35: Alive

The void yawned before them, a cliff into nothingness. The beacon pulsed brighter in Celeste’s hand, the Tarot’s glow steady and insistent.

Atlas muttered, “We’re really doing this?”

Tanuki tightened his grip on his daggers. “We’ve come too far to turn back.”

Celeste lifted the card. Its light flared, and the void folded inward, collapsing into a narrow bridge of glowing data. The path stretched into the darkness, humming with unnatural energy.

They crossed in silence. At the far end, the bridge widened into a platform. Beyond it stood a door, not of stone or wood, but a seamless wall of white light. Symbols crawled across its surface, shifting too quickly to read.

NV raised her bow, her voice low. “This isn’t a dungeon.”

Celeste’s eyes were fixed on the door. “No. It’s a lab.”

The Tarot pulsed once more, and like a key, the door responded and dissolved.

The air changed the moment they stepped through. Gone were the forests, deserts, and mountains. This place was sterile, clinical. A vast interior of white corridors and glass walls. The floor hummed beneath their boots, glowing faintly with lines of code.

Behind the glass, shapes flickered. Not mobs. Not NPCs. Fragments of things, half-formed models, broken animations, textures stretched thin. Some twitched endlessly, caught in loops. Others stared blankly, their faces unfinished.

Atlas’s voice was a whisper. “What the hell is this place?”

Celeste’s answer was quiet, almost reverent. “A madman’s prison.”

They entered a wide chamber lined with consoles. Screens flickered with static, then snapped into fragments of data: player names, guild tags, coordinates that no longer existed.

Tanuki froze when he saw one name flash across the screen. It was the rival guild leader from Gravity Mountain. His tag blinked once, then vanished.

NV’s jaw tightened. “It’s logging them. Everyone who disappears.”

Atlas slammed his fist against a console. “Why? For what?” he asked for no reply.

As they pressed deeper, the hum grew louder. It wasn’t machinery. It was rhythmic, like a heartbeat.

The walls pulsed faintly in time with it, the light dimming and flaring. The unfinished models behind the glass twitched harder, their mouths opening in silent screams.

The hair on the back of Tanuki’s neck stood up. “It’s alive.”

At the end of the corridor, another door waited. Larger. Heavier. Its surface rippled like water, symbols crawling across it in jagged lines.

The Tarot pulsed violently in Celeste’s hand, almost too bright to look at.

“This is it,” she whispered.

Tanuki’s throat tightened. The forest had been a trap. The caravan a warning. The mountain a test. The valley a mirror.

And now, at last, they stood at the threshold of the thing all of it had been leading to.

They were in some kind of prison, or containment zone. For something sentient. Something alive.