Chapter 118: Light of Darkness
Below the city lies a place not quite a basement. Not quite a lab. Not entirely a prison either. But it carried pieces of all three put together in a one big scary gloomy place. It was like it came straight out of a horror story with a mad scientist, a wicked, thrilling ghosts and a sadists playroom.
The walls are really damp and made out of stone bricks, slick with condensation that glistened under the sallow flicker of a single, hanging bulb. It swayed slightly, casting long, distorted shadows that crawled like specters across the floor. The light was sickly disgusting yellow, like old bruises, and buzzed with a tired hum, a sound that grew louder the longer you sat in the silence. It was a sound that burrowed into your bones.
The air was thick. Stale, with the sour tang of rust and something deeper... the metallic stench of old blood clinging to the cracks in the floor. You could taste it at the back of your throat if you breathed too deep.
Chains hung from the ceiling, not in use now, but too polished to be forgotten relics. They gleamed faintly, like they remembered the last pair of wrists they embraced. In one corner, a table stood crooked, its surface scarred with burn marks and tools laid out like surgical instruments. But this was no hospital. Nothing healing ever happened here.
Drips echoed somewhere beyond the walls. Constant. Slow. A leaky pipe, perhaps or maybe something else. In a place like this, even the walls seemed to weep.
Beyond the cracked walls of that forgotten room, just past the corroded pipes and rust-flecked hinges, a hallway stretched into deeper darkness. Only a few dim crystals still lit by magic flicked, most long dead or out of mana, casting blotchy pools of light on the concrete floor. Near the end of the hall stood a thick metal door, its paint peeling in long strips like old skin. From behind it, a sound emerged.
Voices.
"Are you... yes... shugsh"
"Shushs... he said so..."
Not loud. Not shouting. Just murmurs, low and intent, muffled by steel but persistent. Like the rustle of dead leaves dragged by wind, or the soft scratching of nails against old parchment. But there was something off about the tone, too calm, too practiced. As if they were discussing something ordinary.
A flickering light above the door buzzed faintly as if protesting the presence of what lay inside. Dust floated in the air, disturbed only by the vibrations of the voices.