The shop's glass gave way in a shatter of teeth-gritting sound, the pieces skittering across the floor like beads of ice. The fog poured through the opening with a strange, deliberate slowness — not rushing, but creeping, as if savoring the chase.
"Down," the woman ordered.
Jonas followed her through a doorway behind the counter, stepping into a cramped stairwell that smelled of rust and mildew. Each step down groaned under their weight, and the darkness thickened with every flight they descended. By the second landing, the light from above was gone entirely, swallowed by the creeping gray.
At the bottom, she swung open a steel hatch, revealing a tunnel that should not have been there — neither subway nor sewer, but a narrow brick throat disappearing into pitch black.
Jonas hesitated. "This isn't on any map."
"That's the point."
She pulled a small lantern from her pack, its glow slicing a thin wedge through the dark. The walls wept with moisture, old bricks slick under Jonas's fingertips as they moved. He could feel something in the air — not wind exactly, but a low vibration that seemed to thrum in his bones.
Minutes passed in silence until the brick gave way to carved stone. The ceiling rose, arching into shapes that weren't quite human in design — too sharp in places, too fluid in others, as if the rock had been coaxed into form by something that didn't fully understand symmetry.
They came to a circular chamber where the air was warmer, thick enough to taste. In the center, an old maintenance cart sat derailed, its metal bent into unnatural curves, like it had been soft when it twisted. Around it, symbols had been etched into the floor, lines that pulsed faintly as if alive.
The woman knelt, tracing one with her finger. "These weren't made by people."
Jonas stared. The marks seemed to ripple the longer he looked at them, tugging at the edge of his vision. Then he heard it — a whisper, low and dry, like wind dragging through dead leaves.
"Closer…"
He spun around, lantern swinging, but the tunnel behind them was empty.
"Don't answer it," the woman said sharply. "That's how it gets in."
They pressed on, the passage narrowing again. Soon Jonas could barely fit his shoulders through, and the sound changed — the faint whisper becoming a low, slow breathing.
When they finally emerged into a massive underground platform, Jonas realized this had once been a subway station… but the tracks were gone. In their place was a chasm, black and endless, from which the fog boiled upward in lazy spirals.
Shapes moved in that mist — shapes with limbs too long, bending in places limbs shouldn't bend. They did not climb out. They only watched.
The woman pointed to the far end, where a staircase descended straight into the chasm. "That's where it sleeps."
As they crossed the platform, a sudden tremor rolled through the stone. The fog surged upward, and the watchers began to move — not climbing, but stretching, their limbs reaching up toward the platform like grotesque vines. One brushed Jonas's ankle, and his skin burned instantly, the pain shooting up his leg.
He stumbled, dropping the lantern. It rolled toward the edge, the light spilling over into the darkness below. For a split second, Jonas saw it.
The Sleeper.
It was not one thing, but many, fused into a single grotesque mass — dozens of faces, eyes rolling in sockets that weren't their own, mouths open in soundless screams. Its body was a tangle of pale limbs and ribs that flexed as it breathed, and at its center was a pulsing red wound, as if the city itself had a heart.
The woman grabbed Jonas, pulling him back before the fog could reach him. "If you want to live," she said, loading her shotgun, "you shoot that heart until it stops beating."
The ground shook harder. The Sleeper was waking.