kymia is the energy that fills the Vitromotus and the reason nobody imprisoned there stays dead. Store copy describes it as a mysterious power born from emotions that brings those trapped within the Vitromotus back to life, and the secrets behind it are what the player is pushed to uncover. The studio writes the word in lower case in its store text and in the in world archive, and that is the form used across this wiki.
What It Does
Effect | What the studio has said |
|---|---|
Revival | It returns the dead to life throughout the prison, which is why the inhabitants describe death as something they cannot escape into. |
Decay of the mind | The powers it brings compel its inhabitants to cheat death, but cannot prevent the inevitable decay of the mind. Memories and identity erode across repeated deaths. |
Reshaping the world | Over the years its influence reshaped the world inside the prison, bringing about strange biomes and bizarre monsters. |
Infusing everything | The in world account of its discovery describes a unique power that fills the place to the brim, preventing anyone from staying dead and infusing every creature with life. |
How It Was Discovered
The clearest first hand account is the journal of the figure known as The Master, written to compensate for his own failing memory. He records watching his fellow inmates wither in mind and body, and food running short enough that his group had to travel deeper into the tunnels to find any.
The discovery itself was an accident. A member of his group snapped, became a frenzied beast and swung steel at the others without sense or intent. As the man raved, his strong, untamable emotions gave off a form of magical energy that The Master could suddenly see, described as tempting and colourful, like a sweet perfume he could somehow see with his eyes. He focused, absorbed it, and felt a surge of vitality: hunger and thirst gone, some wounds closed, the pain faded. When the man they had put down rose again, The Master understood why nobody in the prison could die, and he came to believe that power could be the key to regaining their freedom.
The journal logs the year as 68 at the time of that entry, and the year as 72 by the end of the same text. More on that record and the figures around it is on Story and Setting.
What It Does to Bodies
kymia does not always put a body back correctly, and a saturated space can do worse. The in world story of the inmate Kaldhor turns on both: a landslide broke him past what kymia could heal, a wizard improvised by infusing his soul into a piece of armor, and the room where that happened held so much leftover kymia that his discarded body fused with everything around it into the creature the acolytes call the Heartwood Abomination. That account is covered on Bosses and Enemies.
kymia in Play
How kymia behaves as a mechanic is only partly public.
A 2025 devlog showing off staff combat says the staff lets the player condense kymia into attacks ranging from a poke to a devastation, which makes it the resource behind magic. Ranged and magic combat are both on the Early Access content list.
Design notes from October 2025 list the character's vitals as hp and kymia, placing it beside health as a core stat. Those notes are a designer's working recommendations rather than shipped behaviour, so treat the pairing as intent.
One hands on account of a pre release build described kymia as the game's mana resource, drawn from the suffering of the prison's denizens. That is a single preview of an unreleased build and is not a studio statement.
Nothing has been published about how kymia regenerates, whether it is spent by every class, or how it interacts with the class system beyond the skill trees themselves.
Spelling
The canonical form is lower case kymia in prose, capitalised only where a sentence or a title begins with it. A 2025 devlog contains the variant spelling Kimia once; it refers to the same energy.