Chapter 25 – Eyes Without Light

Two more guards flanked the entrance, their faces unseen beneath deep hoods. One of them stepped forward, resting a gloved hand against the gate. A moment passed. Then, with the slow groan of shifting metal, the doors began to part.

The captives were ushered inside.

And then, the air changed.

The scent hit them first. Not just the damp, earthy stench of underground chambers, but something else—something sharper. A mix of metal and blood, of scorched bone and something like burnt hair.

The space beyond the gate was vast, sprawling far beyond what should have been possible underground. High above, the ceiling stretched into darkness, barely visible despite the faint, flickering lights embedded in the walls.

Those weren’t torches.

They were glass cylinders—thick and reinforced—each one filled with a swirling, sickly green liquid. Some contained… things.

Limbs, half-formed and twitching, their flesh fused with patches of chitin. Severed heads with empty, unblinking eyes, their faces locked in silent screams. A black heart—massive, pulsing—suspended in a vat of dark crimson fluid, the veins snaking outward like grasping fingers against the glass.

Steps lined the sides, leading downward. Tables filled the lower chamber—some clean, others slick with drying blood. Tools of every shape and size were scattered across them—surgical blades, bone saws, clamps still gripping remnants of flesh.

This wasn’t just a lab.

It was a slaughterhouse for something beyond human.

The man in black kept walking, unbothered. He passed a row of cages along the far wall—each one holding a body. Some were still, others convulsed, their eyes rolled back. Dried, lifeless blood had gone black in their cages, their limp limbs still faintly clinging to the bars.

Some were… changing.

A prisoner, younger than most, stared wide-eyed at the nearest cage. Inside, a figure hunched over, its body distorting, fingers elongating into something far too sharp. It twitched violently, then slowly, almost curiously, turned its head.

Its eyes were gone. Just pits of seething black.

The boy sucked in a breath, stepping back.

The hooded guards laughed.

And the man in black?

He didn’t even glance back.

He simply kept walking, leading them deeper.

A figure emerged from the gloom, stepping out from behind one of the blood-slicked tables. His robes were a deep, wine-stained red, layered over with a coat of fine black leather, stitched together with surgical precision. Unlike the guards, he didn’t bother with a hood—his face was fully visible, though perhaps it would’ve been better if it wasn’t.

His skin was smooth. Too smooth. Like wax left too long in the heat, with barely a hint of pores or imperfections. His eyes, sunken deep into his skull, gleamed with something unreadable—too sharp, too focused. His smile, when it came, was thin, stretched at the edges, like a man constantly suppressing the urge to grin.

“Ah… my dear Harrow,” the man in red drawled, his voice smooth, almost pleasant. “You’ve returned.”

The man in black—Harrow—gave a slow nod, his expression unreadable beneath the shadow of his hood. “I have. And I’ve brought what you asked for.”

The man in red tilted his head, his unnatural smile growing slightly wider. “Then let’s see them.”

Harrow gestured toward the captives, his voice even, detached.

“Beastfolk. A variety—fox-kin, wolf-kin, even a scaled one, though she put up more of a fight than the others. Some humans, mostly villagers. A few adventurers as well. High-quality stock, considering how deep we had to go to find them.”

The man in red exhaled through his nose, stepping closer, his gaze flickering from one prisoner to the next like a merchant inspecting livestock. His fingers twitched slightly at his sides, as if itching to reach out, to prod, to test.

“Not bad,” he murmured, nodding absently. “Yes… this will do. For now.”

Harrow’s gaze didn’t shift. “And? Your progress?”

The man in red finally looked up, his expression momentarily unreadable. Then, he gave a small, almost theatrical sigh.

“As close as ever,” he said. “And yet… not close enough.”

Harrow’s voice remained flat. “Meaning?”

The man in red’s smile didn’t falter, but there was a sharpness to it now. “Meaning, dear Harrow, that the last vessel lasted only three days before the body collapsed under the strain. Better than the last batch, but still far from perfection.”

He turned then, gesturing toward one of the larger containment tubes along the far wall.

The liquid inside was darker, more opaque than the others. A body hung suspended within—tall, vaguely human in shape, but distorted. Its limbs were too long, its torso unnaturally stretched, its fingers curled inward like the claws of a dead thing.

“The bones were strong, the flesh adaptable,” the man in red continued. “But the soul… ah, the soul simply refused to take root. A shame, really.”

Harrow exhaled through his nose. “Then we’re still at a standstill, Veyrn?”

Veyrn, the man in red—the Flesh Architect, as he was known among those who whispered of such things—tilted his head.

“A temporary one,” he said. “But progress is progress. And soon enough, we’ll find the right mixture… the right balance.”

He stepped forward again, his too-smooth fingers brushing against the fox-kin woman’s chin, tilting her head up slightly.

“And who knows?” he murmured, his voice dripping with amusement. “Perhaps the perfect vessel is already among this batch.”

The woman jerked away, her ears flattened, her eyes burning with silent fury.

Veyrn chuckled.

Harrow merely crossed his arms. “Then I expect results soon.”

Veyrn waved a hand dismissively. “You’ll have them. In due time.”

He turned back toward the lab, his coat shifting slightly as he moved.

“But for now,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else, “let’s see what these new subjects are made of.”

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