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When her turn came, the silver-haired man studied the tablet in front of him.
“Excellent specimen. Young. Healthy. Prime candidate.”
She tried to scream, but no sound came out.
They strapped a bright red wristband to her arm. Red meant: living donor. Priority harvest.
Later, as they were marched down another corridor, Anabel saw it.
A sign painted above one of the steel doors:
“IMMORTALITY FOUNDATION”
She froze. She remembered the name. She’d heard it before. In whispers. In rumors.
And suddenly she understood everything.
A machine – perfect, invisible, and real. A supply chain of human parts, feeding the needs of billionaires, aging tycoons, world leaders, and celebrities desperate to live longer, if not forever.
They were brought into a lab. Everything was white. Stainless. Silent. Each room held surgical chairs with restraints, tables lined with syringes filled with glowing fluid. Holographic displays floated above them, showing real-time organ diagnostics.
A dead factory.
Sustaining the life of the rich at the price of death for the forgotten.
Anabel sat curled on the cold floor of a small concrete room. They had locked her there after the sorting. Someone was crying in the corner. Her own heartbeat pounded in her skull.
She thought only of Lucia. Was she alive? Where had they taken her?
Time stopped.
Then – a quiet creak. The door cracked open. Anabel froze.
A shadow moved in the doorway – and her heart nearly stopped. But it was Lucia. Alive. Bruised, clothes torn, but breathing.
They ran to each other, clutching tight, faces buried in shoulders.
“We have to go,” Lucia whispered, sobbing. “Now. While we still can…”
She had been taken to a storage room by mistake – filled with supplies and discarded equipment. There, she saw a guard leave his keyring on a desk.
She stole it. And came back.
“How?” Anabel breathed. “Where?”
“I saw a maintenance tunnel. When they marched us in. It’s narrow, but it leads out.”
They didn’t wait. Silent as shadows, they slipped into the corridor.
It was empty. At that moment, somewhere else, the guards were likely busy – disposing of those deemed unfit.
The girls ran.
Every nerve in Anabel’s body screamed to collapse, to cry, to panic – but her will held.
They found the tunnel. A narrow crawlspace behind a rusted ventilation grate. No one had entered it in years. The stench of mildew and rot choked the air.
They squeezed in. The floor was slick, coated with rust and damp soil.
Then – footsteps behind them. They’d been spotted. A beam of light swept through the tunnel. A shout. Dogs barking.
“Faster!” Lucia hissed.
They crawled, dragging themselves over jagged metal and concrete, their knees and elbows torn and bleeding. The voices drew closer. The barking turned into snarling.
Anabel thought: If they catch us… better to die here.
And then – light. A faint, yellowish glow ahead. An exit. Freedom.
They burst from the tunnel and collapsed on a rocky slope.
Night. Stars. The distant shimmer of highway lights.
But their relief died instantly.
Far off on the road – two black cars sat waiting. Engines idling. Headlights on.
Inside: men in uniform. Police. But not the kind that save you. The kind that sells you back. Or kills you quietly, for a price.
Anabel and Lucia crouched behind the crumbling remains of a concrete wall at the edge of a ravine. Their breathing was ragged. Their eyes searched the dark, ears straining. The headlights burned into their faces.
Six men climbed out of the black vehicles. Armed. Silent. Moving slowly toward them.
“They’re always here,” Lucia whispered. “They wait for the ones who escape.”
Anabel nodded, heart hammering a single thought: Run. Or die. But where?
The landscape was barren – no forest, no buildings, just scattered shrubs and stones.
They bolted – down the slope, stumbling over loose rock.
Shots cracked the silence.
Bullets tore the dirt beside them, flaring sparks off the stones. One struck Lucia in the thigh. She screamed and collapsed.
Anabel caught her without thinking, throwing her friend’s arm over her shoulders.
“Hold on!”
Brakes shrieked in the distance – more vehicles were coming. They were being surrounded.
Then, from the ridge above, came the growl of an engine. A truck – loud, filthy, battered – came crashing down the slope like a beast. It slammed into the black cars, forcing the men to scatter.
The driver, masked, in a black jacket, kicked open the door.
“Get in!” he roared.
No hesitation.
Anabel shoved Lucia inside and climbed in after.
The truck roared to life, tearing away in a storm of dust and grit.
Bullets rang out behind them, but the truck sped off into the night.
They tore down the highway, empty and pale in the moonlight. In the side mirrors, red-and-blue lights flared behind them. Sirens howled.
The truck weaved wildly, dodging, swerving.
Lucia lay curled on the seat, her jaw clenched in pain. Anabel held her hand.
The driver said nothing.
Who was he? Why did he help? It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was escaping.
After twenty minutes of relentless chase, the truck veered sharply off the highway, onto a narrow road choked with water and mud.
Soon, the pursuers faded. Their lights dimmed, swallowed by the dark.
Eventually, the truck came to a stop beneath the rusted canopy of an abandoned gas station.
The driver turned to them. He was in his forties, face worn, eyes pale as ash.
“You’re safe. For now,” he said. “But they don’t like loose ends. They’ll come.”
Anabel shivered. “Who are you?”
He gave a dry, joyless laugh.
“Just someone who knows what’s going on. And knows better than to trust anyone. Even the ones wearing badges.”
He drove them to a nearby village. Told them who might offer shelter.
***
Weeks passed.
Anabel and Lucia moved to a new city. A bright city. Loud. Alive.
They rented a small apartment. Found simple jobs at a café.
It seemed like it was over.
But at night, the nightmares returned. The dark bus. The steel doors. The eyes behind the masks. Lucia had panic attacks. Anabel feared being alone. They understood: time doesn’t heal everything.
Then, one day, browsing the local newspaper, Anabel saw an ad:
“Psychotherapist with 20 years of experience. Trauma recovery. Confidential. Compassionate. Nearby.”
The address was just a few blocks away.
They didn’t even have to discuss it. They needed help.
The house was neat – a small suburban cottage behind a white fence. Flowers in pots. A tidy walkway.
They rang the bell. A young woman in glasses – an assistant – opened the door. Polite. Neutral.
“You’re here for Dr. Marek? This way, please. The doctor will be with you shortly.”
They were led into a cozy waiting room. Warm colors. Soft chairs. A painting of the sea on the wall.
They sat down. Minutes passed. Time slowed.
Then – a click. They turned. The door had locked. Automatically.
Lucia’s voice was barely a whisper: “What was that?”
The windows sealed shut – metal shutters groaned down over the glass. Then – a hiss. A strange, sweet scent filled the air.
Gas.
Lucia screamed. But stumbled, eyes rolling back, collapsing to the floor.
Anabel lurched toward the door, but her legs failed.
The world spun. Blurring. Stretching. In the hissing noise, she heard something – a voice. A voice she knew.
“This bus runs to the final stop. No interruptions.”
The last thing Anabel saw before darkness took her was a pair of headlights.
And she knew – the bus had arrived. And this was the final stop.
Forever.
Ambrylith – the Tree of the Dead
Liam inherited his grandfather’s farm – a place that looked like the universe had turned its back on it about twenty years ago. The house had a sagging roof, with nails sticking out like rusted needles. The garden soil was packed so tightly, it felt like last year’s pie crust.
The only living resident was a snake named Bertha – short and fat like a kielbasa. She loved to lie near the well, as if guarding something better left alone.
People in town whispered about Liam’s grandfather. They called him “mad.” Or sometimes, “a warlock.” No one came to his funeral.
Liam was nineteen – a tired teenager with the soul of an old man who, for some reason, believed that a piece of land was better than a job in an office.
One day, while digging up the soil near an old stone fence, Liam’s shovel hit something solid. He knelt down, cleared the dirt with his hands, and froze.
It was a skull. A real human skull, cracked like his grandmother’s porcelain teacup.
Inside the hollow cavity lay something black and smooth. It looked like a seed – but with a strange, unnerving shape.
He slipped it into his pocket and left the skull near the well, where curious Bertha might enjoy its company.
They say snakes like human skulls.
That night, he dreamed.
In the dream, a very thin girl with impossibly large, doll-like eyes took him by the hand and said,
“Come with me – to the garden where the trees of the dead grow.”
“Why?” Liam asked, confused.
“They bear the most delicious fruit. You have to try them. They only appear once every hundred years – for a single day. Tomorrow, they’ll be gone. You’re lucky.”
“Well, okay,” Liam replied, curious.
They walked past a small lavender lake, its surface bubbling like a jacuzzi, then crossed a creaky old bridge that groaned like an arthritic mule over a deep, narrow chasm.
Ahead of them stood a tall bronze fence, stretching endlessly in both directions until it vanished into the horizon. The girl touched it with her palm. The fence crumbled to dust.
Behind it was a garden so strange, so alien, Liam forgot how to breathe.
The trees looked like women frozen mid-dance – elegant, curving, almost human. Their branches extended like the many arms of a tantric goddess. The wood was deep crimson, with a texture disturbingly similar to human skin.
There were no leaves – only fruit.
And the fruit… They were shaped like breasts. Warm, full, and disturbingly alive.
Liam felt deeply uneasy.
Noticing his hesitation, the girl tugged his hand and said, “What’s wrong? Are you scared?”
“No,” he lied. “I’ve just… never seen anything like this. Are they… edible?”
“Of course!” she beamed. “You won’t regret it.”
She jumped up, grabbed one of the fruits with both hands, and yanked.
The moment it detached, thick red juice – almost like blood – began to drip from the branch.
“Here,” she said, handing it to him.
It didn’t feel like fruit. It felt like flesh – warm, soft, disturbingly real.
“Eat,” she said.
Liam hesitated. His stomach churned at the thought. It felt too much like… human meat.
“You’re such an idiot,” the girl said. “This is the best thing you’ll ever taste. Give it back.”
She snatched it from his hands and tore into it with her long, dirty nails. The skin ripped open. The pulpy flesh oozed more of that blood-red juice.
She split the fruit in two and handed one half back to him.
“Just try a little. Trust me.”
He shut his eyes and touched the fruit with his tongue.
The taste hit him like a flood. It was divine. Hypnotic.
Liam took a huge bite and began chewing slowly, savoring every moment.
At first, he felt a gentle warmth spread through his whole body. Then his vision blurred, as if a soft veil had been draped over his eyes. It was as though sunlight poured under his skin, thick and sweet like honey, filling him with an overwhelming bliss.
Liam slowly sank to his knees, then collapsed onto the ground.
Time stopped. Space became alive, breathing with fantastic colors.
And then – the slow dissolving of all boundaries. His body, his identity, his consciousness – everything began to melt, spilling out, merging with the world around him. Objects lost their names. A hand was no longer a hand. The sky was no longer the sky. Sounds turned into shapes. The wind became a whisper from some endless depth.
When his eyes finally closed on their own, Liam found himself suspended in a geometric cosmos: endless tunnels of shimmering mosaics spread out in every direction, as if his soul had plunged into the fabric of a living Mandelbrot.
Fractals writhed around him, pulsing with light, gazing at him with impossible, shifting eyes.
Emotions became cosmic oceans – sometimes pure, unbearable joy, sometimes terror and unspeakable sorrow.
Everything was simultaneously magnificent and horrifying.
He heard the music of the spheres, the whisper of all human thoughts. Sometimes, even their voices. But it didn’t frighten him.
At some point, Liam thought he might have died – or perhaps he had never been born at all. First, he sobbed. Then, an indescribable lightness filled him, and he began to laugh. With that laughter, he woke up.
Still dazed, not entirely sure where the dream ended and reality began, Liam ran his hands over his body.
“My God… what a realistic dream!” he thought. “It felt like it really happened.”
He glanced around the room, half-expecting to see the strange girl standing beside him.
There was a strange taste lingering on his lips.
Getting up, he looked at himself in the mirror – and froze.
His lips and chin were stained with blood.
“What the hell?!” Liam gasped and rushed outside to the water barrel to wash his face.
All day, he wandered around in a daze, unable to shake the vivid memory of the dream.
By evening, he remembered the strange seed.
Throw it away? Or plant it? What would grow from it?
As dusk fell, he chose a spot in the garden where the soil was soft, dug a shallow hole, and buried the seed.
Then he watered it with water from the old well.
Soon after, Bertha the snake slithered over and stretched herself out on the damp earth.
Wishing the snake goodnight, Liam went inside to make himself a late dinner.
Two weeks passed.
Every day, Liam watered the spot carefully – but no sprouts appeared.
Then came the full moon.
Liam could never sleep under a full moon. It was like someone had injected pure caffeine into his bloodstream, leaving him wired and restless.
Usually, on nights like this, he cleaned the house, worked on his laptop, or stared at the starry sky through an old telescope.
Tonight, he decided to tinker with the motor on his electric bike.
He worked all the way until dawn, then stepped outside to breathe the cool morning air and watch the sunrise.
What he saw made him stop dead in his tracks.
Where he had planted the seed, a full-grown tree now stood. Exactly like the one he had seen in his dream.
“No way…” Liam whispered, barely able to move his lips.
He stood frozen, staring at the tree, refusing to believe his own eyes.
Finally, he forced himself to move closer. But the closer he got, the more dread seeped into his bones.
There were no fruits on the branches – not like in the dream.
Instead, the tree was covered in… faces. Men, women, children – all with their eyes closed, as if sleeping.
Their skin was pale as wax. Their features frozen in silent sorrow.
Liam stopped several feet away, unable to approach any closer.
These weren’t sleeping faces. They were dead. Horror gripped him. He stumbled back.
“God… please make it go away!” he cried out.
He had no idea how he was supposed to live with something like this growing in his backyard. His mind rebelled against it, refusing to accept.
Maybe he should call the police? Or a priest?
But what would he even say?
“There’s a tree full of dead faces growing on my farm. Yeah, I planted it. Yeah, it came from a dream.”
They’d lock him up in a mental hospital.
He was already thinking about calling a friend to help him destroy it when his eyes caught something among the faces.
A girl’s face.
It was so beautiful that Liam couldn’t look away.
Tenderness and sadness were frozen in her features – a breathtaking, heartbreaking face.
Staring at her, Liam began to believe that among all these dead faces, hers was still alive. Sleeping, maybe. Waiting.
He stepped closer, praying that she would sense his presence and open her eyes.
But the face, like all the others, remained still.
Liam spent the whole day near the tree, hoping for some kind of miracle.
Night fell. Morning came.
He forgot about everything else – his chores, his plans. Nothing mattered anymore.
Every day, he spent hours by the tree, speaking softly to the girl’s face, caressing it with trembling fingers, convinced she could hear him.
He was falling in love. Hopelessly, completely.
And he couldn’t stop thinking about one thing: how to bring her back. Back to life.
He searched the internet. He posted on esoteric forums. But none of it helped.
Then, one morning, he found an envelope on the porch.
It was made of parchment – triangular in shape, sealed with wax.
It looked like something delivered from the Middle Ages by a time-traveling courier.
Inside was a small piece of leather, and carved into it were the words: “I can solve your problem. Come tonight.”
Below was an address in a nearby village.
The sky above the farm was darkening with clouds. By evening, it started to rain – nearly a downpour.
Riding his electric bike was out of the question. So he went to the barn and cranked up his grandfather’s old Dodge.
To his surprise, it started on the first try.
Liam drove slowly. The road hadn’t seen maintenance in years – full of potholes and rusted, half-fallen road signs pointing like dead men’s fingers into the fog.
The house was hard to find. It had a number, but didn’t show up on any GPS map. He had to ask a few locals for directions.
Eventually, he found it.
It was old. Covered in weather-worn wooden planks. The windows were fogged up – he couldn’t see inside. The front door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open.
“Hello? Anyone here?” he called out – and barely recognized his own voice.
The inside smelled of mice, mold, and strange herbs.
There was no chandelier. Just a single candle, flickering dimly at the far end of the room.
“You came,” said a woman’s voice.
She was sitting in a chair by the wall – a small, hunched figure in a shawl. A witch.
Her face was mostly hidden, but her mouth was visible. Her lips didn’t move – yet the words echoed clearly in the room.
“You have a tree in your yard. With faces.”
She wasn’t asking. She knew.
“Yes,” Liam replied.
His eyes drifted to her hands.
They looked like roots – thin, mottled, with fingernails far too long.
“And you’ve fallen in love with one of the faces.”
Liam nodded.
The witch smiled – a soundless, reptilian grin, like snakes laughing under the floorboards.
“That tree is an Ambrylith – the Tree of the Dead,” she said. “It grows from hidden desires buried deep in the human subconscious. From thoughts too terrifying even for dreams. It’s not a gift. It’s a mirror. It gives – but it also takes.”
She stood up. Too fast. Like something inside her bones moved independently of her flesh.
“You want her to wake up. To return to the land of the living?”
“I do,” Liam said. “I love her.”
“Fine. I’ll help you. But remember – the dead don’t return without a price. You will have to pay. Not to me. What the tree demands, I do not know. That’s for you to discover.”
Liam agreed.
The ritual was vile. Animal blood. A baby’s brain. His own blood. Herbs.
She brewed it all into a potion. With the potion in hand, Liam headed home.
It was already dark. The clouds made the night especially heavy – no moon, no stars. The rain had stopped.
He didn’t want to wait till morning. He lit his grandfather’s old kerosene lamp, stepped outside, and walked to the tree.
His heart was pounding.
The lamp’s dim light danced across the faces in the leaves, making them look even more lifeless and grim.
They swayed in the wind, whispering like a ghostly choir.
He found her face. His girl.
Opening the potion bottle, he poured it gently over her leaf, repeating the incantation the witch had given him.
It contained a name. Charlotte. That was her name, when she was alive.
Minutes passed.
Then the leaf began to swell – stretching in all directions. Shoulders formed. Then a chest. Arms. A torso.
She emerged fully, growing from the leaf like a figure rising from a painting.
When Liam chanted the final words of the spell – the thirteenth repetition – her face came alive. Her eyes opened. She breathed. Her body shifted and unfolded, becoming three-dimensional.
The tree shivered, as if exhaling.
Charlotte stepped down to the ground.
She stood before Liam, naked, real, alive – and unspeakably beautiful.
They looked at each other for a long moment, unsure who should move first.
Liam did. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly.
She whispered softly, “Thank you… for bringing me back.”
In the next instant, Liam’s vision darkened. He staggered, clutching his chest. His skin cracked and curled like burning paper. His veins burst.
His flesh shriveled like a collapsing balloon. He collapsed, gasping, staring into Charlotte’s endless eyes.
Charlotte watched him die. Without fear. Without sorrow.
She knew. She had always known what the tree would demand in return for life.
She could not change it. Could not stop it. Some things are simply inevitable.
When the first sliver of sunlight appeared on the horizon, new leaves grew on the tree.
And among them – a face. Liam’s face. Frozen in a silent scream.
Charlotte turned and walked into the forest.
She was starving. But the hunger wasn’t hers. It belonged to the tree.
She knew the truth now. If she wanted to stay alive, she had to feed it. Water its roots with fresh blood. Human blood. Every full moon.
If she didn’t – the tree would drink her dry.
Charlotte didn’t want to kill anyone. But ending her life after escaping the void was more than she could bear.
There was no choice. She had to begin.
The first time was the hardest. A young traveler had lost his way. She met him on a country road at night, acting like a girl who’d lost her way too.
He was kind. Gave her his coat, his flashlight. He laughed. Talked about cities, music, the future.
She slit his throat with a shard of mirror while he was still smiling. He blinked rapidly, as if trying to say something. She didn’t listen, she collected his blood in a pitcher.
The earth drank it with a hiss.
The faces on the tree twitched – almost in pleasure. The roots pulsed. The tree swayed, like a woman in a trance. It breathed. And so did she.
It got easier.
Drunks on the roadside. Lonely hitchhikers.
She took their lives. No hesitation, no mess.
Rumors spread through the area – about a dark-eyed young witch wandering the countryside.
But no one caught her. She left no trace.
Sometimes Charlotte sat by the tree and listened to it sing. A chorus of souls locked inside. Among them – Liam’s voice, calling her name. She never answered.
One day, she found a girl. Small, shivering, holding a stuffed bear.
Charlotte couldn’t do it.
She carried the child to the village and left her at someone’s doorstep. She didn’t look back.
No one else crossed her path that night.
At midnight, the tree trembled. Veins of blood streaked the leaves. The faces twisted in pain.
Charlotte’s body began to wither. Her hair turned white. Her skin cracked. Pain and heat burned in her chest.
Then she heard the voice again, from deep within the trunk: “You don’t get to choose. You kill – or you die. This is not a curse. It is a price. Life does not come from nothing. Only from death.”
On the next full moon, she killed an old man.
No feelings. No regret. Quick. Clean. As if she were simply paying off a debt.
That night, she dreamed of the tree opening its bark. Inside sat something dark and trembling – with her face. Younger than the one she wore now.