The Heartless Vessel
The moment the one-eyed High Worshipper’s voice cut through the air, Minel snapped fully awake.
He began to follow the prayer rising all around him.
“O Urare… grant judgment… grant purification…”
The change came at once. The suspicious glances fixed on him vanished one by one. The surrounding Worshippers turned their faces back toward the turbine and resumed their chanting. No one paid Minel any further attention.
“Get over here. Quickly.”
The one-eyed High Worshipper beckoned. Minel approached while still murmuring the prayer. The man’s face hardened; he scowled.
“You idiot. In front of the faithful you recite the incantation. Always.”
He’s not suspicious?
Good.
Minel bowed his head deeply.
“Forgive me. I only just became a High Worshipper…”
“Tsk. The medicine?”
“Pardon?”
“Have you taken the medicine?”
What medicine?
Minel kept his head low and hesitated. The one-eyed High Worshipper’s gaze sharpened in an instant.
“Don’t tell me… you came in without taking it?”
Minel’s mind spun cold and fast. From the way the man spoke, the medicine was something given only to High Worshippers. That would explain how they kept clear eyes while leading a throng of raving devotees. High probability, then: the drug shielded body and mind from the electrical addiction.
The one-eyed High Worshipper’s face closed in until it filled Minel’s vision. Minel studied both pupils carefully and answered in a low voice.
“I already took it.”
The man looked him over once more.
“Yes. You look it. Otherwise you’d already be raving.”
“…”
He gave a short laugh and jerked his chin toward the turbine.
“Today is critical. We’re inspecting the parts that have reached saturation. Keep your head clear. Walk the floor. Watch the Worshippers and manage them. Understood?”
Minel bowed in acknowledgment. The one-eyed High Worshipper smiled in satisfaction and moved away.
So even High Worshippers compete with one another for rewards. The reward is almost certainly the medicine that preserves sanity. And from the way he fretted about his position, if the supply runs short a High Worshipper is demoted back to ordinary Worshipper.
“Cults always are pyramids.”
Minel murmured the observation under his breath, then resumed the prayer while circulating among the Worshippers, pretending to supervise. Step by careful step he made his way to the steel passageway.
Armed combat personnel at the entrance scanned him with hard eyes. Minel flicked his wrist as though it were the most natural gesture in the world. The prayer beads caught the faint outer light and flashed silver. A brief silence. Their gazes lingered on the engraving, then slid away, interest gone. They nodded. Minel stepped into the dark corridor with a face that showed not a trace of tension.
Inside, the passage narrowed at once into a steep metal stair. Every footfall rang; the sound bounced off the walls and needled his ears. The roar of the chimney crowd faded behind him. In its place came the crack of lightning strikes and the grinding rotation of heavy machinery, boring into his skull.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
High Worshippers hurried back and forth, inspecting the machinery. They opened and closed wall panels, checked current levels, and often lifted their heads to watch the mass of devotees in the chimney’s center. The slightest break in the prayer’s rhythm brought an immediate signal to correct it.
“Sector Three is lagging. Make them shout louder!”
“The electrodes are shaking. Call the cable team!”
“Three collapsed in Sector One. Bring water.”
They moved like stagehands behind the curtain—keeping the frenzied performance out front running smoothly while remaining unseen themselves. Prayer beads hung from every busy hand, ready to seize control of any devotee who slipped into pure frenzy or any machine that faltered.
The temporary structure rose through several levels; shadows crossed the upper railings in constant traffic. Minel lowered his body and followed those shadows, never meeting anyone’s eyes, always looking as if he had somewhere urgent to be.
These were not mindless Worshippers. They still possessed reason—perhaps thanks to the medicine—and they performed complex work, operating generators and the like. A single misstep would expose him at once.
Can I even find the path to the fourth floor from here?
First I need a place with fewer people so I can think.
Minel flowed toward the emptiest stretches of corridor, his footsteps dissolving like smoke among the crowds and then melting into the shadows of the narrower passages. Human presence thinned. At last the hallway around him was empty and cool.
And then the path ended.
“This is… locked?”
A massive metal door blocked the way. Threads of blue lightning crawled along its edges, pulsing like a heartbeat. It did not look like any ordinary entrance.
Could this be the road to the fourth floor?
He searched every surface for a way to open it and found nothing. On a half-formed hope he took out the prayer beads and pressed them to the door.
Click.
Yellow lightning spilled from the beads. The door opened with slow, heavy grace.
Good.
He stepped through—and entered another world entirely.
It was a vast spherical chamber. The walls curved in seamless metal; up and down lost meaning inside that perfect globe. At the exact center floated a transparent sphere, webbed with countless electrodes and cables.
“That is…”
A man hung suspended inside the sphere. Residual lightning ran like silk across his skin; his hair drifted free of gravity. His eyes were closed, yet his presence alone formed the axis of the entire space.
Minel felt an immediate, suffocating pressure. Urare was said to be female, so this could not be her. He studied the figure more closely. Human in shape, yet not human. Born at the boundary of machine and flesh, grotesque in its perfection. Yet the head hung limp; the body remained motionless as a dead lamp. The reason was plain: the chest stood open, and the most vital organ—the heart—was missing.
Minel knew at once. If a heart that fitted that cavity were placed inside, the thing would live and move without delay.
In that same instant a tremendous roar shook the chamber.
Shhhhhhhhh—!
Dull metallic impacts sounded as white vapor erupted from every wall. At first it looked like ordinary steam. Then the truth became clear. Faint shapes wavered in the air; echoes like weeping mixed through it. Countless souls seemed to be gathering again, using the vapor as their medium.
Minel had seen this vapor before. In the old worship halls, when the faithful prayed, it had streamed from their bodies into the turbine. The difference now was scale: then it had been only a handful of breath; here a thick fog filled the entire space. Circumstance made it certain—the vapor extracted from the worship of a hundred and twenty thousand fanatics was being drawn to this single point.
“What in the world is that for…”
Then the vapor that had filled the room stopped drifting freely and began to form a great current.
Shhhhhhhhh—!
It swirled over the doll’s head, along its bound arms, and plunged deep into the open chest. The pale gas flowing across the metal skin thickened until it pulsed like a single heart.
Thump.
Thump.
A subtle vibration spread from the bound figure’s chest. Yet there was not enough electricity; it could not fully awaken. Still the soul-vapor poured in without end, as though determined to force the colossal being to rise.
Minel felt an involuntary awe. Water and lightning had fused into something unnervingly sacred. That man was no mere doll.
“Ghhk—”
His eyes burned. A splitting headache drove him back through the metal door. He gasped and braced a hand against the wall—just as a shadow approached from the far end of the corridor.
“Who’s there!”
A voice he recognized. Minel lifted his head. The one-eyed High Worshipper who had helped him earlier stood there. No smile. No pity.
“You. Did you just come out of that room?”
Minel narrowed his eyes. The sharpness in the man’s tone was pure suspicion, unhidden.
“I was… performing my duty of managing the Worshippers. I only wanted to check whether anything was amiss…”
“Don’t talk rubbish. You’re the one from earlier, aren’t you? I knew something felt wrong.”
The one-eyed High Worshipper’s steps quickened. The ring of his boots on the steel grew louder with every pace. Minel spoke quickly.
“I heard strange noises from inside. I thought I should at least look—”
The man cut him off without mercy.
“Even setting foot in there means immediate loss of rank. You lose your reason and go back to that hellish life. And you claim you went in to check? Are you even a real High Worshipper?”
“I only became one recently. There is much I still don’t know.”
As he spoke, Minel casually offered the prayer beads. The gesture only deepened the other’s suspicion. The metal passage froze under a suffocating tension. Far away the Worshippers’ chorus still echoed, yet in this narrow space only two breaths moved.
Minel’s mind turned cold again. Simple excuses would no longer free him. He tightened his grip on the beads while tensing the fingers of his free hand. Opening the inventory and drawing Noise would take a moment, but in this confined corridor he could finish it fast.
In that same breath—
Thud, thud, thud!
Footsteps hammered the corridor behind him. Several torch-like electric lamps danced across the narrow metal walls.
“Stop!”
A cold voice, and three more High Worshippers appeared. The one in the center wore a heavy cloak; in his hands he held an oversized set of prayer beads and an item shaped like a pair of manacles.
One opponent had been manageable. Four changed the calculation. Drawing a weapon from inventory would not be easy. Noise was far too loud; it would bring every nearby body running. Clearing them all with Silence would take too long.
The three newcomers and the one-eyed High Worshipper closed in, forming a circle around Minel.
“You entered a forbidden zone. Immediate detention.”
The cloaked High Worshipper flicked the item from his hand. Remarkably, it flew of its own accord, locked around Minel’s wrists, and forced both arms behind his back. A high-grade item, clearly. Minel had been restrained with almost absurd ease—yet it was not finished.
He kept his voice level.
“Something seemed wrong inside, so I entered. I had no other intention.”
The High Worshipper on the left answered low.
“Something wrong inside, you say?”
“I only just became a High Worshipper and made a mistake. Please show leniency.”
At that the one-eyed High Worshipper roared.
“Lies! This man is no High Worshipper! He stole those beads from somewhere!”
The cloaked one looked Minel up and down, then spoke quietly.
“If he became a High Worshipper recently, Lady Urare will remember him. We need only ask her directly.”
The one-eyed High Worshipper’s face filled with shock.
“Y-you mean to take him before Lady Urare herself?”
“We have gathered every soul the vessel requires. We would have had to present ourselves anyway. The noise this one claims to have heard was most likely the overflow of surplus souls.”
So they call that doll a vessel.
The moment Minel saw a possible exit he turned the thought into words.
“Yes. It sounded like someone whispering. I’m relieved if nothing has gone wrong.”
He tried to continue, but the High Worshipper on the right narrowed his eyes and cut him off.
“Stop calculating. Entering the forbidden zone is a clear crime. Only Lady Urare holds the right to judge a High Worshipper. She will decide.”
The cloaked High Worshipper turned. The others who had followed him seized Minel by both arms.
“Come quietly. If you are a true High Worshipper, nothing will happen.”
The two flanking him watched with cold eyes—the kind that would kill without warning at the first wrong move.
Watch for an opening on the way.
“Understood.”
For now he had no choice but to follow their lead. Minel walked after them with the calm bearing of a man who had nothing to hide.