The Mind That Ate Itself

The experiment wasn't meant to heal them. It was meant to reveal them. Six patients. Six diagnoses. One shared mind. At the edge of psychiatric science, a team of doctors launches an untested treatment — a radical therapy designed to externalize mental illness, to let each subject confront their disorder in a controlled, simulated environment. But the moment the link is established, something collapses. The boundaries between the six begin to blur. Thoughts leak. Memories overlap. And what remains inside the shared space is something neither human nor whole. Inside the Host's consciousness, time folds in on itself. Hallways repeat. Rooms breathe. Conversations echo long after the mouths that spoke them are gone. The patients — once individuals, now reflections of their diagnoses — awaken to find themselves trapped within the psyche they were meant to heal. Depression becomes a whisper in the walls, Paranoia a shadow that watches from behind the mirrors. Narcissism demands worship in an empty chapel. Anxiety counts every heartbeat until the silence breaks. Dissociation drifts through corridors that no longer exist. And Obsession keeps feeding, gnawing at the edges of thought until only hunger remains. As the Host's mind begins to devour itself, reality dissolves into a living autopsy of consciousness — where emotion has form, and every memory is a trap. The six must uncover what brought them together before the system erases them completely. But the deeper they search, the clearer it becomes: this was never a cure. It was a summoning. What began as treatment has become infection. And the cure is what's killing them.