James awoke to the hum of machinery and the smell of rust.
The light above him flickered — thin, white, and unsteady. The walls were tiled with stains of time and neglect. Metal trays caught slow drips from unseen pipes above. The bed beneath him wasn't a hospital bed; it was a slab. Restraints hung loose at the sides, still cold from use.
He sat up slowly, his head pounding. In the cracked mirror across the room, a stranger stared back — pale skin, veins faintly glowing under the surface, pulsing once before fading to nothing.
A shadow filled the doorway.
"You're awake," said a woman, her voice low and even.
She stepped inside — a long coat, a data tablet hovering beside her, eyes sharp with the kind of calm that only exhaustion can buy.
"Where am I?" James rasped.
"The City Beneath," she said. "If you can smell rust, smoke, and recycled air — congratulations, you're still alive."
The world outside was a labyrinth of steel and concrete.
Towers of scaffolding reached up toward a false ceiling of light, miles underground. Streets hummed with movement — soldiers, engineers, medics — all wearing the same expression: survival.
"This is where the Veil keeps what's left of the world safe," the woman said. "Seren. That's my name."
James followed her through narrow alleys between industrial blocks. Neon signs buzzed in broken colors. Pipes pulsed faintly with coolant and power, like arteries under skin.
"We hide down here," Seren said, voice almost drowned out by the echo of boots and machinery. "The surface doesn't know about us. Or what we fight."
"What do you fight?"
Seren just looked at him. "You'll see."
They stopped at a heavy blast door marked with the symbol of a crossed eye — the insignia he'd seen stitched into his sleeve. Inside, a cold light spread across a wide chamber filled with glass tanks and cables that snaked along the floor like roots. Each tank held a shifting, dark mass suspended in blue liquid.
A man waited there — tall, gray-haired, one arm metal from shoulder to wrist.
"Commander Aldren," Seren said. "He's the reason you're breathing."
Aldren gave a short nod. "You're the one who erased a Crack. That's not something we see every day."
"I didn't erase anything," James said. "I—"
But the words caught. Because something was watching him.
The nearest tank rippled, liquid darkening. Inside, the shadows twisted into almost-human outlines — then melted again.
"Echo," Aldren said quietly. "Soldier class. Low-tier. Don't get close."
But James stepped forward anyway.
The moment his breath fogged the glass, the world folded.
Not darkness — something deeper.
A space without space, stretching endlessly into a throne room carved from the bones of the world. The walls pulsed like veins of obsidian shot through with faint red light, and at the center, seated in impossible stillness, was her.
The Queen.
Her presence filled the air, vast and patient. Her shape shifted in the shadows — not monstrous, not human — something between. Two fractures where her eyes should be glowed faintly, their red light searing through the space between worlds until it pinned him completely.
Her voice slipped into him like smoke through cracks in glass.
"A rare one."
"Empty… and yet awake."
"You shouldn't have looked, Hollow One."
"Now we remember you."
Each word resonated inside his chest, not as sound — but as memory.
For a moment, he felt her gaze move through him, unraveling his fear, his anger, everything human.
"When the world forgets you, James…"
"…we won't."
The light fractured.
The throne shattered into shards of crimson mist — and then he was falling.
"James!"
Aldren's voice cut through the noise. The lab reformed around him in flashes — the tank, the hum, the cold metal floor beneath his hands. His lungs burned for air.
The Commander's metal arm steadied him. "Don't stare too long," he said. "The Abyss stares back harder."
James didn't answer. His gaze flicked toward the tank — and just for a second, he swore he saw her silhouette ripple behind the Echo's shifting mass. Watching. Waiting.