Nowhere: the Flesh Maze Below Leng in Signalis

Nowhere is the maze of flesh at the bottom of the mines under S-23 Sierpinski on Leng. Elster reaches it near the end of chapter 2, after a dark shore, and has to work through its meat-lined rooms, cages and shrines to reach the red gate beyond. It is where she finds Isa again, the last diary of Alina Seo, and a note called The Dreamer. (Signalis)

Where is Nowhere?#

Below the mines. Elster rides down from Sierpinski with Adler's key, goes down a well and a huge hole, and comes out on a dark shore where The King in Yellow lies out of reach. Past that is Nowhere. There is no map of it in the game, and the chapter ends there. (Signalis)

Nothing in the game explains how a maze of flesh came to be under a mining camp. Adler's last note from the facility says the Replika staff were turning into "masses of flesh", The game never says whether the two are connected. (Signalis, "Adler's Note")

What happens in Nowhere#

• The creature and Isa: dropping through a hole of flesh, Elster finds Isa cornered by a many-armed creature in a cage. It turns on Elster, and Isa reloads Adler's rifle and kills it, then collapses. Elster can wake her with a small bottle; Isa says she feels sick and gives Elster the rifle. (Signalis)
• Alina's last diary: she doesn't know how long she's been "down here", her hair is turning white, and she remembers "a different name, and a different life". (Signalis)
• The Empress shrine: a haloed figure and a decayed body whose fingers take three rings. The riddle that solves it, "The Empress' Hand", ends "On the last day she took her life." The game doesn't confirm the shrine is to the Grand Empress of the Empire, though no other empress appears. (Signalis, "The Empress' Hand")
• Radio puzzles and plates: Elster tunes the radio to find tones that open doors, balances a scale with wooden dolls, crosses barbed-wire mazes in the dark and burns incense at an altar. Each puzzle gives up a stone plate. (Signalis)

The plates and the door#

The way out is a door that takes six plates. Five are found in Nowhere; the sixth, the Plate of Eternity, comes from much earlier at Sierpinski. The plates are the seals of The King in Yellow, and the copy of the book on the shore has fewer seals each time it appears. The game never says what the seals hold shut. (Signalis)

Through the door is the red gate, where Adler waits with Isa's knife still in his eye. He tells Elster that Falke went past the gate and came back changed. Elster goes on to the Penrose-512, and the false ending plays. See Signalis endings explained. (Signalis)

The Dreamer and the flesh below Leng#

The Dreamer is short, so here it is in full: "A prison from which the only escape is death. Deep below, the dreamer floats in a sea of flesh. The red eye birthing a new world from their dream for eternity. And each time the dreamer turns over in their sleep, the world turns over too, until only flesh remains." (Signalis, "The Dreamer")

The Dream Diary, found in Rotfront, has a matching entry: "I was a worker in the mines of Leng, when I was consumed by a shapeless mass of flesh, my flesh joining with the flesh of many others, until only my bones remained. My mind joined the collective of flesh, which persists beyond death." (Signalis, "Dream Diary")

What is Nowhere really?#

The game states only what the notes say. Players read it a few ways. The most common is that the dreamer is the dying Ariane, sealed in the Penrose's cryo pod and assumed to be bioresonant, and that Nowhere is the deepest layer of a world her dream is reshaping; Alina's diary, found right here, fits that. Others treat the flesh as a real outside power linked to The King in Yellow, since its seals come from this maze. Some argue Falke is the dreamer. See bioresonance for what the game says about the power behind these readings. None is confirmed. (Signalis)

Nowhere closes chapter 2, which the game titles Liminalität, German for liminality, the state of standing on a threshold. (Signalis)