The basement corridor exhaled as Amelia was pushed forward. Not shoved. Not dragged. Guided.
Cold hands brushed her arms, her back, her shoulders — dozens of them, polite and careful, like nurses escorting a patient to treatment. The stitched figures from the confession cells followed silently, their footsteps uneven, bones clicking inside borrowed skin.
The darkness ahead thickened.
Then a light flickered on.
One bulb.
It revealed a white-tiled hallway that stretched unnaturally long beneath the asylum. The tiles were cracked and swollen, veins of rust running through them like dried arteries. Water dripped from pipes overhead, each drop echoing like a countdown.
At the end waited two swinging doors.
Paint peeled to reveal a word beneath:
SURGERY.
Amelia's stomach twisted.
The doors opened by themselves.
Warm, metallic air rolled out.
Inside, surgical lamps hung like upside-down suns, their glass clouded with age but glowing faintly. Beneath them stood metal tables arranged like an altar hall. Each table had leather straps, yellowed and cracked from use.
And they weren't empty.
Bodies lay there.
Some still breathed.
Some were half-built into the room — ribs fused into rails, spines stitched into beams, skulls carved into shelves. Their eyes moved slowly, tracking Amelia with exhausted awareness.
One woman tried to scream.
Only dust fell from her mouth.
A tray rolled across the floor by itself. On it rested surgical tools polished far too recently: drills humming softly, needles trembling, hooks whispering against metal.
The walls pulsed.
Then footsteps approached.
Elias Crowe stepped into the light, coat untouched, face glowing like embers beneath skin. His shadow crawled separately from him, slithering across the tables and over the trapped bodies.
"Fear makes strong foundations," he said gently.
Amelia backed away.
Crowe lifted a scalpel. It floated from his hand, spinning slowly in the air.
"Redwood was weak once," he continued. "Cracking. Forgetting. So I taught it how to grow."
The patients twitched as if remembering pain.
Crowe smiled.
"We don't kill here, Amelia."
The lamps brightened.
"We convert."
The leather straps on a nearby table snapped open.
Something beneath the floor began knocking upward — slow, wet, eager.
Amelia turned and ran as the surgery hall inhaled behind her.