Ha-eun crouched behind a floating slab of concrete, barely breathing after going through a life-and-death experience. The air where she was was thick, suffocating, as if the mysterious force bore a grudge against her presence. Her hands trembled as she clutched the knife she'd found at the campfire, its hilt engraved with ΔΣ, a symbol that is found in the Greek alphabet.
Suddenly terrain shifted to dark grey and broken obsidian pillars emerged from the ground, and mirror-like, shattered transparent glass floating around mid-air. A child's bicycle hung upside-down in the air, its wheels spinning lazily. A shattered mirror reflected a version of Ha-eun with hollow eyes and cracked lips.
She looked away as she remembered the most unpleasant thing that she hated.
"This isn't real. None of this is real. How am I getting out of this hellhole?" she muttered her herself.
The ache in her muscles was real. The stinging cut on her palm, where she'd gripped the knife too tightly, was real. And the corpse at her feet the corpse was undeniably real.
She'd stumbled upon it hours ago, half-buried in a dune of black sand. a person, A stranger.
His face was mummified, skin stretched rigid over bone, lips peeled back in a like in silent scream. A gas mask hung around his neck, its lenses were broken. Ha-eun knelt beside him, her throat tight.
"Who were you?" she whispered, her voice swallowed by the silence.
The man's backpack lay split open, spilling notebooks and rusted tools. She flipped through the pages, her fingers leaving smudges in the dust. Sketches of geometric symbols, equations that made her head throb, and a phrase scrawled in red ink.
"THE ARCHITECT IS A LIAR."
A faint glow caught the corner of her eye. Clutched in his bony fingers was a keycard labeled ΔΣ-7, its surface pristine despite the decay around it. She grabbed it, the corpse's joints snapping like dry twigs.
"Sorry," she muttered, though the words felt hollow. Death here was the only mercy.
She froze.
The sand around the corpse moved. Not wind—there was no wind. The granules rippled outward in circular waves, like something beneath the surface was… breathing.
"No," she breathed, scrambling back. "No, no, no "
The sand erupted.
It is uncoiled like smoke in its given form, all new and with rough edges. Ten feet tall, its body a shifting mass of obsidian shards that refracted distorted glimpses of the void. No face, no limbs, just a core of seething violet light, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
It screamed.
The sound wasn't normal. It vibrated in her teeth, her bones. Ha-eun's nose bled from shock. She ran.
The debris field twisted as she fled. A floating car crumpled like paper as the creature passed, its shard body slicing through steel. She ducked into a crumbling concrete tunnel suspended midair, its walls plastered with yellowed missing-person posters. Korean, English, languages she didn't recognize, all ages, all eras.
"Kim Joon-seo vanished in 1997…"
"Lucas Moreno, last seen in 2021…"
"Анна Петрова, исчезла 1965…"
The creature's shadow falls behind her. Ha-eun sneaks through a crack in the tunnel, landing on a floating slab of highway overpass. Below her, she only saw an abyss, its depths swirling with darkness.
The creature surged upward, shards puffing into spear-like blades. She barely dodged, the blade scraping harmlessly off her body.
"Great, now I have saved my body from falling into this hell," she thought. "Think, Ha Eun. Think."
She suddenly remembers the note from the campfire: "Time here isn't circular; it's folded. Survival is the only thing I can do now, find the Architect." The keycard in her pocket is ΔΣ-7.
What if this thing is part of the architect? And survival? Her mind raced with thoughts. She finally decided what to do.
The creature leapt. Ha-eun gripped the keycard and pressed it to her chest, as if it could shield her.
"Come on, you ugly bastard!" she yelled, voice cracking. "Hungry? Then eat me!"
She jumped into the abyss.
The abyss swallowed her. The cold air blew through her clothes and skin, but she couldn't say the exact feeling because she was busy with hungry creatures. While she falling, she felt like time was going slowly.
The creature followed, its shards screeching against while it falling.
She saw a floating shopping container. Ha-eun twisted, aiming for a floating shipping container. She crashed through its rusted door, rolling onto a floor filled with bodies. Dozens of them dried like the first corpse, all wearing gas masks. A makeshift lab? Monitors lined the walls, their screens static-filled. A chalkboard read:
"ARCHITECT'S RESEARCH LAB – SECTOR ΔΣ-7
BREACH CONTAINMENT = TERMINATE ALL"
The creature's nails spread through the container's walls. Ha-eun scrambled to a terminal, jamming the keycard into a slot.
ERROR. DNA MISMATCH.
"Damn it!"
A tendril grazed her shoulder, slicing through fabric and skin. Blood welled black, bubbling with stardust. She slammed the keycard again.
ERROR. DNA...
The creature's core is widening. Then the terminal exploded, and a dozen small pieces of metal shards pierced her thigh. Ha-eun screamed, collapsing behind an overturned lab table.
The creature loomed, nails retracting. For a moment, she hesitated. Then its core split open, a jaw lined with rotating teeth like broken satellites.
Ha-eun closed her eyes. Then A gunshot rang out.
"BANG"
The creature was tossed to the side with a burst of part of his body. Ha-eun blinked. A figure stood in the doorway, covered in shadows, tall, hooded, a rifle smoking in their hands.
"Move!" A woman's voice, more like a command, but rough.
Ha-eun lurched sideways as the stranger fired again. The bullets weren't metal, they burst into nets of crackling blue light, tangling the creature's tendrils.
"The core!" the woman barked. "Aim for the goddamn core!"
Ha-eun lunged, knife raised. The creature wriggled, but the nets held. She plunged the blade into its violet heart.
The creature exploded. A shockwave hurled her against the wall. Silence fell.
The stranger lowered her rifle. Her hood slipped, revealing gaunt features, skin mottled with galaxy-like lesions, and eyes that glowed faintly gold. Human, but not. Not anymore.
"You're lucky I track Voidborn migrations," she said, offering a gloved hand. "Name's Vega."
Ha-eun ignored the hand. "The Architect. Where is he?"
Vega smirked, tapping the chalkboard's ΔΣ-7. "You're standing in his graveyard." She kicked a corpse's boot. "These idiots thought they could bargain with him. Now they're fertilizer."
"And you?"
"I'm the pest controller he never paid." Vega reloaded her rifle with glowing cartridges. "Come on. That Voidborn was a scout. The hive's already hunting us."
Ha-eun didn't move. "Why help me?"
Vega's gaze dropped to Ha-eun's bleeding shoulder, the stardust swirling in her blood. "Because you're changing. Faster than I did. And if the hive takes you…" She cocked the rifle. "Let's just say you don't want to meet what they'll turn you into."
A low, collective hum vibrated through the container. Dozens of violet cores flickered in the abyss beyond.
Vega cursed. "Too late. Run!"
They fled through the debris field, with the Voidborn swarm closing in around them. Ha-eun's lungs burned, and her leg screamed with pain with each step. Behind them, Vega fired backward, launching nets of light that slowed the creatures, but not enough.
Ahead loomed a colossal structure: a fractured skyscraper fused with Gothic cathedral arches, its windows glowing a blood-red. Vega shoved Ha-eun toward a rusted service door.
"Who are those creatures?" Ha-eun asked as she ran alongside Vega.
"They are Voidborn," Vega replied. "They exist to kill any living being in their sight."
"Inside! Now!"
Ha-eun stumbled into a cavernous hall. The door was sealed behind them with a hiss of pressurized air. Vega slumped against a wall, her rifle clattering to the floor.
"Safe?" Ha-eun panted.
"Nothing's safe here." Vega pointed upward.
Ha-eun followed her gaze. The ceiling writhed with Voidborn larvae pulsing, translucent sacs veined with violet light. Inside each floated a humanoid figure, its features melting and reforming.
One sac burst. A half-formed creature slumped to the floor, its face a twisted mockery of Ha-eun's own.
"Welcome," Vega whispered, "to the hive."