AUTHOR'S NOTE
Author here.
Not sure how well I'll be able to update, given that lately I've had classes going on. Even worse is the crazy writer's block I've had for a while now (yeah, I've had a lot of those) but I'm trying my best.
Also, I hadn't known this, but apparently putting emojis in your work get it penalised in terms of Power Stones. I literally just found out today, and I had to edit my work entirely. Tbh, I don't like the format without the emojis and whatnot, but I'll take what I can get, I guess.
Anyway, I'm trying to write a bit more to see how far I can go, trying to rebuild my momentum. I'm not very good at finishing projects, but I'm trying, at least. Not the most glamorous of chapters, this one, but it is something.
With that out of the way, have a nice read!
EVENING, 25TH JULY, 1990, THE ASTRAL PLANE
THE TRAIN GROANED again — deeper this time. Outside, the surreal landscape stretched once more: a smear of impossible geometry and chaotic colours, bending and folding beyond the windows. Then, without warning, the cosmos vanished.
Not faded. Not unraveled. Simply gone — blinked out of existence and overwritten in an instant.
In its place: concrete walls, stained with old watermarks. Electric lights buzzed and flickered in erratic, almost resentful pulses. A subway tunnel — narrow, obedient — stretched forward like a line drawn by a tired hand.
Jasmine steadied her breath, heart still thrumming with aftershock. Mordred, unsurprisingly, was unbothered. She lounged with bored elegance, watching the tunnel blur past with her trademark indifference.
A crackle of static filled the cabin. An overhead announcement followed — garbled and too clear at once: "Now arriving: Grand Central Terminal. Please mind the threshold."
Jasmine blinked. Grand Central? Her brow knit. She'd been here before — not often, just a few times. Unsurprisingly, every one of those times also just so happened to be with Ashley during the occasional family trips to the States.
She glanced at Mordred, silently asking for context. Mordred rolled her eyes, ignoring Jasmine. With an exaggerated air of fatigue, she stretched lazily into a seated position, cracking her neck as if waking from a nap.
The train groaned to a stop with a reluctant shudder, and with a sharp hiss, the doors slid open, revealing a platform drenched in a sickly, jaundiced light that, to Jasmine's disconcerted senses, seemed to throb in sync with her pounding heart.
Jasmine shifted first, rising stiffly from the seat like a marionette uncertain of its strings, legs aching from tension. She steadied herself against her armrest of her seat, sandals clinking softly against the floor.
Across from her, Mordred remained slouched for a moment longer. Then, she theatrically rose, and smoothed the creases in her long coat like someone preparing for a red carpet, not a descent into an eldritch subway station.
Jasmine swallowed, her throat raw. She glanced at Mordred, searching for reassurance — some flicker of empathy — but found only that serene mask, the same hollow amusement in those empty eyes.
Mordred caught the glance but said nothing. She simply tilted her head in that vaguely feline way of hers, then turned and stepped into the aisle, her boots clicking with crisp finality against the worn metal floor as she walked along it like it was hers.
Jasmine stood frozen for just a moment longer, her fingers still pressed against the armrest, unwilling to let go of the only solid thing in this nightmare. The train had grown colder, or perhaps it was simply her — the steady hum of trepidation thickening in her chest.
With a shaky breath, she pulled herself away from the seat, moving after Mordred. The older woman alighted the train without pause, boots crossing the narrow threshold with her practiced impertinent poise. Jasmine followed quickly.
Behind her, the train doors hissed shut, sealing the coldness inside, leaving them in this unfamiliar place. The station stretched ahead, dark and unknowable, but Mordred had already begun to move forward, not even sparing a glance back.
"Keep up," she drawled.
Jasmine obeyed without answering, quickening her pace before her mind could fully agree, sandals slapping softly against the concrete. The sound barely echoed, swallowed by the oppressive hush of the terminal.
At the far end of the platform, a pair of wide escalators rose steeply under a flickering sign that she couldn't read — Mordred didn't pause but swept onto the right-hand escalator, and Jasmine stumbled after her.
At the top, they spilled into a narrow mezzanine of grime‑streaked walls and distant ventilation hum. Skirting a shuttered kiosk, they strode past a row of frozen turnstiles and into a low, vaulted corridor where the ceiling arched overhead in dusty brickwork.
The ramp led them up under a low, shadowy ceiling of tiled arches. Then, without warning, the space opened wide. Jasmine blinked at the sudden shift — a vast austere hall stretched out before her, dim and quiet.
This was Grand Central, but it felt dead, almost post-apocalyptic. Not shattered or burned, but hollowed out, like a cathedral no one prayed in anymore.
The Main Concourse stretched ahead of them, vast and echoing — but wrong in the way a wax figure is wrong. It had the shape of the place she remembered: the arches, the tall windows, the chandeliers. But the details were twisted.
The light filtering through the high glass was sickly and uneven, like sunlight seen through brackish water. The windows themselves were warped, bowed slightly inward — as if the building were breathing slowly, in some deep, shuddering sleep.
The ceiling's celestial mural still curled above — but the constellations had dimmed into sullen blotches, their outlines flickering faintly with a static shimmer. Some of the stars were in the wrong places. One was moving.
The chandeliers sagged low, casting only enough light to remind her how much darkness lingered. The marble floor beneath her feet was dull, but more than that — it felt soft, somehow. Not like stone, but like something pretending to be it.
And the clock. The golden four-faced timepiece at the center of the building.
She remembered the last time she saw it in person vividly — the way she and Ashley would lean against its pedestal beneath her father's Invisibility Cloak, shoulder to shoulder, taking turns narrating absurd little stories about the people rushing past.
But now, the clock just seemed eerie — like a monument left behind in a dream that no longer made sense. Its once-bright bronze filigree was dulled with tarnish, like it had been weeping green tears for decades. The glass faces were fogged with grime.
Each of the four sides told a different story — none of them true.
One ran backward, while another ticked twice for every second. The third stuttered forward in uneven lurches, freezing at intervals like it couldn't make up its mind. And the last didn't move at all — as if it had simply given up, or was watching.
This place wasn't just wrong. Time felt wounded here — cracked open and limping along, a puppet show pretending the strings still worked. Or maybe reality itself had shrugged off the illusion of time and was moving on without it.
Mordred had already started walking, her boots clicking against the soft marble as if nothing were amiss. Jasmine hesitated, her feet heavy, as though tethered by the oppressive, liminal air that hung thick in the terminal.
"Mordred," she whispered, her voice a tremor. "Where is everyone?"
Mordred didn't turn back, though Jasmine could see her profile shift ever so slightly, albeit still unreadable. "They're gone," she said flatly, her tone offering no comfort, no explanation, just the quiet finality of a fact spoken aloud. She said nothing more.
Jasmine wanted to demand answers, but thought against it. It was unlikely she would get a direct answer to that question. Instead, she silently followed Mordred, the echo of their steps filling the cavernous space as they silently walked towards the main doors of the building.
Mordred reached the tarnished bronze doors first, and with a swift push, they creaked open, releasing a gust of cold, stale air. Jasmine's eyes widened as she looked out into the city beyond.
The New York she had toured with Ashley on multiple occasions was not this one.
Like the terminal, it wasn't ruined, just lifeless, like the soul of the city had quietly slipped out and left the body behind. There were no cars. No people. No distant murmur of life. Even the skyline stood like a paper cutout, colourless against the bruised, grey sky.
"Come on," Mordred muttered, already walking again — not rushed, just deliberate. Jasmine clutched her arms as she followed trying to give herself comfort in the dullness of her surroundings.
"Is this some kind of… parallel world?" she asked, speaking more to the silence than to the older woman.
"Close enough," came the short, insouciant response.
Jasmine's stomach churned. "So… it's not real, is it?"
Mordred shrugged. "It's as real as we need it to be."
Jasmine hesitated, giving the strange surroundings a quick once-over. "So… where exactly are we going?"
"34 Thomas Street," Mordred said with a yawn. "Now quit dawdling."
Jasmine scowled. "Could you at least elaborate on what the objective is?"
Mordred didn't slow. "Retrieve someone. Or something. Depends on what's left."
Jasmine's frown deepened. "That's not an answer."
"It wasn't meant to be, darling," Mordred replied, voice flat as a coin toss. Jasmine felt a flicker of irritation but bit back her retort, not wanting to say something she would regret.
The pair walked in silence for some time, coming to a stop at the base of a wide concrete stairwell leading up to the entrance of an enormous, featureless skyscraper of cold brutalist architecture that made Jasmine feel a wave of vertigo and dread just looking at it.
It loomed like a monument to nothing: a towering slab of cold, board-formed concrete that didn't resemble a building so much as the idea of one. Its brutalist design felt like an insult to the world around it, as if it had been ripped from another time, or perhaps another dimension entirely.
Three black-framed glass doors marked the entrance, evenly spaced and flanked on both sides by massive floor-to-ceiling windows. An enormous concrete overhang jutted out above the entryway, its underside dotted with circular lights.
Yet, the building didn't induce dread because of its overwhelming appearance. No, it was something far worse—an undercurrent of eldritch horror, as though it were merely imitating a building.
On that note, it wasn't eerie because it failed to resemble a building — it was eerie because it resembled one too perfectly, to the point where its flawless imitation only highlighted how artificial and uncanny it truly was, like a mask carved too well, worn too tightly.
Mordred cast a sidelong glance at her young escortee. Unsurprisingly, Jasmine was frozen, eyes wide, stunned by the towering monolith before them. Capitalising on that bewilderment, Mordred gave a mocking bow and said, "Welcome to the Oldest House, Error."