The laboratory stank of blood and rust. Lantern flames guttered in the stale air, throwing jagged shadows across stone walls slick with condensation. Beneath the light, Aeron worked in silence. His gloved hands cut through flesh with the calm precision of a master surgeon.
The corpse on his table was no patient. Its chest had been opened, ribs bent back like the pages of a grotesque book. Nestled within was the prize he sought: a human heart, still glistening, still warm.
Aeron lifted it with a surgeon's reverence. His fingers were steady, but his eyes… his eyes trembled.
This was his sixty-third attempt.
Sixty-three failures, sixty-three lifeless vessels dissected, rearranged, forced into shapes that life itself rejected. Around him, the walls bore silent witness. Shelves sagged beneath glass jars where preserved organs floated in murky fluid. Copper wiring tangled through the room like a nest of serpents, connecting arcane machines to symbols carved into the floor with obsessive care. It was no hospital, no academy laboratory.
It was a tomb. His tomb.
"Immortality…" The word slipped from his lips like a prayer, or perhaps a curse.
He set the heart upon a metal tray etched with runes, attaching thin copper wires that crackled with faint arcs of blue light. A flip of a switch, and the machine whirred to life, half magic, half science, fully madness.
The heart twitched.
Aeron leaned forward, breath shallow, his gaunt reflection staring back at him in the polished surface of his scalpel. A flicker of life pulsed through the organ, a fragile rhythm, a whisper of triumph. His own failing heart stuttered in response, daring to hope.
And then—silence.
The glow faded. The flesh shriveled black, curling inward like burned paper.
"No…" His whisper cut sharper than any scalpel. "No, no, no—!"
The tray clattered as his fist crashed down, rattling the glass jars, spilling dark liquid across the floor. He staggered back, shoulders heaving, his body trembling with fury and exhaustion.
The machine died with a sputter. The silence that followed was unbearable.
Aeron pressed a hand to his chest. Beneath his ribs, his own heart fluttered irregularly, the same weakness that had haunted him for years. His breath caught, thin and ragged, as though the failure had stolen more than his experiment—it had stolen a piece of his time.
And then came the whispers.
At first, faint. Like the scrape of insects against the walls. But they grew louder, clearer, threading through the shadows like a chorus of mockery. They spoke no language of men, yet Aeron understood.
You will never succeed.
He staggered toward the crooked mirror that hung on the far wall. His reflection was unkind: hollow cheeks, skin pale as parchment, hair streaked with gray far too early. He looked like a corpse still pretending to walk.
You are weak, the whispers hissed. You defy the natural order. You are nothing but rot pretending to think.
"Silence!" Aeron's voice cracked, but his glare did not waver. He slammed his bloodied palm against the mirror, smearing crimson across his reflection. His chest burned with rage and shame, but his voice steadied, low and venomous.
"You think me weak? Then watch. Watch as I carve eternity out of death itself."
The whispers faltered. For a moment, silence returned.
He turned back to the table, lifting the blackened husk of the heart. His hands were strangely gentle, almost tender, as he slid it into a jar. Another failure to add to the shelves. Another step closer to the truth.
Aeron collapsed into his chair, body sagging under invisible weight. He should have despaired. A sane man would have wept. But despair was a luxury he could no longer afford.
Instead, he smiled. A small, cracked smile, like a man on the brink of madness.
Because he knew something no one else did.
Each failure brought him closer. Each ruined heart was a door slammed shut, but behind it, another door opened. Somewhere among these failures lay the equation that would unlock eternity.
His hand drifted to his own chest, where his heart stuttered weakly, as though in mockery of his obsession. He whispered, not to the whispers, not to the dead around him, but to himself:
"There is no tomorrow without this. So tomorrow… I will try again."
The lantern sputtered. The shadows crept closer. And in that suffocating silence, Aeron set his scalpel beside him, eyes burning with a hunger that was no longer human.
Failure was inevitable.
But inevitability had never stopped him before.