There was silence for a while.
But the quiet never lasted long. Not in a place like this.
Not where desperation passed for currency, and raw strength was the only language that held any weight.
First came the murmurs—faint, uncertain, like the rustling of ghosts.
Then curses, spat out between clenched teeth. Then prayers, desperate and cracking under fear.
Then the screaming.
Because the shadows had started to move.
They came from the walls. From the cracks in the ground.
From the long-dead eyes of broken statues. Slowly, deliberately—relentless and inevitable. They didn't rush. They didn't stumble. They advanced like they already knew how the night would end.
Some resembled people, vaguely.
Once-human shapes, twisted by time and death and something darker still. Others didn't look like anything that should've ever existed.
Things that had no right to stand upright. Things whose limbs bent the wrong way. Things with too many eyes—or none at all.
