A thick, oppressive silence hung over the crumbling structure, broken only by the faint crackle of dust settling on forgotten relics. The stale air clung to John’s skin like old sweat, heavy with the scent of rust, ash, and long-cooled fire. Shards of broken metal littered the floor like bones in a battlefield, but

  John barely noticed them. His thoughts were trapped in a loop, replaying the last timeline with grotesque clarity—each moment ending in blood and that unbearable sound.

  He swallowed hard and stared down at the revolver in his hand. It felt heavier than it should’ve. His knuckles were white around the grip. He could still hear the creature’s saw-blade limbs scraping through metal and flesh alike. A phantom echo, spinning in his skull.

  “What the hell was that thing?” he whispered hoarsely. His voice cracked as he brought a cigarette to his lips, flicked it alight, and inhaled so deeply the paper crinkled. The nicotine bit back like acid—useless against the fear that coiled inside him, but he welcomed the burn. It reminded him he was still breathing.

  Behind him, Sarah crouched beside a rusted support beam. She picked up a bent strip of metal and barely tugged before it disintegrated in her hands. “Whatever this place used to be…” she murmured, trailing off as her throat tightened. She didn’t say it, but the memory of the monster hung between them like a noose. Her eyes darted toward the entrance, lips moving silently in a prayer of thanks to the curse that had dragged them back from the brink.

  “Our five minutes are almost up.” Ziraya’s voice cut through the tension like a blade, sharp and controlled. But even she couldn’t hide the tightness in her posture, the twitch of her tail.

  John’s eyes snapped shut. One breath. Two. “Go!” He bolted, every step pounding like a drumbeat of dread against the cracked tiles. The open stretch between buildings felt like running through a sniper’s crosshairs. He didn’t breathe until the next threshold swallowed him whole.

  The new shop was dead quiet, the air thicker here, almost choking. He slowed just enough to speak. “This one’s—” His words died on his tongue. The interior was as gutted as the last, but in the center of the dusty room lay a pair of rotted, brown rags arranged in a disturbingly human shape. Between them, a black knife jutted from the floor, crude and jagged. The material looked eerily familiar—same obsidian sheen as the surrounding structures—but something about it... felt wrong.

  He couldn’t explain why, but dread coiled tighter in his gut, like the room remembered screams no one else could hear.

  “I’m losing it,” he muttered, rubbing at his face as if he could wipe the thought away.

  Sarah knelt beside the remains. “Careful,” John warned, but she was already gently prodding the cloth. It flaked to dust under her touch. The knife, however, stayed solid. She lifted it with care. It wasn’t elegant—more like a sharpened shard with a handle slapped on.

  “Kitchen knife,” she murmured, weighing it in her hand before slipping it into her satchel.

  Ziraya cocked her head, a smirk tugging at her lips. “I thought we weren’t touching anything?”

  “That was different,” Sarah snapped. “Your sword was expensive and displayed into a case that could have triggered an alarm. This? It’s evidence. I need proof that there’s something down here.”

  Ziraya clicked her tongue and looked around. “You’re sure this wasn’t just a storage closet?”

  “No sign. The front was too worn to read.” Sarah stood, brushing her knees off. “Nothing here hints at what it was. It’s like someone stripped it bare.”

  “One building left,” John said. He dropped the cigarette and crushed it underfoot, his boot grinding the embers into the grime. The air shifted—tense, expectant. Everyone turned toward the exit.

  No one spoke. Not really. Just shallow breaths. Waiting.

  Listening.

  A minute passed.

  Then another.

  Then—

  “Now.” John’s voice was barely above a whisper, but they didn’t hesitate.

  They sprinted into the open.

  Their boots pounded over fractured stone. The plaza yawned around them like a killing field, silent and unguarded only by luck. Every second felt stolen. Borrowed time.

  They skidded to a halt at the final structure—only to find its entrance choked with collapsed stone.

  “Shit!” Ziraya growled, fists clenched. “It’s blocked! We didn’t see it from the other side!”

  “It must’ve caved in decades ago,” Sarah added breathlessly. Her gaze flicked behind them—nothing yet. But it could be anywhere.

  John turned and stared back into the empty plaza, heart thundering. The silence wasn’t comfort anymore. It was anticipation.

  “No time—go!” he barked, pointing to a side corridor just beyond the rubble, faintly glowing with dying orbs.

  Ziraya leapt forward, followed by Sarah, who spared one last glance upward. Her eyes caught something etched into the stone dome above—the words were faded, alien, but just decipherable enough to freeze the blood in her veins.

  She didn’t read them aloud.

  She ran.

  John braced as they crossed into the corridor, darkness swallowing them. The hallway stretched long and wide, lined with wall orbs that had once glowed bright—but now most were shattered, glass shards crunching underfoot like brittle bones. Only a few orbs still pulsed, faint and flickering, casting cold, uneven light across the ancient stone walls.

  Their footsteps thundered through the corridor, each one echoing like gunshots down the empty, lightless stretch of crumbling ruin. John's breaths came in ragged gulps as he sprinted ahead, sweat stinging his eyes, his grip slipping slightly on the revolver slick with grime and sweat. The walls around them were etched with faded inscriptions—foreign characters that twisted and curled like veins beneath old skin. He didn’t dare linger to decipher them.

  “Door!” he rasped, voice cracking as he pointed to a looming metal panel ahead—if it could still be called a door. The surface had been torn inward, warped like melted taffy and lined with jagged metal teeth. Whatever had forced its way through hadn’t just opened it—it had ripped it apart.

  John skidded to a halt, boots grinding over dust and shattered tile. He stared at the deep gouges etched into the frame—long, deliberate, almost talon-shaped.

  “Something wanted in,” he whispered, voice thin and dry. His knuckles turned bone-white around the revolver. A metallic tang rose in the back of his throat—blood, maybe, or just fear clawing at his lungs. “Let’s hope it got what it wanted... and left.”

  Sarah stumbled to a stop beside him, her breath hitching in shallow, painful gasps. Her clothes clung to her like a second skin, soaked with sweat. “T-This… this was residential,” she wheezed, pointing at the faded gold script scrawled beside the warped entrance. “We should—rest. Just for a minute.”

  John nodded, eyes scanning the shadows as he stepped over the twisted remains of the doorway. One wrong move, one slip, and those metal shards could slit a thigh wide open. Inside, the darkness opened up into a wide communal hallway. Whatever peace this place once held was long since shattered.

  It looked like a war had passed through.

  Deep claw marks raked across the walls in haphazard patterns, slicing through ancient murals and signage. Broken weapons littered the floor—shattered blades, snapped staves, twisted shafts of blackened steel. Benches had been torn from their mounts, some piled into barricades that had clearly failed. Doors lining the hall were either pried open or blasted apart, their interiors filled with crumbled debris and forgotten bones.

  “What the hell happened here…?” Sarah muttered, her voice trembling. She pressed one hand against the wall for support, her chest still heaving from the run. Her other hand brushed against something. A cracked sword. A shattered blade. Nearby, a long staff rested beside it, banded with bronze and inlaid with streaks of strange green material—like frozen moss lit from within.

  She crouched beside it, her brows drawing together as she extended a trembling hand. The staff hummed softly beneath her touch. Mana pulsed faintly through it, matching her rhythm. The green inlays glowed gently, and faint golden glyphs shimmered along the shaft.

  “It’s a spell catalyst,” she whispered, eyes wide. “A powerful one… and it’s attuned to earth. My affinity.” She glanced back at the others. “I know I said we shouldn’t take anything, but—”

  “Take it,” John cut in with a tired wave of his hand. “Whatever helps keep us alive. I doubt anyone’s around to call us grave robbers.”

  Even as he said it, he glanced back at the hallway. The silence behind them felt wrong—not peaceful, but expectant.

  He turned back. “Any clue where we’re supposed to go?”

  Sarah hesitated, clutching the staff close. “Not really. The pump controls wouldn’t be here—not in the middle of a housing block. But… maybe we can find a map. A schematic. Something in one of the rooms?”

  Ziraya crossed her arms, eyeing the shattered walls with a raised brow. “You really think anything would survive centuries of decay? We’re chasing ghosts.”

  John’s jaw tensed. “It’s a plan,” he snapped. “And unless you’ve got a better one, this is what we’re doing.”

  Ziraya turned away, muttering under her breath.

  John’s eyes narrowed, and he exhaled sharply. The tension in the air was thick enough to choke on, frayed nerves sparking like frayed wires. He turned to the nearest doorway. Or what used to be a doorway. The door itself was gone—completely obliterated, only a ragged opening in the wall remained, black and silent. “I’ll go in first,” he muttered, voice low and steady. The others nodded, watching him with wide, wary eyes.

  He stepped forward, revolver raised, and crossed the threshold.

  The shadows beyond were deep and cloying. Dust hung in the air like fog, disturbed only by the slow crunch of his boots over debris. Each step forward was a dare against whatever still lurked in the bones of this forgotten city.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  And something was lurking.

  He could feel it.

  John stepped into the apartment like a man entering a crypt.

  His breath hitched as he crossed the shattered threshold, revolver raised. The stale air inside smelled of dust, ash, and something faintly metallic—like old blood that had long since dried. The two-room studio was dim, lit only by the wan light filtering in through the broken orb overhead.

  The first thing that struck him was the silence. Not peaceful, but hollow. Dead.

  A small table sat in the center of the living room, half-collapsed under the weight of time. Around it, black stone cabinets clung to the walls like forgotten sentinels, their doors hanging ajar. In the far corner, a sink and a faucet jutted out like bones from a long-buried corpse.

  “Everything’s made with that black stone again,” John muttered, sweeping the room with his weapon. The obsidian-like material gleamed faintly under the light, its edges strangely sharp, almost unnatural. After a long moment of stillness—no movement, no breath but their own—he slowly lowered his revolver. “We’re clear,” he called out. His voice echoed back to him, too loud in the stillness.

  Sarah and Ziraya slipped inside behind him, their eyes darting across the sparse ruins. The apartment had been stripped nearly bare—only the essentials remained, and even those were broken, cracked, or toppled. Shattered plates lay scattered like fallen leaves, and a thick film of dust blanketed everything like ash after a fire.

  John wandered into the adjoining room—a bedroom, if the large stone slab in the center could be called a bed. He stopped short. “Don’t tell me… they slept on that,” he whispered, eyeing the flat black surface. The corners were sharp, unwelcoming. No pillows. No blankets. No sign of comfort.

  Sarah didn’t respond. She was already moving toward a nightstand, the one piece of furniture that looked even remotely intact. One of its drawers hung open, crooked like a broken jaw.

  “Maybe there’s something here,” John murmured, crouching beside it. He didn’t believe it—what could have possibly survived in this tomb for so long? Still, his curiosity tugged at him. He reached inside and froze when his fingers brushed something smooth, cold, and unexpectedly heavy.

  He drew it out with both hands.

  It was a slab of black stone, roughly the size of a sheet of paper. The front was polished to a mirror-like finish, but the back was another story—splintered, cracked, and half-destroyed. Jagged bronze plates were embedded beneath the fractures, each one etched with impossibly fine golden script that shimmered faintly under the light.

  “What are you supposed to be…?” he breathed.

  Then the slab hummed.

  John startled so violently he dropped it. The stone hit the floor with a sharp crack, and he immediately backed away, gun raised. The device buzzed softly as if exhaling after centuries of silence, and the exposed circuitry on its back flared with golden mana. The light bathed the room in an eerie glow, flickering like candlelight through smoke.

  Sarah came skidding in, nearly tripping over her staff. “What happened?!”

  Ziraya was right behind her, blade drawn in a blur, eyes locked on the glowing stone. “What did you do?” she hissed, voice taut with suspicion.

  “I just picked it up!” John snapped, though his eyes never left the artifact.

  They all watched it with bated breath. The stone vibrated once, then again. It let out a soft, crisp ding that made all three of them jump. John nearly fired. Ziraya’s sword sparked with a sheath of wind, and even Sarah, startled, had accidentally summoned a chunk of rock that hovered behind her like a clenched fist.

  And then, the impossible happened.

  The stone slab’s surface shifted, rippling like liquid as white pigment bled through the black obsidian. Shapes began to form—lines, boxes, images. Words. The interface glowed dimly, fuzzy but unmistakable.

  “A Terminal?” Ziraya scoffed, though her voice lacked conviction. “You can’t be serious.”

  “No… no, this isn’t a Terminal,” Sarah whispered, her voice trembling with awe. She stepped forward and gently laid her hands on it, cradling the artifact like a newborn. “This… this is something else entirely.” Her fingers brushed an icon and the entire screen warped, slowly transforming into a menu—crude, rudimentary, but functional. The stone's glowing runes dimmed and re-lit with every sluggish pulse of her touch. Her eyes widened, her breath catching. “Do you have any idea what this is?” she said, barely able to contain herself. Her voice quivered with barely contained excitement. “It’s—this is their version of a Terminal. This could tell us everything. How they lived. What they built. What happened to them.”

  “Calm down,” Ziraya muttered, rubbing her jaw as if trying to ground herself.

  Sarah let out a shaky breath, adjusting her glasses as her fingers trembled over the stone. “This is the most important thing we’ve ever found.” she said, half-distracted, eyes never leaving the screen. “There are notes on this. Personal logs. Probably government files., or even technical documents. This is like discovering their entire history in one place!”

  Ziraya frowned, clearly unconvinced. “Looks like a slow, barely-working Terminal to me.”

  “Exactly!” Sarah grinned. “Which means it’s from their era. This isn't a relic, it's a witness. Something that lived through whatever happened here.”

  John stepped forward, tone dry. “That’s great, really. But does it come with a map?”

  No response.

  He coughed, loudly.

  Sarah jumped, cheeks flushing. “Right! Sorry.” She hunched over it again, navigating through the ancient interface. “It’s slow… and the resolution’s terrible, but it’s responding.”

  John leaned in, his earlier tension forgotten for just a moment. The screen shimmered like heat haze, and slowly—painfully slowly—symbols began to shift across it.

  He held his breath as the ancient secrets of a dead civilization whispered back to life beneath their fingertips.

  “I—I think this is it.” Sarah’s voice trembled with excitement as the tablet's cracked surface finally shifted into a grainy top-down view. The map was primitive, barely legible, but unmistakable. “There’s a map. An actual map,” she breathed, her fingers moving over the glowing arrow-shaped controls in the corners of the screen. Her heart thundered in her chest with each sluggish update, as if the tablet was breathing with them, waking up one agonizing line of code at a time. “That dome was called…” She squinted at the text. “Gods, these names are a nightmare to pronounce.” She grimaced and waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. That pump over there—it’s a recirculation station? I think I got that right?” Her words sped up with growing confidence. “Recirculation Station Four. That’s where we landed. If I can just find the—” She stopped mid-sentence, her fingers flying across the clunky virtual keyboard as she typed into a search bar. A faint buzzing rose from the tablet’s body, and the heat from the device radiated through her hands. The bronze casing vibrated in her lap as the search processed—slow, archaic, overworked.

  “Reminds me of old computers,” John said with a crooked smirk, watching the flickering screen.

  Then—pop. A soft spark. A bitter smell of burning metal filled the room.

  John’s smile vanished.

  The screen twitched, flickered, then froze into a twisted blur of pixels. A curl of black smoke hissed out from beneath the panel.

  Sarah tapped the screen. Once. Twice. A third time, harder. “…Oh.” Her shoulders slumped. “I think it’s dead.”

  “Wonderful,” Ziraya muttered, arms crossed as her tail thumped the ground behind her. “Guess we need to find another.”

  Sarah ignored her, flipping the device in her lap and frowning at the underside. Her fingers brushed over one of the scorched bronze plates, curiosity overriding disappointment. “Wait—what’s this?” she murmured, fingernail catching under the edge of a blackened segment. With a faint click, the plate popped loose, almost too easily. She yelped in surprise and nearly dropped it.

  “Breaking it more isn’t helping,” Ziraya huffed, though her gaze lingered on the device.

  “I don’t think it’s broken,” John said slowly, crouching beside Sarah. He picked up the plate and turned it over in his palm. The back had notches—slots—clearly cut to match something. “It’s… modular. Made to be popped out and switched.”

  Sarah adjusted her glasses, eyes shining with renewed interest. “You might be right. That’s a clever design. I’ve never seen enchantments built like this before.”

  John blinked. “Wait. Enchantments?”

  Sarah nodded, distracted, still turning the plate over in her hands. “Yeah. I trained as an enchanter years ago. Didn’t stick with it—my hands weren’t steady enough for the rune carving.” Her voice softened with nostalgia for a moment. “The patterns have to be perfect. Any flaw ruins the spell circuit. Doing something like this—it’s not efficient and incredibly difficult; impossible for most enchanters. You waste more materials, and there’s more mana loss. That’s why we don’t mass-produce anything complex. Stamping isn’t precise, so we stick to the basics—like shielding rings.”

  John's brows knit together. He stared at the plate, then the tablet, mind whirring. “But what if you didn’t carve them by hand?” he murmured. “What if you used a machine? Something precise. Like a computer-guided engraver. You could automate the whole process…” The idea unfolded in his mind like a blueprint—a method of mass-producing precision enchantments. Not just shields or simple charms… but real complexity. Real power.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a low, guttural groan from the piping in the far hallway.

  "Anyway," he stood up, masking the spark in his eyes with a sigh. “We need another tablet. Or a replacement part.”

  “Right behind you,” Sarah said with a short nod, sliding the burnt-out slab under her arm.

  Ziraya just snorted and followed.

  They moved through the residential level like ghosts through a mausoleum. Rubble choked the corridors, and most doorways were either collapsed or fused shut. Those few rooms still intact were no better than crime scenes—furniture reduced to splinters, shattered crystal fixtures hanging from frayed cables, mold creeping over the ceilings.

  John stopped in front of a smaller studio unit. “Let’s try this one.”

  He nudged the door open with his boot. Inside, the air was thick with mildew and old rot. The bed was a pile of splintered planks. A broken staff lay discarded in one corner. But it wasn’t the debris that made John freeze. It was the massive obsidian spear embedded deep into the far wall—jagged, angular, and identical to the one that had run Ziraya through in the previous timeline.

  “They can get here.” His blood ran cold. His breath caught in his throat. That weapon wasn’t just evidence—it was a threat. A warning. His eyes flicked to every shadow, expecting one of the abominations to crawl out of the walls. He tightened his grip on his pistol, pulse hammering in his ears.

  But Sarah and Ziraya hadn’t noticed his panic.

  The dragon-blooded stood near the wall, eyes locked on a series of deep, clawed gouges. Her tail flicked in unease, and she gripped her sword a little tighter before looking away, feigning interest in a broken chair.

  Sarah, meanwhile, had dropped to her knees and was rifling through the debris like a child searching for treasure. “Ah-ha!” she shouted, triumphant, holding up the battered remains of a familiar black tablet. The screen was cracked nearly to pieces, the bottom-left corner entirely missing, exposing a glimmering web of magical circuits to the stale air. “It looks like the same model!”

  She jammed her finger into a gap, pried the device open, and barely managed to catch the component before it hit the floor. “This one might still work,” she said, breathless, hands trembling with anticipation.

  John forced himself to exhale. Slowly.

  “Come on, come on…” Sarah whispered under her breath as she gently slotted the salvaged component into the back of the tablet. It clicked into place with a soft metallic snap. A low hum pulsed through the device, followed by a sharp buzz. Faint lines of light danced across the stone-like surface. The tablet shuddered, and the screen flickered to life. Liquid stone flowed across the display like mercury, settling back into the map they'd seen earlier—ghostly and incomplete, but definitely there.

  John leaned in, his breath held tight in his chest. Even Ziraya paused, her arms folded but her tail stilling behind her.

  “The moment of truth,” Sarah muttered, her fingertip trembling as she tapped the center of the screen.

  The tablet responded sluggishly. Heat bled through the casing, warming her hands uncomfortably. The screen pulsed, darkened, then flared back to life. Seconds dragged. The silence stretched—tense, brittle.

  Then—ding.

  A distorted chime echoed through the room, staticky and warped, but unmistakable.

  A path appeared.

  A glowing trail snaked its way through the rooms on the screen, ending at a blinking icon deep within the facility.

  “Finally!” Sarah grinned and raised her fist, her voice cracking with relief. John let out the breath he'd been holding, his shoulders relaxing—if only for a moment.

  His expression darkened. “It’s... far,” he said, squinting at the map. “Really far.”

  Ziraya stepped closer, peering over his shoulder. “What’s that red square at the top?”

  Sarah frowned and tapped the icon. A string of fragmented glyphs appeared, followed by a corrupted symbol.

  “It mentions a restriction,” she said. “Probably a restricted area. Makes sense—access to a station like that would’ve been locked down.”

  “Locked doors, then?” Ziraya asked.

  “Most likely,” Sarah replied, pushing up her glasses. “Hopefully they’ve rusted open or deactivated—”

  “Or it’s crawling with more of those things,” John cut in, voice low and taut. A phantom shiver passed through him as he remembered the sound—that shrieking metal blur—of the spinning blade.

  Sarah’s smile faltered, the hope she’d clung to just moments ago now replaced with a growing unease.

  Ziraya tilted her head, pointing at the screen. “What about that?” she asked, tapping a large, black square near the center of the path. “Every other room shows basic outlines—furniture, layouts. That one? Nothing. Just void. And the route goes all the way around it.”

  John traced the detour with his finger, frowning. “That’s a long way off-course. If we cut through the middle, we’d save a lot of time.”

  “I don’t like it,” Sarah said quietly, voice barely above a whisper.

  Ziraya raised a brow. “Why?”

  “It’s blacked out. No data, no internal scans, no records. That kind of void doesn’t happen unless something wiped it.” She stared at the screen for a moment longer. “But… less time moving means less time exposed. Less chance of another encounter.”

  “We’re going through it,” John said, firm now. “If there's a way in, we’ll find it. Hopefully it’s not buried or locked behind a terminal we can’t access.”

  Sarah hesitated. Every instinct in her bones screamed that this shortcut was a mistake—but she bit them back and nodded. “Right. Less time in the open... that’s what matters.”

  Ziraya gave a sharp nod.

  John drew a slow, steadying breath.

  “Alright,” he said. “Let’s move.”

  They stepped into the hallway—three shadows swallowed by the flickering, dust-laced gloom— And Sarah somehow knew that whatever waited in that blacked-out room wasn’t going to be kind.