Immortalis and the Asylum Interiors That Amplify Every Interaction
Corax Asylum squats in Togaduine like a deliberate affront to order, its every stone and shadow engineered to turn the simplest exchange into a performance of dread. Nicolas DeSilva, its master, has shaped the place not as mere confinement but as an extension of his will, where walls whisper, floors betray, and corridors fold upon themselves. The interiors do not merely house suffering; they amplify it, twisting every glance, every footfall, every breath into a reminder of vulnerability. One steps inside and feels the structure close ranks, mirrors multiplying the gaze, clocks hammering disorientation, hidden passages ensuring no path leads to freedom.
The crypt-level dungeon sets the tone with its damp cells, each fitted with a bed far preferable to a coffin for Nicolas’s nocturnal pursuits. Straps and handcuffs gleam alongside racks of rusty scalpels, scissors, bonesaws, and trephines, the air thick with the promise of petty surgery. Whips and birches line the shelves, tools for the lighter moods. Narrow stone steps ascend to the ground floor, twisting midway to a door that grants Nicolas swift access to his private chambers, hygienically detached from the asylum’s mire. Hygiene matters to him, but only for himself; the inmates wade through the filth he preserves.
Upstairs, the ground floor sprawls in calculated asymmetry. The west wing hoards the banqueting suite and library, both Nicolas exclusives, positioned for convenience near his quarters. The east wing counters with cells holding one or five inmates, calibrated for maximum discomfort, strewn with soiled gurneys and oversized wheelchairs binding tortured forms. A meeting hall and chapel complete the facade of civility, the former for Nicolas’s random assemblies of drivel, the latter awaiting conversion to theatre. Corridors bristle with mirrors and clanging clocks, reflecting infinite watchers, ticking out discordant time. At the great front entrance sits Nicolas’s modest office, the nerve centre of his empire.
The first floor escalates to bespoke horrors: an iron maiden, brazen bull, and hall of mirrors where reality fractures under angled glass and Webster’s lighting arcs. A second floor lies cut off, and above sprawl the washrooms, open-plan chambers spewing sewage for inmate ablutions, their flesh pre-sliced to ensure optimal treatment. Nicolas’s aggressive building programme ensures no privacy; secret passages and rooms shift with each builder rotation, known only to him.
These interiors amplify every interaction through relentless surveillance and spatial deceit. Mirrors turn solitude into exposure, clocks erode temporal bearings, and the labyrinthine layout funnels all paths to Nicolas’s design. A glance in a mirror might summon his reflection; a footfall echoes through hidden vents. Cells cluster for discomfort, corridors converge on his office. Even the grander spaces, banqueting hall and chapel, serve his caprice. The asylum breathes his intent, turning breath into tension, movement into trap. Inmates exist within his gaze, their every twitch a cue for response, their whispers drowned by relentless ticking. Nicolas has not built a prison; he has sculpted a stage where he alone directs, and every soul performs under amplified scrutiny.
Immortalis Book One August 2026