The descent started quietly.
Not with a stumble, not with a drop, but with the smallest change—almost too subtle to notice. The floor didn't pitch. It leaned. A tilt, a murmur beneath their boots. A hush beneath their steps.
Lana was the first to feel it. Not with her eyes, but with her bones.
She kept walking, her breathing even, her focus sharp—but she could sense it now: a direction pulling at her insides. Like gravity had shifted its allegiance.
Jason, five minutes later, was the one to speak it aloud. He stopped walking, leaned into the wall, and let out a tight hiss through his teeth. "Are we going down?"
No one answered right away. Because they already knew that the descent had begun.
Not like falling, not like spiraling, but like being led downward by something ancient and patient. Something that didn't need to drag them. It only needed them to continue.
The air changed with them. It no longer held the sterility of surgical halls or the damp rot of old bones.
Now it was warm and soft. It was cradling in a way that felt wrong. Not comforting. Not maternal. Just too close. It literally felt like breath that hadn't left a mouth in years. Like lungs full of water that hadn't yet remembered they could drown.
The walls glistened.
Pink in some places. Rust-red in others. Webbed with living veins that glowed faintly, their rhythm uneven—almost as if they were still deciding what kind of heartbeat to have.
The smell wasn't blood exactly. It was before blood. It was salt. Skin. Amniotic musk. The scent of something not yet born.
Jason gagged once behind her but swallowed it down, and didn't speak.
Kieran reached out and pressed his hand to the wall. It pulsed beneath his palm like a sleeping thing stirred.
He jerked back. Not in fear. In recognition.
"It's alive," he said, voice low.
Nyx didn't pause or blink. She just kept moving.
She walked like someone returning—not remembering, but belonging. Like her feet weren't guessing their way forward. Like the floor remembered her gait, and the walls had already learned her breath.
Lana watched her move.
She was starting to believe that Nyx hadn't come from this place.
This place had come from her.
The descent curved into a spiral now. It was subtle but certain.
They circled down into the dark in slow, quiet loops, like being drawn into the throat of some massive beast that didn't bite—but swallowed.
Lana's shoulder throbbed again, and her scar pulsed with dull heat.
A beat.
Then another.
Behind her, Jason staggered slightly. His voice was thinner now, tight with nerves.
"I don't do spirals," he mumbled, pressing his shoulder to the wall. "I can't—my equilibrium's shot. Feels like the floor's moving under me."
Then: "I think I'm gonna throw up."
Nyx hummed.
Just a soft, low sound in her throat.
A lullaby meant for something bigger than them.
The walls responded.
Their pulse slowed.
Matched her rhythm.
Jason stilled.
His nausea vanished like mist.
He stared at her. "You just—did something."
Nyx turned her head slightly. "I didn't do anything. The corridor just needed a reminder of what it used to be."
Kieran stepped closer to her, a subtle line sharpening in his jaw. "You're scaring him."
"He should be scared."
Jason didn't argue.
The spiral wound tighter.
Steps blurred together.
Time frayed around the edges.
Not enough to panic. Just enough to confuse.
Lana blinked once and realized she didn't know how long they'd been walking. Ten minutes? An hour? Her legs didn't ache. But her thoughts had started to repeat.
The walls looked familiar.
The ceiling pulsed too slowly.
She touched one side of the corridor to ground herself.
A flicker darted through her mind.
Not memory. Not vision.
Just... something.
A version of her, floating. Smaller. In a tank. Eyes closed. Skin pale and perfect.
Then it was gone.
And the spiral ended.
The floor leveled.
They stepped into a space that made the rest of the corridor feel like a throat, or a birth canal, or a whispered warning.
This space?
This was the heart.
The womb.
It was vast.
A sphere the size of a cathedral, round and red and living. The walls were layered with membranes—flesh stretched over ribbed scaffolding. The light here was pulsing. Dim. Gentle.
Pods hung from every curve of the chamber like overripe fruit.
Hundreds of them.
Maybe more.
Suspended like dreamless thoughts.
Jason's voice cracked when he spoke. "What... the hell is this place?"
Nyx walked forward.
Not with fear.
With certainty.
She turned slowly, taking it all in.
"This is where I came from."
Every breath in the room stopped.
Lana turned. "You remember?"
Nyx shook her head. "No. But it remembers me."
Kieran stepped toward one of the pods. The surface was translucent, milky. Inside, a body floated. Curled. Suspended in some kind of fluid that shimmered softly.
Human.
But not breathing.
Not decomposing either.
Held in a kind of waiting.
Lana stepped to the next.
She reached out, and the pod responded. The surface shimmered. Shifted.
Revealed her face.
Not as it was now.
As it had been.
Younger. Peaceful. Eyes closed. Unscarred.
A version of her who had never woken.
Jason staggered back. "They're us."
"No," Nyx said. "They're versions of us. Possibilities. Every one of these... was an option."
Kieran turned to her. "How do you know that?"
"Because I've seen the other side of myself," she said. "And I'm still here."
Nyx stepped to the center of the room.
There, embedded in the floor, was something different.
A core.
Round, pulsing. Red and gold and wet with motion.
From its sides, cords extended in every direction—connecting every pod like veins from a heart.
Nyx knelt.
She didn't touch it.
She hovered.
Jason's voice shook. "Please don't touch anything. I am begging you."
Nyx didn't move. She looked up at Lana.
"It's not mine."
Lana hesitated.
Then the heartbeat in her chest—the one she'd taken from the Echo—pounded once.
Hard.
She felt it in her molars.
In her spine.
It wasn't pain.
It was calling.
Kieran stepped beside her. "You don't have to."
Lana's voice came soft. "I know."
She stepped forward.
The floor responded beneath her feet.
Not violently.
Curiously.
One of the cords pulled loose from the core.
Lifted like a snake.
Wound gently around her wrist.
She didn't flinch.
The contact was warm. Familiar.
Like something trying to remember her by touch.
Then—she left.
Not her body.
Her self.
She was elsewhere.
Inside the corridor's memory.
Not her own.
Its.
She saw:
A woman. Pale. Red-eyed. Suspended in liquid. Lips parted like she was about to scream forever.
Evelyn above her. Injecting her with something that hissed in the needle.
The first Eve. The prototype. Tearing herself from the corridor's root—refusing to become what it wanted. Choosing death over transformation.
Specter whispering over a body, "Not this one. Too aware."
Hundreds of Queen candidates.
One survivor.
Lana.
Except—she had been rejected once, too.
Discarded.
Forgotten.
Only... the corridor hadn't forgotten her.
It had remembered.
All this time, it had remembered.
The vision ended.
She gasped.
Returned.
The cord unwound.
Lana swayed. Stood still.
Everyone stared.
Kieran's voice was low. "What did it show you?"
Lana looked around. The walls. The pods. The breath in the room.
"It didn't show me," she said. "It asked me."
Jason took a step forward. "Asked you what?"
A sound split the floor.
Soft at first. Then sharper.
Two paths opened beneath the membrane.
Two exits.
One glowed white-hot—straight and blinding. Like pain carved into clarity.
The other pulsed with cool blue. Gentle. Slower. Whispering without language.
Nyx turned to the others.
"One leads to unification," she said. "The other... to confrontation."
Jason stepped back. "Unification of what?"
"Everything. Memory. Thought. Blood. And the thing that made this corridor."
"And confrontation?"
"You meet what made you," she said.
Jason stared. "Jesus Christ." Kieran didn't speak. He looked to Lana.
She was already watching both paths.bThen she heard Specter's voice, like wind through the pod-veins.
"Don't become its vessel. You're not here to be claimed."
Lana didn't argue. She only whispered, "I was claimed the second I was born."
And she stepped forward. Toward the blue path. Toward confrontation.
Nyx's smile was small. Proud.
Kieran followed without hesitation. Jason held still. His breathing shallow.
One heartbeat. Two. Then—"Goddammit," he muttered. And he moved.
The Womb Room sealed behind them. There was no door. Just breath pulling shut.
And ahead, something even older opened.