The tunnels twisted tighter the deeper Ren went, narrowing from broad service corridors to cramped maintenance shafts barely wide enough for him to walk without scraping his shoulders against the walls.

  The air grew colder, damper, thick with the sour stink of mold and something worse — the heavy, metallic tang of old blood soaked into concrete.

  He moved slowly, flashlight low and tight against his chest, rebar held loosely in his right hand.

  The silence here was absolute.

  Not the waiting quiet of the upper ruins, full of distant groans and whispers.

  This was a dead silence.

  Heavy. Pressing.

  Suffocating.

  Every step echoed too loudly, bouncing back from the cracked walls in a distorted chorus.

  Ren pressed onward, breath shallow.

  The ruin was thicker here — not just strands now, but sheets, curtains of faintly pulsing energy draped across doorways and tunnels like diseased membranes.

  He learned quickly to duck beneath them, slipping through the narrow gaps, careful not to touch.

  Each sheet vibrated with a frequency that made his teeth ache and his fingers twitch.

  He didn’t want to know what would happen if he touched them.

  After what felt like hours, he found a larger chamber.

  An old maintenance hub — wide and circular, with branching tunnels leading off into deeper darkness.

  Collapsed furniture lay strewn across the cracked floor: overturned desks, shattered monitors, broken shelving units.

  Signs of a fight lingered here.

  Bullet casings scattered across the ground.

  Dark stains smeared along the walls and floor.

  And bones.

  So many bones.

  Some stripped clean.

  Some still wrapped in rotting cloth and armor.

  Ren crouched near the entrance, scanning the space.

  No movement.

  No sound.

  He edged forward carefully, boots crunching on shattered debris.

  At the center of the room stood a twisted sculpture of ruin-thread, rising from the floor like a frozen explosion — thick cords of energy radiating outward, anchoring themselves to the walls and ceiling.

  It pulsed slowly, a heartbeat out of time with his own.

  He kept his distance.

  Something had happened here.

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  Something bad.

  He picked his way through the debris, scavenging where he could.

  A half-full canteen.

  A cracked but still usable crowbar, heavier than his own.

  A bandolier of old, rusted tools — pliers, screwdrivers, a hatchet head with no handle.

  Everything useful went into his pack.

  Every breath felt like a crime against the silence.

  A faint noise broke it.

  A wet, dragging shuffle.

  Ren froze, crouched behind the wreckage of a desk.

  The sound grew louder.

  Closer.

  A figure shambled into the chamber from one of the branching tunnels.

  At first, he thought it was just another scavenger, wounded and dying.

  Until it raised its head.

  The face — or what was left of it — was a mask of ruin.

  Skin sloughed away in wet ribbons, bones exposed through gaps in the flesh.

  Its eyes glowed faintly, threads of ruin weaving through the empty sockets.

  It moved jerkily, puppet-like, dragged forward by invisible strings.

  Another shape followed it.

  And another.

  And another.

  Half a dozen at least, spilling into the room with slow, relentless momentum.

  The Woken Dead.

  Ren didn’t breathe.

  Didn’t move.

  The creatures staggered forward, heads twitching, mouths working soundlessly.

  They didn’t hunt like the Nightkind — swift, brutal predators.

  They didn’t hunt like the ruinbound survivors — cunning and hungry.

  They drifted.

  Drawn to life.

  Drawn to ruin.

  Drawn to him.

  One of them turned its ruined head toward his hiding place.

  A low, rattling moan escaped its broken mouth.

  The others echoed it.

  A chorus of hunger and decay.

  Ren’s grip tightened on the rebar.

  No way to run.

  No way to hide.

  Fight.

  Survive.

  He rose as the first Woken Dead staggered toward him.

  The fight was fast, brutal, and ugly.

  He swung the rebar hard, connecting with the nearest corpse’s skull.

  It caved inward with a wet crunch, but the creature didn’t fall — it stumbled back, twitching.

  He swung again, harder, shattering the ruin-thread binding its jaw.

  The creature collapsed in a boneless heap, threads writhing like severed nerves.

  Another reached for him with clawed fingers.

  He ducked under the grasp, driving the rebar up into its exposed ribcage.

  The impact jarred his arms, rattling his teeth.

  The thing convulsed, clawing at the rebar buried in its chest.

  Ren ripped it free and spun toward the next one.

  They came in slow, clumsy waves.

  Easy to dodge individually.

  Deadly in numbers.

  He retreated step by step, swinging and dodging, using the broken furniture for cover.

  Each kill — if they could be called kills — sent a small pulse through his chest, the shackle warming briefly.

  But there was no satisfaction.

  No strength.

  Only survival.

  Only necessity.

  When the last of the Woken Dead collapsed into twitching ruin-thread and rotting flesh, Ren staggered back against the wall, gasping.

  Sweat poured down his face, freezing against his skin.

  Blood — not all of it his own — stained his jacket and hands.

  The hunger whispered approval, pleased by the violence.

  He ignored it.

  Again.

  Barely.

  His arms ached.

  His legs trembled.

  He was alive.

  But he wouldn’t survive another fight like that without an edge.

  He needed more than scavenged tools and blind luck.

  He needed to grow.

  He moved quickly through the chamber, dragging the bodies into a heap near the ruined sculpture at the center.

  He wasn’t sure why.

  Instinct, maybe.

  Or something older.

  Something deeper.

  He touched the base of the ruin-thread sculpture, focusing on the memory of battle, of death, of survival.

  The structure shivered.

  Cracks spiderwebbed through it.

  It collapsed inward, a silent implosion of energy and dust.

  A surge of warmth flooded his body, burning through his veins like liquid fire.

  Ruin Spread: +1

  Chain Score: 5/???

  New awareness blossomed in his mind.

  New strength.

  He stood straighter.

  Breathed deeper.

  The aches faded, scabbed cuts knitting closed faster than they should have.

  Not perfect.

  Not instant.

  But enough.

  Enough to matter.

  The cost tickled at the edges of his thoughts — a faint loss, a thinning of something he couldn’t name.

  He shoved it aside.

  Later.

  Survive first.

  Always survive first.

  He scavenged what he could from the wreckage — a better knife, serrated and half-rusted but sharp enough to split bone.

  A battered pack with more water.

  A bundle of cloth he could use to bind wounds.

  It wasn't much.

  But it was enough to keep moving.

  Enough to keep breathing.

  He left the chamber through a different tunnel, one leading deeper, away from the lingering stench of blood and broken ruin.

  Every step echoed with new strength.

  Every breath tasted of ashes and victory.

  And somewhere ahead, deeper in the dark, the ruin waited.

  Growing stronger.

  Growing hungrier.

  Just like him.