The silence of the lower cells was different tonight.
Not just empty—it was taut. Like a string pulled to its limit, vibrating with a tension no one could see.
Subject 313—no, the boy who no longer answered to numbers—sat alone in the corridor of madness.
His hands were raw from the earlier test. Blood crusted around his wrists where the restraints had finally failed. The system's voice had gone silent again after assigning him a new label: [Unbound Initiate].
But something else had changed.
The walls.
They were... breathing. Or maybe that was just his mind unraveling again.
He didn't know if the other subjects were dead or asleep. He didn't care. All that mattered now was the flicker—the strange glint at the corner of his cell—a crack of light. Not sunlight. Something colder.
System Notification:
> Hidden Pathway Detected.
> Abyss Thread [Shattered Link] Accessible.
He didn't think. He moved.
Whatever lay beyond that wall... he would face it. Even if it shattered him more than he already was.