Laboratory Report: Regenerative Subject Testing Programme
Subject ID: Series-2 / Batch F / Collar No. 035
Ability Classification: Lazarus Phenomenon (Spontaneous Regeneration through death-state)
Prepared By: Magister Orellin, Head of Biological Trials
Date: Cycle 4 – Passage 1
Excerpt – Week Three, Day Six:
"Subject terminated repeatedly under controlled execution. Recovery no longer resembles simple healing but full resurrection. Cellular collapse total, then reversal. Psychological distress extreme; subject vocalized uncertainty of identity: 'Am I the same after so many deaths?'
Designation updated to: Lazarus Phenomenon."
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Time is not time here.
It stretches, thins, trembles. A rubber band pulled taut by unseen hands, threatening to snap yet never daring to. Days blur into each other until they are indistinguishable shades of grey. The rituals—feeding, testing, bandaging, isolation—become the only measure of existence. Precision replaces freedom. The schedule itself becomes a god, and we bow to it in the only way we can: survival.
And in that bleak worship, I made a friend. Or maybe I only imagined I did. Perhaps it is better to say: a shadow brushed against mine, and I mistook the contact for companionship. Friendship implies warmth, comfort, and a shared promise of tomorrow. She was none of those. She was red eyes that burned like embers in the dim light, platinum hair too pale to be natural, and a smile too sharp to trust. She terrified me the way death terrifies—inevitable, incomprehensible, lingering in your periphery until it finally claims you.
At first, I thought she was like F2-34—sharp, unyielding, alien. They even carried a similar aura, as if branches sprouted from the same tree, sap flowing from the same ancestral root. Not siblings, not quite, but linked by some blood-thread deeper than womb-water.
The first time she spoke to me, it was over bread.
Bread. Dry, tasteless, holy in its blandness. It was the one indulgence permitted to us in this place of blades and fire, a crust of reprieve I gnawed at like a rat pretending it had found treasure. Bread tethered me to something faintly human. And then—her voice. Calm. Cheerful. Absurdly out of place.
"You always sit by yourself. Are you opposed to interaction?"
Her words dropped into my silence like stones into a pond, rippling outward. Panic jolted through me. My tongue, stiff from disuse, betrayed me.
"I… I have no issue with it. I just like my space." The whisper cracked as it left my lips, a voice long buried in dust.
She studied me, quiet, crimson gaze burning. In my head, Logos murmured, her voice the low hum of wind through leaves: "Curious."
From then on, the red-eyed girl began to orbit me. Meals. Rest hours. The sterile gaps between trials. She did not intrude; she was simply there. A shadow I hadn't known I needed, cast by a flame I hadn't realized was burning.
Meanwhile, the tests grew worse. They began tailoring torments, adjusting execution methods like artists perfecting a cruel sculpture. My curse: I could not wield mana. Not even a spark. Not even a flicker. Others fought with fire and ice; I fought with nothing.
"F-2.35, are you ready?" A voice that never asked so much as declared.
"Yes," I sighed, though the word was a painted lie.
They armed my opponents, never me. I was canvas, not brush. "Begin."
The first time, they severed my arm. Blood poured out, hot and wet, pooling at my feet. They let me bleed, bandaged me half-heartedly, dragged me back to my cell. By dawn, the arm had regrown. That was my secret: regrowth. Not healing, not recovery—rebirth. I knew it came from the Empress, her principle burning deep in my marrow, but I had no mastery over it. Logos approved of my survival. That meant she would not intervene. And so I was permitted to be butchered.
Today, it was my legs. They hacked them off. I screamed until my voice shredded. Flesh regrew sluggishly, grotesquely. My heart failed once, then jolted alive under their electricity. I pissed myself during the spasms, humiliation almost worse than agony. Almost.
Each death erased something. Each resurrection wrote over the absence with something unrecognizable. I was becoming… other.
Between torments, I distracted myself with her.
"Why do you always wear those gloves?" I asked once, voice halting.
Her grin flashed. Fanged. Sharp. "Do you want to know?"
I nodded, wary.
"I'm a vampire."
The words landed like a hammer. Her tone was light, playful, but the weight beneath it pressed cold into my skin.
"Vampires exist?" Reflexively, I reached inward. Logos?
"Yes," Logos replied, detached. "But you do not count every insect you know exists, do you?"
Her indifference almost made me laugh. Almost.
"That explains the fangs," I murmured.
"And the gloves," she added, wiggling her fingers. "I absorb vitality by touch. These keep me from draining every hand I shake."
My chest tightened. I had no clever reply.
Later, she offered her own truth: "I was abducted while feeding. Caught off guard." Her voice was soft, but the memory bled from it like an unhealed wound.
I touched my own neck without meaning to.
"You bump into things often," she observed suddenly, as if my bruises betrayed me. "Why not just… walk differently? Give yourself more space?"
"…Miscalculations," I said, awkwardly, wishing the floor would swallow me.
And then, because silence was unbearable, I blurted: "What's it like, using magic?"
Her eyes glimmered. "I'm a Category Six. Darkness affinity." She puffed her chest with pride.
I tilted my head. "That means…?"
"You have no idea what I just said, do you?"
"Nope."
She sighed theatrically. I pictured her with spectacles, lecturing in some grand hall. "Fine. Listen closely. Grade Seven mages are seeds. Barely able to sense mana. Little fireballs—poof!" She mimed an explosion with her hands, her cheer absurd in this place.
I thought of Regina. Her soft water tricks, ripples in the air. Gentle, compared to this girl's ember-bright intensity.
"Grade Six Adepts, like me, refine mana until it becomes art. I once saw an earth-user compress coal into diamond, then carve a child's portrait into it. Beautiful." Her tone lifted like wings.
"Logos," I muttered inwardly, "why didn't I know any of this?"
"Why should you?" Logos replied flatly. "You cannot use mana. It was irrelevant."
"Huuuuuh."
She wasn't finished. "Grade Five mages? Scholars. Mirrors of reality. I don't know the details, but they say the world itself bends to them."
I tried to gather her words into something coherent, but they scattered in my head like ashes in wind.
"So you're a Six."
"Yes."
Before I could ask more, the alarm rang. [Ring!] Harsh, metallic, absolute. Our fragile bubble burst. Bath. Lights out. Silence. Routine reclaimed us.
And so I return to the cycle: ritual, torment, regrowth, bread, her.
A shadow orbiting a shadow.
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Laboratory Report – Closing Note:
"Subject continues to display Lazarus Phenomenon consistently. Emotional instability increasing. Red-eyed specimen (V-6/Batch F) observed establishing repeated social contact with Subject. Possible cross-contamination of psychological resilience. Monitor closely."