"Inspection for U-449 complete.
Condition: Out of danger. Subject will be granted one week of rest."
The words were spoken in a tired murmur as a woman in a pale medical uniform tapped across the surface of a glowing translucent tablet. Upon the bed before her lay a man perhaps in his fifties, his chest rising and falling in the heavy rhythm of medicated sleep.
She was one of the senior physicians assigned to the NARAK Medical Division.
Night inspections were always the most exhausting. The corridors felt longer, the silence heavier, and the list of names in her hand somehow more burdensome than they appeared under daylight. She had only one final verification left before her duty ended.
She scrolled down.
"Last one remaining… uhh… K-013."
Her finger halted.
Beside every patient's name, the attending staff had written their preliminary status reports.
Her eyes narrowed.
Condition: Deceased.
Time of Death: Evening.
She read it twice.
Then once again.
A faint crease formed between her brows, though she did not know why.
With a quiet sigh, she locked the tablet and began walking.
The hallway leading to the lower wing of the medical division was deserted.
Dim blue crystals of urja patthar embedded within the walls released a weak, ghostly glow that barely managed to push back the darkness. Their light painted the corridor in cold shades of silver and blue, making the polished floor appear almost wet.
Rows of sealed patient chambers lined both sides like sleeping mouths.
No voices.
No footsteps.
No machines.
Only the repetitive clicking of her heels.
Tak… tak… tak…
The sound bounced off the sterile walls and returned to her ears, strangely delayed, as if someone invisible walked half a step behind her.
She instinctively glanced over her shoulder.
Nothing.
She swallowed and tightened her hold over the tablet.
"Long shifts are making me paranoid," she muttered.
At last she reached the final room.
Above the metal gate, bold black letters were engraved:
MORGUE
For reasons she could not explain, the temperature around the entrance felt several degrees lower than the corridor outside.
She pressed her thumb against the transparent identification plate.
A mechanical female voice responded.
"Identification successful."
With a low hydraulic hiss, the heavy door slid sideways.
A wave of freezing air escaped from within and passed through her body like invisible fingers.
She shivered.
Every single time she entered this place, she was reminded how little separated the living from the dead.
One breath.
One heartbeat.
One moment.
That was all.
She exhaled and stepped inside.
The morgue was vast, metallic, and oppressively silent.
Towering steel compartments stretched from floor to ceiling in endless rows, each one holding someone whose story had ended before they wished it to. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic, iron, and stillness—the peculiar stillness that belonged only to places where no one was meant to speak loudly.
Blue urja patthar lamps glimmered from the corners like dying stars.
Her heels made almost no sound now.
Even noise seemed reluctant to survive here.
She walked deeper until she found the designated storage unit.
A small identification strip glowed on its surface.
Name: Karan
Code: K-013
Time of Death: Evening
Age: 15 Cycles
Cause of Death: Multiple fatal injuries. Organ rupture. Skeletal collapse.
Additional Note: Subject's physical integrity severely compromised. Handle with caution during cremation.
The doctor stared at the details for a second longer than necessary.
Fifteen cycles.
Just a child.
A shadow of pity crossed her face.
She placed her hand upon the steel handle.
And paused.
Something… was wrong.
From the thin ventilation slits of the compartment, she thought she saw the faintest shimmer.
A soft pink glow.
She blinked.
Gone.
The compartment returned to lifeless dull steel.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose.
"Wonderful," she whispered dryly. "Now I'm hallucinating."
Trying to dismiss the unease crawling over her skin, she pulled the drawer open in one swift motion.
Inside lay a body covered by a white shroud.
She folded the cloth back.
And involuntarily inhaled sharply.
Even though she had read the report, the sight still struck like a blow.
The corpse was less a body and more the aftermath of cruelty.
Arms bent at unnatural angles.
Legs twisted.
Skin torn and darkened by infection.
Bruises layered over bruises until flesh no longer resembled flesh.
The skeletal frame beneath appeared collapsed, as if every bone inside had been ground into fragments. His face was caved inward, jaw shattered beyond use, nose flattened, and auburn hair matted stiffly against his scalp.
This was not what death looked like.
This was what prolonged suffering looked like after death had finally shown mercy.
The doctor's throat tightened.
"Poor boy…" she whispered, genuine sorrow softening her voice. "May your next journey be kinder."
She began the formal examination.
Pulse point—none.
Breath—none.
Body temperature—frozen.
Pupil response—
Her hand stopped halfway.
The skin beneath her fingers was no longer as cold as it should have been.
She frowned.
No.
Impossible.
She leaned closer.
And then—
She saw them.
Two eyes.
Open.
Staring directly into hers.
Not brown like before
Not humanly warm.
But deep luminous pink—like embers hidden beneath sacred ash.
Her breath vanished.
Her mind refused to process what stood before her.
The tablet slipped from her hand and shattered across the floor.
Her knees buckled.
She crashed backward, palms scraping against the frozen tiles, yet she did not feel the pain.
Those eyes held her.
Not with rage.
Not with madness.
But with something infinitely worse—
an emotionless stillness, ancient and vast, as though they were no longer windows of a wounded child but hollow gateways through which something unseen had begun to look.
She tried to scream.
No sound emerged.
K-013 sat upright.
The movement was slow.
Measured.
Almost ceremonial.
A pulse of pink radiance traveled beneath his torn skin.
Then she heard it.
Crk… crk… crk…
Bones knitting.
Joints aligning.
Cartilage reshaping.
His twisted limbs straightened with horrifying precision.
The cratered portions of his face rose back into place as though invisible hands were molding clay.
The shattered jaw inflated returning to its original shape.
Ripped flesh closed.
Rotting bruises faded like a mirage
Blood dried, flaked, vanished.
Every ruined part of him was being restored—not chaotically, not randomly, but with the terrifying exactness of a master craftsman repairing it's creation that had not yet fulfilled its purpose.
The doctor stared, trembling so violently her teeth clicked together.
No medicine could do this.
No science in NARAK could do this.
No mortal should do this.
Except those monsters who reached the 'gate' but those can be counted on one hand in the entire world.
Within seconds, the boy who had entered death as broken remains stood before her whole.
Naked.
Silent.
Unblinking.
Yet something about that silence felt louder than thunder.
He looked down at his own hands as if acquainting himself with them.
Flexing fingers.
Rolling shoulders.
Tilting his neck.
Not like someone grateful to be alive—
but like something newly awakened testing the boundaries of its chosen form.
The air inside the morgue had changed.
It felt heavier.
Charged.
As though unseen eyes beyond the world had descended upon this single room.
The blue crystals flickered and in the dim cold light of 'urja patthar' those deep pink eyes looked like twin twinkling stars.
For one fleeting instant, the doctor felt the instinctive urge to bow.
And that realization shattered whatever remained of her composure.
Control returned to her body only in the shape of primal terror.
She screamed.