As the journals malevolent power bleeds into their minds, Cathy
the Empath becomes its vessel. Her body contorts, her voice
fractures, and a black inky fluid becomes her screen.
She doesn't just read the journal, she feels every death
recorded in its pages. What is the terrible truth
behind Project Ladder Rung? Who are the architects they keep
mentioning, and what weeds in the terrifying void when the
upscenador finally consumes them, the psychics stand on the
precipice. Will this hidden journal be the
key to their escape, or the trigger for their damnation?
The answers lie behind the threshold, in a darkness that
breathes. Listen now, but don't listen
alone. Dean moved, not spread, moved
like a living thing squirming under glass.
He cut his eyes at us being squirmed, revealing a hidden
text and blood. You were bred to open the door.
Sarah punched John, screaming. You knew we were marked, but her
fists sank into his chest like wet clay.
His skin rippled, revealing glyphs beneath.
He's been marked since birth. The air turned thick and sticky
like syrup. John suddenly recoils from the
journal, not because of its content, but because he heard my
suspicion squirming in his mind. John knows more than he's
saying. Amelia shouted as he grabbed the
journal. Clutching it is clutching it
like a lifeline. It's the only way out.
Somewhere in the dark, something rustled.
Not paper this time. Something slower, something
deliberate. My heart snagged against my
ribs. Was it memory breathing through
the dust, or something wading deeper inside?
We're spread out, half searching, half fleeing from the
weight of our own terror. Each step felt wrong, as though
the floor shifted minutely under foot, bucking like skin
stretched too thin. The stale air vibrated with
tension, the scents of unseen eyes brushing over the nape of
my neck. I kept moving, I had to.
Motion was survival. In the flicker of the dying
bulb, I caught glimpses, diagrams scalded in languages
that should not exist, anatomical sketches stitched
together with frantic ink, maps of nowhere, calendars whose
dates ended abruptly, as if history itself had simply
stopped. I tried to blink the scene away,
but the aftermath clung behind my eyelids, pulsing like memory,
like guilt, like something wanting me to remember it.
The symbols we had seen before, the impossible glyphs, burn
faintly from the margins of the pages, like embers refusing to
die. Staring at the pages, the glyphs
slightly morphed, squirmed and rearranged themselves.
The pages captivate me until they bled.
I ran my fingers along the spine of a heavy tone and flinched.
It was warm to the touch. Behind me, Emil muttered
something too soft. Here.
Sarah gasped. John's hand flew back as if
burned. The journal fell open, its
page's breathing not just a Nachian.
EKG lines, seismograph spikes, a child's frantic scrawl, and a
crayon of a door with too many hinges.
The words first started not from the buck, from us.
Emil's voice, unbidden, slithered from his lips.
You've been here before, haven't you, John?
The thudding wasn't a sound. It was a silence eating sound.
Each pulse erased the buzz of the bulb, the rest of Sarah's
breath. The word help.
I just whisper. Only our heartbeats remain.
And then, and then the wet, grating slick.
Something unpeeled itself from the far wall.
A heartbeat. Not mechanical, not human.
Something older there itself seemed to pulse around us, stick
with the scent of ozone and something sweetly organic, like
rotting fruit in an empty Chapel.
My skin prickled with the certainty that we were being
measured, assessed by whatever weighted in that darkness.
John's eyes darted not to the dark void, but to me.
He knew what I'd seen, what I'd remembered.
The darkness ahead shuddered, not like a door opening, but
like a sleeper stirring beneath thin sheets.
Shapes suggested themselves at the edge of vision, angles that
hurt to look at directly, curves that defied natural law.
So as papers slipped from numb fingers, Emil took a halting
step forward, his face slack with trouble.
Wonder. Only John resisted, his breath
coming in. Sharp panic burst the fogged and
suddenly frigid air which clung to my skin like breath dink
dark, wrong and sentient. The philosophy lectures from my
university came back unbidden, Professor Cal Isle droning about
forbidden knowledge. Some doors aren't meant to be
opened because what weights beyond doesn't enter our world,
it rewrites it. Soundless invitation resonated
in my bones, not words but pure intent.
By passing years to speak directly to the reptilian brain,
it carried the weight of centuries, of something that had
weighted longer than human civilization.
Come. Sarah moved first, drawn like
iron to a magnet, and meal followed, his usual nervous
synergy replaced with eerie calm.
Even John's resistance crumbled, his body moving while his eyes
seemed protest. The wall sweated formaldehyde
and scripture. Science had become scripture
here. As I crossed the threshold, 3
truths burned themselves into my mind.
The symbols carved in our bones weren't markings, they were
addresses. Doctor Hart hadn't been
experimenting on us, she'd been preparing us as offerings.
That smell, the almond and vanilla, wasn't from the lap, it
was from the scent of the door's breath.
The darkness beyond wasn't empty.
It watched with patient hunger of a predator, like had seen
civilization rise and fall. And as the last of the light
died behind us, I understood with chilling certainty we were
stepping into another room. We were being swallowed as the
darkness sealed behind US1 thought echoed louder than the
whispering voices. The most dangerous things.
Forbidden knowledge isn't learning it, it is being
recognized. But what waits on the other
side? The door hadn't opened.
It had noticed us, and that was enough.
The darkness stirred, and then something whispered my name.
And so Group Omega stands on the brink, their trust shattered.
But the question remains. Is John a traitor, or is he the
key? The answers lie in the next
episode. In the meantime, the
investigation continues. If this is your first time with
us, the story begins. Episode 1 Lost in the Labyrinth.
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afraid by yourself, and if anything else, you can always
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