Rein found himself in a place that should not exist.

  The world around him was wrong—not just broken, but unnatural, shifting, moving as if it was breathing. The air hung thick, damp, pressing against his skin like unseen hands dragging him downward. He tried to move, but the ground pulsed beneath his feet, slick and soft, like walking across something still alive.

  A distant noise rippled through the air.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Water? No. Not water.

  The sound echoed from above him. Rein tilted his head, his breath catching in his throat. Shapes hung from an endless void where a sky should have been. Bodies. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands.

  Some were human. Some were not. Some still twitched.

  Drip.

  Something warm splattered onto his cheek.

  Drip.

  More drops. Dark. Thick. The stench of iron and decay curled into his lungs.

  The bodies shifted. No—they twisted. Stretched into long, jagged smiles, their empty faces contorting in grotesque ecstasy.

  And then they all spoke. At once.

  “Do you see it?”

  The voice wasn’t a sound. It was a thought, invasive, shoving its way into his mind like writhing fingers burrowing into flesh.

  Rein staggered back. No. No, this wasn’t real. He turned, his instincts screaming at him to run—but there was nowhere to go.

  The world was shifting. The walls of reality peeling apart like wet paper.

  Something moved in the distance.

  A shape. A monstrous, impossible thing, too large to fully comprehend. Its form was shifting, bleeding into the dark, stretching into infinity.

  It had limbs but no body, eyes but no face, mouths that whispered but never moved.

  And then—it turned its attention to him.

  It noticed him.

  Rein’s breath hitched. A raw, primal terror rooted him to the spot. His legs wouldn’t move. His lungs wouldn’t work. He was a child again, trapped in some unspeakable nightmare, caught in the gaze of something that should not be.

  The voices in his head laughed.

  “You are not real.”

  The entity took a step—or something close to a step. Space itself twisted around it, bending, warping. The ground beneath Rein curdled, splitting apart like a rotting carcass.

  “You do not belong here.”

  And suddenly, Rein was elsewhere.

  The cold hit first.

  Rein exhaled, his breath curling in the air like mist. The world around him was silent—too silent. He stood in the ruins, the place where it all went wrong, but something was off. The torches were gone. No firelight flickered against the damp stone. The entire chamber sat in an oppressive, inky darkness, except for one thing—the rows of iron-barred cages.

  They were still here.

  The cells where the cult kept their test subjects. The failed Nephilim. The ones who died screaming.

  The only sound was metal groaning in the distance, the slow creak of rusted doors swaying open and shut. A metallic scent drifted through the air, thick and stagnant. It clung to his throat, making it hard to breathe.

  Rein turned, pulse hammering. The cages had been opened.

  Some were ajar, hanging loose on their hinges. Others were fully open, their doors shifting with the unseen draft. But most were still sealed shut, their interiors swallowed by absolute blackness.

  Something scraped against the floor.

  Rein’s fingers twitched toward his weapon, but his weapon wasn't there.

  A slow, creeping terror began to crawl up his spine. His pulse pounded in his ears, loud, frantic, like a drumbeat of rising dread. Sweat prickled at his skin, cold and clammy despite the suffocating air pressing in around him. His breath quickened, shallow and ragged, but it felt like he couldn’t pull in enough air—like the walls were closing in, like the very darkness was pressing against his lungs. His hands trembled at his sides, fingers twitching with the instinct to fight, to run—but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. Only the silence. Only the slow, deliberate scraping sound from the cage ahead.

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  A single, pale hand reached out from one of the cages, dragging itself forward, fingers curling against the stone like broken claws.

  A girl stepped into the dim, wavering light.

  He knew her.

  The girl from the first time he had set foot in the ruins. The one behind the bars, begging for help.

  But now, she was wrong.

  Her head was tilted too far to the side, her neck bent at an unnatural angle, as if it had been snapped but never quite broke the whole way through—a jagged line of torn flesh and exposed sinew stretched where her spine should have held her upright. Her arms hung limply before her, stiff but twitching, the joints bulging at unnatural angles as though her bones had been rearranged by something that had never seen a human body before. Her skin, once pale, had taken on a sickly translucence, dark veins writhing beneath the surface, pulsing with something that did not belong inside her. And her hands—her fingers—the nails had been peeled away, leaving raw, darkened flesh where they had once been, her fingertips worn down as if she had been clawing at something in the dark for far too long.

  Her eyes were gone.

  Not just empty sockets—something had taken them. Hollowed them out. Left something else inside. Something that watched him without looking.

  The moment stretched. Neither of them moved.

  Then she took a step forward.

  The sound was wet.

  She didn’t walk like a person. She dragged herself forward, her feet sliding unnaturally against the stone. A shuddering, fractured gasp left her throat, but her lips didn’t move.

  Her voice whispered directly into his head.

  "You left me."

  Rein backed up instinctively. His shoulder hit cold iron—a cage door.

  Trapped. He was inside one of them.

  She took another step. Then another. Closer.

  "You didn’t save me."

  A slick, wet tear slid down her cheek, but it wasn’t clear. Dark, thick. It smelled like rust.

  Her fingers twitched, then curled. A movement meant for grasping.

  "No," Rein whispered, his back pressing into the bars. "You’re not real."

  "Neither are you."

  She lunged.

  Darkness swallowed him whole.

  And then—

  Rein bolted upright, a sharp gasp tearing from his throat. His chest heaved, his skin clammy, his entire body rigid with the phantom pain of something unnatural gripping him.

  The room was dimly lit, silent except for his ragged breathing.

  Shilley stirred, groaning as she propped herself up on one elbow. "Damn, you okay? You sound like you were getting eaten alive over there."

  Rein wiped the cold sweat from his brow, his heart still hammering. "It was just a dream."

  "Yeah?" Shilley yawned, flopping back onto her makeshift bed. "Didn’t sound like it."

  Luxana was still awake, watching him from across the room. Her golden eyes studied him carefully, as if she sensed there was more he wasn’t saying. But she didn’t press.

  Rein swallowed hard, forcing his breath to steady. It was just a dream.

  But deep down, he knew.

  The thing in his nightmare had seen him.

  And somehow, it knew he was real.

  The morning light crept in through the cracks of Rein’s worn-down shelter, a pale imitation of warmth that did little to shake the lingering cold in his bones. He sat up slowly, his muscles tight, his breath still uneven. The dream had left a weight on him, something that hadn’t faded even as reality settled back around him.

  Shilley was still half-asleep, her cloak bundled around her like a cocoon, while Luxana stood near the entrance, arms crossed, her expression unreadable. She had been awake for some time.

  Rein rubbed his temples. "You didn’t sleep?"

  "I did. But something woke me up," Luxana murmured, glancing toward the window. "Something… off."

  Rein followed her gaze, a flicker of unease creeping back into him. The colony was always restless, but there was a stillness outside that didn’t feel natural. Not absence of sound—absence of presence.

  He moved to the window, pushing the cloth aside just enough to get a view of the alley outside.

  Nothing.

  And yet, something felt wrong.

  His eyes drifted toward the far corner of the alleyway, where the shadows stretched longer than they should have. He went to the door, opened it to look around. A faint imprint in the dirt—a boot mark, too fresh to belong to just any passerby.

  "Someone was here," he muttered. His pulse quickened slightly. "Watching."

  Luxana nodded. "I sensed it too. But whoever it was, they didn’t want to be seen."

  Shilley groaned, rolling onto her back. "Great. So we’ve got stalkers now? Fan-freakin’-tastic."

  Rein exhaled, stepping back from the window. "We need to move soon. If someone’s tracking us, staying in one place is a mistake."

  Luxana’s golden eyes lingered on the alley for another moment before she turned back to him. "It wasn’t just anyone. This was someone skilled. Someone who knows how to stay hidden."

  Rein didn’t say it out loud, but he had a feeling whoever it was had been close enough to hear them breathe.

  The group gathered their supplies—what little they had—and prepared to leave the colony behind. As they passed through the market one last time, they could feel the tension in the air, as if the colony itself was holding its breath.

  Senthos patrols were more active than before. People whispered behind hands. The oppression of the place had only worsened overnight.

  They stopped at a few vendors to secure water, dried rations, and other essentials for the journey. The process was uneventful, but Rein caught more than a few glances from wary traders. The colony had become a place where secrets festered, and fear ruled.

  At the edge of the market, they passed a wall that had been painted over hastily, but not well enough to completely hide what was underneath—a crude red symbol, one Rein didn’t recognize, but Luxana’s sharp gaze lingered on it a moment too long.

  "That’s new," she murmured.

  "Cult-related?" Rein asked.

  "Possibly. But if they’re becoming bold enough to leave marks in the open… this place is worse off than I thought."

  They kept walking.

  A sudden shout cut through the air. Rein turned in time to see a man struggling against two Senthos enforcers as they dragged him toward one of the administrative buildings. He thrashed, but their grip was ironclad.

  "I didn't say anything!" the man shouted, his voice raw with desperation. "I swear! Please!"

  No one intervened. No one spoke. The market carried on as if nothing was happening.

  Shilley exhaled. "Yeah. We’re definitely leaving."

  Rein clenched his jaw. He didn’t know the man, but he knew what this was. Someone had talked. Or worse, someone had just been accused of talking. And in this place, that was enough to disappear.

  Luxana’s posture stiffened, her voice quiet but firm. "We need to move. Now."

  No one argued.

  Without another word, they stepped beyond the colony’s borders, into the unknown.