Dion hesitated, slightly, his one foot stepping inside the tree.

  Compared to the strangeness he had endured since the start of the journey, this somehow felt like the bottom tier.

  Still, it didn't make the feeling any less horrifying.

  “What is this place?”

  Dion muttered, the words swallowed by the cavernous silence within.

  The alchemist did not pause or turn.

  “My shed and workshop,” he spoke, the words echoing slightly in the hollow gloom.

  He stepped deeper into the shadows, his grey robes dissolving into the dark.

  “Now, your new abode…follow.”

  Dion lingered on the threshold. The word ‘shed’ had never sounded so much like a sentence.

  Staring into the vast, hollowed interior, he shot the alchemist a look that said it all.

  This was a shed? You’re kidding, right?

  Yet he saw no such humor on his face.

  Forget humor. He still didn’t even know what the man looked like… apart from a voice and his name.

  Van Helmont.

  Then again, he had just watched him turn a man into an ice sculpture and a beast into a living trophy.

  “Why should the place where the man lies his head to rest be any less unsettling? The thought didn’t stop the shiver that ran through him as he stepped into the gloom.

  He placed his second foot down, completely stepping in. There was no going back now.

  The transition was instantaneous.

  One moment, the oppressive silence of the metallic wastes, the next, a profound, tomb-like hush.

  The outside world vanished, the thumping sound cut off as if by a guillotine.

  Contrary to what he thought, the space inside was not cramped, but a vast, multi-level cavern carved or perhaps grown from living rock and petrified wood.

  The light came from small floating motes reacting to their presence, drifting lazily in the still air, illuminating the surroundings.

  Their light slowly revealed the interior and what lay within.

  The sight caught Dion’s breath mid-chest, locking his body in place.

  The walls were decorated with a translucent, amber-like resin deep, golden, and faintly luminous.

  Suspended inside the resin, like insects trapped in ancient sap, were… things.

  A bestiary of impossibility.

  To his left hung a crystalline creature shaped like a great cat, its body long and sinuous, but with wings made of brass. It was frozen mid-pounce, jaws open in a soundless snarl.

  Dion could see every razor-edged shard of its wings, each one catching the motes’ light.

  And then, a heavy stench of desiccated herbs hit him, mixed in with a faint, cloying sweetness of decay, like forgotten flowers in a sealed room. The mixture carried a complex scent that made his nose twitch.

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  Further along, another amber resin, this time in a tube marked P-17, held something even worse. It was not a creature but something vaguely humanoid. Dion could not be sure. It looked misty.

  Next to it was another tube, this one empty with the word P-18 prelabeled.

  He tore his eyes away. His stomach pitched. His knees threatened to give.

  What the hell? What had he walked into? This place felt more like a collection.

  A trophy hall. A gallery of arrested moments, a museum of failures and wonders that should never have been.

  As if to confirm it, the alchemist moved. He came to a stop at the empty tube and unbuckled the head of the Skollynx.

  Dion watched. Its eyes were still alive. Its pupils trembled in terror.

  The alchemist casually dumped it inside.

  Every instinct screamed at him to run, to get away from this ossified menagerie.

  "This way."

  The voice cut through his horrified fascination.

  The Alchemist had not paused to admire his newest collection, already moving toward a spiral staircase that seemed to be formed from a single, continuous root of the great tree, winding upward into the shadows.

  Dion forced his legs to move, his every step too loud in the cavernous quiet. He kept his gaze fixed on the figure's back, afraid of what else he might see if he looked around.

  As they climbed, glimpses of other chambers branched off from the stair.

  Some sealed behind lattices of living wood, others open and cluttered with strange apparatus, their purposes inscrutable in the dim, drifting light.

  Unaware of Dion’s racing thoughts, the alchemist finally led him to their destination.

  A smaller alcove carved into the cavern wall. It was a simple room, spare and cold. A grey blanket lay pushed against one wall, and opposite it stood a desk of polished, dark wood.

  “You will stay here,” the alchemist stated, his voice echoing faintly in the confined space as he turned to leave. “Sustenance will be provided shortly.”

  Dion’s gaze, still roaming, finally registered the Alchemist’s presence fading.

  “Those things down there… what are they?”

  The question left him before he could stop it, his voice barely a whisper.

  The Alchemist stopped. His hood turned slightly toward Dion in silence, the darkness within seeming to drink the light.

  “Rest,” he finally replied. It wasn’t the answer Dion had hoped for.

  “Although your body is recovering at an anomalous rate, do not wander. Some of the specimens are quite… reactive to a new presence.”

  With that, he walked away, his form receding down the stairs until Dion could hear only the fading steps, and then nothing.

  The silence of the place descended once more, but now it was a listening silence. A hungry one. It pressed against his eardrums.

  Dion glanced around. The place somewhat reminded him of a prison cell. Expecting comfort was rather foolish.

  Truth and exhaustion crashed into him. He had only exchanged one cell for another. He was still a prisoner. Still a slave.

  A huff of air escaped him. Something mixed with relief, exhaustion, and sorrow.

  He swallowed the urge to laugh. Half a day ago, he had dreamed of vengeance, of reclaiming what was stolen and hunting the slavers who had taken him.

  Now he was right back in a new cage.

  His hand brushed the signet ring resting against his chest.

  Lavos.

  Dion’s eyes hardened. No matter the cost, he would make it back.

  The ethereal heart pulsed beneath his touch, as if acknowledging the vow. A quiet calm spread through him, steadying the storm of fear and exhaustion.

  He slumped, too weary to even think. The last of his energy seeped away, and exhaustion pulled him under like a tide.

  It was unknown how long he slept. But when he finally stirred, a strange sight greeted him.

  A mass of crumpled flesh and metal no taller than Dion's knee. Its limbs were a tangle of mismatched joints, and its face, somehow, horribly looked like a child's.

  Its head appeared to have been sawed open, then stitched back together with a crude metal band.

  It was so close he could feel something radiating from its patchwork skin. Unnatural warmth… or was it cold?”

  Dion flinched backward, his breath hitching in his throat.

  He jumped back, instinctively making a grabbing motion towards his waist. He was no longer on the shores of the mainland. He almost forgot the fact.

  Before he could even process the horror of its face, its mouth hinged open. The words that emerged were stitched together, as broken as its body.

  "M-mas… ter. Or… ders. Fo… od. You… eat.”

  Still reeling from the horrific sight, Dion forced himself to focus. His first instinct was to strike the thing down, to destroy the grotesquery looming over him.

  Then his eyes fell on the desk, and the carefully arranged plate of fruit and cured meat rested there.

  A true, desperate hunger flickered in his eyes for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

  He shoved past the silent creature and rushed toward the food.

  The plate held a sparse, strange meal. The meat was a dark, iridescent strip that shimmered with a faint coppery sheen, like the flesh of some deep-burrowing creature.

  The fruit was a cluster of small, hard-skinned orbs the color of tarnished bronze; their surfaces were cool and smooth as polished metal to the touch.

  Days of starvation tore through him, shredding any semblance of control. He snatched up the meat first, tearing into it.

  It was dense and salty, with an iron-like tang that coated his tongue. Juice or perhaps something more like oily sap smeared his chin.

  He didn't care. He shoved the metallic orbs into his mouth next, crushing them between his molars. They burst with a startling, citric bitterness that made his eyes water.

  Crumbs, strange peels, and glistening grease scattered across the cabin.

  He ate, but the hunger didn't overtake him, at least not completely. He didn't forget the creature's presence, but a grim certainty settled in his gut.

  He was safe. For now.

  First, whatever this thing was, it showed hints of intelligence, however fragmented.

  Second, he was still alive. A blunt fact. He wasn't na?ve enough to think it had waited for him to wake just to kill him.

  And perhaps the final reason was the food itself. Why feed someone you were about to kill?

  He continued eating, each bite like a savage, yet his eyes never fully left the silent, stitched-up watcher in the room.

  On cue, the creature flinched, a jerky twitch that snapped Dion’s attention back.

  The words grated out, slow and shattered.

  “Mas… ter. Re… quires. Your… pre… sence. In… the… la… bor… a… tory.”

  Dion quickly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, grabbed one last bronze orb from the table, and shoved it into his pocket. He gave the creature a sharp, wary nod.

  “Lead the way.”