Chapter 5 – The Breath Beneath the Earth
I found the entrance by accident.
A sunken stairwell behind an abandoned bathhouse, half-covered in rusted fencing and a sheet of cracked plexiglass. It wasn't marked. No signs. No warnings. Just a feeling in my chest—tight, hot, and urgent. Like something inside me needed to get lower. To disappear beneath the city's skin.
The stairs groaned under my weight.
I held the rail with both hands, my ribs still aching from the fall days ago. The concrete was damp and green with mold. Each breath I took tasted like wet rust and mildew.
I didn't stop.
I couldn't.
The noise of the surface—the noise of the people, the spirits, the watching things—felt thinner here. Muted. Like the world itself had turned down its volume.
I reached the bottom.
What I found wasn't a tunnel.
It was a cavity.
A vast, half-carved wound in the city's underbelly. Bits of subway rail jutted from collapsed walls, but no trains had ever passed through. Graffiti glowed faintly under the soft flicker of broken lights. A single vending machine, long dead, stood crooked in the far corner.
I stayed.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I had nowhere else left to go.
I sat against the wall and tried to calm my breathing. My fingers were still shaking. My eyes burned. My stomach begged for food I didn't have.
And yet, beneath it all, something else stirred.
Not hunger.
Not fear.
Something deeper. A low hum beneath my ribs. The same rhythm that pulsed through my tattoo when I touched it, though I hadn't touched it now. It was warm again. Throbbing faintly. Like it was trying to breathe through my skin.
I tried to ignore it.
I failed.
The air in the tunnel changed.
First, it grew colder. Then heavier. Like I'd fallen underwater without realizing it.
I stood, too fast.
That's when I heard it.
A wet, dragging noise. Somewhere deeper in the dark. Not footsteps. Not speech. Just movement—limbs too long, nails scraping stone, cloth catching on rusted pipe.
Then the crying started.
Not loud.
A whimper.
Broken. Rhythmic. Like a baby had been crying for hours and didn't know how to stop.
I backed away from the sound, but it moved with me.
The crying became louder.
Closer.
I turned and ran.
I made it only a few feet before my foot caught on a bent rail and I fell hard against the concrete. My palms tore open. Blood spattered. My ribs howled.
The crying stopped.
I didn't move.
I didn't even breathe.
Something was behind me.
I turned.
And I saw it.
It didn't walk.
It floated—barely off the ground, limbs dangling like they weren't meant to be used. Its body was wrapped in soiled gauze, knotted and sagging. Pieces of its arms and legs stuck out at wrong angles, like branches snapped but not broken off.
Its face…
There was no face.
Just bandages soaked through with something black and pulsing. Like mold had taken root in its skull.
The crying came again—but the thing didn't move its mouth.
It didn't have one.
My body refused to move.
The spirit came closer.
The lights above flickered and popped. The air began to buzz. My ears rang. And still, the thing came closer—not crawling, not lunging. Just… arriving.
Its hand brushed the wall beside me.
The concrete cracked.
Not shattered.
Withered.
Like the wall had aged a hundred years in a second.
I tried to crawl backward.
I couldn't.
My hands weren't responding.
My legs were numb.
The crying spirit lowered its head toward mine.
That's when my tattoo flared.
Not in pain.
In warning.
The heat surged outward from my right arm, spread through my chest, and then into the air like smoke. The world shimmered.
The crying stopped.
The spirit's gauze fluttered, though there was no wind.
And then its body jerked violently backward—like something had hit it from inside.
It convulsed.
Screamed.
Not with sound.
With pressure.
The air around it cracked.
I couldn't see anything, but I felt it—something holy and vicious, pouring from me like breath I'd been holding too long. The spirit's bandages blackened. Its body twisted. Then it vanished into itself like a flame snuffed out by its own heat.
Silence followed.
Real silence.
Not the absence of noise—something more complete.
The air returned to normal.
My arms collapsed beneath me.
I vomited blood.
My vision swam.
Somewhere above me, I heard footsteps.
Real ones.
Clean. Intentional.
I looked up.
There was a figure at the edge of the stairwell.
White hair.
Blindfold.
Standing still, like he'd been watching for a while.
His head tilted slightly.
"Well," he said, his voice echoing faintly down the tunnel. "That's new."
And for the first time since arriving in this world, I wasn't alone.
I passed out before I could speak his name.