A sound cut through the silence.
A scream.
Desperate. Young. Female.
"Help me!"
The voice echoed through the warehouse, but it was impossible to pinpoint where it came from. The acoustics of the abandoned building distorted the sound, throwing it in multiple directions at once.
All three of them froze.
"There's no one supposed to be here," Soo Ah whispered, but her protector instincts were already overriding caution.
"We need to cover more ground," Soo Ah said, making a decision. "Split up. Noir and Piers, take the lower floors. I'll check upstairs."
"That's not protocol—" Piers started.
"Someone's in danger," Soo Ah cut him off, her playfulness completely gone. Her hand went to the blessed axe at her side, the weapon already beginning to shimmer with spiritual energy.
"We don't have time for protocol."
Before either of them could argue further, she was moving toward a rusted stairwell leading to the upper levels, her lilac combat suit disappearing into the shadows above.
Noir watched her go, something uneasy settling in his stomach. But another cry pulled his attention downward.
"Please... someone... please..."
The voice was trembling, frightened, coming from somewhere in the depths below.
"Down here," Piers said quietly, his blue eyes tracking the spiritual residue in the air. His expression was carefully neutral, but Noir caught the subtle tension in his shoulders. "The lower levels."
They descended.
The stairwell was narrow, claustrophobic, each step groaning under their weight. The spiritual pressure increased with every floor they passed, making the air thick and hard to breathe. Noir's brass knuckles caught what little light filtered down from above, casting brief flashes of gold against the darkness.
The crimson scarf around his neck felt heavier with each step.
When they reached the basement level, the temperature dropped sharply. Not Piers' doing—this was something else. The kind of cold that came from absence. From things that shouldn't exist.
The space opened into what must have been a storage area. Massive support pillars stretched toward a ceiling lost in shadow. Industrial shelving units stood like silent sentinels, most of them collapsed or empty. And everywhere—everywhere—were stacked boxes, creating a maze of blind corners and hidden spaces.
"There," Piers said, pointing to a section where boxes had been pushed together, forming a small alcove. "Behind those."
A sound came from the darkness—quieter now, more desperate. A child's whimper.
"Please... help me..."
The voice was so small, so frightened, that Noir felt something twist in his chest. He was already moving forward before Piers could stop him.
"Careful," Piers warned, but he followed, his hands already positioned to manipulate temperature at a moment's notice.
Noir approached the stacked boxes slowly, his brass knuckles raised but not threatening. He made himself smaller, less intimidating, the way you would with a frightened animal.
"Hey," Noir called out, his voice carefully calm as he crouched down. "Don't be scared. We're seers. We're here to help."
Silence.
Then, barely audible: "Seers?"
"Yes," Noir said gently, moving closer to the boxes. "You're safe now. What's your name?"
The boxes shifted slightly, and a small face appeared in the gap between them. A girl, maybe ten or eleven years old, dirt-streaked and terrified. Her eyes were wide, reflecting what little light existed in the basement—too wide, Noir thought, but dismissed it as fear.
"Kai," the girl whispered. Her voice had a strange quality to it, slightly hollow, like an echo. "My name is Kai."
"That's a nice name," Noir said, keeping his tone soft. He was acutely aware of Piers behind him, watching, calculating. "How did you get down here, Kai?"
The girl's face disappeared for a moment, then reappeared slightly higher in the gap. "My father... my father brought me here. He was checking the building for demolition work. And then the things came so fast and I ran and I got separated from him and—"
Her voice cracked with what sounded like emotion.
Noir's chest tightened. He moved even closer, close enough now that he could almost reach out and touch the boxes.
"It's okay," he said. "You're going to be fine. Where did you last see your father?"
"He's looking for me," the girl said, and there was absolute certainty in her voice that made something cold settle in Noir's stomach. "My father wouldn't leave me. He's probably out there right now, searching everywhere for me. He'll never stop looking. He promised."
The words cut deeper than any blade.
Noir's hand froze halfway to the boxes.
What would it feel like to have someone search for you like that?
To have someone care that much?
To have someone promise they'd never stop looking?
His father had never promised anything. Had never been there to promise. Just an absence where a person should have been—a hole in Noir's childhood shaped like all the moments that never happened.
His fingers unconsciously tightened around the crimson fabric he held—his mother's blessing. The only parent who'd ever cared enough to leave him something. Anything.
"Noir," Piers said quietly from behind him. There was warning in his voice.
But Noir was already reaching toward the gap in the boxes, already extending his hand toward where the girl was hiding.
"Come on out, Kai," he said. "Let me see you. We'll find your father together, I promise."
The boxes shifted again.
Something moved in the darkness behind them.
And Noir realized, in that moment of dawning horror, that the face he'd been looking at was too still. Too perfect. The eyes didn't blink. The mouth didn't quite match the words he'd been hearing.
"Noir, back away," Piers said, his voice sharp now. "Back away right now—"
But it was too late.
Noir's hand touched the edge of the box, and something grabbed his wrist.
Not a child's hand.
Something cold. Slick. Obscene.
The boxes exploded outward with sudden violence, cardboard and wood splinters filling the air. Noir stumbled backward, his brass knuckles coming up instinctively as the thing that had been hiding behind them revealed itself.
For a split second—less than a heartbeat—Noir's mind tried to process what he was seeing as human. Tried to make sense of the shape, the proportions, the general outline.
Then the details registered.
The creature was roughly humanoid, but everything about it was perverse. Its flesh was wrinkled and gray, hanging loose in places as if the skin was several sizes too large for the frame beneath.
The ribs were visible—not just visible but protruding sharply through the flesh, each bone distinct and knife-edged, moving with the thing's breathing in a way that suggested they weren't quite attached properly.
It had arms—long arms, too long, with too many joints bending in directions that made Noir's eyes water to track. The fingers ended in what might have been claws or might have been bone that had simply grown through the fingertips.
Where a face should have been was smooth, featureless flesh—no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Just blank, wrinkled skin stretched tight over a skull that was the wrong shape, elongated and angular.
The mouth was somewhere else.
At the creature's abdomen, where a navel might have been on a human, was a vertical slit lined with teeth. Dozens of them, needle-thin and curved inward, glistening wet. The mouth opened as Noir watched, impossibly wide, and from its depths came that same child's voice:
"He promised he'd never stop looking..."
The voice was perfect. Innocent. Terrified.
Coming from that stomach-mouth lined with teeth.
Noir's mind went blank with primal horror. His body moved on instinct, throwing himself backward as the creature lunged forward with horrifying speed.