Nathan awoke to silence.
It wasn't the absence of sound but something deeper, something hollow. A silence that felt like it had weight, pressing against his skull, against his thoughts, like a hand wrapped around his throat.
He was still in the factory—or what was left of it. The walls had shifted again, no longer metal and rust but smooth stone, impossibly old and humming with unseen energy. The air was damp, heavy with the scent of earth and decay. The darkness stretched before him, shifting, alive.
And then, the call.
Not a whisper. Not a scream. But something else. A pull. A vibration that resonated in his bones, drawing him forward against his will. His body moved on instinct, each step sluggish, as if the ground itself resisted him.
He wasn't alone.
The figures from before still lingered in the shadows, their hollow faces turned toward him, watching. Judging. But they didn't move to stop him. They only observed, their presence a quiet warning of what lay ahead.
At the end of the corridor stood a door, unlike any he had seen before. It was carved from something ancient, symbols etched deep into its surface, pulsing with a dim, sickly light. It was waiting for him.
Nathan hesitated, his fingers trembling as he reached for the handle. The metal burned cold against his skin, but he didn't pull away. He had come too far to turn back now.
With a deep breath, he pushed the door open.
Beyond it was a chamber, vast and cavernous, its walls lined with structures that looked more like roots than stone, curling and twisting toward a single point in the center.
A pedestal.
And resting atop it—a relic.
Nathan's chest tightened. The object was small, unassuming, no larger than his palm. But its presence filled the room, warping the very air around it. It pulsed, a slow, steady rhythm, like the heartbeat of something ancient, something waiting.
The call grew stronger.
Nathan stepped forward, drawn toward the relic as if invisible threads pulled him closer. His breath hitched, his skin prickling with the weight of unseen eyes. The whispers returned, coiling around his thoughts, not in words but in feeling—dread, longing, inevitability.
This was why he was here.
His fingers hovered over the relic, the air around it vibrating with barely contained energy. He could feel it, even without touching it. It wanted him to take it.
A voice, clearer than ever before, echoed in his mind.
You were always meant to find me.
Nathan's fingers closed around the relic.
The world shattered.
The chamber dissolved, torn apart by a force beyond comprehension. Nathan screamed as he was hurled into darkness, visions exploding behind his eyes—memories that were his but not his, places he had never been but somehow remembered.
The factory's origins. The souls trapped within its walls. The cycle repeating, over and over, through lifetimes.
Nathan was not the first.
And he would not be the last.
The weight of the truth crushed him, his body convulsing as the relic's power poured into him, rewriting him, reshaping him. He was changing, becoming something else. Something the factory had been waiting for.
His breath came in ragged gasps, his mind splintering under the weight of it all. He tried to fight it, to hold onto himself, but it was slipping, unraveling. He could feel it happening, feel himself being rewritten by the relic's will.
And then, just before the darkness consumed him completely—
A choice.
Nathan's fingers tightened around the relic. His body was no longer his own, but his mind—his will—remained.
He would not be just another echo in the factory's cycle.
He would break it.
With one final, desperate surge of strength, he turned the relic's power against itself.
The factory roared, the walls trembling as cracks split through reality, light searing through the darkness. The figures in the shadows screamed, their forms unraveling, consumed by the very force that had bound them for so long.
Nathan's vision blurred, his body burning from the inside out. The relic shattered in his grip, releasing a shockwave that sent him reeling.
Then—
Silence.
Nathan collapsed, the weight of existence pressing down on him.
And for the first time since he had stepped into the factory…
He felt free.