The room around was dimly illuminated. The only source of light was a single bulb swaying faintly overhead, its rusted chain groaning with each subtle movement. The pale glow it cast was weak and sickly, swallowed almost entirely by the emptiness of the space.

The walls were made of rusting iron plates, mottled with dark stains and orange corrosion.

A confinement zone of some kind?

At the center of the room sat a man — "sat" wouldn't be a correct word. He wasn't here willingly. His wrists and ankles were bound to the chair by thick metallic ropes, each wound so tightly they bit into his flesh.

Within arm's reach of the chair sat a battered steel table, its surface littered with a mess of strange objects. Tools. Jagged instruments.

'Where am I?'

'What place is this?'

Sezel tried to turn, to get a better look at the surroundings, but the edges dissolved into a haze of incomprehensible blur. There was nothing else. Just the chair. The table. And one door, directly behind him.

'Who is this man?' Sezel questioned, looking at the person bound to the chair, but the only thing that followed was a desolate silence.

Then the door behind him clicked open. Sezel's eyes widened, panic rising in his chest. Three figures stepped through.

And then the impossible happened. They walked straight through Sezel.

He froze. Confused, he instinctively raised his own hand to look at it, only to find he had nothing. No hands. No body. It was as if he didn't exist. This was just his consciousness watching the scene from afar.

'A dream?' he realized with a creeping sense of unease.

It lined up with the last thing he remembered. Sezel had given in to fatigue and slept. This was his mind playing illusions? But then why did it feel so vivid? So real?

The three men who entered through the gate were all wearing long white coats, physicians perhaps.

On a closer look, each was sealed head-to-toe in isolation suits. Their hands enclosed in thick gloves, their hair covered, their faces hidden behind tinted visors and breathing masks. Even their eyes, behind the glass lenses, were unreadable.

'Does this man have some kind of disease?' Sezel wondered.

One of the suited figures stepped closer, lifting a gloved hand and slapped the bound man's cheek, not brutally, but sharply enough to jolt him awake. The person's body twitched, like an insect, then he slowly faced up. Sezel's stomach twisted in disgust the moment he saw the man's face.

He was indeed suffering from some kind of disease. Half his face was covered in small black scales, a thin trail of dried blood traced downwards beneath them, as if they were not just growing out of his face, but rather they were pushing themselves out of his flesh.

"How are you feeling?" one of the other doctors asked. His voice was filtered and sterile through the mask, drained of emotion.

The man turned his head with an effort that seemed monumental. His movements were sluggish, like someone trapped in a fog of drugs.

"What do you want?" he rasped, looking down. Sezel's gaze too flickered down and his chest tightened.

A pool of dried blood had spread beneath the man's legs, its edges thick and cracked. His feet… no, they weren't feet anymore. His toes were elongated, blackened, and sharpened like claws, as if they were the toes of some animal.

What is even this? Sezel thought, his confusion bordering on horror. Why am I dreaming… this?

"Let me see my wife…" the man said at last, voice broken and equal parts plea and surrender. Tears tracked down his cheeks, pattering softly on the floor, mingling with the blood.

At another look, Sezel could see that this man didn't even have hands. They were cut from below the elbow, and the end part of his elbow was growing into a black pointy formation.

One of the doctors extended his hand. The man beside him silently picked up a hammer from the table and placed it in his palm.

What are they going to do with that?

"Tighten the restraints," the doctor holding the hammer instructed. His voice remained flat. The third man crossed the room and yanked a lever by the wall; the metallic ropes constricted harshly around the prisoner's limbs.

The next moment, the man cried and pleaded, desperate cries that filled the iron chamber and echoed like an animal's last moments.

The doctor didn't flinch. He brought the hammer down against the man's clawed foot. Once. Twice. Again. The doctor hammered the man's toes, or rather his claws, as if he was hammering a nail in the wall. The man cried with pain and resisted, but none of them paid any heed.

The doctor hammered it till it broke and fell to the ground. A new stream of fresh blood flowed down the broken toe.

"Stop… please… stop!" the man sobbed between gasps. "Please let me see my wife one last time!"

THRASH!

The doctor's patience snapped. He rose slightly, then slammed the hammer into the side of the man's scaled face. The blow cracked loudly against the hardened growth.

"Stop acting like you're human," the doctor barked, his voice sharp now with contempt. "You'd only spread the contamination to her! Is that what you want?"

The words struck harder than the hammer. He just cried, biting his own lips. The doctor walked to the back, and with an electrical cutter, slashed the pointed ends of his hands.

Sezel felt his stomach twist violently, nausea clawing at his throat. He wanted to look away, but even in this dreamlike state, he was rooted in place.

What the fuck is this? What am I seeing?

The doctor walked in front of the man and started speaking. "We are doing this for your own good. We are giving you more time to live. There is no cure and you will eventually become one of them, so better that you let us collect information."

The man didn't answer. He kept his head bowed, silent as though this speech had been fed to him many times before.

Without another word, the doctors set their tools down and left the room, their white silhouettes vanishing behind the squealing iron door.

For a moment, there was only the drip of blood and the faint creak of the chair.

"Why…? Why is this happening to me?" the man finally spoke, his voice broken. Tears rolled freely again. "I prayed to you… daily… every hour, every minute. I never asked for much. Just… just a happy family."

"Why did it have to be like this?" His voice rose into a trembling shout. "Save me. Please… release me from this misery!"

And then his eyes snapped up and locked onto Sezel's.

For the first time, it was as though he could see him.

The gaze was wild, terror-streaked, full of a pleading so raw it cut straight into Sezel's core.

Sezel froze. Every hair on his body prickled, a cold dread icing his veins.

"Huff, Huff..." Sezel woke up, gasping.

His eyes darted around to take in the darkness of the room. He was still in the Spirit Realm. The dream was gone, but its images still clung to his mind like bloodstains he couldn't scrub out.