The tunnel sealed behind them with neither sound nor ceremony. No hiss of hydraulics. No clang of metal on metal. Not even a sigh. It simply closed—without warning, without witness.
Gone.
The passage vanished so completely, it felt like it had never existed at all. The air behind them stopped breathing. The walls smoothed into silence. And the corridor, that strange, living thing, erased the idea of an exit the way a body forgets a fading pain.
Lana didn't pause. She didn't speak. She just kept crawling forward, her elbows brushing the heat-slick walls, her knees pushing through the low, red shimmer that now pulsed beneath them. The tunnel didn't quake. It didn't shudder. It pulsed, slowly, deliberately—like lungs waiting for a breath to come.
Like something listening.
Her shoulder still ached. The old wound, long closed and long ignored, had opened again somewhere in the dark. Not wide. Just enough to remind her it had once mattered.
She pressed her fingers to the spot and felt it—damp, warm, wet with something that wasn't quite blood anymore. The skin wasn't torn. But it wasn't sealed either. It felt soft. Almost... receptive.
The scar was listening too.
Somehow, impossibly, it was remembering.
Behind her, Jason's breath broke the quiet. He was panting softly, the way people do when they're trying not to sound scared.
"Do you think we're gonna die down here?" he asked. His voice didn't echo. It just hovered.
"No," Lana said.
He hesitated. "You sure?"
"No."
He didn't laugh. He didn't need to.
It wasn't a joke. It was just the truth.
Kieran was behind them, bringing up the rear. His silence wasn't nervous or cold. It was watching. Measuring. She could feel him back there—his focus locked not on the path ahead but on her. The shifts in her posture. The tremors in her voice. Every breath, every glance, every subtle change. Not because he feared for her.
Because he'd realized something.
He wasn't the chosen one here.
Not anymore.
The tunnel veered suddenly to the left and opened up—not into another hallway, but into a space. A chamber. Round and strange. Like a lobe of flesh carved into the corridor's side. The walls here pulsed with faint veins of red light, crawling under the surface like fireflies trapped in skin. The air smelled like metal and old breath.
In the center of the room sat a chair.
No mistaking what kind of chair it was.
Surgical.
Its surface gleamed. Its frame tilted back like a reclined dentist's seat, but far less merciful. The restraints on its arms hung slack, each buckle dark with dried blood. The grooves in the metal seat held brown-red stains—not fresh, not ancient. Just... waiting.
Lana stopped. Stared. She didn't blink.
Nyx came to her side without being called.
Her voice was quiet. "That's where she tried to fix you."
Lana didn't flinch.
Her stomach didn't drop.
It coiled. Tighter. Like something she'd buried had recognized the smell of itself in the air.
"You remember that?" she asked.
"I remember everything," Nyx said. Simply. Not sad. Not proud.
Lana stepped forward.
Then a voice came down from the ceiling—a whisper in the vent. Familiar.
She froze.
Turned toward it.
No one was there.
But the voice wasn't foreign. It wasn't even someone else.
It was her own.
Not as she sounded now.
As she had then.
"You're hurting me! Let go of my arm!"
Jason flinched, visibly shaken. "That was... you."
She didn't answer him.
She reached for the chair. Laid a hand on one of the restraints.
It twitched.
A ripple moved through the metal.
And suddenly, she wasn't standing in the chamber anymore.
She was there—arms bound, skin bare, Evelyn leaning over her with a needle and a soft, almost maternal voice full of calculation.
She saw the red spiral being drawn on her thigh. She heard herself cry out. Saw her own eyes in panic. And she felt it, just barely—Nyx, unborn but present, already alive in the walls. Already watching.
Then it was gone.
Lana staggered back, breath caught.
Kieran caught her elbow.
"You're bleeding again," he said.
She looked down. Her shoulder had gone damp.
The scar had opened. Or maybe it had just responded.
Lana pulled herself upright, shoulders back.
Her voice was soft, but it didn't shake. "I was born in that chair."
Jason frowned. "That's not true. You weren't—"
"I was," she said, with finality. "Just not the way you think."
She didn't elaborate.
She didn't have to.
Nyx had already moved. She pointed past the chair.
"There's something behind it."
Lana stepped around—and saw it.
The wall had split.
Not by door. Not by tech.
By intention.
It had pulled apart like a breathing thing. The gap was small, just wide enough for one person. It shimmered with heat. It felt... alive.
"Only you," Nyx said.
Kieran stepped forward. Instinctive. "No way."
Nyx didn't even look at him. "It won't open for you. This isn't about you."
Jason didn't argue.
Kieran stared at Lana. His expression shifted—something unreadable at first, then something softer. Not defeat. Not fear. Just a quiet kind of grief.
He had always been the blade. The hybrid. The tool built to survive. But Lana...
Lana was becoming something else.
Something chosen.
She met his gaze. Held it for a heartbeat.
Then she turned and stepped through the opening.
The corridor let her.
It didn't close behind.
It pulsed.
The room on the other side was dim.
Not dark. Not empty.
Just... neglected.
The kind of place a memory goes to die when no one visits it anymore.
There were mirrors.
Dozens.
Floor to ceiling.
Each one glowed faintly—not from lightbulbs, but from within. A static shimmer. Like they held lightning behind their glass.
But none of them reflected her.
They reflected versions of her.
In the first: Lana with black eyes, clawed hands, and no scar.
In the second: a child, strapped to the chair, screaming for someone who never came.
In the third: an older Lana holding Nyx—only Nyx was twenty, hollow-eyed, distant, unreadable.
And more:
One showed her atop a bone city's tower, arms spread, worshipped by crowds of shadows. Crowned in light. Completely alone.
Each mirror pulsed as she passed.
Each one moved.
Each one whispered: You could have been me.
One mirror rippled—and then spoke.
But not out loud.
"You're the one who ran."
She turned.
There was no figure. Just a mirror showing Specter.
Young. Crying. Blood on her coat. Folded in a hallway like a broken promise.
Specter looked up.
"Why?"
The glass cracked—quiet, slow, like heartbreak frozen into crystal.
Lana didn't flinch.
"I'm not sorry," she said.
And something shifted.
The mirrors dulled.
The exit opened.
She stepped back into the corridor.
The others hadn't moved.
Kieran looked at her. "You saw something."
"I saw myself."
Jason opened his mouth.
She didn't let him finish.
"We move forward."
Nyx said, softly, "She answered."
"Who?" Kieran asked.
Nyx didn't answer him.
She didn't need to.
The corridor understood.
It opened wider.
The walls pulsed—just once.
And something ahead stirred.
Round.
Waiting.
Lana didn't stop.
She walked.
And the corridor bent around her—lifting, clearing, making way.
Every step forward lit the ground.
Every step behind fell into shadow.
There was no turning back now.
Only becoming.