Chapter 1: Chapter One — A Kind of Mercy
Chapter Text
The Fog pulled tight this time.
It didn’t roar. Didn’t scream or claw like it sometimes did when it dropped us. This time, it simply released—quiet, controlled. Almost surgical.
I landed on the cracked tile like I’d been here before.
Because I had.
Over and over again.
The impact barely registered in my knees. No stumble, no jolt of surprise. Just the familiar chill of the Institute bleeding through the soles of my boots. I breathed in the rot-sweet air—faintly metallic, tinged with chemicals and something older. Like wires stripped bare and forgotten.
The Fog always smelled worse inside the walls.
Across from me, Felix straightened first. Always polished, always trying to look composed, even as the place groaned around him. He brushed imaginary dust from his coat with the kind of practiced detachment that told me he needed it—needed the illusion of control more than he realized.
Claudette dropped low beside a rusted locker. It wheezed on half-broken hinges as she pressed into its shadow. She didn’t speak. Just scanned the hallway like something was already coming.
Yui cracked her neck with a sharp pop, muttering something in clipped Japanese under her breath. A curse, if I had to guess.
None of them spoke to me.
No nod. No check-in. No recognition.
Good.
Let them forget I’m here. Let them think I’m just another body in the rotation. I don’t need attention—I need freedom.
I slid my hands into my coat pockets, curling my fingers against the worn lining. Grounding myself in the friction. The air was already vibrating, faint but insistent. The beginning tremors of something on its way. Something wrong.
They didn’t feel it. Not yet.
They never did—not until it was too late.
I didn’t bother looking around.
I knew where we were—secondary treatment ward, northeast quadrant of the map. Just two turns from the therapy lab where the paint peeled in patterns no one had ever applied.
The lighting flickered above us. Once.
Then again.
Léry’s always buzzed. But when he was here, it sang.
There was a rhythm to it—low, deliberate. Like pressure building behind a false wall. Like something coiled tight and waiting to be released.
Static.
Not faulty wiring. Not electromagnetic interference.
Him.
Herman Carter.
The Doctor.
The Fog’s prodigal interrogator.
He was close.
He always was.
I stepped forward first, my boots making no sound across the tile. No rush. No urgency. Just movement.
The others hesitated behind me—half a breath of stillness—then followed.
Not because they trusted me.
But because I moved like someone who knew where they were going.
They assumed it was instinct.
They didn’t realize I was remembering.
And I didn’t correct them.
We moved as a loose cluster—Felix ahead and to the left, Yui walking just behind him, fast but quiet. Claudette stayed closer to me, though not intentionally. I think she still felt safer near someone who didn’t make noise.
I didn’t speak.
I didn’t have to.
The others did enough of it for me. Small sounds—footfalls, breathing, the rustle of sleeves or the shifting of tools. They weren’t careless. Just… human. Unaware that the Fog hears everything.
We cut through the first corridor and found the generator tucked behind a half-collapsed nurse’s station. The thing was cracked at its seams and already giving off that faintly burnt, coppery tang it always did when it hadn’t been touched in too long.
Felix stepped forward, inspecting it like a wine snob with a new bottle.
“I’ll handle this side. It’s shortened before—watch the coil.”
Yui knelt down beside him and rolled her sleeves up to her elbows. “If it shocks me again, I’m breaking its legs.”
Felix smiled. “It doesn’t have legs.”
“Not yet.”
Claudette hovered near the edge of the nurse’s desk, her arms drawn tight across her middle. She glanced at me but didn’t say anything. I tilted my head slightly to meet her eyes, let my expression soften.
She blinked once. Looked away.
I moved toward the far end of the generator and dropped to one knee, feeling the ridges of the floor press through my pants. I didn’t reach for the machine. Not yet.
I listened.
The others heard nothing.
But there it was—again.
The faintest flicker beneath the buzzing lights. A hum too low to register as threat, but too wrong to be part of the natural static. It wasn’t the generator. It wasn’t the wiring.
It was Him.
Far off. But aware.
I laid a hand on the frame of the generator and let my other rest against the tile, grounding myself. I felt the charge before I heard it—subtle, diffused through the air like it was leaking through the walls themselves.
Yui jolted upright.
“Did you hear that?”
Felix frowned. “What?”
“I don’t know. Just… felt off.”
Claudette turned toward her. “Maybe it’s the—”
“It’s not the gen.”
All three of them looked at me.
I blinked slowly.
Lowered my gaze to the wires.
Added a quiet, “I’ve felt it before.”
That was enough.
They turned back to the task. The topic shifted. I kept my posture still, my eyes half-focused on the machine. Inside, I was already mapping routes. Calculating radii. Reviewing stimulus-response times.
He would be close soon.
He liked to start slow.
I let the others think I was uneasy.
I let Claudette pat my shoulder once.
Let Felix offer a calming nod.
Let Yui call me “quiet but solid.”
They wanted me to be real.
So I gave them enough of me to believe it
The spark hit like a whipcrack.
No warning.
Just sound. Pressure. Then pain.
The Static Blast tore through the hallway with a shriek so loud it hollowed out the center of my hearing. I didn’t scream.
The others did.
Yui staggered first, clutching her head and cursing as she ran. Her footsteps hit the tile hard and fast, already fading. Felix swore sharply, peeled away from the generator before it could explode again. Claudette stumbled, half-dazed, fingers reaching for the wall as she vanished around the bend.
Their auras flared red.
One by one.
Lit up in the distance like matches struck in fog.
I didn’t move.
Not at first.
The hum in my skull hadn’t faded, but I could hear him beneath it—dragging something. Maybe the Stick. Maybe a body.
Heavy breathing.
Not mine.
I turned slowly toward the hallway mouth, heart steady behind my ribs. There was blood on the walls now. It hadn’t been there before.
He came around the corner in pieces.
Not literally. Not visually.
But the way he moved—stilted, fragmented, like a frame skipping in a broken reel. He twitched into view, coat slick with something wet and black. It gleamed under the lights like oil. Or gore.
His chest heaved.
His mouth twisted into something like a grin—wide, uneven, feral.
Herman Carter.
The Doctor.
We’d never stood this close before.
He saw me.
And then he looked at me.
Not in passing. Not like prey.
Focused.
His eyes scanned my form top to bottom—rapid, flicking, unstable. Recording.
His head tilted to the side, slow. Birdlike. Curious.
I didn’t run.
But I thought about it.
The hallway behind me was clear. I could make the corner before he raised the Stick. I could vault the gurney. Use the curtains as cover. I had time.
But I stayed.
He breathed.
Fast. Loud. Shallow.
His hands twitched.
He didn’t lift the weapon.
Why aren’t you running?
That’s what his gaze asked.
Not confusion. Not anger.
Fascination.
And then—
He moved.
He stepped closer.
The floor crackled beneath his boots.
I felt it—the electricity dancing on the air, snapping softly at the edges of my coat. The hair along my arms rose. The tension built in the silence, coiled so tightly I felt the weight of it in my teeth.
He was close.
Too close.
And he didn’t stop.
Another step.
Another.
I didn’t retreat.
I breathed slower.
His eyes were wide now—hungry and bright, the madness behind them pushing so hard against the fragile glass of his mind that it almost spilled forward.
His breathing shook. Not with rage.
With excitement.
A noise rose in his throat—stifled at first, then tearing free.
A laugh. Distorted through the contraption strapped to his face. Glitched and metallic. Broken-glass hysteria.
The sound rolled through the hallway like something loose in the walls.
I should’ve run.
I didn’t.
I lifted my hand—slow, deliberate.
His fingers twitched. But he didn’t strike.
I reached up—not toward the Stick. Not toward the crown embedded in his skull.
To him.
My fingers brushed the side of his face, just below the harsh line of metal restraint bolted into his skin. Warm. Sweating. Flushed from exertion. Alive.
The flesh beneath the frame was taut, pulled unnaturally by wires meant to exaggerate his smile, to force his face into joy even when there was none. I felt the edge of a cable, the twitch of muscle beneath it.
It should have repulsed me.
It didn’t.
For a second, he stopped breathing.
And I looked at him like he was a man, not a monster.
Then I ran.
Turned hard on my heel and bolted, slipping past him before he could react. The gurney slammed behind me as I vaulted, curtain rails clattering and swinging in my wake.
His laughter exploded behind me.
Wilder. Higher. Fractured.
I didn’t look back.
But I knew.
He would never forget the way I touched him like he was human.
Herman Carters POV
She touched me.
Two fingers, maybe three.
1.8 seconds of skin contact. Warm.
Pressure: negligible.
Temperature: elevated. Pulse: detectable.
It should’ve meant nothing.
No sedation. No probe. No induction equipment involved.
Just—
her hand.
Skin on skin.
Real.
Unprovoked.
The hallway still echoed.
My laughter had died out, but something behind my teeth buzzed.
Not the Spark. Not residual charge.
Something lower.
Subdermal.
Not measurable.
The Entity had not responded.
No penalty.
No punishment.
She had reached out—mid-trial—
and the Fog had done nothing.
I stood where she left me, every line of my posture still coiled from the moment she bolted.
I hadn’t raised the Stick.
Hadn’t chased.
Why didn’t I chase?
Her hand was warm.
Real.
Her eyes had not screamed.
Her mouth hadn’t opened.
She looked at me like I was a man.
A man.
Not a machine.
Not a monster.
Not a doctor.
She touched me gently.
I’ve been struck.
Bitten.
Scratched.
Burned.
I’ve been insulted in every language.
Called things I hadn’t been before I started cutting.
No one had touched me like that.
Not since—
Irrelevant.
I shook my head hard enough to jolt the frame.
Metal scraped bone.
The Spark flickered under my skin, impatient.
It wanted release.
Stimulation.
Control.
But I didn’t lift the Stick.
I want her back.
Not for points.
Not for pain.
For clarity.
She wasn’t in fight or flight.
She was in study—like me.
Like I used to be before they opened my skull and called it a gift.
What is she?
How does she know what I am?
Why didn’t she fear?
My fingers curled involuntarily.
The Spark surged again, crawling up my spine, licking the base of my skull.
I didn’t channel it.
Not yet.
I need another trial.
I need her isolated.
I need her still.
Just one more touch.
Camilla’s POV
The sound of my own breath followed me down the corridor.
Even. Controlled.
Measured in fours.
In. Two, three. Out. Two, three.
I could still hear him laughing.
It wasn’t following me anymore. The Spark had retreated behind walls and smoke and steel, hunting something slower, louder.
Them.
He was going to kill them.
Not out of routine.
Not for efficiency.
But to get them out of the way.
He wants me alone.
The realization pulsed at the back of my throat like a swallowed scream.
I took a shortcut—cutting through a collapsed testing ward, hopping over a row of shattered desks. I wiped my hand on the back of my coat. Not because it was bloodied. But because it felt like it should be.
The warmth of his skin still clung to my fingers.
I found them again before I had to fake a stumble.
Yui and Claudette had doubled back to the northeast hall. Felix limped up behind them, hand pressed to his side like the blast had rattled him harder than he’d admit.
Claudette’s voice was tight. “Where did you go?”
“Got turned around,” I murmured, keeping my voice low. “Didn’t hear where he went.”
Yui looked me over. No judgment. Just tension.
“He’s not acting like he usually does.”
I nodded. “He’s… different.”
That much was true.
Felix motioned toward the nearby gen. “Then we focus. One more, maybe two. He’s either toying with us or tunneling.”
He was doing neither.
He was cleaning the slate.
We worked in silence.
Claudette next to me, fingers trembling slightly as she reattached a fuse line. I moved in beside her, hands steady, posture unthreatening.
I held the wiring still for her—gentle, measured, helpful.
She glanced up. Smiled, even.
Didn’t ask any more questions.
They trusted me again.
Because I moved carefully.
Because I watched the corners.
Because I never panicked.
Because none of them had seen what he looked like up close.
What he looked like when I touched him.
For a moment, the trial softened.
The lights stopped flickering.
The air calmed.
The Spark retreated back into the walls like it had never been there.
Even the Fog seemed gentler—thinner in the corners, stiller between the rails.
The generator clicked in rhythm beneath our hands, the hiss of static reduced to a low electric purr. Felix crouched across from me, sleeves rolled back, brows furrowed in concentration. Yui stood guard at the far end of the corridor, arms crossed, back straight. Claudette worked beside me in silence, jaw tight, hands only shaking a little now.
There was a rhythm to the work.
For just a breath, we were a team.
Not scared. Not hunted.
Just four people doing what they had to do.
And I—
I almost forgot he was watching.
Almost.
The Spark snapped again.
It wasn’t like the last time.
No warning static. No rising charge.
Just impact.
A high-pitched shriek—needle-thin and impossible to localize—ripped through the room like an exposed nerve dragged across a live wire.
I didn’t hear Felix shout.
But I saw him fall.
His body jerked back, arms thrown wide as if something had pulled his spine taut mid-breath. The generator’s blue light flickered, coughed, then dimmed entirely as he hit the tile.
One flicker.
Then gone.
His aura blinked out like a candle crushed between two fingers. Silent.
Final.
For one suspended heartbeat, no one moved.
Even the Fog stilled.
Yui spun, instinct-driven, adrenaline already surfacing in her stance. Her feet scraped hard against the floor—
Too hard.
She caught the base of the broken nurse's station and went down, hard, hands catching herself on slick tile.
And then—
he arrived.
Herman came into the hallway like a rift being torn open.
Shoulders hunched, one hand twitching at his side, the other gripping the Stick. His grin was already wide, unnaturally stretched—teeth bared like an animal caught mid-experiment.
He didn’t run.
He didn’t charge.
He just walked.
Shoulder rolling like he was trying to stay calm, like he was holding something in.
The Spark danced around him, a low whispering coil of violet-blue energy flickering across the wires bolted to his skull. Each step clicked with static, sharp enough that the lights buzzed above us in response.
He didn’t look at me.
He didn’t have to.
I was the silence in the center of the storm.
He was coming for everything else.
Claudette made a sound—a scream, but barely. Tight and real and small.
Not theatric. Not for attention.
Just fear .
She turned and ran.
Her shoes skidded. Her arms pumped.
Yui pushed herself up and followed—less grace, more grit. I saw her limp, just slightly, from the fall. Still fast. Still strong. But not fast enough.
I didn’t run.
Not yet.
I held my breath and watched the Spark rise again.
But this time—it was aimed.
Not wild.
Not explosive.
Surgical.
Like a scalpel dropped from a great height.
Like a voltage spike measured in revenge.
It hit Yui first.
Her aura burst red. Bright. Sharp.
She screamed, but it didn’t carry.
She disappeared around the corner, and in the next second—
Gone.
No fanfare. No mercy.
Just a blip on the radar, wiped clean.
Claudette kept going. I could hear her—the slap of her palms against door frames, the drag of her breath, the wet click of her shoes in the puddled tile. She knew the layout better. She might’ve made it if—
Crack.
The sound wasn’t metal.
It was bone.
I flinched.
Then it was silent.
Her aura flickered once—
Then dimmed to black.
I could still hear the generator humming behind me, stupid and low and unaware of the bodies it had outlived.
Herman stood where they’d vanished. Stick loose in his hand. Head slightly tilted like he was considering a variable that had solved itself.
He was cleaning the board.
Clearing noise.
Calming the static.
He wanted the silence back.
He turned.
Looked down the hallway.
At me.
Now it was just us.
Chapter 2: Chapter Two- Phantom Pain
Summary:
Camilla Shinda doesn’t scream. Not when the Entity’s Spark rakes across her nerves, not when the Doctor corners her in the halls of Léry’s Memorial, not even when her hand dares to touch his face. That silence is what draws him closer. Herman Carter is not meant to pause. Not meant to look at survivors as anything but variables. And yet when Camilla says his name—Doctor—it splinters something deep in him that even the Entity cannot control.
Dragged apart by the Fog, both emerge from the trial changed: Camilla marked by phantom pain and a dangerous spark of clarity, Herman humming to the fire with static on his teeth. The cycle turns, and obsession begins to bloom.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The silence pressed down thick enough that I could hear my own pulse.
Not racing—
not yet.
But steady, deliberate, a drumbeat inside my skull that felt too loud in a place that demanded stillness.
Herman stood at the far end of the corridor. The Stick hung loose in his hand, dangling like an afterthought, metal faintly scraping against tile when he tilted it just so. His head was cocked slightly to the left, that wide frame bending in the smallest, eeriest way. It wasn’t the posture of a hunter. Not exactly. It was closer to someone leaning toward a sound—straining, listening, as though he heard something I could not.
And then—soft at first—he began to hum.
It wasn’t noise. Not static. Not the fractured echoes of madness he so often dragged behind him.
It had rhythm.
It had shape.
A tune.
The first few notes slipped between bursts of static, jagged and uneven, carried on the faint sizzle of the Spark that crawled along the wires drilled into his skull. It was ugly. It was broken. And yet—there was something almost tender threaded into it. A relic of something he must have carried long before the Fog got its hands on him.
The melody bled together slowly, like a half-remembered song pulled through a broken phonograph. Off-pitch. Warped. Too sweet to belong here. It wound itself around the corridor until I realized what I was hearing.
An old-time lullaby.
It didn’t belong in Léry’s.
It didn’t belong anywhere near me.
But it was here. And he hummed it like no one had ever told him that music could be dangerous.
Like no one had ever beaten it out of him.
And under that humming, the world shifted.
The air thickened. The walls seemed closer, pressing in with their flickering lights and rotted paint. The generator’s quiet stutter faded until I couldn’t hear it at all. All that remained was him .
The Spark crawled over my skin in waves. Not pain. Not yet. Just that electric prickle that told me lightning was close, stalking in the clouds before it split the sky open. My scalp tingled, hair lifting at the crown. My teeth buzzed faintly in my skull, the vibration crawling into my jaw.
Every nerve screamed run.
I stayed still.
Because the thing about running is—it makes you prey.
And prey doesn’t
look back.
He moved.
Slow at first. Deliberate.
One step, then another. Boots echoing in time with the tune. His humming didn’t falter. He let it guide him, each note syncing with the dull, steady thud of his footfalls, like a metronome beating against my chest.
He walked past the spot where Felix had fallen—where his body had convulsed under the Spark before winking out into nothing. Herman didn’t look down. Didn’t acknowledge it. Felix was a variable already solved.
He stepped over the smear where Claudette’s blood had slicked across the floor, his heel leaving faint imprints that glistened under the sickly fluorescent light. Still, he didn’t pause. Didn’t care.
He only paused once. Only once.
His neck rolled, vertebrae cracking sharp and brittle, like branches breaking under frost. Each crack ricocheted down the hallway, violent little bursts that pulled the air tighter around me. His head tipped the other way when it ended, like a marionette reset on its string.
The humming never stopped.
And gods, it was worse than silence.
Because silence is merciful. Silence lets you pretend you’re unseen.
But music—
music is intimacy.
And in the Fog, intimacy kills.
He was close enough now that I could see the flicker of his pupils, the restless darting of his gaze as it traveled over my face. He wasn’t just looking—he was mapping , matching me to some impossible variable he hadn’t yet solved. Each pass of his eyes felt like a scalpel tracing the contours of my skin, dissecting without breaking.
The Spark arced between us, a faint snap in the air. The sound was small, but it bit at me all the same. The air smelled sharp, like copper split open by lightning. My breath caught, but not the way it should have—not with fear. Not entirely.
For a moment, I let my hand rise. Slow. Calculated. Deliberate. Every inch I closed between us made the static louder in my skull, but I didn’t stop. I touched him. My fingertips found the edge of his cheek, warm beneath the cold gleam of the electrodes that held his skull captive. His skin buzzed faintly, alive with current. Flesh and machine and man all at once.
His grin twitched. The hum cut off mid-note, strangled still in his throat.
For a single, stretched second, we just stood there. My hand against him, his breath sharp and unsteady, both of us caught in a pause that felt like the Fog itself was holding its breath. The silence was weighted, thick as tar. The only thing I could hear was the Spark in the air and the echo of my own pulse.
Then I moved.
It wasn’t reasoned. It wasn’t measured. My legs made the decision for me, boots slamming against tile, breath tearing sharp and fast through my chest. My heartbeat shifted into a rhythm I recognized too well—the cadence of prey running from predator. The corridor ahead narrowed, the bend so close I could almost taste the safety of it. Two more seconds and I would be gone.
Static cracked behind me—loud, vicious—followed by a silence that was worse. No footsteps. No humming. Nothing but the sound of my own desperate sprint.
That was worse.
I pushed harder. My muscles screamed, but I forced them to obey. The overhead lights flared, strobing white-blue as veins of Spark crawled along the walls, bleeding through the plaster like roots. Each pulse lit the path ahead in jagged fragments. And then
He was there.
Herman stepped from the right with surgical precision, clean and inevitable, as if he had known— counted —on me choosing this route. He didn’t swing the Stick. He didn’t need to. It hung loose at his side, more statement than weapon.
I froze.
The Spark rolled across my skin in waves, sinking into the marrow of my bones. My teeth ached with it, jaw clenched tight against the vibration that hummed in every nerve. His eyes locked on mine, and I knew with terrible certainty—
He had anticipated me. He had waited for this.
My breath hitched. Not fear. Not exactly. Something older, darker, uglier than fear. Something that made my blood burn.
He tilted his head, that grin curling back onto his face—not wide, not manic, but precise. A private smile. Then, low and soft, he began to hum again. Quieter this time, almost gentle, the melody threading through the static like it belonged there.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt this alive. This raw. This seen. The Spark climbing my spine pleased a primal part of me that the Cenobites had clawed out long ago, tearing it from my ribs and holding it aloft as tribute. That ugly, feral core that was never meant to be gentle.
Everything slowed. Every breath. Every beat of my heart stretched until the silence between them was unbearable.
He stood in front of me, humming low, the tune weaving itself into the static. I looked at him— really looked—until my eyes dropped, unbidden, to the hatch at his feet.
No key. No escape.
The Entity noticed. It always noticed.
A bone-chilling chime rang out, splitting the air. The sound crawled through my ribs, setting my bones alight with resonance until it felt like I might shatter. The tiles beneath us cracked in jagged lines, dust rising in clouds that caught the dying light like ash.
Time was gone.
No generators. No doors. No rescue.
Just me.
Just him.
Standing in the ruins of Léry’s Memorial as the world fractured around us both.
Herman didn’t move. Didn’t strike. He only hummed, steady and unbroken, as though the collapse of reality itself was background noise.
The static danced between us, arcing in little bursts, and I wondered—
if the Entity’s chime was a warning…
or an invitation.
He watched on—never breaking eye contact, never raising the Stick. Just breathing. Just looking.
“I see you, Doctor—”
The words cut through the static like a scalpel, clean and merciless. They didn’t tremble. They didn’t falter. They came from me as though I had been waiting to say them my entire life.
The effect was instantaneous. The humming in his throat seized, strangled mid-note, dying in the pit of his chest. No laughter. No sound at all. For a heartbeat, the world stood still. Even the Spark seemed to pause, electricity stuttering across the air as though the current itself held its breath.
Then the Entity came.
It ripped through my body with a violence so sudden I didn’t even gasp. White-hot agony carved me from the inside out, splitting me down the center, my spine shattering like glass under a hammer. The pain was absolute—purifying. It folded me in half, dragged me screaming through the floor into the churning, bubbling pit that opened beneath Léry’s. My vision tore with it, blurred into fragments of light and shadow.
The last thing I saw was him. Herman Carter.
Still watching.
He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t blinked. He only stared into me as the world consumed me whole.
And somewhere beneath the static—just as the Entity sealed me away—I swore I heard the hum begin again. A low, broken tune curling up from his throat, filling the silence I left behind.
She said it.
“I see you, Doctor—”
No hesitation. No fear. The syllables struck with surgical precision, sharper than the Stick ever could. They cut me open. They opened something.
The Spark didn’t flare.
My pulse did.
Then the Entity took her.
No kill. No points. No satisfaction. Just the pit swallowing her whole. Bone cracked. Muscle folded. Gone.
And I hadn’t moved.
Not because I couldn’t.
Because I didn’t
want
to.
She had looked at me like I was real.
Not a subject. Not prey. Not a variable.
Real.
And she named me.
The hum crawled back up my throat unbidden, spilling uneven and jagged. It wasn’t laughter. Not exactly. But it wasn’t far from it either. My jaw ached with it, my teeth buzzing as the current spread down into my chest.
The Entity pulsed at the edges of my mind, a presence like a thousand barbed hooks. It demanded order. Compliance. Focus. Obedience. I ignored it. My hands flexed against the Stick, muscles twitching with unused charge, hunger crawling under my skin.
It had taken her too soon.
Interrupted the experiment. Corrupted the data.
I need her back.
I need her in the next trial.
I need her isolated.
I need her still.
Because now I want to know—
when she says she
sees me
…
what exactly does she think she’s looking at?
The Fog let go all at once.
The bubbling pit. The shatter of bone. The static—gone.
I hit the ground hard enough to jar my teeth, boots sinking into familiar dirt instead of cracked tile. The sudden change was jarring, like being dropped from a nightmare into a memory. The campfire hissed and popped beside me, its light stretching long, jagged shadows over the empty logs. The other survivors weren’t here yet. No chatter. No accusing stares. Just firelight and smoke, licking heat across my cheek in the dark.
My hands moved on their own—pressing over my ribs, my spine, my throat. Searching for proof. Breaks. Bruises. Wounds. Anything that said it had been real.
Nothing.
Smooth skin. Whole bones.
Except—
A deep, twisting ache at the center of me. Not sharp enough to be fresh. Not dull enough to be dismissed. Something older. Hungrier.
Phantom pain.
The kind I had learned to ignore in another life—one Hell had trained me to endure until it became familiar. Routine. Expected.
But this wasn’t the Cenobites’ work.
This was his.
And it hadn’t even left a mark.
I sat very still, staring into the flames, until the ache settled lower, curling into some place unreachable. It throbbed with each crack of the wood, each spark that jumped skyward, impossible to chase and impossible to soothe.
Yet for all its cruelty, it brought something else too. Something small. Something uninvited.
A bubble of light.
The rush that came with pain refined into meaning. It was the same terrible spark I had once felt when the Cenobites first showed me the truth of suffering—when Pinhead’s offer had turned agony into purpose.
And now, for the first time since my exile, I felt it again. That twisted euphoria that pain could be more than punishment. That it could be—clarity.
His Spark had given me that.
I hated it.
I savored it.
And somewhere deep inside, I wanted more.
I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. I just let the fire warm the front of me while the phantom pain gnawed at my core. It was a cruel companion, but not unfamiliar.
I knew what it meant: the Entity wasn’t done. Neither was he.
I would see him again.
And this time, I would not look away.
The Fog did not release him. It never did. Not fully. It simply shifted, receded, like the curtain between performances. One trial ended, another waited in the wings.
And still—he could feel her.
Her voice lingered, cutting sharper than any Spark he had ever drawn from flesh. “I see you, Doctor—”
No hesitation. No fear. She had named him. And then the Entity had stolen her away before he could answer, before he could dissect the meaning from those words, before he could drown in them.
Now, back in the space between, he sat on the edge of his own realm. Léry’s loomed behind him in quiet ruin, its walls humming faintly with dormant static. The great asylum was his cage, his sanctum, his experiment hall—but now it felt small, empty, without her. From where he stood, the glow of the campfire was visible in the distance: the survivors’ domain, where their fragile warmth sputtered against the Fog.
He could not cross that light. None of them could. The Entity’s rules were absolute—killers who dared step into the fire’s circle found their flesh stripped in punishment. But he lingered at the edge, static sparking faintly against his fingertips as he watched. Survivors shifted on their logs, muttering, stealing glances toward the shadows when they thought it safe. A few killers brooded near their own boundaries, but Herman stayed fixed, his gaze unbroken.
He hummed.
Low at first. Barely audible beneath the crackle of fire drifting on the air. Then louder. Broken, uneven notes stitched together into something almost sweet. The tune had no name anymore, but it had teeth. Each note vibrated against his skull, threaded with static until his jaw ached. His teeth buzzed with it. Sparks ticked at the corners of his vision.
He laughed once—short, clipped. Not joy. Release. His fingers flexed against the Stick though he did not lift it. The Entity pulsed around the edges of his mind, warning, tightening its leash. He ignored it. His hum bled into giggles, fragmented and bright, spilling out like wires stripped bare.
They didn’t understand. They never did. The survivors huddled closer to their fire, clutching each other, stealing glances toward the shapes that stalked the Fog. Some whispered his name when they thought he wasn’t listening. A few killers shifted further back into their realms, their silence heavier than his. None of it mattered. None of them mattered.
She mattered.
Her hand on his face. Her eyes that did not scream. The way she looked at him—not as monster, not as machine. As man.
It had been taken too soon. Interrupted. He needed more data. He needed the next trial. He needed her.
The Entity’s chains would come for him again, as they always did. But he would not fight them. Not this time. Not when he knew who might be waiting on the other side.
So he hummed into the Fog, giggling into the static, tasting sparks against his teeth. Survivors shifted uncomfortably by their fire. The flames bent in the unnatural wind.
And when the Fog shifted again, he prayed it carried him to her.
Notes:
He's probably humming Phantom of the opera-
Chapter 3: Chapter Three - Endurance
Summary:
Camilla endures a trial claimed by Pinhead, where chains, hooks, and Kakihara’s fanatic devotion turn suffering into spectacle. Torn from the Cenobite’s grasp by the Entity, she returns to the campfire changed — alive, but wrong. In Léry’s, Herman feels her pulse through the Spark, voices promising he can keep her if he kills.
Notes:
Little reminder my herman is set in the 60's/70's before the fog snatched his ass. He's probably humming The Zombies - Time Of The Season too LOL
Chapter Text
The Fog felt wrong that night. Not heavy. Not suffocating. Intrusive.
It slid close around the campfire, curling into the survivors’ hair, their clothes, their lungs. The fire hissed low as though the air itself wanted to smother it.
They all felt it.
Jane sat rigid, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the flames. Dwight shifted on his log until the wood creaked, biting his nails until they bled. Meg tapped her foot fast, restless, like a mare locked in a stall too small. Even their silence was noisy.
And then the sounds began.
First, a wet, steady breathing. It came from nowhere and everywhere at once, sliding through the Fog like a whisper pressed against the ear. Then the faint rattle of chains across unseen stone, tugging taut, releasing. And beneath it—softer still—the staccato chatter of teeth, gnashing like an animal preparing its bite.
Every survivor flinched.
No one spoke. No one dared.
I sat still, hands folded in my lap, my gaze pinned to the darkness beyond the firelight. They weren’t hallucinations. Not this time. These were her helpers—the faithful who served her sermons. The Weeper’s mournful sob. The Gasp’s cruel exhale. The chattering silhouette with its mouth forced open to eternity.
They lingered just at the edge of sight, never stepping closer, always waiting.
It meant only one thing.
The next trial would belong to the Priest.
No one wanted to say it. But everyone knew. Pinhead’s trials were sermons dressed as hunts. Few survived them. Fewer still survived whole.
The fire cracked, sparks flying into the suffocating dark.
I didn’t move. Because if she was coming for me again… then I was already hers.
The Fog did not wait long.
One moment, I was watching the survivors squirm by the fire, their bodies caught in a silence too heavy to be broken. The next—chains rattled. A bell tolled in the marrow of my spine.
The Fog tore us open and spat us out.
Coldwind Farm.
The dirt hit hard beneath my boots, soft with mud and scattered straw. The stench hit harder—fertilizer gone sour, copper rot baked into the soil, mildew clinging to wood. The cornfields rose around us like walls, stalks tall enough to blot out the sky, whispering against themselves with no wind to move them.
The others stumbled nearby. Jane steadied herself first, jaw tight, posture squared like she could bully the Fog into leaving her alone. Dwight hit the ground awkwardly, palms scraping dirt, panic already carved into his face. Meg cursed under her breath and bolted before her knees had even straightened, sneakers tearing tracks into the soil as she sprinted into the corn.
And me? I just stood. Breathing.
Because I already knew what waited here.
The air was wrong—too heavy, too sharp. The sound wasn’t silence. It was chains. Rattling faintly, like wind chimes in the distance, tugging and pulling at invisible points in the air. And underneath that, woven into the rustle of stalks, the sound of wet breathing. Long. Measured. Intentional.
The corn split.
She stepped out.
The Priest. The pins gleamed under a sickle moon, each one set in its perfect grid of flayed flesh, each one shining like holy symbols. Her movements were unhurried, inevitable. The chains dragging behind her weren’t bound to anything, but they clattered and scraped as if they were attached to the whole of reality itself.
Her gaze passed over Jane, lingered on Dwight, slid past the direction Meg had run. Then it landed on me.
I felt the ache before she even spoke. That deep coil in my core, the phantom rush of recognition.
“You cannot outrun me, Analyst.”
My throat locked. The word hit like a lash, striking deep where flesh met memory. The Analyst. The title she gave me when the Order reshaped my purpose. The title they carved into my mind before my exile. Hearing it now ripped the stitches loose.
“You were mine,” the Priest said. Her voice was calm, soft, merciless. “You will be mine again.”
The chains answered her words.
Dwight shrieked when the first set ripped through the earth and hooked into his shoulders, jerking him back so hard his feet left the ground. He clawed at the links, but they only tightened, pulling him upright into a grotesque crucifixion. The sound of tearing muscle was louder than his screams.
Jane lunged to help him—foolish, desperate. She grabbed at the chains, tried to wrench them free, only to recoil as the steel burned her palms. She cursed, stumbling back.
That’s when the laughter came.
High. Musical. Bright as broken glass.
The corn swayed, and Kakihara slid into view like a shadow given flesh. His suit was immaculate, his scars gleaming like jewelry in the pale light, mouth stretched in its eternal smile. He moved with all the urgency of a man walking to dinner.
Meg’s scream tore through the fields a moment later. He’d caught her already.
「ああ、美しい。皮膚の下にある音楽だ。」
(Ah… beautiful. The music beneath the skin.)
I didn’t need translation. His tone carried everything. Delight. Reverence. Worship.
Pinhead tilted her head, and though she did not speak Japanese, she answered as though she understood every syllable.
“Yes, Kakihara. She still carries it. The song is not gone.”
Meg stumbled into the clearing, dragged by his hand clamped around her wrist. He knelt beside her like a lover, pressing a sliver of steel into her shoulder, eyes wide with bliss as her body buckled around the pain. His voice hummed low in her ear, the sound like a hymn.
And I realized with a cold twist in my gut: he hadn’t been talking about Meg at all. He’d been talking about me.
The chains tightened around Dwight until his scream broke into something wet and raw. His legs kicked uselessly, heels digging trenches in the dirt, before the links yanked him across the ground toward the barn.
I should have followed. I should have run. I did neither.
Because this wasn’t a hunt anymore. It was a performance.
The barn doors creaked open of their own accord, the Fog breathing them wide. Dwight’s body was dragged up, up into the rafters, chains pulling him higher until his arms stretched wide. Hooks glimmered in the moonlight like teeth.
The steel bit in. His shriek rattled the loft beams.
Pinhead stepped beneath him, serene as a priest before an altar. She looked not at him, but at me, her calm voice cutting through the air.
“You see? Struggle only proves devotion. Pain is the one truth that never lies.”
Dwight’s eyes bulged, lips working frantic, but no sound came out. His throat had given up. The chains carried his silence better than any voice could.
Movement to my right drew me—Kakihara. He had left Meg kneeling in the mud, her sobs muffled by his careful hand pressed over her mouth. Not to silence her, not really. Just to feel the way her jaw trembled under his palm. His gaze wasn’t on her now.
It was on Dwight.
The screams. The open mouth.
He watched every syllable that didn’t come, lips curling with delight at the silent contortions. His head tilted, his scars glistening, the smile in his split mouth stretching until I thought it might split further. He didn’t need to hear. He was feasting with his eyes.
He whispered in Japanese, soft, reverent:
「歌だ… 叫びは歌だ。」
(A song… the scream is a song.)
And Pinhead, without turning, answered as though he had spoken straight into her skull:
“Yes, Kakihara. And every note belongs to us.”
The barn shuddered. Chains bit deeper. Dwight’s body jerked, his head lolling as blood painted the rafters.
Jane sobbed somewhere behind me, a sound she tried to swallow and couldn’t. Meg thrashed weakly in the dirt, Kakihara’s grip tightening like a lover’s embrace.
Jane broke first.
Her sob cracked into a scream as she bolted for the barn, skirts catching on corn husks, her hands outstretched like she could pull Dwight down with sheer will. The chains answered before she reached him. One snapped across the ground and coiled her ankle, tearing her off her feet so hard her teeth clacked. She hit the dirt face-first, blood seeping into the soil. Her nails clawed trenches as she tried to drag herself forward, but the chain only reeled her back, slow and deliberate, until she lay writhing beneath the crucified body above.
Pinhead did not look at her. Not yet. The sermon had not reached its next verse.
Dwight’s body jerked against the hooks. His throat worked uselessly, mouth wide, silence spilling out like incense. Kakihara tilted his head to watch it, transfixed. His hand remained firm over Meg’s mouth, but his eyes devoured Dwight’s wordless agony. Every spasm. Every twitch. Every gasp of air that never became a sound. His smile widened until his scars gleamed like raw jewels in the moonlight.
「もっと…もっと。」
(More… more.)
Pinhead obliged.
Another chain tore through Dwight’s thigh, splitting flesh with the sound of wet canvas ripping. His body arched, his silence breaking into a strangled wheeze. The hooks above groaned as blood poured down in slow sheets, pattering into Jane’s hair where she knelt beneath. Her hands lifted, shaking, as if she meant to catch it, to shield herself from a rain that did not end.
The Fog breathed heavier, curling close. It wanted this.
Meg thrashed against Kakihara’s grip, a muffled shriek escaping between his fingers. He chuckled low, almost tender, and pressed the blade deeper into her shoulder until her body buckled. The sound she made vibrated against his palm, and he shuddered like a man hearing music for the first time.
“Yes,” Pinhead intoned, her voice like iron through velvet. “Every soul is a note. Every cry a chord. Together they form a hymn.”
Her eyes rose from Dwight to me. “And you, Analyst, are the song that binds it.”
My stomach clenched. I could feel the chains in the air, humming, waiting. They were not wrapped around me yet, but every link knew my name.
I did not move. Because if I moved, I feared they would answer.
And me? I stood rooted to the floor, the ache in my chest twisting sharper with every syllable, every snap of chain. Because I understood the shape of the ritual. I recognized the pattern. They weren’t killing Dwight for Dwight. They were teaching me.
Meg kicked and clawed at the dirt, desperate to rip free, but Kakihara’s grip was steady, calm. One hand pressed gently over her mouth, not to silence her—no, he wanted her to scream. He wanted to watch it. But he wanted it when he chose. With his free hand, he reached inside his jacket. Moonlight caught the glint of polished steel — thin, needle-like weapons balanced between his scarred fingers. Senbon.
My stomach turned.
He selected one like a painter choosing a brush. With care. With ceremony. He whispered in Japanese, almost lovingly:
「泣け。声を聞かせろ。」
(Cry. Let me hear your voice.)
Of course, he couldn’t hear a thing. But the watching was enough. The shape of her lips, the strain of her jaw—that was his song.
The senbon slid into the soft muscle just below her collarbone. Not deep enough to kill. Just enough to catch a nerve. Meg’s whole body arched, muffled sobs tearing past his palm as tears streaked her face.
Kakihara’s smile widened. He tilted his head, studying the way her mouth stretched around each cry. His thumb brushed her cheek almost tenderly as he pulled the needle free, a thin ribbon of blood following it. He hummed, low and distorted, body trembling with delight. The sound wasn’t human, more vibration than melody.
Another senbon. This time, he slid it between the tendons of her forearm. Meg writhed, eyes rolling, her mouth shaping a plea she couldn’t voice. He leaned closer, watching every syllable, every desperate twist of her lips.
「美しい。痛みは芸術だ。」
(Beautiful. Pain is art.)
Pinhead watched as if he recited scripture. She spoke softly, her calm cutting through Meg’s muffled screams. “Do you see, Analyst? He understands. Suffering reveals beauty, and beauty endures.”
I clenched my fists until my nails bit crescents into my palms. The ache in my chest flared bright, sharp, dangerous. Because I did see. Every tremor in Meg’s body, every silent plea in her lips, every senbon Kakihara slid home like a conductor tuning an instrument. He wasn’t killing her. He was playing her.
Pinhead’s chains clattered, her sermon spilling smooth. “Suffering reveals beauty, and beauty endures.” She wanted me silent. To watch. To wilt. To remember her authority.
But silence had never been my only weapon.
My voice cut before I could swallow it, sharp and deliberate: “Why don’t you turn him into one of us then? Hm?”
Her head tilted, slight but sharp.
“Worried your dear human will change?” I pressed, every word steady though my stomach roiled. “Worried he’ll find interest in another? Maybe Abagore? Or the Sculptress? She lures many artists—”
The name cracked the air like a whip. Pinhead’s eyes narrowed, calm but cutting, and for the first time her sermon faltered.
Chains writhed in the rafters, eager.
Below, Kakihara laughed — jagged, delighted, his scars splitting wider as if the tension itself was another performance. He muttered in Japanese, glee raw in his voice:
「大胆だな。すばらしい。」
(Bold. Wonderful.)
And Pinhead? She only smiled. Slow. Patient. I had given her something she wanted — a spark to answer in kind.
Her eyes locked on me, still and terrible. The barn seemed to hold its breath.
I smiled back, teeth bare, letting silence stretch. “I don’t know, darling,” I murmured, “you seem… attached.”
It was a risk. A provocation. But calculated.
Kakihara’s laugh split the air, bright and jagged. He doubled over Meg’s body, whispering in Japanese as he slid another senbon beneath her skin:
「あはは！聞いたか？彼女はお前を縛る鎖を見たんだ。」
(Did you hear that? She saw the chain that binds you.)
Pinhead did not laugh. She did not frown. But the faintest flicker of tension pulled her lips, her calm cracking like porcelain. The chains in the rafters rattled louder, hungrier, striking the floor inches from my boots with a snap that rang through my bones.
Her voice came low, deliberate. “Careful, Analyst. Attachment is the language of the weak. You should know that better than anyone.”
And yet, for the first time since she stepped from the corn, I felt the balance tilt.
My words hung in the rafters like smoke. Attached.
For a breath, she didn’t move. The chains stilled, waiting for her will.
Then they answered.
teel screamed from the rafters.
The chains lashed down like striking serpents, links cracking through the air before I could move. One coiled across my chest, another wrapped my ribs, slamming me back against a support beam hard enough to rattle my teeth. Pain flared sharp, hot, blooming deep as bruises formed before the steel even cut.
I didn’t give her the scream she wanted. I bit it back, my throat working around a hiss instead.
Pinhead stepped closer, serene as always, her pale face luminous in the dark. “You speak of attachment as though you are above it.” Her calm voice slid under my skin more easily than the chains had. “But I know you, Analyst. I know the ache that drives you. I know why you touched him. Why you lingered when you should have fled.”
The chain at my side wrenched tighter, grinding flesh against bone. I winced, but I met her eyes.
Kakihara’s delighted laugh split the barn, ragged and sharp. He clapped once like a child at a show, then bent back to Meg, whispering against her ear as he drove another senbon into her thigh:
「ほら見ろ。彼女もお前と同じだ。鎖が必要だ。」
(See? She’s just like you. She needs chains too.)
Pinhead’s lips curved, faint, cruel. “Chains remind us of what we are, Kakihara.” Her gaze returned to me, pinning me harder than the steel. “And you, Analyst… you are still mine.”
The ache twisted inside me — not fear, not entirely. Something sharper, hotter, more dangerous. I swallowed it down and forced a smile back at her.
The chains cut deeper, biting across my ribs and arms, holding me spread against the beam. Every nerve screamed for release. My vision blurred at the edges. Still, I managed the words, my voice jagged but steady:
“Our sessions have grown so boring, Priest. Have you run out of designs and ideas?” I tilted my head, let the smile widen though my body trembled in the steel’s grip. “I haven’t even whimpered.”
The barn went still. Dwight’s body swung silently above. Jane clutched the wall, frozen between horror and disbelief.
Kakihara broke the silence with a gleeful, distorted laugh. His scars split wider as he clapped again. He hissed in Japanese, reverent and wild:
「ああ、いい。噛みつけ、もっと噛みつけ。」
(Ahh, yes. Bite her. Bite her more.)
Pinhead’s eyes narrowed, but her composure held. She tilted her head, serene even in irritation. “Very well. If you will not whimper, you will sing.”
The chains shuddered in answer. One coiled around my leg and yanked, dragging me half off the beam. Another twisted across my shoulder, forcing my spine to arch until agony lit every nerve. My teeth clenched, but a raw sound broke loose, torn between growl and scream.
The Priest tilted her head, watching with the still patience of a surgeon at work. “Better. Pain creates music, Analyst. The only true song worth hearing.”
Kakihara’s laughter rang bright, delighted. He abandoned Meg’s writhing body and stepped into the open, clapping once, eyes alight. He muttered in Japanese, voice trembling with reverence:
「聞こえるか？ 彼女の声だ… 最高の音楽だ。」
(Do you hear it? Her voice… the greatest music.)
The chains jerked again, dragging me higher, ribs grinding, arms straining until blood slicked my side. Dwight swayed above me, his limp body a grotesque metronome, keeping time with every pulse of the steel.
The chains bit deeper, their weight pulling until my shoulders burned and my arms screamed. Every breath came ragged, wet at the edges where blood slid in rivulets down my ribs. My body sang with pain, each note sharp and piercing, but I forced my jaw tight, kept the scream caged behind my teeth. She would not have it freely. Not yet.
Above me Dwight swung, his silence a grotesque lullaby, a body made into a pendulum for the Entity’s amusement. The Fog lapped at him greedily, savoring each drip of blood as though it were incense rising in an unseen cathedral. His head lolled side to side with every sway, eyes wide but already empty, a marionette dancing in someone else’s ritual. The barn’s rafters groaned with the weight, wood creaking like pews bending beneath an unseen congregation.
Jane pressed herself flat against the far wall, hands splayed as if she could meld into the boards. Tremors rattled her arms, her eyes darting from Dwight to me to the door. When the chains shifted away from her, she bolted, skirts tearing against splintered wood as she crashed through the barn door. The Fog caught her, swallowed her into the corn with a sigh like an inhaled prayer. A heartbeat later Meg followed—half-crawling, half-stumbling, her arms smeared slick where Kakihara’s senbon had kissed her. Her sobs tangled with the rustling of stalks until both sounds disappeared.
Pinhead did not stop them. She didn’t care. The sermon was never meant for them. It was meant for me.
The chains tightened once more, a cruel punctuation. They wrenched a sound from my chest I hadn’t meant to give—high, unwilling, half-scream, half-groan. The rafters rang with it, vibrating with grim approval. Even the barn itself seemed to pause, to listen.
Kakihara moved then. He left Meg’s blood behind in the dirt and approached, every step deliberate, unhurried, reverent. He dragged a scarred hand through his hair, slicking it back with the wetness that dripped from the steel biting into my flesh. When his palm came away red, he smeared it across his face like a lover’s caress, a war-paint mask painted from me. His grin widened, his mouth nearly splitting open at the scars, and his tongue darted across the seam to taste it. He shivered with delight.
Beautiful. Scars and all.
The thought should have sickened me. Should have broken the hold of the pain with revulsion. But it didn’t. Instead, it frightened me. Because it wasn’t the Entity’s Spark that rattled me, it was him. Kakihara Masao. Human. Still human. And yet he reveled in carnage with more hunger than any Cenobite I had ever seen in my life.
Beneath his mania burned emotions twisted like wildfire: desire, devotion, an eagerness so bright it bordered on worship. His madness was not the dispassionate cruelty of Pinhead’s sermons. It was personal. Hungry. Loyal, I realized suddenly, with the sharp clarity of steel pressed against bone. Loyal to a fault. Loyal to the one who earned it. Could I use that later? Could I bend it? Could I find the fault lines in his chaos and pry them open with the same tools I once used to break men in sterile offices—with patience, with calculation, with my voice?
The thought flickered—fragile, dangerous, but real.
Not now. Not here.
Now I had to endure.
My body strained against the chains, my chest tight, each inhale rasping ragged, catching on blood pooling inside. Endure, because the others needed time. If Jane lived, if Meg lived, if Dwight’s sacrifice held, then perhaps the Entity’s cruel rotation would spin elsewhere. If they lived, they might not have to kneel at this sermon again for dozens of trials. Their pain tonight might be enough.
So I bit back another cry, clenched my fists until nails carved crescents into my palms, and forced myself to hold the line. Endure. Wait. Survive.
The thought of using Kakihara later—of twisting his devotion, of binding his chaos to my own advantage—barely had time to root before the chains yanked again. They dragged me higher, joints screaming, blood slicking faster down my side. My shoulders stretched toward breaking, my ribs grinding under steel’s insistence. My body screamed. My mind screamed louder.
Because some part of me knew she was right.
It was a song. A hymn carried in the grinding of bone and the tearing of flesh. The music of pain.
And I hated myself for hearing it. For listening. For almost answering back.
My body snapped forward, then back, like a marionette in the hands of an impatient puppeteer. Links coiled around my waist, my thighs, my throat, tightening with the rhythm of her will. The beam at my back groaned under the strain, threatening to crack with every jerk. The smell of hot iron and blood filled my nose as the chains ground deeper into flesh, their rasping song filling the barn.
Pain seared white behind my eyes, rolling in waves that made my vision strobe. I hissed through clenched teeth, choking on a sound I swore I wouldn’t give her. Every muscle jumped with each lash, a puppet made to twitch at her command.
Pinhead stepped closer, expression calm as ever, pins glinting in the moonlight, her movements slow and deliberate as if savoring the lesson. “You speak of loyalty, of attachment, of boredom.” Her words fell like a scripture being carved into my ribs.
Another chain whipped across my side, tearing fabric and skin alike, the snap echoing like a whip in a cathedral. I gasped, knees threatening to buckle, but the steel held me upright, arms and spine locked into place like a grotesque effigy on display. My head lolled, but still I refused her scream.
“You whimper now, Analyst. Your body betrays you.”
Blood ran in thick streams down my side, dripping onto the dirt in a steady rhythm that sounded almost like a drum. Kakihara’s eyes lit at the sight, his face alive with fanatic glee. He crouched low, dragging his fingers through the red trail before pressing them to his mouth. His split lips shone wet as he whispered, hungry and reverent:
「もっとだ…もっと見せろ。」
(More… show me more.)
Pinhead’s gaze never wavered from mine. “Do you see? He understands. He honors what you deny.” Her tone carried the satisfaction of a sermon finding its echo.
The chain at my throat tightened, cutting into tender flesh, stealing my breath, black edging into my vision. I forced my lips into a smile anyway, though the blood at my mouth made it ragged and broken. My teeth gleamed red in the candlelit dark.
Endure. I had to endure. If Meg and Jane could keep running, if the Entity’s cycle spun true, this punishment would spare them for nights to come. My agony might purchase them a reprieve.
But here, in this moment, under the Priest’s chains and Kakihara’s delighted eyes, I knew the truth she wanted me to confess. She wanted more than pain—she wanted admission. She wanted the song.
Pain wasn’t just survival.
It was song.
And I was still singing.
The chains cut deeper, vibrating through my bones as if they were strings plucked by some unseen hand. Blood slicked my chest, my throat, my thighs. Every nerve screamed. Every breath tore ragged from my lungs, gurgling in my chest like broken notes of an organ.
And still, I smiled. A cruel rictus that mocked her even as tears pricked at my eyes. Because I could feel it—the thing I had buried, the thing I had been forced to forget. The place in me that used to open like a door when the Order called. It stirred now, restless, clawing at my ribs as if begging to be let out.
I pushed. My nails cut into my palms, my back arched, my veins felt molten. My vision bled silver at the edges, the ache in my chest splitting into something sharp, radiant. My skin tightened, stretched as though about to tear and reveal something else beneath. I could almost taste the old power again—the promise of transformation, of becoming more than this fragile meat. My bones hummed with it, vibrating with the chains’ rhythm.
Pinhead’s calm voice cut through the air, her tone edged with hunger: “Yes… Analyst. Sing for me.”
Kakihara’s laughter rattled the rafters, broken and euphoric. He clapped his hands once, eyes gleaming as he whispered in Japanese:
「そうだ！戻れ！美しい怪物に！」
(Yes! Return! Become the beautiful monster again!)
The barn shook, rafters groaning, dust spilling from beams. The gates yawned open with a howl, and I glimpsed Meg and Jane in the distance, sprinting through the corn toward the shimmer of freedom, their silhouettes desperate and small against the moonlight.
And then the sky split.
The Entity’s judgment fell like a guillotine of night.
A spike of black void speared down through the crown of my skull, splitting me head to spine in one merciless stroke. My body convulsed violently, the chains snapping as the steel tore me free of Pinhead’s control. I was dragged upward like a skewered puppet, blood streaming down in sheets, raining over the rafters, soaking the dirt, spattering across Kakihara’s eager face.
I didn’t even have breath to scream. The sound that left me was something else—wet, guttural, torn raw as my jaw cracked open around it, a note not meant for human throats.
Pinhead’s composure shattered, her chains flailing impotently as the Entity stripped me from her grasp. Her calm broke for the first time. Kakihara threw his head back, laughing brokenly, slicking his hair with the spray as if it were holy water. He shuddered, reveling in every drop.
The spike pulled me higher, higher, until the barn roof vanished, until the Fog swallowed me whole. My body bent and snapped in its grip, vision spiraling into black. The hymn of chains faded behind me, replaced by the roar of the void.
All I could think, in that last violent instant, was how close I had been. How nearly I had broken free. How the taste of that power lingered even as I was dragged away.
Then nothing.
I drifted in the black, weightless, turning slowly as if I were no more than a leaf caught on an unseen current. The void wasn’t empty. It breathed. Thick waves rose and fell around me, dark as tar, carrying countless hands that stroked, tugged, and swayed me wherever they pleased. Their touch was cold and slick, leaving oily trails across my skin that clung long after they pulled away, as if they were claiming me piece by piece.
The black rocked me like a cradle, endless hands shifting in rhythm. My limbs bent without resistance, moved like a doll’s, each motion precise, deliberate. Their fingers pressed into the hollows of my ribs, traced the line of my throat, smoothed back my hair as though preparing me for display. Too many to count. Too many to fight.
Two voices wound through the dark, brushing along my skull like whispers carried through bone.
“Poor darling—” crooned one, syrup-sweet, smoothing my hair back again. Slime dribbled cold along my temple, slick as oil.
“We took the Cenobite’s fun away, my love,” purred the other, breath soft as silk against the inside of my ear. “It will be angry—”
The first voice cut sharp, hungry, vibrating in my chest like teeth against glass. “And so will we, the longer they deny us a proper meal. This is not their Fog, darling. It is ours.”
Their tones tangled—soothing, threatening, caressing—until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. They overlapped, echoed, made a single harmony that sank into my marrow. But I knew this much: they weren’t angry at me. Not yet.
No, they meant to use me.
The way their hands cradled, tilted, arranged me—it wasn’t comfort. It was placement. Like a lure dropped into dark water, a bright thing meant to catch a predator’s eye. My ribs expanded and contracted with their rhythm, as if my very breath was being pulled to a tempo not my own.
I floated, helpless in their tide, knowing what they were shaping me into.
Not prey.
Not killer.
Not survivor.
Incentive.
Their grip vanished all at once.
No weight. No sound. Just a jolt, like my body had been dropped down a shaft with no end. The black slipped away, peeling back like a curtain, and firelight struck my eyes, harsh and sudden. The campfire hissed and cracked in front of me, the same as always, its warmth crawling up my skin as though it had never left.
But the way they looked at me wasn’t the same.
Dwight dropped the half-whittled stick in his hands, wood clattering against the stone circle. Jane froze mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open. Even Meg—bruised, pacing, her fists tight—stopped cold as though she’d seen a ghost.
Their faces told me what the hands hadn’t.
It hadn’t just been one trial.
To them, I’d been gone for dozens.
I lifted a hand instinctively, needing proof that I was solid, that I hadn’t been left behind in that black tide. My palm trembled, pale in the firelight, but it was there. I was there. The ache from Pinhead’s chains still thrummed deep in my ribs. It was fresh—raw, immediate. No time had passed at all.
Jane blinked at me once, twice, as if convincing herself I was real. Then she surged forward, seizing my cheeks in her hands and pinching hard enough to make me jolt. “You’re alive—holy shit!”
The words rang out too loud, too bright. Dwight laughed nervously, the sound sharp, breaking almost into a sob. His shoulders shook as if he might fall apart. Meg dragged a hand down her face, muttering curses under her breath, her chest rising fast.
Alive.
I was alive.
But the look in their eyes said it plain: they weren’t sure I should be.
Jane’s hands still cupped my cheeks, her eyes wide, wet at the corners, her breath shaky. Dwight muttered “no way, no way, no way—” like a prayer or a mantra, eyes locked on me as if I might vanish again. Meg sat down hard on the log, staring at me like she was watching a corpse climb out of its grave.
To them, I’d been gone for weeks.
To me, it was seconds.
The ache from Pinhead’s chains hadn’t even faded. It was still singing under my skin, every bruise and cut humming like plucked strings.
Alive.
But not right.
Never right again.
Léry’s walls hummed, restless in their silence. The asylum seemed to breathe in uneven pulses, every corridor a throat that whispered static. Between trials the place slept, but he never did. His boots dragged unevenly on the cracked tiles, heel and toe striking irregular rhythms like a broken metronome. Each pass down the hall carved deeper into the ruin. The Stick trailed behind him, prongs sparking faint, arcs of blue crawling up the walls like ivy spun from lightning. Dust fell from the ceiling with each burst.
Then it hit.
A spike of resonance, jagged and sudden, ripped down his spine until his teeth rattled against each other. Not the Spark. Not his. Something other. Something vast, coiled, and wrong. Familiar in its wrongness.
Her.
His breath hitched, sharp and stuttering, chest seizing like a machine jolted with foreign current. Every fluorescent bulb in Léry’s guttered, then flared, then flickered in unison, pulsing with the rhythm of a heartbeat that wasn’t his own. The static rushed across his skin, crawling into his gums, his jaw, making his skull hum like a tuning fork.
She was back.
He couldn’t see her. Couldn’t hear her. But the Fog sang it through him, vibrating his marrow with electric clarity. She had returned. Dragged back into the campfire, alive when she should not have been, when he had felt her absence carve space through him like a hole drilled in bone.
Every line of his body coiled with hunger. His knuckles whitened around the Stick, wood groaning under the pressure of his grip. He dug it into the tile hard enough to split the grout. The Entity toyed with him—taking her away, dropping her back like a bauble on a hook, daring him to break. It wanted him to boil. To hunt. To kill. And the pulse of her return was winding his insides tighter than any chain.
His hum slipped out unbidden, fractured, uneven, his teeth buzzing with sparks. “You’re mine…” The sound warped, cracked, broke, then rebuilt itself under his breath. A mantra. A promise. A plea. Need thickened it until his throat tore raw.
Static bled through the walls in answer. Plaster bulged with veins of blue light, crawling like roots, each pulse synced to a heartbeat that was not his. The resonance didn’t fade. It grew. It became a rhythm, steady, unstoppable, crawling under his skin until even his bones throbbed with it. He pressed a trembling hand against the wall, breath jagged, eyes wide and bloodshot. The asylum trembled faintly, fluorescent hum building into a shriek as if responding not just to him but to her.
Then came the voices.
They didn’t echo in the halls. They didn’t need air. They slid directly into him, seamless and twinned, finishing one another, overlapping, curling like smoke inside the shell of his skull. Lovers’ voices, mocking, indulgent, impossibly close.
“She can be—” one purred, velvet and cruel, its cadence laced with hooks.
“If you want,” the other finished, softer, slicker, a whisper stroking the edge of his eardrum.
His grip on the Stick tightened further. Wood splintered under his hand, slivers driving into his palm. His hum cut off mid-note, replaced by a guttural rasp. “What’s the catch?” His voice fractured, words sparking against his teeth. There was always a catch. Always a leash.
The first voice purred again, clawed and sweet, dragging sensation across his shoulder. Not flesh. Not metal. Something lithe and alien, tipped with cracks glowing faint red like embers smoldering under coal. “Nothing you aren’t used to, Doctor Carter.”
The second voice pressed heavier, a suffocating weight sliding down his spine. He felt it as an inky-black tendril curling down his arm, suction cold, leaving round marks on his skin that throbbed after it passed. “Just kill. Just torment. Feed us their fear, and we will let you keep your little pet here.”
His pulse stuttered, Spark sputtering like faulty wiring inside his chest, static boiling against his ribs. Camilla’s face ripped through his mind’s eye with merciless clarity—the tilt of her head, the curl of her lips, the way she had once whispered Doctor like a hymn into the dark. The ache that gnawed him hollow every time she vanished now roared back, not absence but presence, so sharp it split him open.
The voices cooed together, seamless in duet, their tones sliding around him like silk dripping over barbed wire. “Go on then. Kill…”
“…and you can collect her straight from the fire.”
Above him, the lights burst in unison, glass raining down in sparks and shards. Electricity spat from severed wires, hissing across the floor like serpents. He didn’t laugh. Didn’t hum. He only gripped the Stick tighter, wood shrieking as it bent in his hand, splinters biting so deep into his palm that blood ran down the handle in dark rivulets.
She could be his.
All he had to do was kill.
GrimmTruth on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Aug 2025 04:06PM UTC
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Oculi on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Aug 2025 07:24PM UTC
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(Previous comment deleted.)
Oculi on Chapter 1 Fri 05 Sep 2025 01:24AM UTC
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