Volume 2 – Chapter 17: Shadows Beneath

The world was changing all around us.

The more we ran, the more the city felt like it was falling apart, like reality itself was folding onto itself. The buildings contorted into strange angles, the structure themselves bending beneath that disturbing blue light. The streets stretched out longer than they had any right to, alleys bent back into places they shouldn’t have. It felt as if the city had begun to defy the laws of space and time.

And the whispers.

They were growing louder.

As we rounded another corner, Rika tightened her grip on my wrist. The sound of our feet stepping on the pavement were swallowed up by the oppressive hum that had ingrained itself in the air.

“We’ve got to get off the streets,” she panted. “This — whatever this is — it’s contagious.

She was right. That glow was no longer just an amorphous light. It was seeping through the cracks of the pavement, pulsing under our feet, crawling up the walls like veins of light.

I looked around frantically to find some shelter.

Then I saw it.

An entrance to the subway half buried in rubble. The metal railing was bent and rusted, and the sign above it flickered and buzzed with failing electricity. But the staircases going underground were intact.

“Down here!” I tugged Rika toward it.

She paused for just a moment, then stepped into the shadows behind me.

We were even stripped of the air as soon as we dropped.

It was humid, saturated with rust and mildew. The tunnel walls were greased with decades of grime, and sparklers of emergency lights popped erratically at twisted angles, throwing shadows along the tiled walls.

Rika exhaled sharply. “Great. Because underground in a city that’s falling down is absolutely the safest place to be.”

I brushed past her sarcasm and continued, gingerly stepping over shards of glass and debris. As we went further, the hum grew quieter — as if muffled by layers of concrete and steel.

For the first time in what seemed like hours, there was something resembling silence.

We reached the platform.

It was deserted, except for old advertisements that clung to the walls like dead skin and a few broken suitcases that had been left behind in haste. One train stood idle on the tracks, its doors slightly open, its interior dark.

Rika nudged me. “Think it works?”

I doubted it. The city’s power grid had been shaky since the flood and whatever was happening above wasn’t helping. But it didn’t matter. The train wasn’t our way out — it was a disguise.

“We’ll take a break here,” I said, getting onto the platform. “Just for a little while.”

Rika didn’t argue. She was tired — and so was I.

The three of us entered one of the train cars and found seats near the rear so that we could see the entrance. Torn cushions and thick dust everywhere, but it was somewhere to breathe.

We both fell into stunned silence for a moment.

Then Rika broke the silence.

“That thing,” she whispered. “The one in the house.”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

She took a deep breath and ran a hand through her frizzy hair. It was like, ‘It wasn’t just some… hallucination, was it? We both saw it.”

I swallowed. “It knew my name.”

That was what gave me the most anxiety. Not just the way it glided, not just the way it flickered through the darkness.

It had called me by my name.

That meant it wasn’t random.

It was here for me.

Rika shifted uncomfortably. “And those things outside. The ones we saw before we ran …They had no normal, either.”

I nodded, holding on to the edge of my seat. “Something is happening to the city. It’s changing.”

Rika rubbed her arms, as if to deflect a chill. “What if it’s something that’s not just city?”

The thought chilled my blood.

What if this wasn’t isolated?

What if what was happening here, was happening everywhere?

Before I could reply, a noise sounded in the station.

A low, metallic groan.

Both of us froze.

It came again — closer this time.

Rika reached for my hand, her fingers icy. “That wasn’t the wind, right?”

I shook my head.

I was slowly turning to face the door of the train car.

It looked like it belonged to the other side of the world—through the cracked glass I saw the platform; it was empty, just as we had left it.

But the air felt wrong.

Thicker.

Like there was something invisible pushing against it.

And then—

A flicker.

A glimpse barely, just enough to set my pulse racing.

A shadow. Not in the light of the casting, not in the shape of anything human.

It flowed along the back wall, its shape rippling and twisting like liquid smoke.

Then it stopped.

And turned toward us.

It dropped suddenly into the temperature.

Rika gasped, her talons pinching my arm.

I didn’t move.

Neither did the shadow.

It was waiting.

Testing.

And then—

The lights flickered.

The long-silent emergency sirens outside suddenly emitted a short, static-filled wail before the wail died again.

And the shadow lunged.

The force smashed the train’s windows.

Rika screamed.

I grabbed her wrist and ran.

We leapt out of the other door, the impact knocking us to the platform. The train rattled violently behind us, metal straining against pressure we couldn’t see. The shadow within writhed, strobing like a corrupt video, the figure splitting and reassembling in frenzied, wrong-seeming jags.

I didn’t stop to watch.

We raced to the maintenance tunnels at the opposite end of the station, diving through an ajar door just as another torrent of force battered the train behind us.

The door banged shut behind us.

Darkness swallowed us whole.

The only sound for a long moment was our ragged breathing.”

Then, faintly, we heard it once more.

The whisper.

Closer than before.

And this time, it wasn’t calling my name.

It was laughing.