00:31 HOURS – THE PULL
The deck shuddered beneath Elara's boots as the SSV Chronos groaned in protest, its metal bones screeching against forces no ship was meant to endure. The black door loomed before them, its edges bleeding dark tendrils of smoke that curled against the air like searching fingers.
"Full reverse!" Captain Rios bellowed into the comm, his voice raw. "Engines at 120%—now!"
A deafening whine answered as the thrusters fired, but the ship didn't slow. If anything, the pull grew stronger.
Elara's stomach lurched as the horizon—or what was left of it—tilted violently. The ocean had vanished. In its place, an endless void stretched in every direction, punctuated only by the eerie glow of three mismatched suns casting jagged shadows across the deck.
Something was wrong with the light.
It didn't illuminate so much as cling, painting the crew in sickly hues that made their skin look bruised, their eyes too bright.
Felix Park, their usually composed meteorologist, clutched the railing beside her, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "This—this isn't possible. The atmospheric pressure alone should have—"
A deafening crack cut him off.
The door opened.
Not a slow, dramatic reveal. One second it was sealed—the next, it was gone, replaced by a yawning tunnel of swirling dark matter, its edges vibrating with that same impossible script.
And the Chronos was being dragged straight into it.
CALIBAN's voice cut through the chaos, sharper than Elara had ever heard it: "Elara. Look at the water."
She forced herself to glance over the railing—and froze.
Beneath them, the sea wasn't water anymore.
It was glass.
Smooth, black, and perfectly reflective—except where their ship's wake fractured it into a spiderweb of cracks, each one oozing a thick, iridescent fluid that twitched as it hit the air.
Then—
The first scream came from belowdecks.
00:42 HOURS – THE THIRTEENTH PASSENGER
The mess hall was a warzone.
A chair lay upended, coffee pooling across the floor in a steaming, acrid puddle. Half the crew had their weapons drawn, trained on the figure standing calmly by the counter.
A woman.
Her back was turned, her posture relaxed as she stirred a spoon in a chipped mug. She wore a Nexus Dynamics uniform, the logo faded but unmistakable.
Elara's breath caught.
She knew that profile.
Dr. Lien Cho.
The biologist had vanished six months ago on a routine supply run near the Triangle's edge. Presumed dead.
And yet here she was.
"Lien?" Elara's voice came out hoarse.
The woman turned—and the room collectively flinched.
Her skin was too smooth, stretched taut over high cheekbones, her lips parted in a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
No—not just that.
Her eyes weren't blinking.
At all.
"Elara." Lien's voice was wrong, too. Half a second out of sync with her mouth. "You're late."
Jax, their security lead, had his sidearm leveled at her temple. "What the hell are you?"
Lien's head tilted, the motion unnaturally fluid. "Oh, Jax. You're still alive?" A pause. "That's... unexpected."
Then—
She twitched.
A full-body spasm, violent enough to make her spine arch. The coffee cup slipped from her fingers—
And melted midair, dissolving into a swarm of silver beetles that hit the floor with a sound like falling nails.
The crew scattered as the insects skittered in every direction, vanishing into vents, under doorways.
Lien just smiled.
"Don't worry," she said. "They're friendly. Mostly."
01:17 HOURS – THE LABYRINTH
The ocean was gone.
Not evaporated. Not drained.
Erased.
One moment, the Chronos floated on an endless glass sea—the next, it sat stranded on a seafloor of polished black stone, grooved with deep channels that formed a sprawling maze.
At its center stood the spire.
A monstrous thing of interlocking rings, each one rotating in opposing directions, its surface etched with those same damned symbols.
CALIBAN's hologram flickered to life on the bridge, his usual snark replaced by something colder.
"I've mapped the pattern. It's a Klein bottle—a four-dimensional maze. And the walls?" A pause. "They're made of the same material as Lien's skin."
A beat of silence.
Then—
The walls began to move.
01:29 HOURS – THE FIRST CORPSE
They found Captain Rios in the eastern tunnel.
Or what was left of him.
His body lay sprawled across the stone, his torso split open like a blooming flower, ribs splayed wide to reveal a nest of writhing cables where his organs should have been.
Felix gagged, stumbling back. "Oh god—"
Then the corpse sat up.
Rios' head lolled, his mouth unhinging too wide, too wrong, as a wet, gurgling laugh bubbled up from his throat.
"Elara," the thing that wasn't Rios crooned. "You shouldn't have come back."
Jax fired.
Three rounds punched through its skull—
And the body exploded in a shower of black fluid and snapping wires.
From the spire, a deep, resonant chime echoed.
UNKNOWN VOICE: "Penalty incurred. Time reduced. Proceed."
The countdown above the maze flickered.
42 minutes remaining.