Mistress Seraphine entered behind him, silent as ever.
“You’ve forgotten your name,” she said. “Good. Names are for the outside. And you… will never go back.”
He did not flinch.
The Obedience Vault
The Rebirth
There were no windows in the Rebirth Chamber. Only the pulse of red lights, beating like a heart behind the walls.
Elias — no, subject — stood naked in the center, his skin scrubbed raw, his limbs trembling but trained. The cage was still locked tight, now a constant, a piece of anatomy rather than an object. It no longer tortured him — it defined him. He had become smooth, not just below the waist, but in mind. Stripped. Sanded. Made usable.
Mistress Seraphine stood across from him, radiant in silence.
She no longer needed to speak. Her presence was law.
Still, she spoke.
“This is your final hour as anything separate.”
She stepped forward and circled him again. Always circling. He felt like prey. Or orbiting debris.
“You are not man. You are not machine. You are not Elias Crane. You are the Vault’s gift to itself — a vessel of absence. Hollow. Controlled.”
She placed her palm on his chest — over his heart.
“You no longer have a center. You are filled with me.” And he was. In every sense. He had forgotten the smell of air that wasn’t recycled through this place. He hadn’t heard music in weeks.
Hadn’t touched himself.
Hadn’t come.
His desires now belonged to her — to her hands, her tools, her rituals. To resist? Unthinkable. Resistance was a language he no longer understood