It was cold.

  Not a simple chill that nipped at the skin, but a penetrating, soul-deep freeze that felt ancient and unnatural, as if death itself had wrapped around me like a burial shroud. The cold didn’t just touch me—it claimed me, saturating every fiber of my being until I couldn’t tell where my flesh ended and the ice began. It silenced my thoughts, numbed my awareness, and drowned me in a stillness so absolute that even time seemed to hold its breath. I was suspended in nothingness, adrift in a void without form, function, or feeling. There was no floor beneath me, no ceiling above—just a perfect and suffocating black.

  I tried to open my eyes, but even that small act felt like an impossible feat. My eyelids might as well have been carved from stone. The very thought of movement was exhausting, as if the idea alone required more energy than my body had left to give. There was no telling how long I had been trapped here—hours, days, years? Time unraveled, lost to the darkness, and with it, the memory of who I was or what I had been before.

  Where am I?

  The question echoed hollowly inside my skull, as though shouted into a vast, empty canyon. Even thinking the words left me drained. There were no answers, no voices, no sensations beyond the crushing cold and the endless dark. I tried to reach out—not with hands, but with awareness, with whatever fragmented part of me still dared to feel—but there was nothing to connect to. My body, if it still existed, was lost in the void. My senses returned nothing.

  Then, suddenly, a flicker. A thought.

  What happened?

  The question cracked the silence like a whisper through a crypt. Fleeting images began to bleed through the black. Not memories—too fragmented, too surreal—but flashes. Visions. A fire, wild and hungry, its flames clawing at walls and ceiling. My hands trembling as I bent over a bathtub, choking, crimson vomit splattering against porcelain. My skin—God, my skin—sloughing off in sick, wet ribbons, sliding down to the tile in strings of ruined flesh.

  Panic surged through me like electricity, jolting something primal awake. Panic? No—terror. Pure, animalistic fear. The kind that makes your heart hammer as though it’s trying to escape your ribcage, the kind that drowns reason beneath the instinct to run, fight, survive. I wanted out—I wanted to live. I didn’t care how or why, only that I had to get free of this… this nothing.

  The darkness responded, folding in tighter, as though it sensed my growing awareness. It pressed against me like a second skin, heavy and oppressive, daring me to resist, to try and escape its endless grasp. I struggled—at first mentally, then physically. Limbs that had been dormant for… however long… twitched into motion, feeble and uncoordinated, like a newborn fawn trying to stand. My lungs seized. I didn’t know if I was breathing, but something in me demanded air, demanded movement, demanded life.

  Then—light.

  A single pinprick. So small it could’ve been imagined, yet unmistakably real. It shimmered in the distance, impossibly far but burning with a warmth that seemed almost holy compared to the frostbitten tomb around me. I locked onto it like a drowning man spotting the surface of the water, and without hesitation, I surged toward it—though my body remained unmoving. It was a spiritual lunge, a soul’s desperate reach.

  But the light receded. Always just ahead. Time twisted and unraveled, turning every second into an eternity. My reach stretched on and on, but the light grew no closer. It was like trying to touch the stars from the bottom of the ocean. Every moment dragged with the weight of years, and the fear that I would never reach it clamped down on my chest like a vice.

  No. I can’t lose this. I won’t.

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  “I will reach you!” I cried—whether aloud or in my mind, I couldn't say. It didn’t matter. My desperation took shape, driving me with a force I didn’t know I possessed. Something deep within me—dormant, ancient, angry—snapped open like a clenched fist. I pushed harder, tore at the darkness with everything I had left. My fingers brushed the edge of the light.

  And then, everything changed.

  A surge of warmth, brilliant and blinding, ripped through me like lightning. It chased away the cold in an instant, filling my limbs with unbearable heat. The agony was almost as bad as the numbness—like being reborn through fire. My mouth opened in a scream, raw and ragged, as if my vocal cords were learning how to work again. I had no control. I thrashed, convulsed, felt—for the first time in what felt like forever.

  But before I could understand what was happening, I began to drown.

  Liquid. Thick, heavy, and suffocating. It filled my lungs, poured down my throat, coated my skin. My instincts kicked in with violent force—limbs flailing, lungs heaving. I couldn’t breathe. My eyes flew open. Blurred lights and distorted shapes spun wildly around me. My hands slammed against something smooth and unyielding.

  Glass.

  I was trapped.

  Panic flared, fresh and choking. I struck the glass, weak at first, then harder. My fists thudded against it again and again, pain blooming across my knuckles. Cracks began to splinter the surface, fine as spiderwebs.

  Come on. Come on—

  CRACK—CRACK—

  CRASH.

  The tank burst apart. A rush of cold, viscous fluid dumped me onto the floor in a torrent. I landed hard on wet tile, the air exploding from my lungs as glass bit into my side. I gasped, open-mouthed, drawing in a breath so sharp it seared like fire. The relief was immediate and overwhelming. I choked and gagged, vomiting fluid in ragged bursts. My body trembled uncontrollably, muscles spasming from the strain.

  It took long moments for me to stabilize—knees buckling beneath me, chest heaving. My skin was raw and slick, covered in filmy mucus that clung to every inch like a second skin. I blinked rapidly, forcing my vision to focus through the blur. My surroundings came into view in pieces.

  Rows of cylindrical tanks, each one towering and filled with the same thick, glowing fluid I had just emerged from. Some were empty. Others… weren’t.

  One tank still bubbled faintly beside me—its contents pale and unmoving. My fingers found the edge of it, using it to steady myself. But then I saw what floated inside.

  A face.

  If it could be called that. Its features were stretched and loose, as if halfway melted. Dead eyes, bulbous and glazed, stared out at nothing. Its skin was bloodless, almost translucent, with white, rope-like tendrils where legs should’ve been. The top of its skull was clear, revealing a pulsing brain suspended in gelatinous fluid.

  I recoiled with a cry, my stomach heaving. I collapsed to my hands and knees and vomited again, this time dry, retching until tears stung my eyes.

  What the fuck is this place? What the fuck happened to me?

  As the nausea ebbed, I forced myself to look again—at the other tanks. Horror bloomed as I saw what was inside them. One held a woman—at least, what had once been a woman—her chest and head pierced with thorny green vines that twitched subtly, as though sensing my gaze. Another held a man whose head had swollen grotesquely, green veins pulsating beneath stretched skin, eyes wide and frozen.

  Dead. All of them. Silent. Lifeless. But not peaceful.

  I staggered backward, my breath catching. Numbers were tattooed on their flesh. Black ink, clinical, impersonal. Branding.

  I turned my gaze inward then, panicked, running my hands over my own body. I searched for deformities—tentacles, growths, unnatural seams in my flesh. Nothing. Smooth skin, trembling muscles. No vines. No tentacles. Just… smaller. Leaner. I felt wrong—but intact.

  For now.

  I have to get out. I have to get the fuck out of here.

  I scanned the room again, chest heaving. In the far corner, a stairwell—metal, industrial, leading up to a catwalk above. I could see a doorway, barely lit, a rectangle of potential salvation. I moved—slipping, staggering, nearly falling. Blood from my side trickled down my leg, mixing with the thick fluid beneath my feet. Every step was agony.

  But I kept going.

  Because whatever this place was—whatever they did to me—I wasn’t staying to find out the rest.