The last sound Alex remembered was bone snapping. Not the pain. Not the hate. Just the clean, horrible crack that had marked the end. He came back with a gasp, air burning in his lungs like someone had lit a match inside him. His hand went to his chest—no wound, no blood. A cheap sofa. A dead fluorescent bulb buzzing overhead. Instant noodles crusted in a bowl on the floor. He was in a small rental that smelled faintly of oil and damp cardboard. His phone lit the room: October 21, 2025. 11:03 a.m. A date. A time. Realer than anything else in the bleary blur of waking. He counted in his head. Ten days. Ten days before the veil slit, before the Underworld slipped its fingers through the world and started taking names. Ten days before streets hollowed and towers learned to cough up ghosts. Ten days to act, and every memory he’d bled for in the other life sat behind his eyes like a map. He had been a survivor once. He’d seen the rules from the inside. Rule one: walls were paper to

Rain started falling the moment Alex left the shop. Not a gentle drizzle — a cold shower that slapped the pavement and turned the night into a sheet of silver. Mei Lin walked beside him, her umbrella useless against the wind. She spoke without looking at him. “You’re sure about this?” “Yes,” Alex answered. “The Nine-Turn Lock wakes early. It’s the first artifact that responds to spiritual pressure.” “And it’s sitting in a museum basement.” “Exactly.” Mei Lin’s shoes clicked on the wet sidewalk. She didn’t rush. She didn’t panic. She simply calculated, adjusting her pace, her breathing, the safest side of the road — as if her mind ran numbers even in the rain. “How did the Triad get it last time?” she asked. “They broke in,” Alex said. “Eight men, two died. After the Haunting began, the security systems failed. But someone got there first. That someone got the Lock.” He didn’t add the final detail: He had seen that Lock from the other side. On the day he died. They turned

The fall knocked the air out of him. Alex slammed onto something hard and cold, pain shooting through his ribs. For a moment, the world blurred into ringing ears and the taste of iron. Then the smell hit him—rat droppings, damp metal, and the sour rot of things that should never be wet. He forced himself up. Dust drifted around him like ash. Above, flashlights cut through the shaft he’d escaped from. “Police! Stop resisting!” The beams swept across the empty exhibit he’d left, paused on the twisted corpse of the ghoul, and vanished. Alex exhaled shakily. The dumbwaiter shaft was narrow, the dark almost solid around him. He reached up and grabbed a frayed rope. Grease slicked the fibers, and pain shot through his wounded palm—but he didn’t hesitate. His choices were climb, fall, or die. He wrapped his hands and descended. Each slide burned. Each breath scraped his throat. The sound of the police faded above, replaced by the groan of old machinery and his own heartbeat drumming i

The sound was a dry shhh, like leaves dragged across stone. Or like claws scratching at a coffin wall from the inside. Mei Lin froze. Her pulse had barely begun to slow after the Soul Lock activated, and now it stumbled again. The word safe shriveled in her throat. “You said this place was safe,” she whispered. “I said nothing could get in,” Alex muttered. His voice was sharp, focused. “I didn’t say it was empty.” The bronze bell felt small in his grip, but it was the only thing he had. He’d made a mistake — he sealed the boundaries, but never cleared the interior. They weren’t protected from what was out there. They were trapped with what was already inside. “Mei,” Alex ordered, voice snapping like a whip. “Phone. Light.” Her mind, normally a machine of cold profit and logic, stuttered in the dark. “Alex, I—” “Now. Upward.” The urgency broke through her paralysis. Her shaking hands fumbled with the phone, and the LED beam sliced into the rafters. “I don’t s

The first warning was small. A splinter of wood shot across the office like a bullet and skidded against Alex’s boot. Mei Lin choked on a scream. From the new crack in the door, a single paper-thin claw slid through—edges dripping with black, corrosive tar. It twitched once, tasting the air. Alex’s stomach dropped. The door wouldn’t last. Thirty seconds, maybe less. “Alex…” Mei Lin whispered. Her voice shook uncontrollably. “It’s just wood. It’s just wood—we’re dead…” Her words were terrifyingly true. They weren’t trapped from something. They were trapped with something. Alex’s body trembled—blood loss, exhaustion, the sting of a hundred cuts. The bronze bell felt too light in his grip. Too small for what was outside. Second life, same stupid ending. Not betrayed by a general this time—just a cheap office door. Then Mei Lin said one quiet word. “No.” Alex looked up. Fear still clung to her, but her eyes had sharpened—no longer panicking, but calculating. “You’re think