The closer Seyfe drew to the corpse seated at the heart of the structure, the heavier the air became. Not with pressure or heat—but with presence. As though something unseen were holding its breath alongside him, watching his every step with anticipation.
The body was slumped in an aged chair of dark metal veins, bolted directly into the ground. Tubes spiraled out from its back and arms, pumping a sickly green liquid into the walls and chambers beyond. Its skin was pale, almost waxen, yet unwrinkled. The muscles beneath were still defined, the fingers resting on the armrests stiff but intact. No signs of decay. No flies. No smell. But no signs of healing either.
It was neither rotting… nor restoring.
Seyfe narrowed his eyes.
It's paused… he thought, his instincts prickling.
The figure's chest was hollowed open. Where a human heart should've been was instead a pulsing clump of formless green—viscous, silent, and rhythmically beating like a drum muffled by layers of earth. The heart had no valves, no arteries. Just a center of... nothingness. No flesh. No core. Just movement.
Seyfe crouched slowly beside the corpse, inspecting the tubes more closely. Each one fed into the surrounding facility, and if the notes on the walls were any indication, this corpse was the power source. Not just for the grotesque chambers—but for the corrupted echoform forest above.
He glanced at the face.
Eyes closed, but the skin was taut. Not a day of rot on it.
Seyfe raised his hand to the side of its temple and hovered a finger over the pale skin.
"Who were you before this?" he muttered.
As if in answer, a vibration trembled up through the floor and into his bones. The corpse's left eye twitched.
Seyfe instinctively pulled back and stood, hand brushing against the edge of the seat. The green heart pulsed harder. From somewhere deep in the chambers, the sound of machinery stuttering echoed across the walls.
Then—the corpse's lips parted.
A single breath escaped it, hoarse and hollow.
Not a gasp.
Not a whisper.
Just breath—proof of life.
A chill crawled down Seyfe's back.
"This thing's still alive…"
He circled the chair slowly, eyes scanning for any glyphs, triggers, or runic interfaces. But the tech here was raw—cobbled together with ritual instead of regulation. He stopped behind the corpse, noting where its spine had been fused with the chair. Thick cords of blackened tissue spiraled into the backrest, spreading like a parasite.
Then, something on the back of its neck caught his attention: an embedded rune, still softly glowing.
Not a rune for power.
Not a rune for control.
A binding rune.
Seyfe's fists clenched. "They didn't just use you… they trapped you."
And if the heart was still beating—then whoever this was, they were caught in an endless cycle of living without life. Kept at the edge of death to feed a machine born from obsession.
He looked up, toward the sealed chambers.
Whatever had been created here—this wasn't the end.
This was just the origin.
Seyfe stepped back toward the corpse, his jaw tightening.
The binding rune pulsed faintly like it knew—as if it anticipated what he was about to do. His hand hovered above the green heart, the viscous matter shifting ever so slightly under the transparent membrane of skin that barely contained it.
He gritted his teeth.
"This isn't life. This is torment."
He unsheathed his combat knife. It was Veiler-forged, serrated for density, etched with minor null runes for cutting through tethered bindings. He wasn't sure what would happen if the heart stopped pumping—but he knew enough to recognize when something needed to end.
With a swift motion, he plunged the blade down toward the green heart.
The instant the edge touched the membrane, a violent shudder rocked the entire chamber. Sparks of emerald energy burst across the air, scattering against the walls like shattered glass. Seyfe stumbled back but held the knife in with both hands, grinding his teeth as a wave of resistance fought back—not from the heart, but from the rune.
Tendril-like veins of glowing green slithered from the back of the corpse's neck, crawling along the seat and up Seyfe's arms, trying to push him off.
"Damn it—let go already!" Seyfe barked, pressing harder.
The knife met invisible resistance. It was like stabbing through congealed energy—shapeless but unyielding. The heart pulsed faster now, almost in panic. The chair beneath the corpse hissed and let out a deep groan as though warning him.
More of the cursed liquid oozed from the tubes into the chambers beyond. The bound abominations began to twitch inside their tanks—eyelids fluttering, heads jerking, limbs flinching against the green sludge.
Seyfe screamed in frustration and slammed his foot against the base of the chair for leverage. He drove the blade in deeper—only for it to suddenly snap in two.
A surge of energy exploded from the heart, flinging him backwards across the chamber. He hit the wall hard, landing on his shoulder with a painful grunt.
The broken half of the knife clattered uselessly beside him.
Smoke rose from his hands where the green energy had burned through the gloves. His palms trembled—not just from pain, but from failure.
"—Tch... you godsdamn cruel sons of bitches..." he cursed, breath ragged. "You didn't just bind him… you turned him into the core."
The heart continued to pulse. Calm now. As if mocking him.
Seyfe sat there, back against the wall, staring at the still-living corpse whose face remained emotionless—frozen in a state of eternal wakefulness.
The rune on its neck pulsed once. Twice. Then dulled again.
"…I'm sorry," Seyfe muttered, voice low. "You didn't deserve this."
For a moment, he closed his eyes, collecting himself.
Then he stood, taking one last look at the man—no, the prisoner—entombed in his own body.
He couldn't save him.
But maybe… he could stop whoever made this from ever doing it again.
He turned away from the heart.
And walked deeper into the facility.
Seyfe's footsteps echoed across the hallway, soft against the corrupted stone. The air grew denser the further he went. That green luminescence—ominous, pulsing like the breath of something just beneath the skin of the world—led him down another long corridor, until it opened into an immense hall.
The first thing he saw was the fountain.
It stood at the center like an altar. Grand, old, and baroque in shape—but perverted in purpose. Water didn't run from its tiers. Instead, the same green substance flowed, smooth and thick like syrup, spiraling upward from beneath the floor, defying gravity before trickling down. It didn't splash. It didn't bubble. It simply moved—pumped—with mechanical certainty.
Seyfe approached it warily. The ground beneath the fountain was layered in rune-circles, etched not with traditional glyphs of containment or protection, but with ones he couldn't recognize. They weren't symbols meant to cast. They were meant to evolve.
And near the base of the fountain, etched in the faded stone, he caught a single phrase written in Old Tongue.
Death can wither, but yearning can root deeper than flesh.
Seyfe's brows tightened.
There was a pulse again—stronger this time. Not from the fountain.
From behind it.
He stepped around the structure, hand hovering close to the sheath of his backup dagger. What he found was another corpse—though this one was different.
It was upright, bound in vertical suspension by chains nailed to the ribcage, not the limbs. The body's arms hung limply by its sides, fingers curled inward. Its feet didn't touch the ground, suspended a foot off the air. But it was still.
Not breathing.
Not blinking.
Not rotting.
Not alive.
And yet... the skin—ashen and bruised in patches—seemed to rejuvenate in slow, undulating patterns, like the body was healing only to die again, in a constant cycle. His eye caught the movement of blood, sluggish but active, traveling the veins like it had nowhere else to go.
A thick tube ran from the back of its neck directly into the stone wall, siphoning something. The same green fluid pulsed faintly through the tubing.
Seyfe's throat tightened.
"This isn't just a lab…" he whispered to himself. "It's a factory for recycling souls."
He took a cautious step forward, eyes scanning the surroundings. The chains weren't simple iron—they were runewrought, glimmering under the pulse of the green light. Every link had a symbol engraved—one to trap, one to delay decay, one to preserve memory.
This corpse wasn't meant to die.
It was meant to stay in limbo.
Forever.
He glanced down at the corpse's face—young, sharp-boned, likely once a scholar. Eyes closed. Lips parted just enough that Seyfe wondered if it had ever tried to scream.
A nameplate was embedded into the wall beside it. It was cracked, but one word stood out.
"Subject: VEDRAN."
Seyfe's brows furrowed.
That name wasn't just familiar—it was from the Overseer archives. Vedran was an academic from a century ago, presumed dead after trying to uncover the mystery of Echoform origins.
He took a shaky breath, the implications curling like frost along his spine.
Whoever had built this place had done more than just toy with life and death—they had tried to perfect the idea of continuation.
And they were using real bodies—real people—to do it.
Seyfe turned his back to the body, suddenly feeling watched, even though he was alone.
Or… he thought he was.
He reached for his earpiece—only to remember it had long since stopped functioning in this realm.
He needed to find a way out.
But even as he looked toward the far side of the hall, toward another sealed gate, a thought clawed into his mind:
If they made this… who's continuing their work now?
He clenched his jaw.
Then, without another glance at Vedran, he moved toward the sealed passageway—ready to unearth more of the answers he hadn't asked to find.