The doors loomed ahead.
Kane moved toward them, breath rasping.
The Boneglass knife pulsed faintly in his grip, reacting to something beyond.
The mark over his heart — the Black Meridian sigil — burned hotter under his skin.
He should have turned back.
Every instinct screamed it.
But some other part of him — the part that had tasted the Rot, the part that wanted to hunt — pushed him forward.
---
The iron doors groaned open at the slightest touch.
Beyond them, the world had changed again.
It wasn't a parking structure anymore.
It was a cathedral, built from bone and rusted wire, stretching endlessly into a black sky stitched with red lightning.
Something was singing, high and soft, words too broken to understand.
Rows of pews lined the ground — but they weren't empty.
Figures sat slumped in every seat — human-shaped, but still.
Too still.
Kane stepped forward cautiously, knife raised.
The singing grew louder.
He walked between the pews.
The figures were corpses.
Their skin was stretched tight, almost translucent.
Their mouths were stitched closed with barbed wire.
Their eyes — if they had any — stared sightlessly ahead.
Kane's breath caught.
Some of them wore paramedic uniforms.
His old uniform.
He stumbled back.
The corpses moved.
---
A hundred heads snapped toward him in unison.
The stitches on their mouths strained — then snapped — as they opened their jaws impossibly wide.
From every throat came the same whispered word:
> "Kane."
The corpses rose.
---
Kane backed away, heart hammering.
The Boneglass knife thrummed violently, almost dragging his hand.
The Rot inside him snarled — eager — but he hesitated.
Using it again...
Last time, it had cost him something.
He could feel it, even now — the black veins under his skin, the faint ache behind his eyes.
Something was growing inside him.
---
The first corpse lunged.
Kane ducked under its swipe, slashing upward — the Boneglass knife severed its arm at the elbow.
Instead of bleeding, the wound hissed, pouring out black mist.
The corpse didn't even flinch.
It grabbed for him with its other hand.
Kane twisted away — straight into another grasping body.
Fingers, slick and cold, closed around his throat.
More were coming.
Dozens.
Maybe hundreds.
> "Use it," a voice growled inside his skull.
"Feed us."
It wasn't his own thought.
It was the Rot speaking.
Kane clenched his jaw.
He had no choice.
He let go.
---
The world bent inward again.
Black fire erupted from Kane's body — raw, hungry, screaming.
It swept across the pews, across the corpses, devouring them in writhing tendrils.
The dead shrieked — not in human voices — but in the voices of things that should never have worn human flesh.
The Rot feasted.
Kane fell to his knees, trembling.
His vision blurred — he saw things not meant for living eyes:
A tower made of open mouths, singing.
A river of hands, reaching up to pull the stars down.
A creature with a thousand eyes, none of them blind, none of them merciful.
The Rot whispered:
> "You were made to be more.
Let us finish what the world began."
Kane squeezed his eyes shut.
"No," he rasped.
"You don't control me."
The fire guttered.
Silence fell.
The corpses were gone.
Only ash remained — swirling slowly in the dead air.
---
He forced himself to stand.
The mark on his chest burned hotter than ever.
Beneath his skin, he felt it:
New veins, black and sharp.
New muscles, tighter, more responsive.
The Rot was changing him.
Making him stronger.
But at a price he hadn't yet seen.
---
Ahead, at the far end of the bone cathedral, a new door waited.
Carved into the surface was a shape Kane recognized instinctively:
A symbol of a Breach.
A tear between worlds.
If he passed through, there would be no going back.
No more pretending he was human.
Only the hunt.
Only the hunger.
Kane closed his eyes for a moment.
Then he walked forward, toward the door — and whatever nightmare waited beyond it.
The Boneglass knife whispered in his hand.
The Rot inside him laughed softly.