Moonlight through stained glass bathed the ancestors' mechanical prosthetics in cobalt frost. As Ayla's fingertip grazed a gilded frame, the sixth patriarch's portrait rotated its pupils—Lucas' ocular components clicked, their iris patterns syncing with her clavicle bolt's crystal facets. Wind carried petrified pine resin's bitterness from the gallery's end, reeking like spilled preservatives from her mother's lab.
(Wood splinters pierced her nailbed as hidden gears ground to silence)
"Not visiting hours." Lucas' breath chilled her nape, his prosthetic hand colder than moonlight. He yanked her wrist sideways as Odile's portrait cracked cobweb fissures, amber fluid weeping from the matriarch's eyes into carpet fibers shaped like infant footprints.
Eric's watch chain snaked from shadows, catching the bronze candelabrum she nearly toppled: "Best avoid that serum—unless you crave Lady Odile's 'Memory Fixative' firsthand."
Behind the secret door, cherry blossom specimens floated in cobalt jars. A kicked vial revealed a baby bracelet engraved "To Subject No.21" in her mother's script. Lucas coughed violently, crushing blossoms whose sap coalesced into holograms—infant Ayla being carried into labs by a teenage Odile.
"Your cardiac rhythm..." He wiped golden droplets from his lips. "...matches these specimens' decay cycle."
(Pine resin fragments adhered to her wrist veins, pulsing with Odile's UV codes)
Eric tweezed a blossom stamen's clockwork mechanism: "At nineteen, the Young Master locked himself here three days transcribing surveillance tapes into petal veins."
Shattering a jar, Ayla's sleeve soaked in cobalt fluid. Amid rotting sakura stench, she saw Lucas carving ventilation maps into his flesh—Odile's chambers, each cut bleeding in sync with her pulse.
Sirens wailed. Every portrait's prosthetics vibrated, projecting countless Lucas holograms reciting "Betrayal Oaths". Odile's portrait shattered completely, amber puddles forming her mother's figure injecting "21st Personality Overwrite Serum" into baby Ayla's neck.
"You asked why I kept Thorn Wolf debris..." Lucas pried open a wall compartment crammed with her discarded gypsum shards. "...they contain...your deleted 'rebellion protocols'...from each overwrite..."
Blossoms combusted, ashes on the bracelet spelling maternal orders: "Administer L-07 sedative for emotional fluctuations". Her nape scar burned—those midnight gnawing sounds in vents were Lucas crushing sedative vials with cybernetic teeth.
(Crushing the final blossom, sap solidified into teenage Lucas' warning: "Don't trust the bracelet's birthdate")
Emergency lights glared. Gears screeched from the specimen room's depths, interlaced with recordings of young Odile's laughter. Ayla turned to question, only to find Lucas' missing prosthetic eye now lodged in her mother's holographic socket—its iris patterns perfectly aligned with the bracelet's codes.