"You're not supposed to be here, you know."
The voice hit like a knife to the spine.
Not loud. Not gentle. Just there. Right behind him, where no one should be.
Merlin didn't breathe.
His fingers tightened on Keryx's hilt. Lightning laced faintly across the blade's edge, but he didn't turn. Not yet.
'Something got that close without tripping my perception field.'
The silence behind him stretched—not dead silence, but watching silence. Waiting.
A whisper of air, too cold, too sharp.
Keryx rose in a clean arc, the blade a shimmer of light in the dark.
Because there was someone standing there.
A girl—if you could call it that. Small frame. Long hair that hung like it had been dragged through oil. Skin pale but veined with something too dark, as if her blood had forgotten how to flow properly. And her eyes—her eyes—
Merlin's grip tightened.
Just sockets filled with thin light. Like something tried to mimic being alive and didn't quite get it right.
Not like a person. Like an insect. Slow. Deliberate. Dissecting.
"Not one of them," she whispered. Her voice echoed off the metal like it didn't belong in air. "Too slow. Too… loud."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Merlin said. His voice was calm, but inside his chest, his ribs pulled tight.
The thing stepped forward.
One bare foot. No sound.
"Not staff," she said again. "Not test. Not mine."
Merlin didn't move. "You're Subject Zero."
A flicker passed through her face—like a glitch in a projection.
"No," she said. Then smiled. "Not anymore."
'She doesn't know about the rift.'
'She thinks I'm another intruder.'
"I don't want to fight you," he said.
She smiled wider. "That's good."
The smile didn't reach her eyes. Because there were no eyes.
"Because you wouldn't win."
Keryx pulsed once with mana. Merlin kept the blade low, non-threatening. "You were in the pod. Three days ago, you left."
"I didn't leave." Her tone shifted. It grew… flat. "They left. They tried to bury me again."
Her feet moved. No real steps—she just was closer. Ten meters. Then five.
Merlin didn't step back.
'Don't show weakness. Predators notice.'
"I'm not with them," he said, eyes sharp.
Then her head jerked sideways.
A shudder passed through her frame. A ripple beneath her skin.
"Something followed you here."
Merlin's heart skipped.
She turned slightly—just enough to face the shadowed corridor.
"Noisy thing. Angry. Wrong."
Merlin twisted, eyes narrowing. The auxiliary hallway was empty. Still. But—
A shift in the mana. A wrinkle in the air.
Something was moving in the walls.
He looked back at the girl.
No sound. No flicker. Just vanished—like she'd melted out of the frame of the world itself.
'No time to process that.'
The scraping started.
Something else was in the facility.
Merlin backed toward the main desk, blade raised, breathing steady.
The lights overhead flickered.
A low whine built in the walls.
Keryx vibrated in his hand.
'No cover. No traps. Just open space. I'm fucked.'
The scraping grew louder.
Whatever was coming, it wasn't trying to hide.
'Let's see what this place buried.'
The sound was almost slow at first.
Merlin exhaled through his nose. Keryx was steady in his grip. The lights overhead sputtered, casting jagged shadows against the curved metal walls.
No, not quite—pouring.
The creature unfolded from the corridor like a liquid nightmare. Limbs first—too many of them, jagged and slick. No eyes. No face. Just a maw in the middle of a chitin-covered torso, opening sideways like it didn't understand how mouths were supposed to work.
Merlin's breath caught.
'What the hell is even that thing?'
Steam poured off its back as it dragged itself out of the corridor fully—twice the size of Merlin, bristling with what looked like malformed armor. Bones jutted from the flesh like blades.
Its head—or what passed for one—twitched once toward Merlin.
Subject 0 appeared in front of it.
Like the world forgot where she had been a moment ago.
She was silent. Still barefoot. Still smiling.
Faster than it should've been.
Merlin tensed—Keryx raised instinctively.
Not dodging. Not blocking.
She let the thing hit her.
The impact should've torn her apart, but it didn't. The creature's momentum stopped like it had slammed into a wall. Her fingers were wrapped around one of its extended arms—those jagged, bladed limbs—and she twisted.
There was a sound like wet rope being torn in half.
Then came the screaming.
The creature shrieked—an awful, choked, inhuman sound—as she tore its arm off in a clean wrenching motion. Black ichor sprayed across the wall. The lights flashed.
Her hand was inside its chest.
Her arm went straight through the armor, into the ribs, out the back.
Merlin's stomach twisted.
'…That's not strength. That's something else entirely.'
She tilted her head—expression still peaceful—as she spread her fingers.
And the creature convulsed.
Its torso split down the middle like overripe fruit.
Flesh hit the walls in wet, meat-thick slaps. Bone shattered. Fluid boiled.
She stood over what remained.
And slowly—so slowly—she looked over her shoulder.
"Still watching?" she asked.
Merlin didn't answer.
She stepped toward him—bare feet silent on the slick floor. Black ichor clung to her like paint.
"I thought you'd run."
Merlin met her eyes. "I don't run."
She smiled again. "Neither do I."
He watched her carefully.
Just wrongness in the shape of a person.
"What are you?" he asked, voice low.
Then she walked past him.
Toward the corridor he hadn't entered yet.
The one marked EAST WING – SEALED.
She didn't touch the melted lock.
She just stood in front of it.
Metal groaned. Steam hissed.
She glanced back once.
'I don't think I have much of a choice.'
Because whatever was behind that door—
Was worse than anything he'd seen yet.
And somehow, she wanted him to see it.
The door yawned open like a mouth left too long in rigor mortis—gutted hinges groaning as steam curled around his boots.
Merlin stepped in behind her.
One foot, then the other.
Keryx still drawn. Mana low but steady. He kept his eyes sharp, blade sharper.
The light didn't reach here. The emergency backup from the lab stopped at the threshold.
Only blackness ahead.
Subject 0 didn't hesitate. She walked as if she knew every inch of the space—bare feet landing silent against the steel floor. Her white coat, now soaked in thick ribbons of blood and ichor, trailed behind her like a war banner.
'She's not cautious. Not reckless. She just… doesn't care.'
Not temperature-wise. Not physically.
Whatever this place was—it hated being remembered.
The walls were smooth—no consoles, no control panels. Just a long hallway, gently sloped, descending into whatever was buried beneath the lab. It felt like a bunker. Or a tomb.
"How far does this go?" Merlin asked.
She didn't turn. "Far enough."
"…Far enough for what?"
"Do you want the honest answer?"
He blinked. "Try me."
She glanced over her shoulder, expression still calm. Her irises gleamed silver in the dark.
"It leads to what's left of me."
Then she kept walking.
Because every instinct in him screamed to stop following.
Dozens of shattered tanks were half-buried in the ground. Glass glittered like bone fragments in the dark. The corpses were gone, but the absence of them wasn't.
"They were like me," she said. "Early tests. Variants."
Merlin's eyes narrowed. "And you survived."
She shrugged. "Define 'survived.'"
He didn't ask what happened to the others.
There were scratch marks along the walls here, too. Deeper. Not wild. Deliberate. Like someone had been carving their way out one inch at a time.
But what caught his eye was the far end of the room.
Or maybe just a slab. Made of the same blackened bone-glass as the rest of the facility. But it had runes carved into it.
Runes that pulsed with the same rhythm as the corrupted mana in the air.
She stopped just in front of it. Placed a hand on the side.
"I come here when I want to remember."
He tilted his head. "Remember what?"
Her voice lowered. "What I was made for."
She looked over her shoulder.
"Worse things than you can imagine."
Merlin's fingers curled at his side.
But she didn't move toward him.
One leg crossed over the other. Her hair—long, white, tangled with dried blood—curled over her shoulder like mist.
Merlin didn't lower his guard.
"What was that thing in the hallway?" he asked. "The thing. The one you… tore apart."
Her gaze flicked upward.
He didn't like that answer.
He exhaled slowly, trying to suppress the chill at the base of his neck.
"And what are you, then?"
She tilted her head as she smiled.
"Something hungrier."