T-02-21-07: The Lost Passenger

As Wei Zhenzu stepped into the [Abnormality Event Node] radiating an eerie red glow, he felt an intense sensation of weightlessness.

It was like being stuffed into a rapidly spinning washing machine. The image of the crystals of Stormterror's Lair lingered on his retinas for an instant before collapsing and stretching into countless bizarre, dazzling lines.

"Tap."

Wei Zhenzu landed steadily on a metal floor that was hard, yet strangely sticky.

"L-Liangzi..." Paimon clutched the fabric of the uniform on Wei Zhenzu's shoulder, her little face deathly pale and her voice trembling.

"Where... where exactly are we? Weren't we in Stormterror's Lair?"

Wei Zhenzu did not answer immediately.

He slowly raised his head and swept his cold gaze around, his brow furrowing almost imperceptibly.

This was no ruin, but a train carriage.

A dilapidated, eerie carriage from hell that should never have existed in Teyvat, as though it had traveled for tens of thousands of years through some alternate dimension forgotten by time.

"Clack... clack..."

There were clearly no tracks anywhere around them, yet the carriage rocked rhythmically, making a teeth-grating sound of metal scraping against metal.

The old incandescent lamps on the ceiling flickered, buzzing with electric current.

Under the pallid light, the carriage walls were covered in dark red rust, writhing lumps of dark red flesh, and enormous mechanical gears jutting incongruously from the flesh.

The air was thick with the overpowering stench of blood and the foul odor of some heavily oxidized metal.

"No... let me out... let me off..."

A shrill, hoarse scream, as though its owner's vocal cords had been completely torn apart, came from the very center of the carriage.

Biting down on the calla lily-flavored lollipop in his mouth, Wei Zhenzu turned his indifferent gaze toward the source of the sound.

An Abyss Mage knelt amid a mountain of broken seats and unidentified lumps of flesh.

In Teyvat, the Abyss Order was synonymous with spreading fear.

But now, this Abyss Mage had become the most pitiful prey.

The remains of several Abyss Mages lay scattered around it, completely torn apart. Some had been twisted into knots, some sliced neatly into countless thin pieces, and others forcibly folded into triangles.

Under the Mirror Dungeon's oppressive laws, which cut it off from everything, aboard this hellish train full of spatial distortions and endless loneliness, the Abyss Mage's mental defenses had utterly collapsed.

"I can't go back... I can't get back to the Abyss... there are rifts everywhere... space is eating people..."

It stared blankly at its companions' corpses, clutching the mask on its face with both hands and pulling so hard that it tore away its own flesh.

Dark red blood dripped through its fingers, but it seemed unable to feel the pain. All that remained in its heart was an utterly deranged obsession.

"I have to escape this train! Go back where I belong!"

That extreme terror and obsession, born from being lost in space, were like a spark falling into a barrel of gasoline inside the sealed carriage.

Hum.

The air before Wei Zhenzu suddenly warped, and the system's alarms blared wildly in his mind.

As Wei Zhenzu and Paimon watched in shock, the Abyss Mage underwent a Distortion on the spot.

"No matter which door I open... I can't find... the way... my way...!"

Its screams cut off abruptly, replaced by the chilling sounds of bones breaking and flesh tearing.

"The Abyss... no, there's no Abyss here... only countless pieces of me..."

"Twenty-one point nine million hours... my skin melted, my bones grew together... but why hasn't the train stopped?"

"Where are my hands?... No, why are your eyes growing in my throat?!"

"So crowded... so dark... someone's watching me from the gaps... they're tearing me open, then sewing me up... tearing me open... sewing me up again..."

"Are you getting on too?... Come on... come on... the seats here... will never all be filled..."

"There's no terminal... then you can all... become this train's... fuel..."

The Abyss Mage's body was cruelly kneaded and pulled as though by a pair of enormous, invisible hands from the void.

Its fur tore apart, but its dark red flesh did not fall to the floor.

Instead, as if it had come alive, it fused eerily with the shattered spatial rifts and writhing lumps of flesh in the surrounding carriage.

With a piercing blast of a train whistle that seemed capable of piercing the soul itself, a monstrous creature appeared in the center of the carriage.

It no longer looked anything like an Abyss Mage.

Though its main body still barely retained a trace of a human outline, the flesh of its upper body had become utterly deformed.

Two bloodshot eyeballs, filled with terror and madness, hung incongruously from its skinless, scarlet face, which looked as though it were melting.

Most chilling of all, its entire torso had been split vertically down the middle with extreme violence, from its face all the way to its abdomen, like a gaping maw of the Abyss.

Countless scarlet, fleshy tendrils extended from its torn chest and abdomen, thrashing wildly in the air.

Both its arms were raised high, its hands long gone and replaced by two enormous, serrated blades made entirely of purple "spatial rifts," radiating a dangerous light.

T-02-21-07 (pseudo)-[The Lost Passenger]