The false dawn bled weakly across the surface, but down here, in the depths of the collapsed city, there was no day or night. Only darkness. Only cold.

  Ren stirred stiffly from his corner between the rusted cars, bones aching from the concrete’s unkind embrace. His hands were numb, his breath a faint cloud in the chilled air.

  He checked his traps first — simple noise markers, loose stones piled on twisted bits of metal. None disturbed.

  For now.

  He ate sparingly: a few scraps of canned food, washed down with the last of his scavenged water.

  It tasted worse today. Metallic. Stale.

  Or maybe it was him.

  The hunger curled tighter beneath his ribs, restless, discontent.

  He tightened the straps of his pack, checked his weapons, and set out deeper into the underground.

  The garage extended further than he had first realized — broken passageways leading off into collapsed corridors and stairwells swallowed by darkness.

  He moved carefully, rebar in hand, the weight of the crowbar across his back.

  Every few steps, he paused, listening.

  No footsteps.

  No breathing.

  No guttural calls from the Nightkind.

  Just silence.

  And the ruin.

  It clung to the concrete in sticky threads, shivering faintly under the weak beam of his stolen flashlight — a narrow cone of illumination barely strong enough to pierce the thick gloom.

  The deeper he moved, the thicker the threads became, stretching from broken beams to shattered pillars, spiderwebbing across entire corridors.

  Some vibrated when he passed, subtle, almost imperceptible.

  Others hung limp and heavy, as if dead.

  He learned quickly to avoid the vibrating ones.

  Whatever lived in those strands wasn't something he was ready to meet.

  A stairwell loomed out of the dark — cracked and twisted, but still intact enough to descend.

  He hesitated at the top.

  A smell drifted up from below: damp stone, old rot, something chemical and sharp.

  Nothing good waited down there.

  But nothing good waited up here either.

  He started down.

  The stairs creaked and groaned under his weight, but held.

  The air grew colder.

  The ruin thicker.

  By the time he reached the bottom, the flashlight barely penetrated a few feet ahead.

  The tunnels beyond stretched out in both directions — long, cracked veins running deeper into the city's bones.

  Signs of old life lingered here.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Scattered supplies: broken flashlights, empty food wrappers, the rusted frames of old shopping carts used as makeshift barricades.

  And bones.

  Piles of them, shoved into alcoves, stuffed into broken lockers.

  Some human.

  Some... not.

  He moved carefully, weaving between the detritus, eyes scanning every shadow.

  The deeper tunnels were stranger.

  Walls curved where they should have been straight.

  Pillars leaned at impossible angles.

  Whole sections of floor rippled like frozen waves, buckling in patterns that made his head ache if he looked too long.

  The ruin here wasn’t just decay.

  It was transformation.

  Changing the world in ways that defied memory and sense.

  Ren forced himself to stay focused, to keep moving.

  The rules hadn’t changed.

  Move quietly.

  Stay hidden.

  Survive.

  He found an old maintenance map half-buried under rubble — faded and water-stained, but enough to glean some information.

  The tunnels stretched for miles.

  Maintenance corridors. Drainage systems. Abandoned subway lines.

  A labyrinth beneath the city.

  And somewhere, deep within, maybe safety.

  Maybe death.

  Probably both.

  He pocketed the map and pressed onward.

  Hours passed. Or maybe only minutes.

  Time lost meaning down here.

  Twice he had to double back — passages collapsed, ruin threads too dense to risk crossing.

  Once he heard movement: heavy, dragging footsteps far down a side tunnel.

  He waited, silent and breathless, until they faded into the distance.

  He did not follow.

  He wasn’t ready for whatever made those sounds.

  Not yet.

  By what felt like midday, he found a break — a collapsed maintenance hub, the walls bowed inward, the ceiling half-fallen.

  But it was defendable.

  One entrance, easily blocked.

  Space enough to rest.

  He set to work immediately, dragging debris across the entrance, rigging more noise traps with wire and cans scavenged from the rubble.

  When he was done, he sat back against the cracked wall, exhausted but alive.

  The hunger murmured approval.

  He ignored it.

  Instead, he pulled the scavenged map from his pack and studied it by flashlight.

  If he was reading it right, there was a larger tunnel network another half-mile south — possibly less decayed, possibly still stable.

  A better place to hide.

  Maybe even find real supplies.

  Shelter was a temporary thing here.

  Everything decayed.

  Everything died.

  The ruin ensured it.

  And the longer he stayed still, the closer death crept.

  He rested briefly.

  A shallow, half-conscious doze, waking at every groan of shifting stone, every skitter of rats in the walls.

  He dreamed — or thought he dreamed — of something vast moving through the tunnels beyond, its presence a crushing weight on the world around it.

  He woke with a start, heart pounding.

  Nothing stood over him.

  No footsteps approached.

  But the hunger in his chest burned hotter, more insistent.

  Move.

  It was time to move.

  He broke camp and slipped deeper into the tunnels, following the thinning strands of ruin.

  The lower levels were stranger still.

  Whole sections twisted into spirals.

  Doorways opened into blank walls.

  Rooms stretched impossibly wide or shrank into knife-edged slits.

  It wasn’t just decay.

  It was madness given form.

  Ren clung to the map, using the faint markers of old pipes and broken signage to navigate.

  But it grew harder.

  Signs shifted.

  Walls moved.

  Or seemed to.

  He blinked constantly, wiping sweat from his brow despite the cold.

  Reality was thinner here.

  He could feel it.

  Taste it.

  Something lurked just beyond the edges of vision — something that watched, that waited.

  The hunger throbbed in rhythm with the unseen presence.

  Not yet, he told it.

  Not yet.

  Near what might have once been a subway terminal, he found signs of other survivors.

  Charred fire pits.

  Graffiti scrawled in hurried, frantic lines across the walls:

  THEY COME BELOW

  STAY AWAY FROM THE SONG

  LIGHT IS A LIE

  He didn’t know what any of it meant.

  But he didn’t like it.

  He moved faster now, steps sure, senses sharp.

  A wrong step here wouldn’t just break a bone.

  It would break reality.

  Ahead, a faint noise.

  Not the slow drag of Nightkind.

  Not the broken shuffle of the Woken Dead.

  Something else.

  Laughter.

  High, thin, and utterly without joy.

  Ren froze, muscles locking, heart hammering.

  The sound came again, echoing strangely through the warped tunnels.

  Mocking.

  Welcoming.

  He didn’t wait to see what made it.

  He turned and ran.

  Boots pounding on broken stone, breath rasping in his throat.

  The tunnels twisted around him, walls leaning inward, doorways slamming shut where none had existed before.

  He ran blind, following instinct and hunger and the primal need to survive.

  The laughter faded behind him, swallowed by the ruin.

  He didn’t stop until he collapsed against a broken stairwell, gasping, the cold burning in his lungs.

  Alive.

  For now.

  The tunnels had changed behind him.

  There was no going back the way he came.

  Only forward.

  Only deeper.

  Ren rose on shaking legs and pressed on, the ruin thickening around him, the threads twisting tighter, the air vibrating with unseen rhythms.

  Down among the broken.

  Where only the desperate survived.

  And the dead forgot how to die.