Ren awoke to silence.

  Not the heavy, suffocating stillness of night, but something lighter. Thinner. As if the world beyond his makeshift barricade held its breath, waiting.

  He sat up slowly, muscles aching from another restless night wedged against cold concrete and twisted steel.

  The crowbar lay across his knees where he'd left it. His traps — crude noise-makers made from wires and shattered cans — remained undisturbed at the entrance.

  No new threats.

  Not yet.

  He allowed himself a single shallow breath of relief.

  The false dawn bled weakly into the tunnels through cracks and broken pipes, casting long, skeletal shadows across the ruined substation.

  The ruin was quieter too, its threads pulsing faintly, sluggish in the morning's chill.

  Ren flexed his hands, rolling his shoulders to shake off the stiffness. The hunger stirred beneath his ribs, as it always did now — low and steady, like the ache of an old wound.

  He ignored it and reached for his water canteen.

  As he drank, he caught sight of something strange.

  At first, he thought it was a trick of the dim light.

  A faint pattern tracing across the skin of his left hand and forearm — lines darker than veins, winding in thin, thorned spirals beneath the surface.

  He turned his hand over slowly, heart tightening.

  The pattern shifted with the movement, a living thing hidden under his skin.

  The shackle on his chest pulsed once — a slow, deliberate throb.

  Ren let the canteen fall from his hand, forgotten, water spilling across the dusty floor.

  He scrambled to strip off his jacket and shirt, baring his torso to the cold.

  There, just below his sternum where the brand of the shackle burned brightest, the markings were thicker — a dense knot of dark veins spreading outward in jagged spirals.

  Reaching.

  Growing.

  He staggered back against the wall, breathing hard.

  This wasn’t just exhaustion.

  Wasn’t just hallucination.

  The ruin wasn’t just outside anymore.

  It was inside him.

  Changing him.

  Every kill, every act of destruction, every step deeper into survival — it was carving itself into his body like a parasite marking its territory.

  He stared down at the spreading marks, at the way they pulsed faintly with each heartbeat.

  Not sick.

  Not wounded.

  Mutating.

  Becoming.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting down the surge of panic clawing at his chest.

  Stay focused.

  Stay sharp.

  Panic was death.

  He forced himself to breathe — slow, steady.

  Focus on the immediate.

  Water. Food. Shelter. Weapons.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Everything else could wait.

  He dressed quickly, stuffing the scavenged jacket back over the growing marks.

  Out of sight.

  Out of mind.

  For now.

  He checked his pack — supplies running low again — and re-secured his weapons.

  The tunnels waited.

  No mercy.

  No forgiveness.

  Only the next choice. The next ruin. The next breath.

  He slipped out of the substation, moving cautiously through the crumbling ruins of the underground.

  The surface was no longer an option.

  Not with the Nightkind growing bolder each night.

  Not with the survivor factions carving out brutal fiefdoms in the hollowed cities above.

  The undercity was death in slower steps — but at least here, death moved in shadows he could anticipate.

  Most days.

  He moved through a shattered service tunnel, the walls cracked and weeping slow streams of filthy water. The ruin pulsed sluggishly along the surfaces — not the sharp, active webs he had seen in denser areas, but an old, rotting kind of ruin, settled into the bones of the earth.

  Easy to ignore.

  Easier to manipulate.

  Ahead, the tunnel collapsed into a heap of twisted rebar and broken concrete.

  A dead end.

  Almost.

  A narrow gap yawned between the rubble and the far wall — barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through.

  He crouched low, slipping into the gap, the world compressing around him into tight, breathless darkness.

  The ruin-thread hung thicker here, brushing against his skin with clammy, electric touches.

  He gritted his teeth and crawled forward, inch by inch, until the rubble gave way to a wider tunnel beyond — an old maintenance corridor, mostly intact.

  He straightened slowly, brushing dust from his jacket.

  The markings on his skin itched fiercely under the fabric.

  He ignored it.

  The new tunnel was different.

  Older.

  The concrete walls were darker, smoother, the air thicker and heavier.

  Signs of old life clung to the space: faded safety posters peeling from the walls, shattered maintenance drones lying in tangled heaps, broken wiring dangling like vines from the ceiling.

  And something else.

  Symbols.

  Carved into the walls at regular intervals.

  Circles broken by jagged spirals.

  Eyes split by thorned crowns.

  Chains looped around empty thrones.

  Ren ran his fingers lightly over one of the carvings.

  The stone was warm to the touch.

  Alive.

  Memory pulsed through it — not thoughts, not words — but impressions.

  Rage. Sorrow. Hunger.

  He jerked his hand away, heart hammering.

  The ruin here wasn’t just decay.

  It was remembering.

  Recording.

  Feeding.

  Movement ahead.

  Faint. Distant.

  A low scraping sound.

  Ren killed his flashlight and pressed himself into a shadowed alcove.

  Shapes moved in the gloom ahead — half-seen through the pulsing mist of ruin-thread.

  Not Nightkind.

  Not Woken Dead.

  Scavengers.

  Three of them, moving cautiously, weapons drawn.

  One carried a heavy sledgehammer across his back. Another clutched a battered revolver. The third, smaller and quicker, wielded a long blade wrapped in rags.

  They moved like animals — twitchy, restless, eyes flicking constantly to the shadows.

  Desperate.

  Dangerous.

  Ren stayed hidden, watching.

  He had enough supplies to avoid a fight.

  But supplies wouldn’t last forever.

  And the scavengers wore battered packs heavy with scavenged goods.

  The hunger stirred inside him, whispering possibilities.

  Take.

  Break.

  Survive.

  He clenched his fists until the nails bit into his palms.

  No.

  Not unless he had to.

  But he didn’t move.

  Didn’t retreat.

  He waited.

  Watched.

  Measured.

  The scavengers paused near a cracked support beam, muttering in low voices.

  Arguing.

  Distracted.

  Ren’s gaze shifted to the ruin-thread webbing above them — stretched taut across the fractured ceiling, pulsing faintly.

  Fragile.

  Weak.

  He moved without thinking, slipping deeper into the shadows, circling wide around the chamber.

  A broken pipe jutted from the wall nearby, its edges jagged and rusted.

  Perfect.

  He wedged the crowbar into the pipe and levered it upward — slowly, carefully — until the structure above groaned under the pressure.

  The scavengers snapped to alertness, weapons raised.

  Too late.

  The ceiling gave way with a thunderous crack, raining down concrete and steel in a deafening cascade.

  Dust and ruin-thread filled the air.

  Ren crouched low, breathing shallowly through his jacket sleeve.

  When the dust cleared, the scavengers lay buried under the rubble.

  One twitched feebly, trapped beneath a slab of concrete.

  Ren approached cautiously, rebar raised.

  The survivor stared up at him, blood bubbling from split lips, eyes wide with terror.

  A young man.

  Maybe no older than Ren.

  Before the world ended.

  Before everything rotted.

  The hunger purred approval, warm and sweet.

  Ren hesitated.

  Just for a moment.

  Then he drove the rebar down.

  The survivor shuddered once, then lay still.

  Ruin Spread: +1

  Chain Score: 6/???

  The shackle burned hot against his chest.

  Not pain.

  Not pleasure.

  Something deeper.

  Something older.

  He rifled through the wreckage quickly, methodically.

  A half-full pack.

  Ammo he couldn't use yet — but could trade if he ever dared approach another faction.

  A cracked medkit — still usable.

  A bloodstained canteen.

  He took it all.

  Survival was the only morality that mattered now.

  He moved on, slipping into the deeper tunnels before more scavengers or worse could come investigate the noise.

  Hours later, he found shelter in the remains of a storage facility — racks of crumbling supplies, broken generators, ancient lights flickering sporadically overhead.

  He set his traps.

  He patched his wounds.

  He rested, back to the wall, weapons close at hand.

  Sleep came fitfully, full of broken dreams — flashes of twisted thrones, skies torn open by chains of fire, great beasts crawling across dead worlds.

  When he woke, the markings on his arms had spread further — dark spirals threading up past his elbows, reaching for his shoulders.

  He pressed a trembling hand against the shackle at his chest.

  The ruin was winning.

  Slowly.

  Inevitably.

  The only question left was how long he could hold on before there was nothing left to save.