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Crypts of the Forgotten

ivak2
14
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The average realized release rate over the past 30 days is 14 chs / week.
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Synopsis
In a world ravaged by war and crippled by corruption, seventeen-year-old Adrian Drenic is just another forgotten soul Dalvaria. Once part of a loving family, Adrian’s life was shattered when his father died in a bombing at a lab in the Astervian Empire, and his mother was killed by corruption in a hospital that collapsed, built so poorly it should never have stood in the first place. Orphaned at fifteen, Adrian survives in the slums, barely scraping by. But everything changes when he takes a job as a low-level smuggler. What starts as a desperate attempt to survive soon pulls him into the shadows of the city—into ancient tunnels beneath the surface. There, he stumbles upon a hidden facility unlike anything he could imagine. A place filled with forgotten technology, secrets of the old world, and the tools to change the future. Now Adrian must decide who he will become. In a world that has lost all hope, he may be the one to rebuild it or bury it for good. Dark, mysterious, and hauntingly real, Crypts of the Forgotten is a gripping journey through grief, survival, and the power of hidden legacy.
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Chapter 1 - Adrian Drenic

The bench creaked beneath him, its rusted bolts barely holding together the splintered wood, long forgotten by any maintenance crew. Weeds pushed through the cracked concrete paths of the long-forgotten park. The rusted remains of the swings swayed lazily in the wind, their chains barely holding on. 

Above him, the moon hung like a pale eye, distant and watchful. Its light spilled over the ruins of what was once a city park, bathing broken lampposts and vandalized statues in cold silver.

He sipped from a small plastic cup, the bitter black coffee doing little to keep the chill off from the night air, his tattered jacket swaying in the silent wind.

Seventeen years old and already tired of life.

He leaned back and exhaled slowly, watching the fog of his breath dissolve into the night.

Tonight, he was celebrating a small victory, or what should have felt like a victory. His name hadn't been on the draft list.

No mandatory service, no deployment to some distant conflict in a land he'd never even heard of, dying for politicians who couldn't care less if his corpse made it home. The list was announced this morning, outside the police station. Nailed to a withered tree, hundreds of names, just from his city alone. But not his. He had read it once. Then again. Then a third time, his heart pounding like it was trying to escape his chest.

The coffee was getting cold. Another sip, just before the last of its warmth faded. Bitter, just like his life had become. He liked it that way. The bitterness grounded him. Made everything else feel honest.

Most of his friends, at least the ones he used to have, had already been taken by the draft over the past few years. The last one, Cassian, was called today. His name sat there on the list like all the others. That left him truly alone now. No one to talk to. No one who remembered what life was like before everything started falling apart.

A month ago, the world had crossed a line it hadn't dared touch in nearly a century. A nuclear bomb, not a threat or a warning this time, was dropped on the northern territories, wiping an entire city off the map. No warning. No explanation that the public could trust, just fire, silence, and then a carefully worded statement.

They called it "a strategic measure". The propaganda centers—what passed for news stations these days—aired it on every screen in the city. Calm voices over soft music, reassuring everyone that it had been necessary. Controlled. Measured. For peace.

The people weren't happy about it. There were protests, marches, chants, even candles and signs in front of government buildings. They didn't last long. The police arrived within the hour, masked and armored, flooding the streets with chemical gas that clung to skin and lungs like smoke from a burning house. Protesters were beaten, dragged into vans, and vanished. No names, no trials—just gone.

Since then, even whispers felt dangerous. People kept their heads down. Eyes forward. Mouths shut.

He drank the last of the coffee, the final sip gone lukewarm and sour on his tongue. With a quiet sigh, he stood, stretching the stiffness from his legs. The plastic cup crumpled in his hand as he walked over to the nearest trash bin—rusted, dented, and overflowing with filth no one had bothered to clean. He dropped the cup on top of the heap and turned away without watching it fall.

Hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind, he started walking. No destination. Just motion. Sometimes that was enough.

There was no real reason to get up early in the mornings anymore. The woodworking shop where he had worked had shut down two weeks ago. Orders slowed down, the bills went up, and eventually, there was nothing left for the inspector. No "bonus" in an envelope to keep things running. After that, the permits disappeared like smoke.

He only had the job because the owner, Ben, had been a friend of his father, a kind man who helped him as much as he could after the death of his parents.

His father had been a physicist, well-paid and highly regarded. Back then, life had been good. He'd grown up in clean apartments, studied in private schools where the curriculum was lighter on propaganda, and even had a tutor at home. They had lived in Astervia, one of the world's great superpowers, thanks to his father's work, back when life still felt stable, even hopeful.

The lab where his father worked was bombed. His body was never found in the rubble. One more line in the long list of strategic bombings.

After that, everything went downhill. They had to leave Astervia and return to their hometown, carrying little more than grief and fading memories.

Two years later, his mother died in a hospital fire. Trying to help evacuate patients when the building collapsed around her. Later, it was discovered that the hospital hadn't met even the most basic safety regulations. No arrests were made. No trials. No consequences. Just another normal day in this hellhole.

Overhead, a soft mechanical hum broke the silence. He looked up.

A surveillance drone drifted slowly across the sky, its blinking red light scanning the dark streets below. Just one of many that buzzed endlessly above the city like metal vultures.

They weren't even ours—Astervian machines, watching from above, here to protect us, or so the officials claimed. To keep the peace. To help stabilize the region. Our greatest ally, they said.

Ever since, twenty years ago, right after their sanctions kicked in and started strangling Dalvaria's economy like a noose around the neck of a dying man. Or at least that's what dad used to say.

He scratched the back of his head and turned away from the drone that had disappeared behind a building. The street ahead stretched empty, lit only by flickering lamps that buzzed like dying insects. Broken glass crunched beneath his boots as he crossed the road, hands still stuffed deep in his pockets.

He lived in what people now called "the slums," a term that didn't even exist a few years ago. Back then, it was just another district; worn down, sure, but not separated by barbed labels or class lines. There weren't names for the poor and poorer. No checkpoints. No invisible borders drawn by wealth and fear. It was just a place where people lived.

Now it was a warning label, a shadowed zone most people avoided unless they had to. No garbage collection, a few working streetlights, and no police unless someone high up wanted someone low down to disappear. It was not the prettiest place.

The walk back to his apartment was the same as always. Walls with peeling paint, rusted metal, and windows lit by candles or not at all. The elevators in his building hadn't worked in years, and the stairwell reeked of piss and mold. He used to count the steps, but lately he just took them in silence.

The door of his apartment was a breath away from falling apart, but it still held. It was a two-room apartment. It was where Father lived before finishing college. The only thing I was left with after everything happened. The building that he lived in previously was burned down, and the insurance check never came.

It was not much, but it was everything he had.

The lights worked once every few weeks, and tonight was one of those rare nights. A dim bulb buzzed overhead, casting a tired yellow glow on cracked plaster walls and a sagging ceiling. The water ran brown for a few seconds before it cleared. If it did. He didn't drink it unless he had to.

A mattress on the floor, a table missing one leg propped up with bricks, and a secondhand radio that only picked up static and government broadcasts.

The second room was supposed to be a bedroom, but he used it for storage, mostly junk he hadn't gotten around to throwing out. Broken tools, old clothes, empty cans stacked neatly in a corner like he was pretending they might be useful again someday.

The walls were bare except for a single photo of his parents, sun-faded and curling at the edges. He didn't look at it much anymore.

He dropped his keys on the table, kicked off his boots, and sank onto the mattress with a long sigh. The silence was heavy here, but he'd gotten used to it. It was honest, at least.

His stomach grumbled, a dull, twisting ache that had become so familiar it almost felt like background noise. He hadn't eaten since yesterday morning.

He lay back on the mattress, pulling the thin blanket over himself, more for the ritual than the warmth. The fabric smelled faintly of dust and old sweat, but it was his. Like the walls. Like the silence. Like the emptiness.

Sleep came slowly, then all at once. Pulled under by exhaustion and hunger and the weight of a world that never stopped taking.

He didn't know how long he'd been asleep when the sound hit him.

Screaming.

Distant at first, then closer—rising panic, voices tangled together in fear and confusion. And beneath it, something even more jarring: a siren. Faint, far away, but unmistakable. Wailing through the night like a blade dragged across steel.

The kind of alarm meant for air raids. The kind of sound that used to mean run for shelter.

But there was no shelter in the slums.

Except the alarms in his district hadn't worked in years. Broken, forgotten, like everything else. No one had ever bothered to fix them.

He blinked once, then shut his eyes again.

Didn't matter.

He was tired. His stomach ached. His head felt heavy.

So he just lay there, staring up at the cracked ceiling, the sound of chaos muffled by concrete walls and exhaustion. Eyes open, then closed, waiting for sleep or the end—whichever came first.

He wasn't afraid of dying. He just didn't know what living was supposed to feel like anymore.