[Timeline: Time skip Year 4 ]

[Location: The Old Iron Mines – Sector 7]

The Old Iron Mines were supposed to be a tomb.

According to Imperial records, the veins had run dry fifty years ago, leaving behind nothing but rusted scaffolding and deep, unstable shafts buried beneath the permafrost of the Northern Wastes.

But as Lyra stood on a rusted ventilation grate overlooking the main shaft, the heat rising from below told a different story.

It wasn't the warmth of the earth. It was the sickly, radioactive heat of processed mana.

Below her, the massive cavern had been hollowed out into a sprawling industrial hellscape. Magitech conveyor belts, rusted and squealing, snaked through the dark like the intestines of a metal beast.

Instantly she activated her [Nature Assimilation]. Her presence vanished from the magical spectrum, reducing her signature to that of the cold stone walls.

Dropping slowly, she didn't need a rope.

She simply manipulated the air pressure around her body, slowing her descent until she landed silently on a high catwalk, fifty meters above the factory floor.

Creeping down the edge and looking down, a sudden smell hit her first, a thick, cloying stench of sulfur, formaldehyde, and rotting meat.

Then she saw the conveyor belts.

Belts that didn't move on regular iron ore, but rather something much more sinister..

Lyra's violet eyes widened, her pupils contracting into slits.

The belts were piled high with "refuse."

Discarded arms. Legs twisted into impossible angles. Torsos that had been stitched together and then thrown away like garbage.

Some of the limbs were elven. Others were covered in black chitin or purple scales.

'Biological waste,' Lyra realized, bile rising in her throat.

'These are the failed experiments. The ones that didn't survive the stitching.'

She watched as a belt dumped a pile of severed limbs into a chute. The chute fed directly into a massive, pulsating structure in the center of the cavern.

It was a Void Reactor.

It looked like a beating heart made of jagged obsidian, suspended in a containment field of humming pylons.

As the biological matter fell into it, the reactor flared with purple light, breaking the flesh down into raw, volatile mana to power the facility.

'They are fueling the factory with the bodies of my people.'

Lyra's hand trembled. Not from fear, but from a rage so cold it burned.

She tapped her bracelet.

'Sector 7 confirmed. Flesh-Crafter HQ confirmed.'

She looked at the guards patrolling the catwalks below. Red Templars. Dozens of them.

They walked with the arrogance of men who knew they were untouchable here, deep beneath the ice.

She could kill them. She could slaughter every single one of them right now. But that wouldn't stop the reactor.

That wouldn't save the "Prime Subject" the Templar had mentioned before she snapped his neck.

She needed to go deeper.

Lyra dissolved into the shadows.

[Phantom Art: Umbral Drift]

She abandoned her physical form, becoming a two-dimensional patch of darkness that slid along the rusted metal of the catwalk.

She moved past a checkpoint where two Templars were arguing, their voices echoing in the vast chamber.

"The reactor output is fluctuating again," one grunted, tapping a gauge.

"The new batch of 'fuel' is low quality. The stitching isn't holding."

"Just keep it running until the Prime Vessel is awake," the other replied, lighting a smoke.

"Once Subject Zero opens her eyes, we won't need the reactor anymore. She is the reactor."

Lyra paused in the shadow of a support beam.

Subject Zero.

The Prime Vessel. The artificial Demon General they were trying to build.

She moved on, slipping through a heavy blast door just as a worker opened it.

The atmosphere changed instantly. The roar of the reactor faded, replaced by the hum of high-grade cooling systems.

She found herself in a long, sterile hallway lined with reinforced glass cells.

Not in the processing plant anymore, but rather a storage of sorts.

Lyra solidified, stepping out of the shadow. She walked up to the first cell, her footsteps making no sound on the white tile.

Inside, huddled in the corner, was a female elf.

But she wasn't just an elf anymore. Her skin was a patchwork of grey flesh and violet scales.

Her hands had been replaced by jagged bone claws that dripped a corrosive black liquid

. She was rocking back and forth, scratching at the glass with a mindless, feral rhythm.

Her eyes were pure black. Void-corrupted.

Lyra moved to the next cell. And the next.

There were dozens of them. Female elves who had survived the initial Void stitching but had lost their minds in the process.

They were drooling, growling, leaking unstable mana from their pores.

The Failed Batch.

Lyra placed her hand on the glass of the nearest cell. The elf inside snapped her head up, hissing like a wild beast, slamming her bone-claw against the barrier.

"They broke you," Lyra whispered, her voice trembling.

She raised her hand. A blade of compressed wind formed around her fingers, humming with lethal intent.

The kindest thing to do would be to end it. To vent the room. To let them sleep. They were in agony; she could feel their mana channels burning from here.

She raised the wind blade.

But then, her eyes caught something on a metal shelf at the end of the hall.

A crate marked with a bright red sigil.

[Stabilization Serum – Type V]

Lyra froze. The wind blade dissipated.

She looked at the serum. Then she looked back at the feral elf girl, who was now staring at her not with hunger, but with fear.

She remembered Damien.

Damien, be it her an elf, Leona a beats kin, hephestus the dwarf, even barnaby and the others, he always found a solution for their problems that made everyone happy

He gave them a purpose when the world gave them nothing.

'If I kill them, I am just taking the easy way out,' Lyra thought, her eyes hardening.

'But if I can them up...'

She looked back toward the heavy blast doors leading to the inner sanctum. She knew Subject Zero was waiting there.

But she also knew she couldn't fight a Void Vessel alone.

She looked back at the cells. Dozens of pairs of black, void-filled eyes watched her.

"I won't kill you," Lyra whispered to the glass.

She walked toward the crate of serum.

"I'm going to make you the nightmare they deserve."

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