Chapter 1: The Razor's Edge

Chapter 1: The Razor's Edge

The sound was a crime in the suffocating silence. Scrape. Screech. Clang. Each noise echoed into the bottomless dark, a dinner bell rung in a church for things that had never known light.

High above that infinite nothing, Ann drove another piton into the rock. Her arm, a corded rope of muscle under grimy skin, swung the makeshift hammer with brutal efficiency. She was a mirror image of the three women below her—the same messy brown hair, the same slender frame—but the resemblance ended there. Ann’s eyes held a flinty, predatory hardness. She was fury given form.

“Hurry it up,” she hissed down, her voice a sharp crack in the cold air. “You think they’re deaf?”

Below her, clinging to the swaying, jury-rigged ladder of scavenged pipes and frayed cable, Hensley flinched. She was the Core, the original, the one from whom the others had fractured. Her hands, raw and bleeding inside worn gloves, tightened on the rungs. “We’re moving as fast as we can, Ann. One mistake…”

“Is a long way down,” Ann finished, not with caution, but with a sneer. “Better a quick death than being ripped apart by whatever that clicking is. You hear it, don’t you, June?”

The fourth of them, June, was plastered against the cliff face a few feet below Hensley, her body trembling so violently the ladder shuddered. She was Fear itself, her eyes wide and dark, pupils blown wide to swallow a darkness that was already absolute. A tiny, choked whimper was her only reply. She heard everything. The scuttling of unseen things in distant crevices, the groaning of the rock under their weight, the whisper of the abyss calling them home.

“She hears it,” Hope said, her voice a calming balm from her position at the bottom, anchoring the safety line. She was the Heart, the one who held them together when Ann’s rage and June’s terror threatened to tear them apart. “Ann, yelling won’t make her hands steadier. Hensley, breathe. We’re almost there.”

Hensley followed Hope’s instruction, dragging in a lungful of cold, stale air that tasted of stone and decay. She looked up. The catwalk was a ghost, a thin black line against a slightly less black void, maybe fifty feet away. It was their only way out of this section of the chasm, the only path to the tower complex they had spotted days ago. Their only… hope.

Clang!

The piton was set. Ann threaded the next length of cable through its eye with practiced speed. “Ladder’s moving up! Get ready to climb, you useless sacks.”

“We’re not useless,” Hope called up, her tone firm but gentle. “We are one person, remember?”

“Yeah, well, this part of the person is doing all the damn work,” Ann retorted, hauling on the cable.

As the ladder shifted, a chunk of weathered rock beneath Ann’s foot broke away. It tumbled into the darkness, silent for a terrifyingly long moment before a faint, distant crack echoed up, a sound so small it only emphasized the sheer scale of the drop.

June shrieked, a raw, piercing sound of pure terror. Her grip went slack.

“June!” Hensley yelled, her heart lurching.

Hope reacted instantly, bracing herself and pulling the safety line taut. The rope snapped tight around June’s waist, arresting her fall but leaving her dangling, spinning slowly over the abyss. Her frantic gasps were the only sound.

“Get a grip!” Ann snarled from above, her face a mask of contempt. “You want to be bait? Because that’s how you become bait.”

“Ann, shut up!” Hensley commanded, her own fear a cold knot in her stomach. She forced herself to look down at June’s terrified, upturned face. “June, listen to me. Hope has you. You’re not going to fall. You need to grab the ladder. Look at my hand.”

Hensley stretched her arm down, fingers wiggling. It was a gesture she hadn’t made in years, not since… Trevor. The memory hit her like a physical blow—a sun-drenched afternoon on a hiking trail, his warm, calloused hand reaching for hers after she’d slipped. ”See? I got you. Always.” The kindness in his smile was a world away from this cold, sharp-edged nightmare. Guilt, sharp and bitter, twisted inside her. This was her fault. All of it.

June’s eyes focused on Hensley’s hand, a tiny spark of recognition in the overwhelming panic. Her breathing hitched, but she reached out a trembling hand, fumbling for the cold pipe of the ladder.

Click. Scrabble. Chitter.

The sound was closer now. Not an echo from the depths, but something moving along the same cliff face they were on. It was fast.

“It’s here,” June whispered, her voice cracking. Her fear gave her senses a razor’s edge, and they all knew to trust it.

“Where?” Hensley demanded, her head snapping from side to side, trying to pierce the oppressive gloom.

“Everywhere,” June sobbed.

Ann didn’t waste time looking. She abandoned all caution, hauling herself up the last section of cable hand over hand, her movements powerful and desperate. She scrambled onto the catwalk, a graceless, clattering heap of motion. “Get up here! NOW!”

The urgency in her voice, stripped of its usual sarcasm, was more terrifying than June’s panic. Hensley didn’t hesitate.

“June, climb! Right now! Think of it as a race!” she yelled, her voice straining.

Hope, understanding the shift, started to climb from below, pushing June upward from her feet. “Go, June, go! One rung at a time. That’s it. You’re so brave.”

The chittering grew louder, accompanied by a wet, scraping noise that sounded horribly organic. Hensley risked a glance over her shoulder. Two pinpricks of faint, phosphorescent green had ignited in the darkness about a hundred feet to their left, moving horizontally towards them with unnatural speed. They weren't eyes. They were lures.

Adrenaline surged through Hensley, a chemical fire that burned away her exhaustion. She climbed, her movements frantic and clumsy. Her lungs burned. Her muscles screamed. Below her, Hope was a steady, encouraging presence, and above, June was moving, fueled by pure, unadulterated terror.

The scraping was almost upon them. Hensley could feel the vibration through the rock, a low thrum that resonated in her bones. She didn’t dare look again. She just climbed, focusing on the dark silhouette of the catwalk, on Ann’s hand reaching down for her.

Just as her fingers brushed against the cold metal grating of the platform, a section of the ladder below them tore free. A sound like shearing metal and splintering bone ripped through the air. Hope cried out.

“Hope!” Hensley screamed, twisting around.

The lower half of their ladder was gone, swallowed by the abyss. Hope was dangling from her safety line, the one June was still attached to, which was anchored to the piton just below the catwalk. The creature, a nightmare silhouette of too many limbs and a glistening, segmented body, was skittering down towards her, its green lures bobbing hypnotically.

Ann was already working, her hands a blur as she hauled on the safety line. “Don’t just hang there, you idiot! Help me pull!” she roared at Hensley.

Hensley scrambled fully onto the catwalk and grabbed the rope, the rough fibers tearing at her palms. Together, they heaved. Hope and June were a dead weight, two bodies against their straining muscles. The rope slid, inch by agonizing inch, over the sharp edge of the catwalk.

The creature was almost on top of Hope. A long, serrated limb lashed out, catching the trailing end of the safety rope. It began to pull, its strength immense, inhuman.

The rope went taut. A brutal tug-of-war began over the chasm, four fractured pieces of one soul against a monster born of the dark.

“It’s going to break!” Hope shouted, her voice tight with strain as she tried to find a foothold on the sheer rock.

“It won’t break!” Ann grunted, her face a terrifying rictus of effort. “Pull, Hensley! PULL!”

They threw every ounce of their waning strength into it. For a heart-stopping second, nothing happened. Then, with a groan of protesting fibers, the rope began to move. Hope and a still-sobbing June rose slowly, foot by foot, away from the clicking, chittering horror. The creature, its prize slipping away, let out a screech of frustration that clawed at their ears, a sound that promised it would not forget them.

With one final, desperate heave, they tumbled backward onto the catwalk, a tangle of limbs and rope, as Hope and June collapsed over the edge. They were safe. They were together. And they were trapped on a metal walkway suspended in an endless night, with their only way down gone, and the hungry things of the abyss now fully aware of their existence.