The laboratory did not belong to life.
It existed beneath it—buried deep within stone that had long forgotten sunlight, where the air itself felt thick, damp, and wrong. The walls sweated with a viscous sheen, something between condensation and decay, and every breath carried the stench of iron, rot, and something faintly sweet that clung to the back of the throat like syrup.
Chains hung from the ceiling.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds.
Each one swayed gently, though there was no wind.
And from those chains—bodies.
Arms.
Legs.
Torsos.
Limbs dangled in isolation—arms stripped to the bone in places, fingers twitching faintly as though memory still lingered within them. Legs hung inverted, skin peeled back in sections to expose muscle that had been carved, studied, rearranged. Torsos were suspended open like butchered carcasses, ribs pried apart, organs either removed or replaced with crude mechanical approximations that ticked faintly in the dim.
There were women.
Men.
Beasts.
And things that had once been either.Their forms had been taken apart and reassembled in experiments that had no interest in dignity, only in function. In understanding. In control.
The limbs of beasts mingled with the limbs of men, flesh fused to flesh in grotesque parodies of anatomy. A woman's torso had been stitched to the hindquarters of a wolf. A man's head had been mounted on the body of a bear, its eyes sewn shut, its mouth frozen in a scream that would never end.
The entire space radiated something heavier than death. It was the smell of a place where death was not an end but a raw material, to be shaped and reused and discarded when it ceased to be useful.
It was Despair.
It clung to the walls. To the chains. To the very air.
A silent, suffocating echo of suffering that had never been allowed to end.
At the center of it all, under a single beam of light—
He stood.
Bent.
Crooked.
A figure whose very posture seemed to reject symmetry.
His back was hunched into a grotesque curve, one shoulder higher than the other, his spine visibly misaligned beneath stretched, mottled skin. His face was swollen, asymmetrical, as if it had been reconstructed from memory rather than precision. One eye sat slightly lower than the other, both sunken deep into bruised sockets, yet alight with a feverish, manic brilliance. He appeared shorter than he was, though his arms hung long and thick, ending in fingers that twitched with constant, nervous energy.
This was Igor Patrovski.
The table before him was drenched.
Blood pooled and spilled over its edges in slow, rhythmic drips, pattering against the stone floor below.
Squelch.
The sound came again.
Wet.
Visceral.
A mixture of flesh parting and something harder grinding beneath it. Flesh parted with wet, sucking sounds. Blood splattered across his apron, across his face, across the floor around him. He did not seem to notice. His eyes were fixed on the thing before him, and his lips were pulled back in a grin that showed jagged yellow teeth.
His hands moved with disturbing familiarity, fingers digging into exposed tissue, pulling, adjusting, cutting. His nails were stained black, his skin layered with dried blood that had long since become part of him.
"Mm… no, no, no…" he muttered, voice thick and uneven.
"You don't get to decide that."
A spray of blood answered him.
On either side of the table—
Two figures stood.
A man.
A woman.
Both naked.
Both alive.
They had been alive for a long time.
Their bodies had been opened from sternum to abdomen, ribs spread apart with mechanical braces that held them in place. Tubes ran from within them—thick, pulsing lines that carried blood, fluids, something more—feeding directly into the thing upon the table.
Their heads were tilted slightly upward.
Pins—long, thin, glistening—had been driven into their skulls at precise angles.
Their expressions—
Serene.
Peaceful.
Smiling.
As if they were dreaming.
As if they were not aware.
Or worse—
As if they were aware and could not react.
Above the table, multi-jointed appendages descended from the ceiling. They moved like the limbs of insects, chitinous and segmented, each one tipped with a different tool—a scalpel, a bone saw, a needle and thread, a clamp, a spreader. They worked in concert with Igor, mirroring his movements, anticipating his needs, never hesitating.
A wet dragging sound echoed from the far side of the room.
It approached.
A patchwork figure.
It had once been a woman. Now it was something else. Her body was stitched together from mismatched sections of flesh, tones and textures clashing where seams held them together. Her ribs were exposed, spread open not by force but by design, and through them ran tubes—thin, transparent lines that pulsed faintly with dim, sluggish light.
Her face—
There was none.
Only smooth, featureless skin where identity should have been.
In her hands, she carried three objects on a tray;three Flowstone cores—one large, two small.
They pulsed faintly, crimson light flickering beneath their crystalline surfaces.
She stopped beside Igor and offered them. Igor took them without looking. His fingers closed around the cores, and he slotted them into the thing on the table.
The reaction was immediate.The lab groaned.
A surge.
An aura.
Orange.
Violent. The appendages faltered. Their movements became jerky, uncoordinated, as if something was pushing back against them. A wave of pressure was not physical, but spiritual. It was the weight of a soul refusing to be bound.
Igor's grin widened.
"Ahh…" he breathed, voice trembling with delight.
"There you are…"
The aura pulsed again.
Stronger.
Resisting.
Fighting.
"Still defiant?" Igor chuckled, low and wet. "Even in death… you refuse me…"
He reached into his coat.
Pulled something free. A syringe.
Filled with a viscous black liquid that seemed to swallow the light around it.
A variant of the black ooze, the corruption that Lyle had acquired. The same one that had spilled from the battle of Saints, that had infected the people of Blackhaven, that had killed and corrupted and spread like a plague.
He drove the needle down into flesh. The black liquid pulsed inward.
The orange aura convulsed— then began to recede.
Slowly.
Reluctantly.
As if being dragged back against its will.
Igor leaned closer, watching, breathing faster.
"Yes… yes… submit…"
The last flicker vanished.
Silence fell.
Then—
The appendages resumed.
They moved with renewed vigor, lifting—presenting—the final creation, turning it so that its form was visible in the dim light of the lab.
It hung suspended above the table.
A skeleton.
Not a complete one—it had been hollowed out, carved and shaped until it resembled a suit of armor more than a body. Its ribcage formed a chest plate. Its spine formed a central column. Its limbs had been articulated, jointed, designed to be worn.
And on its arms—two hands.
Not a complete one—it had been hollowed out, carved and shaped until it resembled a suit of armor more than a body. Its ribcage formed a chest plate. Its spine formed a central column. Its limbs had been articulated, jointed, designed to be worn.
And on its arms—two hands. They were elongated, the fingers stretched unnaturally, each digit ending in a needle-like claw that split at the tip into twin prongs. Tubes ran through them—threading beneath the skin, connecting to the wrist, the forearm, the central frame. Some tubes were empty.
Others—
Were filled.
Blood flowed through them in steady pulses, drawn from the two figures still siting at either side of the table.
At the center of the construct—
A clockwork heart.
Flesh and metal fused together.
It beat. Slow.Deliberate.
Each pulse sending fresh blood through the network, feeding the hands, sustaining them.
Sustaining him.
Because there was no doubt.
These were the hands of the Grand Maker.
Sigmund Kilgowe.
Elias's teacher.
Jamie's mentor.
The old man who had called them gremlins and taught them artificing and drunk terrible tea and run from his past until his past caught up with him.
The hands twitched.
The fingers curled.
The claws extended.
The appendages moved again.
They severed the tubes connected to the man and woman beside the table.
Clean.
Efficient.
Then, with delicate precision, they stitched the exposed veins shut, sealing them, preserving what remained.
The two bodies sagged slightly as their blood began to spray from the tubes.
Still smiling.
Still breathing.
Igor stepped forward.
Slowly, reverently, he reached out and touched the hands.
His fingers trembled.
His expression—
Ecstatic. Almost—
Aroused.
"In life…" he whispered, voice thick with emotion, "you looked down on me…"
His lips peeled back in a grin.
"But in death…"
He pressed his forehead lightly against the construct.
"You will elevate me."
He straightened.
Chest rising.
Eyes gleaming.
"I, Igor Patrovski… will rise."
He laughed.
It was a wet, gurgling sound, thick with saliva and phlegm.
A dismembered voice spoke from the shadows.
"So. You were finally successful."
Mist had begun to seep into the lab, curling around the chains, pooling on the floor. It moved against the draft, against the logic of air and pressure, as if it had a will of its own.
Igor turned.
"Oh," he said, his grin stretching wider.
"You're just in time."
The figure in the mist stepped closer. Its features were impossible to discern—they shifted and blurred, as if the mist itself was part of its body. But its voice was clear, layered, many voices speaking as one.
"Hmm. After all those attempts, all those corpses, you managed to pull it off."
Igor chuckled.
"It wasn't easy," he said.
"Creating a living artifact… especially as a Mundane human with no Awakened Flow."
There was pride in his voice.
Sharp. Bitter.
"But I've done it."
He glanced back at the construct.
"Turns out… the great Sigmund Kilgowe wasn't special after all."
There was pride in his voice.
The figure bent forward to inspect the clockwork heart. The appendages had covered it in a translucent glass container and filled it with an amber liquid that glowed faintly.
"Did you really need to keep him alive for this?"
Igor laughed.
Loud.
Unpleasant.
"Of course."
He gestured vaguely.
"I only needed a part of him. But…" he shrugged.
"I can't artifice. Not properly. I can't process residual energy."
His grin returned.
"I use something better."
He tapped the glass.
"A living source."
The voice was quiet for a moment.
"I understand that Sigmund needs to be alive. But won't he feel everything?"
Igor's eyes lit up.
"Yes."
He was delighted.
"Every cut. Every extraction. Every… refinement."
He exhaled slowly.
"His soul is being peeled apart… piece by piece to clear up residue for my artifacts—it should be agonizing."
His smile sharpened.
"I think it's appropriate."
He turned back to the construct.
"The man who made artifacts… reduced to one. I'll call it my Gifted Hands."
A pause.
The figure sighed.
"Ah, well."
It turned away from the table and walked toward a large tube at the far end of the lab. The tube was filled with the same amber liquid, glowing faintly in the darkness. Inside, suspended in the fluid, A boy floated.Black hair drifting gently around his face. Eyes closed.
A bronze plaque was affixed to the tube's base.
One word was engraved on it.
FREE
The voice hummed softly.
"Your naming sense is… peculiar."
Behind them, Igor clapped his hands once.
Two more patchwork figures emerged from the shadows.
Smaller.
Almost… cute. In a twisted, wrong way.
"Fluffy," Igor said, pointing to the dog-creature.
"Snuggles." He pointed to the child-creature.
"Dinner."
They didn't hesitate.
They fell upon the bodies.
Tearing.
Eating.
The sounds—Wet. Hungry.
Igor didn't watch.
He stepped forward, accepting a bloodied towel from the faceless patchwork.
Wiping his hands.
Slowly and carefully.
He moved to stand beside the figure in the mist.
"Now that we have the tool," he said, "all we need is the material."
he figure in the mist nodded.
"Yes." Its layered voices echoed through the lab.
"The next step is acquiring the fragment of the Oblivion Cube in Aethelberg."
Igor's grin returned.
"Then let us begin."
The mist thickened.
The chains swayed.
And somewhere, in the darkness between heartbeats, the hands of Sigmund Kilgowe curled into fists.