The porcelain plague mask adhered to Adrian's face with a sound like ice cracking over a bottomless lake. Its inner surface wasn't smooth - it writhed with microscopic fungal cilia that sought out his tear ducts, his nasal passages, the vulnerable spaces between his molars. Not invading. Remembering.

  Vaulk's voice vibrated through his cranial bones, bypassing his ears entirely:

  "Shall we finally show you what you paid for with seven generations of hunters?"

  Memory Sequence: The First Betrayal

  The memory struck with the violence of a bone saw.

  Adrian - no, the Surgeon, the original Architect - stood in an operating theater lit by bioluminescent fungi. The stench of cauterized flesh and ozone hung thick. Seven surgical tables formed a perfect heptagram, each occupied by:

  

  
1. 
   
     Table Alpha: Young Kaelis, his mouth sewn shut with silver wire
   
     


  
2. 
   
     Table Omega: A corpse wearing Adrian's face, its chest cavity empty
   
     


  
3. 
   
     Tables II-VI: Twitching hybrids with exposed brains floating in amber liquid
   
     


  

  The Surgeon's hands (his hands, but not his hands) moved with alien precision, using a rib bone as a scalpel to carve the first VII brand into Kaelis' shoulder. The moment the silver numeral touched blood, the walls breathed - not metaphorically. The entire facility was alive.

  "The brands aren't timers," whispered the memory-Vaulk, who now had Mordriss' plague doctor mask under his Sanctum robes. "They're stitches. Holding the wound between cycles closed."

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  Kaelis' scream wasn't sound but a physical entity that crawled into the Surgeon's ears and laid eggs of pure pain.

  Present: The Mask's Revelation

  Adrian clawed at the plague mask, his flaming fingertips leaving scorch marks on porcelain. It came away with a spray of black ichor - only to reveal the tendrils had grown inward, forming a delicate lattice around his frontal lobe. The veins pulsed in time with:

  

  
1. 
   
     The chamber's heartbeat
   
     


  
2. 
   
     The other Alphas' brands
   
     


  
3. 
   
     Something far beneath them
   
     


  

  Alpha-3 collapsed, her fungal exoskeleton erupting in violet blossoms that formed tiny screaming faces. "He's remembering," she gurgled through a mouthful of spores. "That's why the cycle's breaking this time-"

  Kaelis' decaying hand seized Adrian's wrist. Beneath the necrotic flesh, his fungal veins rearranged into legible text:

  THE KING ISN'T DEAD. YOU BURIED HIM ALIVE UNDER THE SANCTUM.

  The words burned away as soon as Adrian read them.

  The Eighth Window Appears

  The chamber originally had seven windows.

  The eighth tore itself into existence between one blink and the next, its edges bleeding temporal static. The scene within shifted like a sickened kaleidoscope:

  

  
• 
  
    First Frame: The Surgeon (with Adrian's hands) plunging a dagger made of frozen lightning into the Demon King's chest
  
    


  
• 
  
    Second Frame: The King laughing as the blade passed through his incorporeal form
  
    


  
• 
  
    Final Frame: The horrific truth - the "throne" was never a seat of power, but a cage constructed from the bones of failed Omegas
  
    


  

  Alpha-6's lightning scars suddenly arced toward the window, forming a bridge of crackling energy. "You missed the heart," he whispered, his voice aging decades with each word. "He's been whispering to us through the brands this whole time."

  The Final Restraint Releases

  The surgical rig's eighth restraint - previously invisible - snapped open with the sound of a breaking spine.

  From the darkness beneath the chamber came a wet, dragging sound.

  Then it spoke.

  Not in the Demon King's voice.

  In the exact cadence Adrian's mother had used when singing him lullabies.

  "My sweet boy," it cooed with decaying vocal cords. "You left your old toys buried in the backyard."