Chapter 1: The First Offering

Chapter 1: The First Offering

The shriek tore through the silence of the Basin, a sound like grinding metal and a thousand tortured voices. It clawed at the concrete walls and vibrated up through the soles of Leo’s worn boots. She was wedged behind a rust-eaten generator, the cold metal pressing a lattice pattern into her back. Her breath hitched, each inhale a sharp, painful gasp in the stagnant air.

Move, Leonora. Now.

The voice was Nyx’s—sharp, pragmatic, and utterly devoid of comfort. It cut through the rising panic in Leo’s chest like a surgeon’s scalpel. The Shrieker is hunting. Its pattern is predictable. It circles the lower catwalks for twelve minutes after a feed. You have six left. Get to the Rig. Get it done.

Leo’s fingers tightened into fists, her knuckles white. Another voice, softer and warmer, rose to meet Nyx’s command. It was Aura.

No. Please, not again. We can wait it out. It might pass us by this time. There has to be another way.

There is no other way, Nyx snapped back inside her head, the two voices a familiar, warring cacophony. Hope is a luxury we traded for survival the moment we woke up in this hell. The gauge is low. You know what happens when it bottoms out. Do you want to feel that again?

A cold tremor, independent of the Shrieker’s cry, wracked Leo’s body. She remembered. The humming lights flickering out, the oppressive, absolute darkness, and the feeling of the Abyss below them noticing. A presence that pulled at the edges of her sanity.

The shriek echoed again, closer this time. It wasn't just a sound; it felt like a physical force, scraping against her mind. Her hand instinctively went to her chest, her thumb finding the cool, dented surface of the silver locket tucked beneath her hoodie. The familiar shape did little to soothe her, a memento from a life she couldn't properly recall, a ghost of a memory that only made her present feel more unreal.

It’s coming, a third, faint whisper trembled in the back of her mind. Echo. The voice of fear. It didn’t argue; it only stated the terrifying truth.

That was the final push.

Nyx’s cold logic won. It always did when the teeth were at the door.

“Fine,” Leo whispered aloud, her voice raspy. The word was for them, for herself, for the uncaring darkness. Pushing off the generator, she broke cover, her movements economical and swift. She kept low, using the skeletal remains of industrial machinery as cover, her eyes scanning the crisscrossing catwalks suspended over the swirling, black void. A single, sterile bulb far above cast long, distorted shadows that writhed like living things.

The Basin was a multi-layered cage of rust and concrete, a forgotten factory dedicated to some unknown, monstrous purpose. And she was a rat in its maze.

Her target was fifty yards away—a ‘Rig’. It stood against a concrete wall like an upright coffin, its glass front clouded with grime. Inside, a shape was suspended in a pale, viscous fluid. A body. Still. Lifeless. Just like all the others.

Faster, Nyx urged. Don’t look at the face.

It was a person, Aura wept. They had a life. A name.

It’s fuel, Nyx corrected, her mental tone flat and final. And we are running on empty.

Leo reached the Rig, her gaze fixed on the release mechanism, a heavy, grease-caked lever. She refused to look at the placid face floating within, the slack jaw, the pale skin. She’d made that mistake before. The nightmares had been relentless.

She gripped the lever with both hands, planting her feet. It took all her wiry strength to shove it downwards. There was a sickening hydraulic hiss and a gurgle as the fluid drained away into some hidden grate. The glass door swung open. The body, slick and cold, slumped forward into her arms.

The smell hit her next—ozone and formaldehyde, a sterile scent of preservation that failed to mask the underlying truth of death. It was heavy, an awkward, dead weight. Leo gritted her teeth, ignoring Aura’s silent, horrified sob, and began the grim task of hauling her offering across the grated floor.

The Shrieker’s cry sounded again, now from a level below, its rage echoing upwards from the infinite dark. Time was running out.

Her destination was the ‘Chute’. It was a monstrous, circular maw of metal set into the floor near the center of the platform, a garbage disposal for the damned. Beside it, embedded in a rusted console, was the Gauge. A single, merciless needle behind a cracked glass pane, hovering just above the red line that marked ‘Empty’.

She dragged the body to the edge, its heels scraping a mournful rhythm on the metal. With a final, desperate heave, she rolled it over the lip. It fell into the Chute without a sound. For a moment, there was nothing. Then, with a deep, resonant thump, the iris-like aperture slammed shut. A low hum vibrated through the platform, and Leo watched, mesmerized and repulsed, as the needle on the Gauge trembled.

Slowly, agonizingly, it climbed. A millimeter. Two. It stopped, a pathetic sliver of progress away from the red.

The humming ceased. The Shrieker’s cries faded into the vastness of the Basin, its hunt concluded for now. Silence, thick and heavy, returned.

Leo sank to her knees, her body trembling with adrenaline and revulsion. Her hands were slick with the cold residue from the body. She wiped them furiously on her cargo pants, but she knew the feeling would linger. It always did.

See? Nyx’s voice was laced with grim satisfaction. We’re alive. We have a few more hours. That’s a victory.

This isn’t victory, Aura countered, her voice shaking with grief and rage. This is a ritual. We feed the machine, the needle moves, the monsters quiet down. And then? The needle falls again. We do it all over. It never ends, Nyx! We’re just delaying the inevitable, piece by gruesome piece!

Then what’s your brilliant alternative, Aura? Nyx sneered. Prayer? Starvation? Should we just jump into the Chute ourselves and see what happens? Survival is the only thing that matters here. One step at a time. One body at a time.

Their argument raged, a storm inside Leo’s skull that was more exhausting than any physical exertion. She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing the heels of her hands into her sockets. They were both right. They were both wrong. And she was trapped between them, the fulcrum of her own fractured sanity. She wasn’t living. She was just… cycling. A cog in a machine she couldn’t comprehend.

When she finally opened her eyes, the argument had subsided into a resentful quiet. She looked around, her gaze tracing the familiar lines of her prison—the catwalks, the distant, humming bulb, the dark maw of the Chute. But this time, her eyes caught on something else. Something she’d never noticed before, her focus always consumed by the immediate terror of the hunt and the grimness of the offering.

Against the far wall stood the facade of an old, derelict motel, something so out of place in this industrial nightmare that her mind had always dismissed it as part of the random, nonsensical architecture. The peeling paint of a ‘Vacancy’ sign. A row of doors that surely led to nowhere but solid concrete.

But one of them… one of the doors, number 7, didn’t look quite right. While the others were rusted shut or hung crookedly on their hinges, this one looked… flush. Intact. And along its edge, almost invisible in the grime and shadows, was a thin, clean line. A seam. Not the jagged edge of decay, but the precise line of something manufactured. Something designed to open.

A new feeling, distinct from Aura’s desperate hope and Nyx’s cynical pragmatism, stirred within her. It was a jolt of pure, unadulterated curiosity—the ghost of the urban explorer she used to be.

A door, Aura whispered, a fragile tendril of genuine hope in her tone. A real door.

A trap, Nyx countered immediately. Or a distraction. The cycle works. The unknown is a liability.

But for the first time in a long time, Leo didn’t feel paralyzed by their conflict. The sight of that clean, straight line in a world of chaos and decay was a promise. It might be a false promise, leading to a quicker death or a worse horror. But it was different.

And in the Basin, different was the only thing more powerful than fear.