The world fractured. Not with light this time, but with a nauseating lurch, a tearing sensation that yanked them through dimensions. Morgan slammed onto a cold, hard floor, the others landing in a tangle nearby. Disoriented, gasping, he blinked, trying to make sense of their new surroundings.
They were in another chamber, similar yet unsettlingly different from the one they'd just fled. This darkness felt ancient, sealed, tasting of dust and forgotten eons, unlike the raw, predatory blackness of the world outside. Strange, intricate scriptures snaked across the walls, interwoven with disturbing bas-reliefs depicting the Darkness Monsters – but subtly altered, somehow more evolved, engaged in scenes of cosmic horror. More statues, identical to the terrifying sentinels flanking the previous door, stood guard in the corners, their empty gazes promising silent damnation. And in the exact center of the room, emanating no light but paradoxically seeming darker than the surrounding void, was a large, perfectly circular symbol etched into the floor – a vortex that seemed to drink the very shadows.
"What... what the hell just happened?" Morgan groaned, pushing himself up, his head swimming. "Where are we?" He fumbled for his watch, It read 2:00 AM. His blood ran cold. "No. No way. That's... that's impossible. A whole day?" He tapped the watch face frantically, then shook his wrist, but the time remained stubbornly fixed. It felt like mere seconds had passed since they touched the relic.
Then he felt it – a cool, smooth weight against his collarbone. He looked down. The spiraling circular green relic with the scriptureson it , the object that had floated moments ago, was now suspended from a newly formed cord around his neck, pulsing with a barely perceptible emerald light.
"Morgan..." Elara breathed, pointing a trembling finger. "That pendant... it's the relic from the other room!"
"They are not the same."
The voice, cool and feminine, echoed slightly in the chamber's strange acoustics, startling them all. It came from the deepest shadows near the entrance of the this room . Morgan instantly snapped his pistol up, aiming towards the sound. "Who's there? Show yourself!" Elara, Amelia, and Victor scrambled to ready their own weapons, forming a tight, defensive cluster.
Two figures detached themselves from the gloom, moving with unnerving grace. The speaker emerged first – a woman with hair as black as polished obsidian, eyes a startling, luminous red, holding a gleaming katana with casual expertise. Following closely was a man with the same dark hair and intense red eyes, his hand resting near the hilt of a sheathed sword at his side.
Morgan kept his aim steady, his gaze flicking from the woman's unnerving eyes to her weapon, then stopping short. Around her neck hung a pendant – same spiral relic with scripture and symbols on it shape, perhaps, but unmistakably similar to the one he now wore, glowing with the same soft, green light.
"Look!" Elara gasped beside him. "She has one too!"
"Greetings," the woman said, her red eyes sweeping over them calmly, assessing their fear and aggression with unnerving detachment. "My name is Chloe. This is my brother, Rowan. We intend you no harm. You can lower your weapons."
Morgan hesitated, his mind racing. Strangers. Red eyes. Impossible pendants. A bizarre, alien location. A lost day. Nothing made sense. But their current position was untenable – lost, confused, and potentially surrounded. With visible reluctance, he slowly lowered his pistol, though he kept his finger near the trigger. "Alright," he said, his voice tight with suspicion. "Start talking. Where are we? How did we get here?
Chloe stepped closer, her movements fluid, her gaze fixed on the relic around Morgan's neck. Rowan remained a silent, watchful presence behind her. "As I said," she murmured, tilting her head slightly as she examined his pendant, "they are not the same."
Morgan's patience snapped. "Enough riddles! Explain. Now. In words we can understand," he growled, irritation making his voice harsh.
Chloe met his glare, unfazed. "You came through a doorway, yes? One flanked by statues like those," she gestured to the corner figures. "Covered in script you couldn't read?"
Elara shot a wide-eyed glance at Amelia and Victor. How could she know?
"How?" Morgan demanded.
"Because we did too," Chloe stated simply. "We found a similar door standing alone in the middle of a ruined street, while searching for someone. Inside, we found this ," she indicated her pendant , "floating, pulsing with light. Not inert, as they are now."
Morgan watched her intently, searching for any sign of deception. Her story mirrored theirs too closely to be a coincidence. Another apocalypse anomaly?
Chloe continued, "I was attempting to decipher the symbols on its surface. I touched a specific sequence..." She paused, her red eyes meeting Morgan's. "And in an instant, we were here. That was one week ago, according to our time sense."
A week? The missing day on Morgan's watch suddenly felt even more sinister. The realization clicked – the relic wasn't just a key, it was a transport system, and a faulty, time-distorting one at that. "Do you remember the sequence you touched?" he asked urgently.
Chloe nodded. "Perfectly." She looked again at his pendant. "Yours possesses many symbols mine lacks, and vice-versa. But the specific combination I activated... I see those same glyphs on your relic." Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "It suggests these pendants respond to specific activation patterns, teleporting the user to predetermined locations. By sheer, improbable chance, it seems you triggered the exact sequence that brought you to this specific place."
Morgan absorbed this, the bizarre logic fitting the impossible facts. He nodded slowly. "That... makes a twisted kind of sense." He took a steadying breath, forcing himself to adapt. "I'm Morgan." He gestured to the others. "This is Elara. And these two are Amelia and Victor." He met Chloe's gaze directly. "So, where exactly is here?"
We're still trying to determine that," Chloe replied. "We've explored parts of this structure. It's vast, and the architecture... it's not human. Similar materials and design to the doorway you used. Another anomaly, we assume. As for dangers..." Her expression became fractionally tighter. "The Darkness Monsters are here, but not, it seems, on this particular level. They infest the floors above. And they adapt. They grow stronger the higher you go. We couldn't defeat the ones on the third floor."
Amelia gasped, "Y-you fought them? Inside?"
" We did," Chloe confirmed, her voice chillingly calm. "Decapitation seems effective. At least, for the lower-level ones we've managed to dispatch. It's the only method we've found that guarantees termination."
Morgan processed this instantly – the click of understanding why his bullets hadn't been enough, why the creature he'd shot had only screamed. They needed to be beheaded. He filed the crucial, brutal information away. Taking another deep breath, feeling the weight of their situation press down, he asked the question that mattered most: "So, how do we get out of this place?"