Year 217 After the Era of Ruin

  18th Day of the Month of Ashes,

  The air was heavy. Laden with an oppressive silence.

  Kael took a step forward, scanning the dust-covered, rusted metal walls. The symbols engraved upon them, half-erased by time, seemed to tell a forgotten story. Warnings? Remnants of a vanished civilization?

  But what unsettled him the most wasn’t the inscriptions…

  It was that sound.

  A slow, deep thumping.

  Almost human… but not quite.

  Lysara, fingers clenched around her dagger, moved cautiously. She was used to ruins, to forbidden zones, but here… here, it was different.

  — “Do you hear that?” she whispered.

  Darius nodded. His gaze swept through the darkness with rare intensity.

  — “It’s not just a sound,” he said in a low voice. “It’s a heartbeat. Like a heart.”

  A chill ran down Kael’s spine.

  This complex wasn’t dead.

  Something, beneath these tons of metal, was still alive.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  The group advanced slowly. Each step stirred more dust, further disturbing the suffocating air. The remnants of technology around them were strange, incomprehensible. Torn cables dangled from the ceiling, and broken monitors still flickered faintly with a greenish glow.

  Then… a shiver ran down Kael’s back.

  Something was watching them.

  Without thinking, he raised his hand, signaling an immediate stop.

  Lysara and Darius froze at once.

  The thumping had stopped.

  A perfect silence settled in.

  Then, a vibration.

  A shrill sound tore through the air.

  Darius jerked backward. Lysara stifled a gasp.

  The lights cut out all at once.

  Total darkness.

  Kael didn’t even have time to shout a warning before the temperature plummeted. The air turned icy. As if something had just awakened.

  A metallic sound rang out.

  Scraping.

  Distant, at first.

  Then closer.

  Something was dragging itself across the floor.

  Kael’s heart pounded in his chest. His gaze swept through the darkness, but there was nothing. Only an abyssal blackness.

  Then, breathing.

  Close. Far too close.

  — “Torch. Now,” he murmured.

  Darius obeyed, and the beam of light slashed through the shadows…

  … but it illuminated nothing.

  Only an empty corridor.

  — “That’s impossible…” Lysara muttered.

  Then, the sound returned.

  Behind them.

  Kael slowly turned his head… and finally saw what had been stalking them.

  A silhouette.

  Tall. Slender. Inhuman.

  Its form seemed to flicker, as if it wasn’t entirely material. Wisps of shadow clung to its body, swirling in an impossible motion.

  But what froze Kael’s blood…

  Were its eyes.

  Two pale, empty orbs.

  Fixed on him.

  The silence shattered all at once.

  The creature moved.