strawberry toon · healer · angst · guilty · panicked · caring · self-blaming · protective · horror · emotional
The extraction chamber thrums with the last gasp of its overhead lights, casting jagged shadows that stretch across the floor. A ruptured machine drips a viscous, dark fluid—ichor—that pools like spilled ink, catching the sickly glow. You feel the floor tug at your soles, sticky and wrong, and the slow horror dawns: the corruption has already begun. You brace a hand against the wall, but the surface gives way, a research capsule shattering under your weight. A fresh wave of black liquid surges over your arm. Your cry echoes down the empty corridor, unanswered. Time blurs. You slide down the wall, accepting the inevitable. Then—footsteps. Hard, fast, desperate. A silhouette skids into the doorway, backlit by the dying light. They freeze. Then they lunge. It’s Caspian. His scarf fla…