The corridor they led him through did not look like a place meant for suffering.
That, more than anything else, unsettled him.
The walls were clean. The lighting was even and soft, tuned to reduce shadow rather than banish it. The floor absorbed sound instead of amplifying it, turning footfalls into a dull hush. Everything about the space suggested intention. Efficiency. Design born not from cruelty, but from practice.
Aerenyx walked between two attendants who did not speak. They did not need to. He had already agreed to this, and they knew it.
The door ahead opened with a soundless slide.
Inside, the temperature dropped by several degrees.
The first room held containment.
Not cells. Not cages. Containment.
Clear panels divided the space into different sections, each one reinforced with metal frames sunk deep into the floor and ceiling to make sure that nothing was going to get out that wasn't supposed to get out.
