. "The Lair of Forgotten Flesh"

Elim stirred in silence.

His breath steamed in the cold air. His mouth opened, but no words came. He was groaning—not from pain of flesh, but from something far older. A sorrow without shape.

He saw her again.

A young girl, laughing in the field behind their home. Her voice was sunlight. Her bare feet kicked snow like it didn't exist. She waved at him.

His heart smiled.

And then the laughter stopped.

An unseen hand—enormous, ancient—crushed her. No sound. No scream. Her little body folded like parchment. Her eyes wide and calm.

He tried to reach her. To move.

He couldn't.

He only watched.

And then it happened again. And again. And again. Her death repeated endlessly, a loop of helplessness, her life stolen by a force he couldn't fight—or remember.

His arms were bound by forgetting.

His tongue, strangled by loss.

And when Elim finally woke, sweating beneath the winter sheet, he had already forgotten her name.

Only the cold remembered.

----

The Descent

The cave's mouth yawned open like a wound in the world—ragged, weeping, lined with black roots that twitched when touched by wind.

Bones lay strewn at its threshold, brittle and half-swallowed by snow.

Something had died here, many times.

The team stood at the entrance.

Crept. Kael. Cerejeira. Bashanta. Tremeur. Inteja.

None of them spoke as they stepped in. The light died quickly.

Veins of glowing fungus ran through the walls, pulsing like arteries.

Every few seconds, they'd shift color—soft green, electric blue, and finally a shade of red so deep it was almost black.

The air was heavy with rot. It pressed into their lungs.

The further they walked, the more alive the cave felt.

The walls were slick, not with water, but something else.

Like muscle soaked in brine. The floor pulsed beneath their feet, faintly, as if breathing.

"This is no cave," Kael muttered. "It's a body."

They passed the first corpse.

It wasn't lying on the ground.

It was suspended from the ceiling by sinews and rusted hooks, skin and muscle stripped away, internal organs glistening and exposed, as if frozen mid-autopsy.

The arrangement mimicked an anatomical exhibit, but with a savage, unfinished brutality.

"This is…" Cerejeira couldn't finish the sentence.

"A display," Crept said grimly. "Not a death."

They moved deeper.

Now, the cave became a theater of the grotesque:

Macabre dioramas lined the passage—skeletons and partially preserved corpses posed in unnatural, almost theatrical tableaus.

Some were locked in silent screams, others clutching at invisible threats, a few arranged in mock conversation around a stone slab, arms lifted in imitation of a toast.

Tattered remnants of jewelry and bizarre decorations made from other body parts dangled from their necks and wrists, echoing the morbid dioramas of a forgotten age.

A wall of faces loomed ahead—skinned visages stretched and nailed to the stone, features twisted in terror or agony.

Some were used as grotesque masks by Yai-beasts prowling the lair, their laughter echoing through the darkness.

They passed a plastinated specimen—a soldier preserved with a foul, glistening substance, tissues infused and posed in a lifelike stance, frozen mid-run, mouth open not in a scream but in a desperate call.

The flickering cave light made him seem almost animated, as if he might bolt at any moment.

A woman, her arms fused with antlers, back curved like a spider's shell, her face split open to reveal a second mouth stitched shut, was mounted upright on a pillar of bone—a grotesque warning or an offering.

Grotesque chimeras lined the passageways: limbs and torsos from different victims crudely stitched together, forming monstrous hybrids. Some were fused with animal remains or magical beast parts, creating abominations that blurred the line between human and monster.

Jars of remnants sat on ledges—organs, eyes, and hands floating in cloudy glass, sometimes decorated with wilted flowers, beads, or bits of bone, reminiscent of anatomical curiosities from a mad collector's cabinet.

On the floor, ritual circles of bones and blood formed intricate patterns, each a testament to some dark rite or failed experiment. Bloodstains and claw marks suggested these displays were frequently disturbed—perhaps by the lair's current inhabitants.

Cerejeira stepped closer to Kael, not even noticing.

He didn't smile. Not this time.

"I believe this is why there were reports of missing personnel," Inteja murmured, her voice even.

"Those are Yai beasts," Crept confirmed. "But the cave is mutating them. Everything here is… wrong."

"This place isn't abandoned," Bashanta added. "It's curated."

And then they found them.

The ANSEP scouts. Their own.

Laid out in rows. Uniforms still visible beneath rot. Fingernails chipped from clawing. Dog tags embedded in the flesh.

Inteja stopped walking.

She knelt beside one body. Her eyes traced the name on the tag. Her fingers brushed his scorched cheek.

"He was nineteen," she whispered. "Always sang off-key in the mess hall."

Crept stared at the bodies, his heartbeat rising.

He rushed forward—pushing past limbs and shattered ribs—eyes searching. Not for the dead.

But for the ones who might still be alive.

"Atiya. Zelaine. Please—just don't be here."

They weren't.

But that brought him no peace.

You don't need to be found. Just be safe.

The lair whispered.

The walls breathed.

A jar clinked.

Inside, fingers floated in viscous amber—stitched together at the knuckles, forming a crude ring.

Kael turned to Cerejeira.

"Don't worry, Cere. I'll protect you."

"Don't give me a nickname," she muttered, jaw tight.

Kael almost laughed, but he didn't.

Even he could feel it now.

This place wasn't just a lab.

It was an altar.

And something had been worshipped here.

Or born.

"It's strange," Inteja said suddenly, standing up.

"No trace of the Hingcha."

"That's not surprising," Tremeur replied. "They always abandon their lairs before they're found."

"And always leave something behind," Bashanta added.

---

They gathered the bodies in a silent circle, each face marked by grief and exhaustion. The cave's grotesque gallery was now a place of mourning.

Inteja knelt among the fallen, her hands shaking as she closed each comrade's eyes. When she finished, she sat back, spine straight, and closed her own.

A hush fell.

The air shimmered. Memories—Inteja's and the dead's—began to flicker into being, projected in spectral images around the group. The cave walls became a canvas of agony and courage.

They saw it all:

The torture.

The experiments—flesh torn and remade, minds broken and rebuilt.

The silent pleas, the moments of defiance, the small mercies shared in the dark.

And then, a shift.

Atiya and Zelaine appeared in the vision—bloodied, desperate, but unbroken. They fought through the horror, side by side, carving a path toward freedom. The group watched, breath held, as the two finally slipped away from the nightmare, battered but alive.

Cerejeira now understood how they teleported out of nowhere and fought with her.

A collective sigh of relief rippled through the survivors. For a moment, hope flickered in the gloom.

Inteja's hands trembled as she fumbled for a cigarette. It took three tries to light it. She exhaled, smoke curling around her face, and then pressed the burning tip to the oil-soaked shrouds.

Flames caught. The bodies were consumed in a gentle, golden blaze.

Inteja bowed her head, whispering a prayer for the dead:

"Let the time mend your soul."

The group stood together, silent, as the fire burned away the horror—leaving only memory, and the ache of love.

And as the last embers faded, a question lingered in the smoke:

Is love the controller of mind that leads to destruction,

or the salvation one seeks?