It's funny to me that I had a similar idea for a story just like this.
Art truly is timeless.
My online moniker sharing namesakes' with the character I intended to have behind it all, buying up orphanages, closing them down, and transferring the kids into an undermountain research facility and doing a similar though personally unique experiment with them.
When they would manifest my version of descent, they'd be given position in my Namesakes' society, until the one I planned to escape does so; and who then sought to free the rest.
While escaping she'd be found by a LARPing community that 'unknowingly' used the same mountain valley as a festival/roleplay venue (like a ren fare but large scale across the valley for a microcosm of knowledge and understanding).
Anyway, my point being is more along a line being, where an outside perspective would let me triangulate where "in our universe" we and they are; which in fiction would be me writing the story and in a [[Parallel Story]/[Fever Dream]] be the characters writing ours.
This all looping back into being funny as I just recently learned Homestuck did this, and despite me never reading Homestuck nor 'Break New World' until AFTER having these ideas (I have files dated back to 2015, some before Undertale even) which all in all have continued to give me Dejavu from the media I've consumed since then.
It's an enthralling experience to know myselve ultimately has been inspired and influenced by things that I've been experientially unawares of.
Kind of like...
A voice that shouldn't exist.
ARE WE CONNECTED?
((LOL; A song recommendation to close my comment with: Egg by Shoe))