Story 997: Train to the Blood Moon

The night was carved from obsidian, and the moon hung fractured like a shattered eye. Draven stood at the rusted gates of the Hollow Line—a spectral railway said to drift between realms. With the bone compass pulsing in his palm, he stepped onto the ancient platform. The train was already arriving.

It screamed into the station like a dying animal, wheels shrieking against warped tracks. Its engine glowed with a sickly green fire, casting twisted shadows along the platform walls. The doors creaked open with a whisper of wind and whispers that weren’t wind.

He stepped aboard.

Inside, the train was alive. Walls pulsed like lungs, the floor beneath his boots was wet and warm, and every window revealed a different apocalypse—one world drowned, another burned, one filled with flying corpses that looked up as he passed. He moved car by car, eyes sharp, weapon ready.

In the third car, he found her.