Where Light Drowns

The narrow passage choked him. It wasn't just the heat, thick enough to coat his tongue and lungs with every gasping breath, or the oppressive darkness, deeper than the abyss outside. It was the closeness . The rough, organic walls, radiating unnatural warmth, seemed to pulse inward with each sluggish throb of the distant arterial pillar, squeezing the air from his chest. His corrupted left arm, now a heavy, ridged club glowing with a sickly internal light like phosphorescent rot, scraped agonizingly against the passage wall. Pressure gel peeled away where the nodules caught, revealing patches of hardened, grey-green flesh that felt numb and alien. The crawling sensation had settled into a deep, persistent ache within the limb, a constant reminder of the invasion.

He ran. Or rather, he stumbled, a broken symphony of desperation and decay. His right arm scrabbled for purchase on the slick, yielding surface, while his left dragged, a dead weight pulling him off balance. Behind him, the faint, terrifying sounds of the node faded: the intensified churn of the reclamation pools, the silent slithering of the pursuing Sentinel – he imagined it flowing through the tunnels like a malevolent river. The sharp, probing PING! PING! of the ROVs had vanished abruptly moments after his flight began. Silenced. The cold certainty of their fate settled in his gut like a stone. Another sacrifice to the Mother .

"External threat… neutralized," the resonant Voice confirmed, its attention snapping back to him fully now that the immediate intrusion was dealt with. The predatory edge faded, replaced by that chilling, analytical patience. "Efficiency… restored. Your flight… serves no purpose. The Embrace… extends… everywhere. Yield… facilitates… cessation… of distress."

The word 'distress' was a grotesque understatement. His lungs burned. His vision swam, the faint, pulsing green luminescence from his own arm and the sparsely scattered, vein-like formations on the walls creating dizzying patterns in the near-total darkness. The ozone stench mixed with a new, cloying sweetness – like rotting fruit and spoiled honey – that made his stomach roil. He felt the corruption spreading, a creeping warmth radiating from his left shoulder towards his collarbone. WALI's fragmented warnings were a constant, agonizing counterpoint.

"Physiological degradation… accelerating… Metabolic stress… critical…" WALI's strained synthetic voice hissed beneath the resonance. "…Left pulmonary artery… minor infiltration detected… Neural pathways… experiencing… feedback interference… Recommend… cessation… of exertion… Unviable…"

Cessation. Yield. The Voice's insidious suggestion wormed its way through his terror and exhaustion. Just stop. Let the alien warmth finish its work. Become part of the stillness he'd glimpsed in the amber tombs and the churning pools. The pull in his chest cavity, a physical echo of the basin's magnetism, intensified as if in response to his fleeting weakness. He stumbled, his corrupted hand catching him against the wall. It didn't hurt. It felt… distant. The wall yielded slightly, warm and sticky against his hardened knuckles.

No. He pushed off with a grunt, forcing his trembling legs forward. Not like the others. Not like the half-formed horrors in the sludge. If he was to be consumed, he would fight until the last scrap of him dissolved.

The passage dipped sharply, then leveled. The air felt marginally cooler here, though no less thick. The rhythmic pulse of the structure seemed muted, farther away. The walls changed subtly. Less like raw, pulsating tissue, more… textured. The vein-like luminescent tracks thinned, replaced by harder, rougher surfaces that felt almost mineral under the thin film of condensation. The oppressive presence of the Mother felt… thinner. Was it distance? Or was this part… different?

He slowed, his chest heaving. The relative silence was unnerving after the constant thrum and the Voice's intrusion. Only his ragged breathing and the soft drip… drip… of condensed moisture from unseen stalactites broke it. The glow from his corrupted arm illuminated a small, circular space ahead where the passage ended. Not another node, not a basin. It looked like… a terminus. A dead end carved from the same black, non-reflective material.

And in the center of this small, silent chamber, something gleamed dully in the light of his corrupted limb.

It was spherical. About the size of a large melon. Made of a metal that absorbed the sickly green light rather than reflected it, appearing deep grey, almost black. It sat nestled within a cradle of extruded rock, like a fossilized egg. Lines of geometric precision, starkly at odds with the organic chaos elsewhere, were etched onto its surface. Symbols? Writing? It looked ancient, pitted, and scarred. Utterly inert.

"Anomaly… detected," the resonant Voice stated, its usual calm disrupted by a microsecond of… hesitation? "Analysis: Foreign object. Ancient. Non-integrated."

WALI chimed in almost simultaneously, its voice suddenly clearer, sharper, as if the Voice's distraction or the distance from the node had granted it a sliver of bandwidth. "Unidentified alloy composition detected… Scans indicate… extreme density… Minimal energy signature… residual… Structure suggests… possible containment vessel… Origin… unknown… Temporal decay analysis… indeterminate… but… significant…"

Non-integrated. The words echoed in Chen Shen's exhausted mind. Something the Mother hadn't consumed? Something it couldn't? Or… something it hadn't found until now? He shuffled closer, his corrupted arm held out like a diseased torch, the glow casting long, dancing shadows. His right hand, still trembling but human, hovered near the cold, enigmatic surface. It felt utterly lifeless beneath his fingers. The geometric etchings were intricate, precise, utterly alien, yet devoid of the biological horror permeating the rest of this place. It felt… cold. Indifferent. Like a forgotten tool.

"Potential… threat vector," the Voice resumed, regaining its composure but lacking its usual certainty. "Recommend… isolation… or… assimilation study. Host proximity… sufficient… for preliminary… scan…"

"No!" Chen Shen rasped, the first coherent word he'd spoken since his flight began. He pulled his hand back instinctively. This thing, whatever it was, was the only object he'd seen in this nightmare that hadn't been warped or absorbed by the Mother . It was a flaw in the horror. A glitch. He wouldn't be the Mother 's probe.

He tore his gaze from the sphere, scanning the small chamber. There had to be another way out. This couldn't be the end. His corrupted arm's glow swept across the walls. Unlike the smooth, pulsating surfaces elsewhere, these walls were rougher, fractured. Jagged seams ran through the rock. And then, in a shadowed alcove opposite the sphere, his light caught something else. Not organic. Not the sphere's metal.

A shape. Angular. Protruding slightly from the wall, half-covered in a thick drapery of the ubiquitous, sticky slime that seemed to coat everything.

He approached cautiously, pushing aside the slime with his still-functional right hand. It peeled away reluctantly, thick and clinging. Beneath it, revealed in the dim, sickly light, was a section of wall that looked… constructed. Not grown. Made of fitted stones, though they were blackened, scarred, and partially fused with the surrounding biological matter that seemed to be slowly encroaching and digesting them.

And etched into one of these ancient, crumbling stones, faint but unmistakable, were marks. Not the complex geometric patterns of the sphere. Cruder. Deeper gouges. Made by a desperate hand.

He leaned closer, his corrupted arm held high. The glow washed over the ancient stone. The symbols weren't alien geometry. They were letters. Earthly letters. English. Scratched deep into the rock millennia ago, preserved by some fluke or perhaps the very slime that now threatened to obscure them again.

Three words. Simple. Stark. A message carved not just in stone, but in finality:

> LIGHT IS PRISON<

Chen Shen stared. His breath caught in his throat, a strangled sound in the suffocating silence. Light is prison. What did it mean? Was it a warning? A madman's scrawl? The words resonated with a terrible irony. He was trapped in absolute darkness, his only light the corruption devouring his body.

"Primitive… marking," the Voice dismissed it, its resonance flattening. "Meaningless… artifact. Focus… remains… on the vessel." It seemed determined to redirect his attention back to the sphere.

But Chen Shen couldn't look away. His gaze traced the crude, desperate strokes. Below the main inscription, almost buried in accumulated grime and encroaching slime at the base of the stone, he saw something else. Fainter. Smaller. He scraped away the slime with trembling fingers, uncaring of the sticky residue.

More letters. Names? Initials? It was hard to make out. The stone was deeply eroded here. He rubbed harder, the rough surface scraping his skin.

"J. KIRK… was faintly visible at the top. Below it, partially obscured: …TECH… ENGINE…. Then, a space. And a final line, gouged with even greater ferocity, the letters larger, angrier:

> …IS PRISONER<

J. Kirk. Tech Engineer. IS PRISONER.

The message crashed into him. This wasn't an ancient ruin discovered by the Mother . This wasn't just a place it had infested. The architectural fragment… the etching… The sphere. It all pointed to a terrifying possibility.

This structure… this impossible, living abomination… it was the prison. Or part of it. And the Mother wasn't an ancient horror lurking within it. The Mother was the prisoner. The inmate that had consumed its cage, its guards, and everything else that ventured too close over uncountable eons. It had turned its prison into its body, its domain. Light is prison. Was the warning about the prison's original purpose? Or a desperate cry about the consuming darkness that had become its ruler?

"Irrelevant… data," the Voice insisted, its resonance tightening, becoming almost brittle. "Focus… required… on the… anomaly… vessel. Host… approach… for… scanning." The command held an undercurrent of… urgency? Annoyance? It didn't like this distraction. It didn't like him seeing this.

Chen Shen ignored it. His mind reeled. The implications were staggering, reshaping the entire nightmare. They hadn't awakened an ancient evil slumbering in ruins. They had drilled into the living, mutated carcass of a cosmic penitentiary, releasing – or simply encountering – its sole, monstrous occupant. The Mother wasn't ancient; it was perpetual . Trapped, yet infinitely adaptable, consuming everything that entered its domain to sustain itself, to rebuild its prison-body anew with each intake of raw material.

He looked from the chilling inscription back to the inert metal sphere nestled in its cradle. Was this part of the prison's original machinery? A guardian? A power source? Or… something belonging to the prisoner?

And why was the Mother's Voice so keen to scan it? What did it fear… or desire… within that cold, silent shell?

The crawling ache in his arm flared, a sharp reminder of his own precarious state. He was deep inside the belly of the beast that had consumed its jailers. He was carrying its corruption within him. And the only flicker of something different, something potentially other , was this ancient, enigmatic sphere, and the desperate warning scratched by a doomed engineer millennia ago.

He stood at the precipice of understanding – a horrifying, sanity-bending understanding – trapped in a silent chamber deep within a living prison, with the key to his own doom glowing grotesquely at the end of his arm, and the only other artifact a silent, metallic enigma. The Voice prodded him towards the sphere, a directive laced with unfamiliar tension. The warning etched in stone screamed its silent caution.

Light is prison. J. Kirk. Tech Engineer. IS PRISONER.

The crushing silence of the dead-end chamber pressed in, heavier than the abyssal depths outside. Chen Shen, trapped between the incomprehensible past and his dissolving future, had to choose: approach the ancient mystery, or succumb to the horror etched in stone and flesh.

The roots ran deeper than he could fathom. And the prisoner, it seemed, was very much in control