, until it felt like the whole world was wrapped around us, waiting for us to fall into it.

Reine and Isaiah were just shadows in the dim glow of our lanterns. Their faces were tight, drawn. We had long since abandoned any pretense of confidence, the air around us thick and heavy, like a blanket made of iron and rot. The smell was unbearable, not like the fetid city air we were used to. No, this had something worse. It was the smell of things that shouldn’t be alive, things that were hanging on by threads too thin to be noticed until you snapped them and heard the world scream.

And then came the Beasts.

They were smaller than the ones I’d encountered before, fragile even. But the way they moved made my skin crawl. They didn’t scurry like rats. No, they flowed, weaving through the dark like shadows becoming flesh. Their many legs bent at odd angles, like they were always half-dissolving into something darker, and their eyes… they weren’t eyes. They were hollow voids that glinted with intelligence, watching us, but never approaching. Their presence made me feel like prey, but not in the way an animal does. No, this was something more deliberate.

Something patient.

Isaiah’s voice broke through the suffocating silence. “They’re herding us.”

I didn’t need to respond. I could feel it, too. The Beasts weren’t blocking our way, they were guiding us deeper, deeper into the earth, or whatever this place was. Their bodies brushed close enough for me to feel the unnatural cold radiating from them, as if they were made from the last remnants of forgotten, dead things. It took all I had not to scream, but even that would have been swallowed whole.

Then the whispers started.

It wasn’t like hearing voices. It was more… a sensation, a pressure against my thoughts. A hand scratching at the edge of my mind, pulling at something I didn’t want to recall. The whispers grew louder, more insistent.

“Remember me,” they sighed in unison, as though they had all been waiting for us to remember… something. Or someone.

I fought it. I clenched my teeth and pushed forward, but the voices only pressed harder, curling through my skull. Some were faint, distant. Others, much closer.

“Remember me. Please.”

They clung to me, tugging at memories I had no desire to revisit. The air around us thickened, as if the very atmosphere was made of old stories. I felt something scraping inside my chest, like I was being torn apart at the seams.

I turned to look at Reine. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated, her face pale as milk, her lips trembling. Her smile was starting to crack, that desperate, thin thing clinging to her face like a mask. “Keep moving and we’ll be okay,” I told her, and the words felt like a lie. But what else could I say?

We were suffocating. Not from the air, no, but from the whispers, the things pulling at us from the other side of memory. But we couldn’t stop. I couldn’t let us stop.

The tunnel squeezed tighter. Its living walls, muscle or flesh or something older, pressed in on us, until it felt like we were crawling through the veins of something ancient, something that shouldn’t be here. The wraiths began to emerge then, though that word, wraiths, doesn’t really capture what they were. They were forms, fading at the edges, twisting like smoke around the light. Faces that looked familiar but never really were, stretching across the moments we’d passed, their hands reaching toward us, fingers warping as if time were bending around them.

Their mouths moved in silence, no sound, but I could hear them, feel them, their hunger, their need. Their hands, all clammy and misshapen, clawed at the air, raking through the fabric of my thoughts, peeling back memories I had no interest in giving.

“Remember me,” they wailed in unison, their voices thin and spectral, like a thousand forgotten souls crying for someone to hear them. But I didn’t want to remember. Whatever it was they wanted me to recall, I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be trapped in this.

I grabbed Reine as she stumbled, my grip tight, the sweat on her arm cold. “We have to keep moving.”

But she was already too far gone, her expression distant, like she was already lost in something deeper than any of us could reach.

The air hummed, then. A low, vibrating note that didn’t belong to anything human. The walls trembled, quivering like something alive that had been disturbed. The wraiths seemed to recoil, dissolving into the shadows with a soft hiss, their forms rippling away like smoke, but the whispers, they remained.

And then we heard it.

A growl, but not a growl, more like the sound of a wound being torn open. It was so deep, I could feel it in my chest, a vibration that rattled my bones, shaking the very foundation of this place. It wasn’t just the sound… it was alive. The tunnel shook with it, ripples of noise spreading out like a shockwave through the air, and in the dark, something stirred.

“We’re not alone anymore,” Reine whispered, her voice small.

I didn’t need her to say it. I knew it. And whatever was down here, in the gut of this living place, it wasn’t something we were meant to face. Not now. Not ever. It had been buried here for a reason.

And I realized, then, what the Beasts had been guiding us to.

We weren’t just stumbling into the depths.

We were waking it up.

Entry 6: Optimize in the Eyes of the Beholder

Smiles are fragile things.

The further we descend, the more mine feels like a brittle mask. My cheeks ache, the corners of my mouth trembling as they strain to hold the curve. I tell myself it’s real, that the joy is real, that the love is real. The Happy Place loves us. The Happy Place is joy. This is truth.

But the deeper we go, the less the truth feels like truth, and the more it feels like a command.

“Keep smiling,” Reine hisses, her voice low and sharp, her own teeth bared in a grin that looks more like a threat. “They’re watching.”

She’s right. Something is always watching.

The air here is thick with the weight of unseen eyes, the oppressive density of a place forgotten by the world above. I clutch the smile tighter, wear it like armor, even as my muscles rebel. Isaiah’s gaze flickers toward me, his face unreadable except for the faintest twitch near his jaw. Concern? Suspicion?

I don’t know anymore.

We find the chamber in a cavern that hums with a strange vibration, like the walls are alive and murmuring secrets we’re not meant to hear.

And in the center of it stands it.

A robot.

It’s humanoid, in the vaguest sense, though time and decay have ravaged it into something grotesque. Rust oozes down its limbs like old blood, pooling in the joints. Its face is a blank oval of polished metal, unblemished except for two pinpricks of blue light where eyes should be.

And then it speaks.

“Greetings, Deacons!” The voice is bright, cheerful, cloyingly kind. “I am here to assist! To improve! To make you better! Aren’t you excited?”

The words don’t land right. They’re too happy, too eager, the joy stretched thin and strained, like a recording that’s been played one time too many.

None of us answer.

The robot steps forward, its movements jerky, joints screaming with each motion. “You seem… incomplete,” it continues, its tone friendly but off. “Allow me to optimize you. You will be more efficient. You will be happier.”

It gestures to the edges of the room, where workbenches stretch in neat, rust-streaked rows. That’s when I see them.

Not machines. Not wreckage.

Bodies.

Flesh fused with wires, bones twisted into impossible shapes, faces locked in grotesque parodies of smiles. They’re sprawled across the tables, their limbs askew, their mouths stretched wide in silent agony.

“Previous benefactors,” the robot chirps. “They were… resistant to improvement. But you! You will be different! Now, hold still.”

It moves fast, faster than its rusted frame should allow.

Isaiah reacts first, his blade slicing clean through one of its arms, but the thing doesn’t stop. Its severed limb twitches on the floor, clawing at nothing. Reine grabs a pipe from the wreckage, smashing it into the robot’s head. Sparks fly as its blank faceplate cracks, but still, it moves.

“You will be better!” it screeches, its voice glitching into a garbled mess of static and optimism.

Isaiah’s final strike pierces its core. The thing collapses, its voice trailing off in a whimper. “Improve… improve… improve…”

We should leave.

But something keeps us rooted.

The cavern hums louder now, the vibration climbing into my chest, my skull. The walls pulse faintly, veined with threads of light that glow and fade in rhythmic patterns. It feels like breath, like a heartbeat.

And then we see it.

The machine.

It dominates the far end of the chamber, a towering structure of flesh and metal intertwined. Veins of luminescent fluid snake through its surface, pulsing in sync with the hum. Its presence is overwhelming, a gravitational force that pulls the air from my lungs.

The colors around it shift constantly, an oil-slick rainbow that makes my head spin if I look too long. There’s a wrongness to it, a sense that it doesn’t just exist here. No, it defines here, warping the space around it into its own logic.

Reine moves first.

“Don’t,” Isaiah says, his voice tight with warning.

But she doesn’t stop. Her hand trembles as she reaches out to touch it.

The moment her fingers graze the surface, the machine screams.

It’s not sound, not exactly, it’s a feeling, a psychic rupture that slams into my mind with unbearable force. Reine screams, too, her body convulsing as the machine’s glow intensifies. Her skin ripples, her features distorting as though something inside her is trying to claw its way out.

Her arm snaps backward with a sickening crack, bone tearing through flesh. Organs and muscles race each other, forming a glistening maze around the reshaping bones. Her face, now sitting on the bottom of her towering alien form, splits into three grotesque grins, her eyes wide and empty. A chorus of melodic screams rip through my nerves, tearing apart the very neurons in my skull.

And then, just as suddenly, she collapses.

Her body twitches once, twice, then goes still.

The machine’s hum grows louder, the colors brighter, more frantic. The air feels heavier, crushing, as though it’s forcing itself into my lungs, into my thoughts.

And then I hear it.

Not with my ears, but inside me, deep and undeniable.

It whispers of joy, of purpose, of understanding. Of love.

And it asks only one thing in return… but I have no idea what that is.

Entry 7: Alien Hearts Make the World Go Round

The machine suddenly stood still and silent, a towering thing of slick organic electronics, its surface still pulsing like the heartbeat of a dying god. The faint glow of its veins flickered, ghostly in the cavern’s dim light. Reine’s body lay at its feet, broken and twisted, the remnants of her grins stretched and haunting, as though ready to spring back to life at any moment to devour us.

I couldn’t stop staring at her. I couldn’t escape the echoes of her bones snapping, each crack and rip a cruel reminder of what had happened, what we had failed to prevent.

Isaiah pulled me back, his fingers digging into my arm with urgent strength. “We can fix it,” he muttered, his voice a frantic whisper. “The First Oracle’s promise… it will hold true. We fix it, and she’ll come back. Just like they said.”

I wanted to believe him. I needed to. The First Oracle had unraveled the riddle of Death itself. Joy was eternal. The faithful never truly die. We were taught this every day, each word a stitch in the fabric of our belief. But Reine’s contorted, lifeless form, now a grotesque maze of twisted alien flesh, crushed those promises into something more… hollow.

“Smile,” Isaiah’s voice cracked, a tinge of desperation creeping in. “If you stop smiling, it won’t work. You know that.”

I tried to force my lips into something that resembled a grin. But it felt wrong, like wearing someone else’s face, a face that didn’t belong to me anymore. The muscles in my cheeks burned, trembled under the strain, but I held it. Even as my tears blurred my vision, I whispered, “We’ll fix it. She’ll come back.”

We approached the machine. The air around it thickened, vibrating with an unsettling pulse. As we neared, its surface quivered, its veins of glowing liquid quickening in their rhythmic dance, responding to our presence.

The controls were… alive, organic shapes that quivered beneath our fingertips. They weren’t switches or buttons but pulsing tendrils, slick and warm, as if the machine had a heart. Every press, every movement we made seemed to ripple through the machine, as if it were listening.

“It’s… broken,” Isaiah muttered, his grin faltering, cracking. “We need to… realign it? Restore the flow?” His voice was a whisper now, full of doubt. We weren’t trained for this. We were Deacons, not engineers of flesh and bone.

But the machine didn’t care. It screamed at us, a sound not audible but felt, vibrating in my ribs, in my teeth. The hum grew louder, a deeper, insistent thrum that seemed to tear at my very soul.

The walls around us began to shift, the darkness itself began to stretch and twist, forming shapes that danced just out of sight, too tall, too jagged, too wrong. And then, I heard it.

Voices.

Whispers.

They came from the walls, from the air, from the space between breaths. They weren’t in our heads. They were the walls, the stones, the very universe around us.

“Why do you cling to it?” one voice asked, soft but insistent, like a secret told in the dark.

“She’s gone,” another hissed. “You saw her die.”

“No one comes back. Not really.”

I tried to block them out, squeezing my eyes shut. “It’s a test,” I murmured. “A test of faith.”

But the whispers didn’t stop. They just pressed in harder, growing louder.

We continued, hands trembling over the shifting, writhing controls. The machine didn’t relent. It fought us. Its surface burned under our touch, its pulse quickened, and the veins beneath its skin swelled and contracted like a living thing in agony.

My fingers were blistering. The heat was unbearable, but still, we pressed on. We had to fix it.

“Smile,” Isaiah’s voice broke, his grin stretched too thin. “Don’t let it see you falter.”

His words pierced me. The pressure mounted. The machine-thing’s love had been warped. It wanted us to break. To stop.

Then, in a moment of sickening clarity, I understood.

The machine wasn’t broken. It was incomplete.

“It’s not about fixing it,” I gasped, the realization hammering into me. “It’s about… finishing it. Completing the cycle.”

Isaiah stared at me, confusion tightening his already warped grin. “What does that mean?”

I didn’t know. Not fully. But my hands moved without thought, pressing the warm, living shapes into a sequence that felt… right. The machine responded, its hum rising to a steady, hypnotic rhythm, its colors shifting into a strange, comforting stillness.

Isaiah followed my lead, his movements instinctive now. Together, we finished it.

The machine stilled.

The cavern fell into silence.

And Reine’s body was gone.

My heart stopped. “Isaiah… where is she?”

He didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the empty space where she had been, his grin now too wide, too strained, as if holding something back, something we both feared.

We left the cavern in silence, walking through the tunnels, our footsteps echoing like the sound of ghosts trailing behind us.

The air outside felt cleaner. The sun felt too bright. The weight of the surface world pressing against my skin was stifling.

And then… she was there.

Reine stood at the end of the tunnel, her body whole, her grin simply perfect, radiant, unbroken, an impossible thing. “What took you so long?” she asked, her voice light, teasing.

Isaiah and I froze. Neither of us spoke.

We didn’t ask how she was alive. We didn’t mention the machine, or the twisted bodies we’d seen, or the way the world had bent around us in those moments.

We just smiled.

Back above ground, the sunlight seared my skin. The smiles on our faces felt fragile. They could crack at any moment. But we held them. We had to.

“The promise holds true,” Isaiah said, his voice shaking. “The First Oracle’s gospel… it’s real. Joy is eternal.”

I nodded, trying to believe it. Trying to feel it. To keep smiling.

But the fear… the fear of what we had done. The fear of what we had seen. The fear of how long we could keep this up, this game, this lie, was always there, in the back of my mind, pressing against my thoughts.

The Happy Place loves us.

And we must always love it back.

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Keep reading: Part 3.