Tor woke with a jolt.
For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming—until he felt the cold metal floor beneath him. The air tasted stale, thick with dust. His eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness of the hidden chamber… and then froze.
Someone was standing in front of him.
A tall figure. A silhouette he knew too well.
His father.
Aron stood only a few steps away, his posture unnaturally straight, eyes locked onto Tor with a grim, unreadable expression—no warmth, no recognition, just a heavy, suffocating seriousness.
Tor's breath caught in his throat. His heartbeat stumbled.
"Dad…?"
The word barely slipped out. It cracked, trembling.
Aron didn't move. Didn't blink. Just stared.
Tor felt his fingers grow numb, as if blood had stopped flowing through them. Cold spread up his arms, down his back. His body refused to move—not out of fear, but out of the same hollow emptiness that had taken him last night.
And then—
Aron vanished.
Not stepped away. Not faded.
Just gone, instantly, like a mirage torn apart by reality.
Tor didn't scream.
Didn't gasp.
Didn't speak.
Only a thin line of sweat rolled down his forehead, trailing along his cheek before dripping onto his shirt. His eyes didn't widen, didn't blink. He sat there, back hunched slightly forward, breath shallow, fingers trembling in small violent twitches he wasn't even aware of.
He simply stared at the empty space where his father had been.
Seconds passed.
Minutes.
He didn't know how long. Time had become meaningless.
His stomach growled—a low, painful twist echoing through the chamber. He didn't move. Hunger felt distant, irrelevant. Just another sound in a world that had already fallen apart.
The chamber stretched out before him: wide, filled with a haze of dust that caught what little light seeped in through the narrow cracks of the ventilation slits. Old tools and rusted shelves lined the walls. Torn cloth lay piled in corners. The smell of old metal and chemical residue lingered in the air.
But Tor didn't look at any of it.
He stared straight ahead, unblinking. His eyes burned, but he didn't wipe them. He felt the sweat drip again down his neck but didn't react. His shoulders were stiff, locked in place.
He wasn't thinking.
He couldn't think.
His mind had gone silent—too silent. No questions, no memories, no fear. Just a blank, empty ringing inside his skull. As if his brain had simply shut down the moment Aron's image disappeared.
Time crawled by.
Ten minutes.
Twenty.
An hour.
Tor didn't shift. Didn't stretch. Didn't look around. He sat exactly as he had woken—back bent, head slightly lowered, hands limp between his knees.
Dust drifted around him like slow-moving snow, settling on his hair and clothes.
His breathing was shallow and slow, barely noticeable.
At one point his fingers twitched again, a subtle spasm, but he didn't notice.
His stomach growled once more, louder this time. It echoed off the metal walls.
Still no reaction.
The chamber was silent except for the faint hum of air through the vents. A single draft brushed past him, stirring the dust on the floor. It carried the scent of burned wood—the same scent he had breathed before he found his father's broken body.
Still, Tor didn't flinch.
His eyes remained set on the blank wall ahead. It was dirty, stained with old water marks and scratches. Nothing interesting. Nothing meaningful. Yet he stared at it as if it were the only thing left in the world.
Because right now, it was.
His throat was dry. He swallowed, but it felt like sand scraping down. He didn't try again.
Hours slipped away in silence.
Eventually, a sneeze escaped him—a sudden, involuntary burst as dust tickled his nose.
His body jerked slightly.
But his expression didn't change. His eyes didn't move. His posture stayed frozen.
He returned to the same stillness as before, as if nothing had happened.
Tor didn't know if he was waiting for something.
He didn't know if he wanted to move.
He didn't know if he could.
The only thing he knew, buried deep beneath the numbness, was that his world had ended last night.
And now, in this forgotten chamber deep beneath the mountain, he sat with only dust, silence, and ghosts for company.
---
A full day slipped by in silence.
Tor didn't remember falling asleep. He didn't remember waking up. Time felt like a dark river carrying him forward whether he wanted to move or not. The only thing that finally broke the emptiness was the sharp, hollow ache twisting inside his stomach.
Another growl—louder than the one from yesterday.
His body reacted before his mind did. His fingers twitched. His throat tightened. He blinked for the first time in what felt like hours. The numbness wrapped around him like a heavy blanket, but instinct forced him to move.
Slowly—very slowly—Tor pushed his hands against the dusty floor and lifted himself up. His legs trembled beneath him. Blood rushed painfully through them as if he were learning to stand for the first time. He didn't speak. He didn't sigh. His face remained blank, drained of emotion.
He took one step.
Then another.
No thoughts guided him. Just a dull pull from his gut telling him he needed something—anything—to keep going.
Across the chamber, half-buried under old cloth and rusted metal, was a cardboard carton. Its letters were almost peeled off, but he could still read the faded print:
CANNED FOOD
He stared at it for several seconds as if unsure whether it was real.
Then he knelt, his joints stiff and aching, and pulled the box toward him. Dust rose in a slow cloud as he lifted the flaps. Inside were a few cans of jam, some packets of dried biscuits, and a row of sealed water bottles—old but intact.
Tor reached in, hands trembling, and grabbed a can of jam. He stumbled across the room looking for something to open it with before noticing a rusty old opener lying nearby. His fingers fumbled, but eventually the lid snapped open with a metallic crack.
He brought the can to his lips.
Sweetness hit his tongue immediately—thick, artificial, overwhelming. But it didn't matter. His body swallowed it greedily. He drank half the can in one breath, his throat working quickly, desperately. Some of the jam dripped down his chin, trailing along his neck and onto his shirt.
He didn't wipe it.
When he'd finished, he set the can down, his hand shaking. His body still felt weak, his limbs heavy as stone. He reached for a bottle of water, twisted the cap open, and lifted it to drink.
Cold water washed down his throat. It felt strange after a full day of silence and emptiness, like life being forced back into him. He paused halfway through, catching his breath, then finished the bottle in slow, steady gulps.
His muscles trembled. His skin felt cold. But there was something different now—barely noticeable, but real. A thin thread of strength returning.
Tor sat back, leaning against a metal crate behind him. His breathing steadied. His eyes drifted across the chamber again, though unfocused. Not searching for anything. Just moving because his exhaustion finally loosened its grip.
And then—
A wet sound.
Drop.
Something dark splattered on the floor right in front of him.
Tor's gaze lowered, expression still flat. A small red droplet glistened on the dusty metal, its color disturbingly vivid in the dim light.
Blood.
Another droplet fell.
Drop.
Slowly—almost mechanically—Tor lifted his head, tracing the path of the falling blood.
Above him, on the chamber's low ceiling, something had formed—a thin, crimson line, as if something were leaking through from the world above.
He stared at it.
For a moment, the blood thickened, gathering into a trembling bead of red. It swelled… and then fell again.
Drop.
Tor didn't blink. His breathing didn't change.
He simply stared.
And then—
As if the world were mocking him—
the blood vanished.
Not wiped away.
Not absorbed.
Just gone.
The ceiling was dry again. No stain. No trace that anything had ever been there.
Tor remained still for a long moment.
Slowly, he lowered his head. The chamber hummed quietly around him, dust drifting lazily in the air. His empty can of jam lay beside him, the scent lingering faintly.
He felt the weight of the air pressing against his chest, heavy and suffocating. His stomach twisted—not in hunger this time, but in something deeper, something hollow and painful.
His lips parted.
Only one sentence slipped out. A whisper. A confession to no one.
"I'm tired."
The words fell weakly, dragged from the last remnants of strength he had. They echoed in the chamber before fading into the hum of the vents.
Tor's shoulders slumped. His eyes dimmed again.
He didn't cry.
He didn't tremble.
He simply lowered his head and closed his eyes, letting the silence swallow him once more.
---
Five days passed.
In the dim, stale quiet of the chamber, Tor sat with one knee raised, his arm hanging loosely over it. His breathing was steady but faint, the way someone breathes when their mind is drifting in a place far from the present. His body had grown weaker from the lack of movement, and the air around him smelled of dust, metal, and the faint sweetness of old jam.
He stared at nothing for a long time.
Then—slowly, stiffly—Tor pushed himself to his feet.
His joints crackled. His back ached. But he stood straight, blinking at the shadows around him. Something deep inside him—maybe instinct, maybe desperation—told him he couldn't keep sitting forever.
He had to know where he was.
What this place held.
Anything that might explain why he was here… and what he was supposed to do next.
The chamber was larger than it seemed at first glance. When he walked forward, the darkness revealed more: abandoned tables, dusty shelves, toppled metal crates, and glass equipment stained with old chemicals. His footsteps echoed softly as he moved deeper.
Halfway across the room, something caught his eye.
A frame—large, metal, and covered in a thick layer of dust—hung crookedly against the far wall. The glass was cracked, the corners dented, but the image behind it was still visible.
Tor approached it slowly.
He brushed away the dust with his hand.
A photograph revealed itself—large, old, and half-destroyed. On the left stood a younger version of his father, wearing a clean lab coat and smiling faintly. And beside him—leaning slightly against him—was a woman.
Her face was gone. Torn, burned, or scratched beyond recognition. But her hair…
Tor stared.
Blond.
Long.
A small corner of it untouched, shining faintly even under the dust.
His father's arm rested around her waist the way couples stood in pictures. Behind them, towering skyscrapers pierced the sky, hinting at a megacity far from the wilderness Tor had grown up in.
He didn't move.
He didn't breathe for several seconds.
His chest tightened—not with panic, not with shock, but with a quiet ache. An ache he didn't know how to name.
Was this his mother?
The thought drifted through him like smoke. He didn't say it aloud. His lips didn't even twitch. He stood there, empty-eyed, staring at the ruined photo until the ache faded into the numbness again.
After a while, he turned away.
He continued searching the chamber. From under a collapsed table, he pulled out a box containing dried food packets—old but edible. Next to it were several stacks of research papers, their corners curled and yellowed from age.
Tor gathered them, flipping through the first few pages.
Chemical formulas. Diagrams of cells. Notes filled with dense handwriting. He didn't understand any of it. Not the symbols, not the terms, not the strange and violent sketches.
Then he found a single sheet tucked between two thick files.
At the top of the page:
Parasitic Genetic Recombination – Phase 3
Tor's eyes narrowed slightly, though his expression barely changed. The page was different from the others—its ink fresher, its edges less worn. The diagrams were harsher, more aggressive. Half the words were crossed out violently.
He read the two lines written below the formulas:
"Subject stability decreasing."
"Mutation window unpredictable."
He didn't know what it meant.
He didn't want to know.
The air in the chamber seemed heavier now. Tor placed the paper back exactly where he found it. The idea of touching anything else made his skin crawl.
Nearby, scattered on a table were several sealed vials of medicine, labeled in codes he couldn't interpret. Metal trays lay overturned around them, stained with dried residue. Tor stepped away instinctively, as if the objects themselves were dangerous.
His own clothes were stiff with dirt. His hair clung together in strands. A sour smell followed him with every movement.
He hadn't bathed.
He hadn't left.
He didn't even know if there was a way out.
He searched anyway.
Along the far wall, behind some crates, he discovered a narrow metal compartment. Inside it lay a small container—flat, thin, sealed with a rusted clasp.
A letter.
He picked it up.
The paper inside crinkled faintly when he moved it, but he didn't open it. His hands held it cautiously, as if the contents might sink into him too deeply—another memory, another wound, another truth he wasn't ready for.
Tor stared down at the unopened letter, silent and unmoving.
The chamber felt colder now.
Heavier.
Filled with ghosts he didn't know how to face.
He placed the letter beside him, sat down again, and let the emptiness swallow him for another long stretch of time.
---