Why Nicolas in Immortalis Designs Spaces That Demand Attention

In the perpetual dusk of Morrigan Deep, where shadows cling to every corner and the air hums with unspoken dread, Nicolas DeSilva reigns over Corax Asylum. This sprawling edifice, a labyrinth of stone and malice, stands as his masterpiece, a testament to a mind that crafts not mere buildings, but instruments of absolute dominion. Every corridor, every chamber, every glinting mirror and ticking clock serves a singular purpose: to seize and hold attention, to strip away privacy, to render the soul transparent and pliable. Nicolas designs spaces that demand attention because, for him, control is not imposed from without, but woven into the very fabric of existence.

Consider the ground floor, where the banqueting suite and library exist solely for Nicolas’s pleasure, their doors barred to all others. These are not rooms for communal respite, but private sanctuaries amid the asylum’s filth. The east wing cells, pristine in their austerity, house one or five inmates depending on his whim for discomfort. Gurneys and oversized wheelchairs litter the corridors, their occupants twisted in perpetual agony, a visual symphony of suffering. Mirrors line every passage, reflecting not just the body, but the fractured self, while clocks clang discordantly, their hands marking no true time, only the relentless pulse of Nicolas’s will. No inmate knows where the next horror will spring, for Nicolas has orchestrated an aggressive building programme, rotating groups of thesapiens to carve secret passages and hidden rooms, ensuring only he holds the full atlas of this monstrous domain.

This is no accident of architecture. Nicolas, with his mastery of horology and penchant for petty tortures, understands that attention is the currency of power. The damp crypt-level dungeons, equipped with beds far preferable to coffins for his nocturnal pursuits, come with straps and handcuffs as standard. Surgical racks gleam with rusty scalpels, bonesaws, and trephines, flanked by whips and birches. The narrow steps to his chambers twist halfway, offering internal access to his prisoners. Above, torture chambers boast bespoke horrors: the iron maiden, the brazen bull, the hall of mirrors where reality dissolves into nightmare. Even the washrooms spew sewage, inmates cut beforehand to ensure optimal treatment. Every element compels vigilance, every surface whispers threat. Privacy is a myth; the self is laid bare, observed, dissected.

Nicolas’s designs demand attention because they mirror his psyche: fractured, relentless, insatiable. He who traded tributes for a medical licence, declaring the sane insane to prove his diagnoses, builds not a hospital but a theatre of the mind. Cure is bad for business, he reasons, and so his spaces perpetuate affliction, turning inhabitants into actors in his eternal performance. The asylum is his canvas, inmates his pigments, smeared across walls of mirrors and clocks that tick without mercy. In Corax, to exist is to be seen, to be seen is to be owned, and ownership is Nicolas’s ultimate art.

Immortalis Book One August 2026