The escape was not heroic; it was desperate and ignominious. When the floorboards slid away beneath Arthur's feet, Elias could not fathom the sight. He had haunted that shop for years, scrubbing its walls and haunting its aisles, never once suspecting that a gullet leading to hell lay right beneath his soles.
"How?" Elias cried, his voice drowning in the discordant shriek of the Collectors as they tore through the wooden door above. "This is my shop!"
"This is not a shop," Arthur snarled, dragging Elias violently into the maw. "It is a cage perched atop an ancient vent. They chose this place for you for a reason... Now, descend!"
They plunged. It was not a fall into a void, but a sickening slide through a vast metallic throat, its walls coated in a substance as viscous as black bile. The descent was rapid and agonizing; jagged spurs of rust flayed Elias's skin, while the screams of the Collectors echoed from above—sounds like shattering crystal that grew faint as they sank deeper into the bowels of the earth
They came to a halt in a profound, stinking depth. Elias stood swaying, wiping the black grease from his face, only to find himself in a place where the "Great Heart's" rays could never reach. Here, the only light bled from colossal pipes that traversed the ceiling like the translucent intestines of a titan; within them swirled a pale, phosphorescent fluid—Raw Aether—siphoned from the minds of the living above, surging toward the central engine.
The vista was grotesque. The tunnels were fashioned from corroded black brick, and fetid water ran through narrow gutters, exhaling a mist that reeked of copper and stagnant blood. There was no sound but the ceaseless, industrial drone of the pipes and the rhythmic dripping of water—a metronome for the dead.
"Etheridge never discards its waste, Elias," Arthur said, striking a chemical match that cast a sickly green pallor. "Everything falls here. Objects, memories no longer fit for combustion... and people."
Elias began to notice the debris. In the hollows of the tunnel lay mounds of uncanny "scrap": headless dolls, rotted shoes, and thousands of shattered glass vials that once held the essence of a human life. The place felt like a mass grave for human identity.
The Melody coiled in Elias's skull began to react to this subterranean rot. Each time they neared an Aether pipe, a sharp tingle pierced his left eye. He began to perceive the world through a fractured lens; the pipes were no longer mere metal, but pulsing conduits. He saw flashes of alien imagery flickering like lightning: a woman's weeping face, a child's hand clutching a ball, a shriek of raw agony... all this psychic debris was flowing directly over his head, destined to be burned as mere fuel.
"I can feel them," Elias whispered, clutching his head. "Arthur, I hear the screaming inside the pipes. Thousands of souls are being crushed this very second just to light a lamp in the Spires."
"Seal your mind!" Arthur barked, shoving him forward. "If you empathize, the Aether will hollow you out. You are a 'Live Radio' now, and this melody you carry makes you a lightning rod for all the surrounding pain. If you collapse here, you'll turn into a 'Hollowed' in less than an hour."
They walked for hours in a leaden silence. Arthur moved with a suspicious, predatory grace, skirting tunnels that groaned with mechanical life and choosing capillaries so narrow they barely admitted a man. Elias watched Arthur's silhouette, a question burning in his mind: Who was this man truly? A mere scavenger? Or another ghost from the past Elias was forbidden to remember?
They reached a sector where the walls were choked with "Aether Fungi"—parasitic growths that fed on psychic leaks. They glowed with a necrotic blue light, giving the tunnel a funereal hue.
"Arthur, stop," Elias commanded, his voice echoing hollowly. "Tell me the truth. You didn't find that watch by chance, and you've known of these tunnels for a lifetime. Why me? And why now?"
Arthur halted but did not turn. In the fungal light, his shadow loomed long and distorted. "Because you are the only one whose heart hasn't completely calcified, Elias. Despite all you sold, there remained a 'fissure' in your consciousness that the System could not seal. I am not your savior... I am a man who needs a 'Key' to open a door. And you, with that melody in your head, have become that Key."
Before Arthur could finish, the earth shuddered beneath their boots. It was no quake, but a profound, mechanical groan emanating from the far reaches of the tunnels.
"The Collectors?" Elias asked, the coldness of death settling in his marrow.
"No," Arthur replied, his eyes widening with a raw, primal dread. "This is worse. They are opening the 'Purge Gates.' They are going to flood the tunnels with boiling Aether to incinerate every living thing down here. We must reach the Stronghold... before the tide claims us."