Sasha, Lila, and Sison huddled in the dust-choked evidence room, the dim light flickering like it feared the past. Each drawer they opened groaned, like waking something better left forgotten.
Then Sison froze. His fingers hovered over a thick folder, sealed in old red tape. On the label: "The Lorie Incident – 1949."
Sasha leaned closer. "Lorie?"
Sison didn't speak at first. His hand trembled slightly.
"I was there," he finally said, voice low. "I was fourteen."
He tore the tape and opened it.
Inside—photos warped with age. A burned-down ice-cream truck. Police sketches of Lorie. Journal entries, feverish and incomplete. And a final image—of a teenage boy, Sison himself, wrapped in a bloodied blanket, staring blankly into space. His eyes weren't crying. They were watching something no one else could see.
A report from the lead investigator read:
"He survived, but he won't speak. Not about the singing. Not about the woman who bled black. Not about the man who opened the shop."
Sasha looked up at Sison.
"You saw her."
"I still do," he whispered.
The lights flickered once—then died.
Sasha grabbed the folder, now wet with dripping ink. Fara's presence above them was like a shadow sliding across skin. Silent, until it wasn't.
Drip.
Drip.
DRIP.
Black ink oozed from the ceiling vents. The pages in Sison's hand began to smoke as the liquid ate into the paper.
"Go, GO!" he shouted.
They sprinted out of the evidence room just as the ceiling above collapsed with a guttural slap, like a giant tongue licking the floor clean. The hall was tilting. Cracking. They heard screams—not from the building, but inside the walls.
Sam burst into view from the corridor, panting, clutching a broken flashlight. "Nina! Toff! Downstairs—NOW!"
They met at the stairwell. Nina held her arm, bleeding, as Toff limped beside her, helping her down. Sasha, Lila, and Sison joined them. The air tasted like rot and ash. The building shook again.
But when they reached the first floor… They stopped.
The entire ground floor had sunken. Like it had been swallowed by the earth. Walls were twisted, windows were filled with dirt and stone. Doors bent inward as if the ground was chewing on the station. Debris and corpses littered the hallway. Desks. Officers. Civilians. Half-covered in mud, their expressions still caught in shock.
They were underground now. Whether by descent or by force, it didn't matter.
They were trapped.
Sam turned, flashlight shaking in his hand. "This isn't just a collapse. This is a transformation. Something's forcing the building into the ground. Like it's pulling us closer to the shop."
They rounded a corner, toward what used to be the lobby, and spotted movement behind a pillar.
Sison raised his weapon. "HEY—Who's there!?"
A figure stepped out, trembling, hands raised.
"Don't shoot," he gasped. "Please. I'm not one of them."
He was in his thirties, with dust in his beard and dried blood on his shirt. Unarmed. Eyes wide with trauma.
"What's your name?" Sam asked.
The man swallowed hard. "Migz. Miguel Castillo. I was arrested for— I don't even know anymore. I was here when the floor broke. I've been hiding."
Toff nodded grimly and pulled Migz behind the remains of a desk. "Then keep hiding."
Suddenly, a scream echoed from deeper below. Not close—but deep, in some sub-level none of them remembered existing. Followed by growling. Wet. Guttural. Multiplying.
Nina looked at the ground. Her voice cracked. "There's more of them."
"More of what?" Sasha asked.
Migz answered, eyes staring through the wall.
"…Children."
Everyone froze.
Sam asked carefully, "What do you mean?"
"I saw one. Last night. Crawling upside down on the ceiling. Wearing a schoolbag. But its face was… it wasn't right. It kept changing."
Lila gripped Sasha's shoulder.
"Lukas," Sasha whispered.
No one said anything for a long second. Until the pipes groaned above them, like lungs inhaling. Then exhaling through vents. And Mila's voice whispered again from Sasha's coat pocket: "…mama… come home…"
The stairwell groaned with every step as Sasha, Lila, Sison, Sam, Nina, Toff, and Migz tore their way up to the fourth floor—the last floor still untouched by the rising dirt and ink below. The walls were cracking, buckling from the pressure. Somewhere beneath them, a voice laughed—deep, glitched, and wrong, like it was learning how.
They burst into the hallway. Shattered light flickered through the dust. The floor sloped unnaturally to one side. Files and furniture were piled like forgotten memories. They reached the windows. Sasha screamed.
Outside, the entire city was collapsing. Buildings sank like they were being devoured. Homes, offices, even the church—the steeple cracked and folded like paper. Smoke billowed up from the craters left behind. Cars vanished as the roads caved in. The sky wasn't gray anymore. It was sick, a mottled swirl of red, black, and violet like bruised skin.
"The whole city's falling," Lila whispered. "It's not just us. It's all of Ishama."
They acted fast. Toff smashed the nearest window with a chair. Glass rained down into the chaos below.
"One way out!" he shouted.
Without thinking, they jumped. Four stories down. They landed hard on the roof of a buried cruiser. The metal groaned, but held. One by one, they rolled off, limping, bleeding—but alive. They ran.
Behind them, the station folded into itself, like a dying animal. Cracks split through the pavement. The ground shook again, and this time, it howled. They heard it. The Earth howled.
Cracks tore open ahead of them. Black smoke hissed out like steam from hell, filling the air with a burnt-metal stench. The cracks moved—followed them.
"Run!" Sison bellowed. "Don't stop!"
They sprinted past collapsing homes and melting signs. The cracks widened, teeth-like ridges forming around their edges.
And then— Kael stumbled.
"KAEL!" Sasha turned.
The ground was split between them. Too far to reach. Too far to leap.
He was alone. The others stopped—screamed for him. Kael looked down.
The crack beneath him opened wider, like a mouth yawning awake. And from within—shadows floated upward. Shapes with no form, eyes with no face. They whispered. They screamed. They sang.
Kael didn't scream. He stood his ground, eyes wide as they surrounded him. Then—bit into him. His flesh ripped.
The sound of skin peeling. Arteries snapping. His scream didn't even have time to escape before his body was torn apart. His eyes rolled back. His chest bloomed red. Strips of him were taken into the dark. What remained—a skeleton, scorched clean.
And the shadows? They rose. They flew toward the shop.
Every tendril. Every month. Every tooth of blackness slithered through the sky and poured into the cracked walls of Dead Shop.
The shop shuddered. Walls mended. Wood bent and rebuilt itself. Signs reformed. Windows blinked open like eyes waking from a dream. It was healing.
The city was dying to heal the shop. The survivors turned and ran again. No one looked back.