The note trembled in Elizabeth’s grip, its edges frayed from countless rereadings:

  “Midnight. Serpent d’Océan Hotel, Room 404. Come alone.

  —E.G.”

  Beneath the glow of a street lamp, she paused, her breath visible in the autumn chill.

  The Serpent d’Océan loomed ahead—an establishment of art nouveau inspiration, its crimson archway crowned by the skeletal remains of a sea serpent, its ribs curving like scimitars over the entrance.

  The creature’s hollow gaze seemed to follow her as she climbed the moss-slicked stairs.

  “Halt.” A guard materialized from the shadows, his voice a graveled command. “Identification.”

  Elizabeth fumbled through her satchel, scattering relics from her last dig: a taxidermied scorpion which almost ended her life in Marrakech, a leather journal bristling with coded maps of Morocco. Her fingers closed on the Guild ID, its edges worn soft.

  The photo glared back—a woman with a defiant pixie cut, feline eyes the color of jade and a nose dusted with freckles from months under desert suns. “That would be me,” she said with a wry smile, handing over her card while crinkling her nose in self-amusement.

  The guard’s flashlight raked over the card, lingering on the birthdate before sweeping upward to Elizabeth. She resisted the urge to clutch her coat tighter.

  The crimson dress beneath—a gamble for confidence, its V-neckline daring, its belt cinching the waist she’d grown accustomed to revealing for two years of sunny fieldwork—suddenly felt flimsy from his leer.

  “Not dressed for this weather, eh?” The guard smirked, his voice dripping with condescension as his eyes flicked to her collarbone, exposed by the V-neck. “Sure you’re not one of those...… night workers?”

  Memories surged—dig sites where foremen and workers alike harassed her with "jokes" to dissolve her authority.

  But Edward Greaves’ voice unspooled in her mind now, crisp as his documentary voiceovers: “This field isn't for the feint of heart. These men respond to nothing but temptations and threats.”

  “Excuse you?” She stepped forward, invading the security guard's flashlight’s halo. The movement made her coat gape, revealing the dress’s crimson silk—deliberate, like challenging his rude gaze.

  A confident smirk tugged at her lips as he averted his eyes to the side. “Shall I tell Mr. Greaves his head of security confuses apprentices with escorts? Or would you prefer to apologize before I escort you to his chambers?”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. His Guild Security badge glittered menacingly as he considered her words.

  “I am just doing my job,” he finally muttered, retreating to the side. "Move along."

  As she swept past him, his gaze slithered down her spine like a centipede. She straightened her shoulders, her red heels striking the elegant marble with poise, each step defiantly resonant.

  She didn’t look back, though she felt the weight of his lingering stare following her behind.

  The Serpent d’Océan Hotel seemed to swallow Elizabeth whole the moment she crossed its shark jaw threshold.

  Its foyer loomed as a cathedral of hedonism: walls dripped with gilt-framed Salvador Dalí paintings, their surreal forms hanging above the entrance’s immense aquarium.

  Elizabeth noticed melting clocks lodged behind the saffron-hued fish and nautilus shells shaped as the golden ratio—But as she leaned closer, the illusion fractured: revealing the clocks to be mechanical, octagonal timepieces.

  The glass’s engineered angles and the water’s prismatic refraction conspired to warp the clocks' shapes to an elongated, languid distortion. Hallucination lapped at Elizabeth's mind as she noticed herself holding her breath.

  Dominating the room coiled the hotel’s namesake—a colossal serpent sculpture, its scales burnished to a feverish resin red. Frozen mid-undulation, its lower curves had been forged into seating areas, cold and smooth, slabs where guests lounged, oblivious.

  Above them, the serpent’s arched spines jutted skyward in undulating waves, symmetrical to the downward design. Leather suitcases nestled in the hollows beneath, as if the guests found a use for the wastes spaces.

  Elizabeth avoided the elevator, crammed with a murmuring flock of bald men in identical pinstriped suits, their collars studded with pearl pins.

  Instead, she chose the spiral staircase, its wooden sticks served as steps, unfurling like a zheshan—a Chinese fan—and etched with motifs from the zodiac.

  Each floor bloomed with astrological significance: from the auspicious goat to the empery tiger, all rendered in lacquer and gold leaf.

  Mister Greaves’ chamber lay on the dragon’s stage. Here, the balustrades were sconces shaped like seahorses and reared upward, their jaws clutching glowing orbs that cast a warm, comforting glow.

  Beneath each of these creatures' shimmering heads, the railing spiraled into crimson-lacquered wood, sinuously coiled. As Elizabeth approached, her gaze snagged on a glint of the tiny silvery bells hidden between square parchment panels with chinese calligraphy which dangled from the serpentine forms.

  Out of curiosity, she trailed her fingers along the grooves, releasing a cascade of hollow, crystalline chimes. A laugh escaped her—sharp and sudden, the kind sparked by childhood mischief—before she stifled it.

  For as the last note faded, her eyes had snapped to the door at the start of the hall. Etched into the rusty brass plaque, stark against the red door, were three digits: 404.

  Knock knock.

  “Officer, how may I help you?” A honeyed voice seeped through the wood.

  “It’s Elizabeth. Your new apprentice… if you’ll have me.”

  “Door’s open. Come in.”

  Pushing the door slowly, as cautiously as a cat surveying its territory, she stepped inside, her heels sinking into the red carpet.

  Edward Greaves slouched in a wingback chair, his boots—thick-soled mountaineering brand, caked with dried mud—propped on a desk cluttered with maps of some underground secret city structure and a rusted sextant.

  His face hid beneath a hat wide enough to make her remember Indiana Jones movies, but she felt the weight of his stare under its shade.

  “Smart choice, light and unobtrusive.” he drawled, nodding at her peep-toe stilettos as he studied her with an appraising gaze. Heat rose to her cheeks.

  “I assume you have a change of clothes in your satchel purse?” he inquired, stroking his gruff beard.

  She tightened her grip on her satchel, its light weight suddenly absurd. “I—I didn’t realize what sort of invitation that was... assumed my current outfit would fit the occasion.”

  He raised an eyebrow, caught off guard by her answer before saying. “I must confess, I share some responsibility for not fully disclosing the nature of our meeting. Wait here for a moment”

  He rushed to his bedroom, leaving Elizabeth perplexed.

  Relief tangled with curiosity clutched at her heart as he reappeared hauling a long-sleeved shirt, black tactical trousers bristling with pockets, and scuffed, earth-toned boots. Depositing the gear onto a side table, he launched into his lesson.

  “Lesson one—” He flourished the shirt, its fabric whistling as it flew. “Gear isn’t just tools. It’s an extension of the adventurer. Lightweight. Breathable.” He mimed a sprint, elbows pumping. “And it allows freedom of movement—just in case we need to outrun a rabid animal or some deranged graveyard dweller.”

  He twisted the garment to expose its inner seams. “Moisture-wicking fabric, reinforced elbows and shoulders—go on, test the flexibility.” Elizabeth pinched the elbow patch, surprised by its cool, almost slippery texture.

  “The trousers—” He flicked a finger against one of the many pockets. “—have cinch straps at the waist. They’re my spares, but you won’t have to worry about your pants falling down mid-mission.” He plucked at the loose, wearied fabric around his own thighs with a rueful grin.

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  “That's a relief,” she said, then paused at the sight of fingerless gloves tucked beneath the boots. “And these?”

  He snapped a glove’s wrist strap taut on his hand, wriggling his fingers. “Primary function? To make you look badass.”

  Her snort of laughter dissolved the last of her nerves.

  With a gentle smirk, Graves retreated to the balcony to offer her some privacy. She started undressing, black shirt clutched between her hurried fingers, pausing only when the cold metal of a zipper startled her—and before she could second-guess the intimacy of wearing a stranger’s clothes.

  Edward braced against the balcony’s salt-pitted rail as he waited, drinking in the city’s contradictions. Sinclair’s district erupted around him—glass high-rises stacked like Jenga towers, their rotated blocks and cantilevered gaps defying gravity, making them seem floating.

  Dawn clawed at their edges, the structures swallowing the dying light until their panes glowed bruise-purple within orange tinted frames, giving the skylines an ethereal quality.

  And there, anchored in the metropolis’s heart like a ziggurat in babylon: the temple. Shaped like a clay urn and pockmarked by centuries, sagged under veils of strangler figs.

  Defiant thickets of gorse and bioluminescent sprouts gnawed at the foundation, nature’s slow siege against steel and concrete, encroaching parasitically upon the roads surrounding it as if reclaiming territory from the urban sprawl.

  This was why he’d come. Why he’d tracked every whispered account of lawyers sleepwalking toward the edge of their balconies, bankers muttering chants in a dead dialect instead of stock market shares.

  Esteemed locals—from exhausted doctors to tireless landowners—had reported eerie visions during the witching hour and whispered of unsettling words emanating from beneath their houses, as if there was some secret group meeting under their basements.

  The city blamed underground fumes. Hallucinogenic pollen from exotic flora. Edward harbored a different conviction. Glancing over his shoulder at Elizabeth, who was busy tying her boots, he chose not to divulge his full theory—at least, not yet.

  “All set then? Let's move.” Edward snapped, already tugging Elizabeth toward the door. His grip was calloused, urgent.

  “Where are we going?” Elizabeth questioned, voice fraying at the edges.

  “I’ll explain once we get there. It’s not far,” he replied evasively, confident that once they were deep beneath the surface, she would have no desire to stray away from him.

  They wound through hushed streets, dawn’s light staining the pavement rust-orange. Elizabeth fidgeted with her cargo pants’ stiff straps as Edward led the way in thoughtful silence.

  Soon they arrived at the temple grounds, greeted by an awe-inspiring sight: an immense, curved wall rising from the earth.

  They circumnavigated the structure until Greaves pressed his palm on the weathered stone. His breath hitched in reverence; the surface hummed faintly, as if charged with millennia of trapped heat—a mass of stones seemingly melted and fused together by time and nature.

  “It’s magnificent…” Elizabeth murmured. “The walls swell like a clay urn, as if the potter’s wheel was left spinning for centuries, layers rippling under the scorching sun.

  “Perhaps even longer than centuries,” Greaves observed, his finger tracing the concave joints. “notice how they've melted and fused, much like metal heated and then cooled into a permanent form.”

  “Like quenching steel.” She leaned closer. “Expanding in the fire, then hardening…”

  “Perhaps.” He tapped a porous patch, grit crumbling beneath his nail. “Or baked under a fiercer sun. With tools we’ve forgotten. Perhaps modified minerals with greater porosity. The unnatural sun of their days begat discoveries forgotten to time."

  Her eyes narrowed. “Unnatural sun? And who are "they"? To which civilisation does this structure...”

  With a hushing smile hinting at secrets yet to be revealed, Edward turned to the temple’s entrance. Instead of a door or gate, a massive boulder blocked the way. Crouching, he freed a sturdy branch from its tangled roots.

  “The answers we seek lie within these decrepit ruins. The sooner we descend in the dark, the sooner we’ll be back in time for supper.”

  Understanding his plan, Elizabeth helped maneuver the branch to wedge the boulder.

  Together, they levered the stone aside. Rot billowed out—A thick, putrid stench reminiscent of a long-sealed grave. Elizabeth reeled, shirt collar clamped over her mouth. Edward seemed unfazed; decay was a smell he’d learned to tolerate.

  Peering into the dark interior, Elizabeth saw nothing but a steep slope plunging into complete darkness.

  Determined, Edward Greaves retrieved a sturdy pike and coiled rope from Elizabeth’s pack. Driving the iron spike into a crevice with a decisive strike, he anchored it with a practiced twist before hurling the rope into the yawning darkness below.

  “Stay close,” he ordered, his voice clipped, and began his descent without waiting for a reply.

  The rope groaned against jagged stone, its frayed fibers whispering in the cold winds. After minutes of cautious maneuvering, Edward’s boots scraped against a narrow ledge.

  He struck a match, the sulfurous flare revealing a rusted sconce embedded in the wall.

  As torchlight bloomed, he squinted upward. Elizabeth dangled like a spider mid-descent, her arms shaking, her knuckles blanched white around the rope.

  “Jump!” he barked.

  Her breath hitched—a half-second of hesitation—before she let go. Air roared in her ears as she plummeted, the torch’s glow shrinking to a pinprick above. Her scream died unvoiced, swallowed by the void.

  Impact.

  Edward staggered under her weight, boots skidding perilously close to the ledge’s edge. For a heartbeat, they teetered—then he hauled her back, his grip iron. Elizabeth clung to him, her pulse a frantic drumbeat against his chest.

  “What’s down there? Spikes waiting to impale curious adventurers?” she rasped, a note of relief in her voice.

  “Because of me, you’ll never have to find out. No need to thank me,” he replied, helping her to her feet.

  “No need indeed—after all, cats always land on their feet, don’t they?” she quipped.

  “I’ll keep that in mind next time. Kitten, be a dear and bring the torch,” he said, scanning their route.

  She obeyed, thrusting the flame toward the wall. Its amber light licked over carvings that twisted like living shadows: scorpion-bodied warriors shrouded in sandstorms, their stings piercing writhing victims; winged horrors coalescing from smoke; a ziggurat drowning in floodwaters, fish-skinned figures fleeing its base.

  Between them, cuneiform clawed into the stone: Sesgallu—defilers, deceivers, dwellers in dark.

  As they pressed deeper, the air thickened. The reliefs seemed to stir—slavering jaws frozen mid-snarl in rictal grins, barely perceptible eyes glinting with malice...

  Edward navigated the labyrinthine passages with a thief’s precision, fingertips brushing moss-slick walls. Elizabeth followed, her breath shallow.

  Eager to escape the oppressive confines, she quickened her pace, though the walls seemed to lean in, pressing them ever closer to the abyss.The ceiling drooped lower, the curve walls narrowing until stone grazed their shoulders backward. Somewhere below, the void murmured.

  They pressed onward until they reached the temple’s heart—a cavernous chamber bathed in sickly amber light from bioluminescent fungi clinging to the walls.

  Elizabeth relished the momentary respite, though suspicion gnawed at her. Edward had divulged too little. What primordial force had they roused? Why did he truly need her here?

  As Elizabeth ruminated over their dire situation, her foot struck something solid half-buried in the dust—a brittle skull. Revulsion coiled in her stomach as she surveyed the malformed bones littering the passageway.

  The skulls were grotesquely elongated, their sockets perfectly circular and set too low on the cranium. Thin, needle-like fangs protruded beneath two slit-like nostrils.

  "Greaves!" Elizabeth finally found her voice. "What are these things?"

  "Bones," Edward replied dismissively, crouched in the corner like a mad dog, clawing at the earth with bare hands. She opened her mouth to retort, but he cut her off. "Best not to dwell on it."

  But how could she not? No human remains bore such queer proportions—nor any beast she knew.

  The acrid stench of old ash, the bones’ charred edges, the gray dust clinging to her boots—this was a cremation site. And the engravings on the walls… they had to be connected.

  Greaves remained engrossed in his task, oblivious to her unease. She watched in silence, struggling to reconcile the esoteric horror around her.

  "The secret to transmutation," Greaves murmured, pulling her attention from the bones to the relic in his hands.

  A jade-and-glass phial, its contents bubbling with spectral iridescence. The liquid refracted the fungi’s pallid glow, casting prismatic shards across the stone. An alchemical experiment—preserved for millenias in the dark.

  Whatever its purpose, Greaves treated it like a sacrament, securing it inside his battered satchel with reverent care.

  Then—footsteps. Faint, but unmistakable.

  Elizabeth stiffened. Greaves stayed low, unheeding.

  Down the corridor, a monstrous shadow stretched across the wall, warping as it advanced. Something stirred in the darkness—roused by their intrusion.

  "We must run!" Greaves barked suddenly as he caught sight of it, launching into a sprint along the ledge. His footfalls thundered against the stone—and in answer, the thing behind them gave chase, its steps erupting into a cacophony of scraping, pounding weight.

  Elizabeth flung herself after him, her body crushed against the convex wall as she navigated the perilous path. Her chest scraped over protruding rocks; her fingertips tore against the distended wall, raw and bent.

  Every step was a risk—her boots strained at the toes, the fabric taut as if her terror alone might tip her into the abyss. Yet that same fear anchored her, a desperate counterweight to the void growing beside her.

  The sounds of pursuit swelled—closer, hungrier. She didn’t dare look back. Her cheek stayed pressed to the cold stone, her eyes locked on Greaves as he surged ahead, nearly at the ropes. Safety was just beyond him.

  And she was the only thing left between him and the beast.

  The relentless sound of their pursuer crescendoed behind them. An instinctive cry tore from Elizabeth’s throat—only to be muffled as a clawed hand, its fingers grotesquely elongated, clamped over her face with a wet, smacking grip.

  She lunged forward, seizing Greaves’ arm in a desperate bid for salvation. The force of her pull wrenched his shoulder from its socket with a sickening pop.

  The creature’s grip faltered—just enough—and it plummeted into the abyss below with a shriek that echoed off the stone.

  Dangling over the void, Elizabeth locked pleading eyes with Greaves. His face contorted with pain, but she tightened her grip, muscles straining, hoping he'd haul her up.

  Then she saw it.

  Reflected in his dilated pupils—a spiraling figure emerging from the darkness behind her. A vortex of malice, its form twisting like smoke, reaching for her with smoldering limbs as it yearned ravenous for her vulnerable form.

  Acting swiftly, Greaves drew his machete, severing the arm that threatened to impede his escape.

  He then climbed the rope, With leaps and using only one functional arm, not exerting pressure on the arm with the dislocated shoulder and which had an amputated manicured hand still clinging to it.

  With a guttural roar, Greaves scaled the rope one-handed, his dislocated arm hanging useless, the soft fingers still embedded in his flesh. Below, the beast howled.

  The sacrifice was offered, yet the beast, still ravenous for more, kept reaching upward. With no barriers left between Greaves and the creature, Edward Greaves lunged toward the opening.

  He hurled himself through the temple’s exit, then turned—body heaving—and charged the boulder like a beast himself.

  His shattered shoulder struck first. Once. Twice. On the third impact, the stone groaned into place—just as the glass phial in his satchel burst from impact.

  A kaleidoscope of light erupted, painting the night's sky in vivid hues. The creature’s final scream was swallowed by the collapsing passage, its hunger to be satisfied by only one victim.