The ruin was thicker down here.
It crawled over the cracked tiles and broken walls, hanging from the ceiling in long, drooping threads that twitched and shivered when Ren passed beneath them.
Each step felt heavier.
Not just from exhaustion.
The air was different.
Denser. Hungrier.
He moved carefully through the collapsed tunnels, the glow of his stolen flashlight reduced to a trembling cone of murky yellow.
The fight with the Woken Dead still throbbed in his muscles — the strain of brutal, desperate survival leaving a deep ache in his bones. His newly healed cuts itched under his jacket, a constant reminder of what he had done to survive.
He hadn't slept.
There was no safe place to sleep.
Not yet.
The tunnels narrowed again, twisting into a series of half-collapsed maintenance corridors. Water dripped from overhead pipes, puddling in grimy pools along the cracked floor.
Every few steps, he paused, listening.
The silence down here was a living thing, shifting and breathing at the edges of hearing.
But tonight, there was something else.
Faint.
A whisper of sound, almost too distant to catch.
He killed his flashlight, crouched low against the wall, and listened.
Voices.
Far ahead.
Low. Rough. The guttural cadence of people arguing in harsh whispers.
Alive.
Real.
Not Nightkind.
Not Woken Dead.
Actual survivors.
Ren moved forward cautiously, sticking to the shadows.
The tunnel ahead opened into a wide chamber — an old maintenance bay or a small service terminal, its high ceiling lost in the darkness.
And there, clustered around a makeshift firepit of burning debris, were people.
Six. Maybe seven.
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Ragged. Armed. Hardened.
Their clothes were a patchwork of scavenged armor, torn jackets, scavenged riot gear stitched together with wire and ruin-thread.
Weapons glinted in the flickering firelight — knives, axes, lengths of sharpened pipe.
One man, tall and gaunt, carried an old, battered assault rifle slung across his back.
They moved like a pack of wolves — circling, wary, ready to tear apart anything weaker than themselves.
Ren stayed hidden, crouched behind a twisted support beam, watching.
He couldn't hear everything they said over the crackle of the fire and the echoing acoustics of the terminal, but he caught enough.
Supply runs.
Territory disputes.
Rumors of "fresh blood" moving through the upper tunnels.
Maybe him.
Probably him.
One of the survivors — a woman with a jagged scar across her cheek — dragged something into the circle.
A body.
At first, Ren thought it was another scavenger.
Then he saw the ruin-thread writhing under the skin.
A ruinbound.
Too far gone.
The body twitched and moaned weakly, ruin-thread pulsing visibly beneath the surface.
The tall man with the rifle stepped forward, drawing a rusted machete from his belt.
Without ceremony, he drove the blade down through the body's throat, severing the spine in one brutal motion.
The ruin-thread spasmed and died, shriveling into ash.
The survivors barely reacted.
No mourning.
No hesitation.
Just another threat removed.
Ren watched, heart hammering.
These people weren’t a safe haven.
They were a new kind of predator.
Not as fast as the Nightkind.
Not as mindless as the Woken Dead.
But just as deadly.
And maybe worse.
Because they still remembered what it meant to be human — and had abandoned it anyway.
He stayed crouched in the dark, muscles trembling from the strain of stillness, until the survivors settled into a rough semblance of rest — some dozing, others keeping watch in the half-light of the fire.
He slipped away as quietly as he had come, retreating into the deeper tunnels.
His mind raced.
There were others down here.
Organized.
Armed.
Surviving.
But at what cost?
He thought of the ruinbound man he had met days ago, grinning with filed teeth.
He thought of the Woken Dead, staggering and mindless.
He thought of the hunger coiled inside him, whispering promises of strength and safety if he only gave in.
No.
He would not become like them.
He would not.
He pressed onward, deeper into the broken labyrinth beneath the city.
Hours later — or what felt like hours — he found a new shelter.
A maintenance substation, half-collapsed but defensible.
Only one entrance, narrow enough to block with rubble.
A working water tap — stale but potable.
Even a half-melted solar panel salvaged from a roof, hooked to a cracked but still functioning battery array.
He could charge the flashlight now.
Maybe rig a few traps.
Maybe stay ahead of the death that prowled these tunnels.
Maybe.
He set to work immediately, stacking debris across the entrance, setting up noise traps, marking blind spots.
Efficiency had become second nature.
Survival instinct.
Not ruin-instinct.
Not yet.
When he finished, he slumped against the far wall, crowbar across his knees, rebar within easy reach.
He ate mechanically — a few bites of scavenged food, a swallow of filtered water — and leaned his head back against the cold concrete.
His mind circled back to the survivors he had seen.
The way they moved.
The way they killed without hesitation.
The way they burned ruinbound without a flicker of pity.
He didn’t know if there was a place for him among them.
Didn’t know if he wanted there to be.
But he couldn’t stay alone forever.
Eventually, strength would fail.
Eventually, luck would run out.
And when that day came, he would have to choose:
Become part of something worse.
Or become something worse himself.
He closed his eyes, listening to the hum of the ruin-thread vibrating faintly through the concrete, the endless groan of the city dying above and below.
Somewhere far away, a scream echoed through the tunnels.
Brief.
Hopeless.
Another forgotten name added to the ash.
Ren slept with one hand on his crowbar and the hunger breathing slow and patient in the hollow of his chest.
Tomorrow, he would move again.
Tomorrow, he would find the next path through the broken world.
Tomorrow, he would survive.
Whatever it cost.
