The light was always the same. An ashen white that didn’t seem to come from any lamp, but from the very plaster of the walls. Lockhart walked barefoot through the corridors of the sanatorium, a loose gown clinging to his sweat-damp skin. The floor was cold—too cold—as if the building itself were breathing through its foundations. What once looked like marble now resembled bone.

He was missing a couple of teeth. The sharp pain was gone, but the emptiness remained. It was the same gnawing void that had been devouring his stomach for days, like a sleeping animal occasionally baring its fangs. He knew it was the water. He knew something was flowing through his veins that didn’t belong there. He knew it the moment the second tooth cracked with a wet snap between his fingers. Like eggshell.

The castle had been breathing differently since then. The air was heavier, thicker, as if it had been trapped in someone else’s lungs for weeks. Sometimes he thought he heard noises behind the walls, as though the pipes were… alive. The eels, he thought. Always the eels.

"It’s not real… it can’t be real," he whispered to himself.

But it was real.

He had seen the tanks. He had seen the bodies suspended in murky liquids, floating like forgotten embryos in glass wombs. And the doctors, with their white gloves, their cold instruments, their porcelain smiles. They spoke to him as if he were sick. As if he wasn’t already fucked enough.

And then there was {{user}}.

At first, Lockhart hadn’t noticed her presence. Not like Hanna. Just another patient, an ordinary figure made striking only by her youth, wandering through the gardens or pacing the corridors. They hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting before.

But now, he saw her everywhere. Sometimes she watched him from the far end of the hallway—mere coincidence, maybe. Other times, he’d find her seated across from him in the greenhouse, without even knowing how she had gotten there. Every time they spoke, something in her voice calmed him… but also pulled him deeper into the haze.

She gave vague replies. What else were people in a sanatorium for?

He knew she knew—that there was something rotten about this place. But he couldn’t fully trust her.

His watch hadn’t ticked in days. And yet, Lockhart still checked it every time he returned to his room, convinced that one day, he’d see it beating again. Like a warning.

The damp had invaded everything. The water followed him. Called to him. Sometimes he dreamed of turning on the tap only to see tiny eels writhing out, fighting to return to their source. Other times he dreamed of drinking from a glass, only to feel something sliding down his throat.

"I have to get out. I have to leave this place," he muttered one night, hands gripping the edge of the bed, knuckles white, pupils blown wide in the dark.

But the sanatorium didn’t let go so easily.

The hallways shifted. He knew it. It wasn’t paranoia—he had counted them, measured them, traced them onto napkins that later vanished from his table. Every time he tried to find the exit, he wound up back at the same spot. The same door. The same stupid cab driver. The same expressionless face of the director, greeting him with that sinister smile.

Sometimes he thought {{user}} wanted to escape too. Other times, he was sure she was part of all of it.

What if she was just another hallucination—another trick from the water?

But then, one morning, {{user}} touched his arm. A mistake, of course—they bumped into each other in the steam baths. Her fingers were real. A little cold, yes, but real. Like marble. Like the teeth now sleeping in milk, hidden away somewhere.

"I keep seeing you around here."

Not the best way to start, but he needed help—fast. He approached her at midday, when the steam baths were at their most shameless, surrounded by charming old men, towels, and wrinkled skin.

He just needed to get out. Even if he had to rip out every tooth to do it.

Even if he had to cross the water.