In Nocturne's underground, where trains never stop and shadows have teeth, Asher steps into the dark. But today—even the darkness bleeds sunlight.
The descent began with crumbling stairs.
Each step cracked under Asher's boots, echoing hollowly down the shaft of the forgotten subway station. Broken tiles, brittle with age, snapped beneath his heels, their once-bright colors dulled to grime. Graffiti spidered across the walls—old serpent symbols tangled between faded gang tags and long-forgotten ads for soda brands no one remembered. Words smeared into hieroglyphics of urban rot.
Rosa's footsteps echoed behind him, faster, sharper. One hand clutched her charm so tightly her knuckles blanched white. She breathed in sharp bursts, her eyes flicking to every shadow like they expected to come alive at any second.
Above them, the entrance hissed—a strange, almost organic sound—as the daylight outside warped and flickered, trying to follow them down.
"Boss…" Rosa whispered, eyes lifting toward the stairwell above.
"I know," Asher muttered, revolver tight in his grip. "It's watching."
The sun.
And it wanted in.
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The Subway Turns Wrong
The further down they went, the less sense the subway made.
Rails that should have stretched straight along the tunnel curled up like iron thorns, twisting toward the ceiling. Support beams shimmered as if caught between melting and fossilizing.
Murals—those old city beautification projects that once depicted hopeful crowds and shining skylines—had turned sinister. The paint bled, thick red rivulets trailing down to pool at their feet, fresh as if brushed only minutes ago. Rosa wiped a smear of crimson off her sleeve with a shudder.
"It's hotter," she muttered, voice thin. "It's not supposed to be this hot underground."
She pressed her palm to the tunnel wall. It was slick, sweating—not with water, but something stickier. Oil? Sap? Blood?
Rosa pulled her hand back, eyes wide. "Boss… the walls are sweating."
Asher scanned the gloom, every instinct screaming wrong, wrong, wrong."If they start breathing," he growled, "we're leaving."
But they both knew: no one was leaving until this was finished.
A sharp turn in the tunnel brought them face to face with… something absurd.
A derailed subway car lay on its side, covered in spray paint and boarded over with planks. Inside, flickering torchlight revealed a ragtag group of underground scavengers.
A dented oil drum burned at the center of their makeshift camp, its flames licking at skewered rats turning lazily over the fire. The smell was awful.
One guy, wearing a battered colander as a helmet, jumped up and waved frantically at them."Hey, hey! Sun Charm? Guaranteed to keep your organs from melting! Made it myself." He held up a mess of scrap metal, bubblegum foil, and what looked suspiciously like a broken Christmas ornament.
Asher stared, dead-eyed.
Another man, eyes too wide and wild, pointed at his own temple, whispering urgently, "The Sun Serpent's Wi-Fi signal... it's in my brain now!"
Rosa blinked. "This city's economy adapts way too fast."
Asher, without missing a beat, sighed, "I officially hate this city."
"We're still getting paid for this, right?" Rosa deadpanned, stepping around the scavengers and their little neon-lit disaster of a hideout.
They left the madness behind and pressed deeper—toward where the real nightmare waited.
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The Nexus Chamber
At last, they reached it.
The nexus point.
It was an ancient ritual chamber, hidden beneath the rusting bones of Nocturne's transit system. Old stone archways framed a circular room at the tunnel's dead end, its floor carved with sigils and geometric designs that hurt to look at directly.
Around the room, the cultists waited.
They stood in a circle, porcelain masks cracked and gleaming under the flickering underground lights. They chanted in a language that coiled through the air like smoke—low, guttural, and hungry.
And at the center of it all—Floating just above the altar—was the Bleeding Sun.
It wasn't a metaphor. It was real.A molten orb of writhing daylight, dripping molten gold that hissed when it struck the stone floor.
Beneath it, a body—slumped and broken. A relic hunter, sacrificed and twitching as if almost alive.
And behind it—A serpent-shaped fissure.Pulsing. Growing. Ready to split the world open.
Asher didn't hesitate.
He fired.
The shot cracked through the chamber like a thunderclap. The first cultist dropped, porcelain mask shattering into pieces that skittered across the floor.
Rosa's charm flared, her hand whipping it toward the circle. It burst mid-air—a roar of black flame and smoke that engulfed half the cultists, sending screams ricocheting off stone walls.
The cult leader, mask painted with a gold sunburst, raised both arms and shrieked:"The Detective brings flame! Feed him to the Noon Serpent!"
The walls—cracked.
From the fractures, monsters spilled out.Creatures made of light and teeth—long serpentine bodies, their scales molten and eyes nothing but pits of brilliance. They moved like shadows—but burned like fire.
The scavengers?Gone.They screamed, grabbed whatever relics they could carry, and bolted into the tunnels.
"Figures," Rosa muttered, dodging a snap of shining jaws.
Asher's vision twisted.
He fired again—but the bullet turned into a snake mid-air, slithering and striking the ground uselessly.
He blinked.The cult leader's face—
His own reflection stared back. Grinning wide. Mocking.
The train tracks began to hum, their vibrations forming words—his name—over and over.
"ASHER."
"ASHER."
"ASHER."
"Boss!" Rosa's voice punched through the madness. "Boss, focus! You've got the anti-light round—USE IT!"
He shook his head, vision blurring, heart hammering against his ribs like it wanted out. His fingers scrambled through his coat pocket, found it—
The relic bullet.
Forged with void essence, blacker than night, heavier than sin.
Asher gritted his teeth, slammed it into the revolver's chamber, and spun the cylinder.
He raised the gun, arm steady despite everything around him.
The Bleeding Sun pulsed, its molten edges flickering hungrily.
The serpent-shaped fissure hissed, widening, promising doom.
The cult's chanting reached a frenzied peak, masks tilted upward like worshippers awaiting deliverance.
Asher exhaled.And pulled the trigger.
The shot split the air—and reality itself.
The orb ruptured in a silent explosion—a burst of white so bright it swallowed everything.
And then?
Nothing.
[End of Chapter 61]
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Preview of Next Chapter (62) — Sunfall Reverberation
The aftermath of Asher's shot unleashes a shockwave that ripples through the city's bones—shattering the cult's ritual but also fracturing Nocturne's fragile reality. Trapped underground, Asher, Rosa, and a handful of unlucky survivors must crawl through collapsing tunnels, battling mutated remnants of the failed ritual. Meanwhile, on the surface, the city skyline flickers like a dying heartbeat—and far above, a new player watches the chaos unfold, biding their time.