The bronze columns of the underground altar were covered with moss. When Elvira scraped off the surface with a silver leaf bookmark, the reliefs made her fingertips numb. Fifteen-year-old Lucas was chained to the throne of thorns, and Lady Audrey was pressing the crescent pendant into his bleeding collarbone.
"This is the Neumann family's coming-of-age ceremony." Eric's voice came from behind, with fluorescent blue liquid dripping from the hem of his white coat. "My brother's crying lasted for three days and three nights, and all the roses in the castle withered."
Elvira felt the marks on the edge of the relief, which were the distress signals that Lucas had scratched with his fingernails. A half piece of yellowed diary paper was stuck in the gap between the mosses, and it was covered with moons wrapped in thorns. When she filled these patterns with blood, the altar suddenly sank, revealing a hidden torture chamber.
The smell of rust mixed with the smell of rotting flesh hit me in the face. The main body of the throne of thorns stood in the center of the secret room, and the dried blood stains shone in the moonlight. The metal barbs on the armrests of the throne were hung with rags, one of which was the plaid pattern of Lucas High School's uniform.
"He executed my uncle here." Eric turned on the ultraviolet light, and a star map composed of bloody handprints appeared on the wall. "It was the night of a lunar eclipse, and the instruments of torture were replaced with pure silver."
Elvira's silver leaf bookmark suddenly stuck to the bottom of the throne. In the pried-open secret compartment lay a burnt diary, with traces of canine bites on the cover. When she turned to the page with "2005.11.05", the monitor in the corner suddenly lit up red.
Lucas's handwriting in the diary was crazy: "When my uncle's blood splashed on the throne, the thorns suddenly came alive and pierced my thigh... My mother said this was the price of love..." In the photo on the insert, the young Lucas was hung upside down on the rack with twelve silver crossbow arrows stuck in his back.
The chamber began to shake violently. As Eric dragged her into the secret passage under the throne, Elvira saw the bloody handprints on the wall were being reorganized to form the floor plan of the hospital where her mother was. In the laboratory at the end of the secret passage, three new culture chambers were oozing fluorescent blue liquid.
"This is the real coming-of-age ceremony." Eric knocked on the glass of the incubator, and the creature inside suddenly opened its eyes. It was a monster that had the genes of Lucas and Selina fused together, and it was wearing a wedding ring on its left fingernail. "What my mother wanted was a perfect container."
Amid the alarm, a holographic image of Mrs. Audrey appeared on the operating table. In the glass jar in her hand, Lucas's heart was floating, and each blood vessel was connected to a nanowire: "Dear, you should thank me for preserving his pain nerves."
Elvira's knocked over reagent bottle triggered a chain reaction. As the incubators exploded one after another, she saw Lucas' clone struggling in the mucus, the silver lines on his back being absorbed by the barbs of the throne of thorns. Eric suddenly twitched like an epileptic, and mechanical tentacles emerged from the collar of his white coat.
"Go!" Lucas' voice came from the ventilation duct. When he smashed the filter and jumped down, only the bare mechanical skeleton was left on his left arm. "The throne has activated the self-destruct program!"
As they crawled through the sewage pipe, Elvira felt a foreign object protruding from Lucas' back - it was a miniature throne model embedded in the spine, with the barbs already integrated with the silver lines. When the sewage reached her waist, a fork appeared in front of her, and Lucas suddenly pushed her to the left pipe.
"Remember, don't trust me when the moon is full." He backed away from the current, the mechanical arm grabbing the chip torn from Eric's body, "If you see your pupils turn into thorns..."
The blast blew away the manhole cover. When Ivy emerged from the moat, she held Lucas's last gift in her hand - a half-charred diary sealed in the miniature throne, with the latest words still oozing blood: "They used your genes to reshape the thorns..."
The church bell tower on the other side of the river lit up with a searchlight, and the beam spelled out Elvira's genetic sequence on the river surface. Selina's sneer came through the loudspeaker: "Dear sacrifice, it's time to sit on the throne that belongs to you."