Chris was sleepwalking on his feet.
Each step over the bloated membranes and mucus-stained stone of the Leviathan's inner corridor was like dragging lead anchors tied to his knees. He hadn't slept in seven days. Not properly. His brain swam with white noise and intrusive thoughts. Sometimes, he forgot what day it was. Other times, he forgot what year.
Kelvin trudged beside him, equally broken in body but kept together by sheer spite. They hadn't spoken for hours. Not since they passed the skeletons. Not since the cave of hanging eyeballs. Not since Chris tried to sip from a puddle and it whispered back in his mother's voice.
Now, there it was.
The supply point.
They crouched behind the cracked remains of what looked like a collapsed intestinal arch, peering at the station from behind a curtain of hanging gut-skin.
It was built like a hexagonal outpost—a bunker made from what appeared to be metal, but carried the soft sheen of calcified bone. The door was still sealed. One red light blinked gently above it.
Then Kelvin hissed, "Oi. Look."
Chris followed his line of sight.
There—standing just beside the supply station, as still as a dead man on a plinth—was a figure.
A humanoid.
He was tall and lanky, standing a good head above Chris's already-imposing 6'4. His skin was pure white, as if every drop of pigment had been leeched from him, then replaced with frost. Thick, blue veins crisscrossed his limbs in protruding arcs, pulsing faintly like veins of lava in ice.
His body was covered in stitches—messy, rushed, and deep. Thick thread slashed through his torso and arms like someone had sewn pieces together from different corpses. His ribs were slightly visible under the skin, not from malnourishment, but like they had been carved outward and stitched shut.
Tattered robes hung from his frame. They fluttered slightly in the still air. One hand clutched a long spear—crudely fashioned from bone, jagged at the base and worn smooth at the grip.
His face?
Sunken. Shadowed. Pupils blown wide like black holes. There was no sanity in those eyes—just cold awareness, like a predator had learned calculus.
Chris's pulse picked up.
He slowly drew his Glock, flicked the safety, and pulled out the mag.
Four bullets.
Of course.
He exhaled through his nose. "Alright," he whispered to Kelvin, "stay here. I'll try talkin'."
Kelvin looked at him like he'd just said he was gonna wrestle God.
Chris edged forward, step by step, not lifting his boots fully from the fleshy ground in case it squelched too loud.
The pale being didn't move.
Chris raised a hand.
"Hey, uh—"
The spear launched.
He didn't even see the motion—just a whistling sound and the smell of something being torn.
He winced, flinched back, arms raised—
But nothing hit.
Instead, something wet behind him screeched.
Chris turned.
Behind him was a worm.
Not just a worm—a thing. A pale, pulsating, bloody worm the size of a small car. Its skin was translucent, and its face was a nightmare of circular teeth like a lamprey carved into a tumor. The spear stuck out its side, pulsing with the creature's dying spasms.
Chris gagged at the smell.
Then came the voice.
"DUMB. FLESH-SACK. CHIMED-EYED MOUTH-BREATHER."
Chris blinked. He turned back toward the pale man.
"What?"
The corpse-like thing had already crossed the distance in a few quick steps and yanked the spear free of the worm's flesh with a sickening schlick.
"YOU WALK LIKE YOU'RE DRUNK ON MILK," the being said, voice deep and scratchy, like someone gargling iron shavings. "I COULD HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS STUMBLING BEFORE YOUR FEET."
Chris opened his mouth, stunned.
The being sneered.
"FOUR BULLETS? WHAT, YOU GONNA SCARE ME INTO BLEEDIN'? I AIN'T GOT BLOOD. I GOT SPITE, BOY."
Chris raised his hands. "Whoa, hey, I was just trying to say hello—"
"HELLO? HELLO?! THIS AIN'T A SALON, YOU SACK OF WET BREAD." The being leaned in. His breath smelled like old pennies and bone marrow. "You ain't the first human to crawl out the Leviathan's hole. You just might be the stupidest."
Chris blinked, unsure if he should feel threatened or just insulted.
"I—uh—"
"SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH."
"…Right."
Kelvin finally caught up, panting. "Chris, you alright?!"
Chris glanced over, gun still halfway raised. "Yeah. No thanks to this... charming ghoul."
The pale being spat something black onto the ground and muttered, "Maybe you're not completely dumb. But you're still breathing, so that's two strikes."
Chris lowered the Glock, exhaled, and glanced at the supply station.
"So," he muttered, "you live here?"
The being raised an eyebrow. "Live is a strong word. Survive is accurate. Loathe existing is more honest."
Chris tilted his head. "Got a name?"
The being stared at him, then smiled with teeth that looked like stone.
"Call me Stitch."
Stitch turned to the bunker.
"Ten years," Stitch muttered, one skeletal hand dragging across the bone-forged doorframe like he was caressing a long-dead lover. "I've clawed, stabbed, burned, and bled against this fuckin' wall for ten. Whole. Years. Not a scratch. Not a dent. Not a whimper from the machine inside."
He stepped back from the sealed hatch, glancing at Chris and Kelvin with scorn. "It just sits there. Watches. Waits. I think it likes the smell of me failing."
The door loomed in front of them like a tombstone for forgotten technology. It was seamless, circular, and made from a pale alloy that seemed to shimmer subtly in the Leviathan's ambient bioluminescence—like a mother-of-pearl veneer stretched across solid titanium. On its center was a black glass panel, dusty and cracked, like an ancient retina scanner. Around the doorframe, faded glyphs traced the surface—half-runes, half-warnings. None of them human.
Chris stepped forward slowly.
The watch on his arm—usually quiet unless prompted—buzzed violently. Its pale green screen flickered like a CRT monitor losing connection. Strange characters spilled across it.
"YOU ARE APPROACHING A SEALED TARTARIAN DEVICE.""CLASSIFIED LEVEL 6 – AEON ACCESS REQUIRED.""VERIFYING—""...VERIFICATION COMPLETE: EXPLORATION CAPTAIN MANTLE, CHRIS. DESIGNATION: VESSEL.""WELCOME HOME, CAPTAIN."
There was a low whir. Then silence.
Chris felt his skin crawl.
The door shivered, as if it exhaled. Then… it opened.
No hiss of gas. No grinding of ancient gears. It simply split down the middle and parted like a sphincter, revealing a long corridor of sterile metal and organic mesh.
Stitch reeled back like he'd been slapped. "What the fuck did you do?!"
Chris turned, stunned. "I didn't— I just walked up—"
"YOU—YOU'RE A CAPTAIN?! OF THIS PLACE?!"
The watch buzzed again.
"This facility is designated 'NOAH'S CASK – BETA NODE'. Status: REDACTED.""Bio-tagged user has undergone partial genome encoding. Vessel condition: degraded but recoverable.""Welcome back, CAPTAIN MANTLE."
Chris stared down at the device, veins crawling with cold. "Why does it keep calling me that?"
Kelvin muttered, "What the hell is a vessel?"
The AI responded in a flat, monotone, filtered voice—low fidelity like a corrupted radio transmission from the 40s:
"A vessel is a living carrier—engineered, bred, and sculpted to bear the weight of unknowable energies not found in this solar system."
The air in the corridor grew cold.
"The Tartarian Empire created twelve. You are the last."
Chris stepped inside.
The corridor stretched on, but there was a faint glow at the end. Faint humming. Like something half-asleep remembering a song.
Stitch didn't move. He stood frozen, eyes wide, mouth twitching.
"I spent a decade starving out here. Ten years screaming at that door. Eating worms and drinking condensation off bone. And you—you just walk in?"
Chris turned, slowly. "You're welcome to come."
Stitch stared at him for a long moment, then snarled. "I'll wait outside. I don't trust tombs that welcome vessels."
Chris and Kelvin stepped into the bunker.
It was impossibly large.
Larger than what the exterior could support. The inside was built like an industrial hive—catwalks layered with organic cable, veins pulsing along the ceilings, huge computers running on black viscera. It was like someone married a server room to a digestive tract.
As they ventured deeper, their flashlights caught glimpses of preserved food—ration blocks, nutrient packs, and condensed water sealed in metallic veins that released it drop by drop. All perfectly preserved.
There were medical kits, oxygen tanks, fire blankets. No weapons. Not a single round of ammo or scrap of steel fit for killing. Just survival. Just maintenance.
The deeper they went, the more the facility responded.
Lights flickered on.
Walls hummed.
Screens displayed his name—CAPTAIN CHRIS MANTLE—in languages he could barely parse. One screen flickered a document with endless text. He could only catch a few lines before it reloaded:
"...Mantle-Sequence Initiated...""...Project Enoch saw catastrophic failure after Experiment 7...""...Human minds incompatible with dimensional compression protocols...""...Only Vessel Mantle retained consciousness post-gatefold exposure...""...Subject experienced bleed from the Eye Beyond the Curtain...""...Containment failed. Empire fell. Vaults sealed. Noah's Cask retained."
Chris stumbled away from the screen, sweating.
"Kelvin…" he whispered. "I think I've been here before."
Kelvin looked spooked. "Man, I don't care if you built this place. Let's take the food, the water, anything, and get the hell out. Please."
Chris nodded. They gathered what they could—rations, clean drinking bladders, some thermal gear. Chris glanced at one last terminal before they left, and something strange pulsed on the screen:
"You are now 18% decoded.""Memories sealed in Cell V-Delta, Leviathan Core.""Proceed to recovery for complete vessel reactivation.""Burn upgrade or risk combustion."
Then it shut off.
Chris didn't know what the hell that meant.
But something deep inside his spine itched. Like his organs remembered things his brain never learned.
He didn't tell Kelvin.
They left the bunker in silence.
Outside, Stitch sat on a cracked vertebrae, slowly sharpening his bone spear.
"You look different," he growled, eyes narrowing. "Like somethin' woke up in you."
Chris met his gaze, voice low. "I think it did."
"You know anything about Magicka?"
Stitch raised a brow, then scoffed. "The fuck you just ask me?"
Chris ignored it. "Magicka. The AI says I've been 'upgraded.' Something about being a vessel. It told me I could burn the upgrades out. But it didn't tell me how."
The AI watch buzzed violently.
"I know how.""I simply refuse.""You are not Commandont. You are not even full-blood Tartarian.""You are a half-spawned mistake wearing his flesh."
Chris blinked, rage rising. "Then why call me Captain? Why open the fucking doors for me?"
"Because protocol demands it. I am still bound to the echo of Commandont's gene-seal embedded in your origin organ."
"What the fuck is an origin organ?!"
"A Tartarian construct. You were born with it. Grown with it. It marks you as vessel-blood. But improperly. Like a fetus scraped from the walls of an abandoned vault. You are functionally useful, but ideologically incorrect."
Stitch burst out laughing. It was a grotesque, phlegmy laugh—wet and wheezing, like something dying of consumption was finding joy.
"Ohh, shit," Stitch hissed between ragged laughs. "Your own Nazi Tamagotchi hates you."
Chris turned to him. "You're dead. Literally rotting. Why the hell are you laughing?"
Stitch wiped pus from his eye socket and leaned forward, grinning with jagged, calcium-white teeth. His gums were black. His breath smelled like damp grave dirt.
"You wanna know how to burn Magicka?" he rasped. "You can't just will it away. You gotta know what you are. Magicka ain't like a lighter. It's truth and delusion doing the tango in your bloodstream."
Chris stayed quiet.
Stitch stood, stepping closer. "And me? I can't use Magicka. Not a fucking drop. Know why?"
He ripped open his tattered robes.
Chris flinched.
Where a chest should've been, there was a nest of stitches and dark, oily tar. His ribcage was exposed—sewn together with rusted wire, still glistening from self-surgery. There were no organs. No heartbeat. Just cavities. A gaping hole where a heart should be, lined with black mold and remnants of embalming fluid. Bloodless veins snaked around old scars like deflated worms.
"I ain't got blood. I'm post-life, baby. Magicka don't work on what ain't real anymore. I'm a puppet made of reanimated beef jerky and hate."
Chris's stomach twisted.
Stitch jabbed a skeletal finger into his chest.
"But you, oh, you're still warm meat. And you got that origin organ thing inside you. That means you can burn the changes. Maybe. If your soul don't snap from the heat."
Chris tried to look away. Stitch grabbed his jaw and forced him to look.
"You wanna burn it out? You need to know what was put in. You gotta see the circuit inside your own soul. Ain't no cheat code. Ain't no instruction manual. You think Magicka is fire? It's surgery. Psychic amputation. You gotta rip the change out with your mind. You gotta bleed on a level deeper than blood."
Kelvin, who'd been standing behind the supplies, whispered, "This is fucked."
Chris didn't argue.
Stitch finally let him go. "You burn that upgrade wrong, it'll cook your spine. Melt your teeth. Burn you from the inside like old gunpowder in a wet barrel."
Chris looked down at his arm. At the vein. At the black pulse.
"Fine," he said, voice low. "Then teach me. If you know how."
Stitch grinned.
"I'll teach you, meat-boy. But only once."
"Why?"
"Because watching you scream yourself into a seizure trying to burn out imperial code sounds fucking hilarious."
Chris stood.
Kelvin grabbed his shoulder. "Are you sure about this?"
Chris looked down at his black-veined arm, then at the bunker behind him.
"No."