unfinished building

The next morning, Ethan Lewis awoke to an empty apartment. Clutching the two enigmatic cards, he felt an unfamiliar pang of loneliness. Though his Mother had often threatened him, her absence now hollowed the space. "Where did you go?" he murmured, recalling her demonic fury when she'd obliterated the Aberration to save him.

At 10 a.m., he hailed a taxi to Dragonwell Street in the Northern District—the rendezvous point with Grace Quinn of the True Gate Sect.

"Kid, you sure about the North District?" The driver's knuckles whitened on the wheel. "Ten people vanished there last week. Cops can't trace 'em—like they never existed."

Ethan leaned forward. "Any details?"

"One cabbie picked up a passenger who... changed. Mid-ride, the guy turned corpse-cold. When the driver stopped, the backseat was empty. They found the cabbie later—babbling mad under a blood-red moon. Then he disappeared too."

The Northern District lived up to its reputation: crumbling buildings, brawls in alleyways, the stench of lawlessness. Ethan exited at a derelict high-rise—a skeletal structure abandoned near completion decades prior.

Trials of the True Gate

Flickering lights greeted him in the lobby. His footsteps echoed like funeral drums. The elevator doors bore rusted handprints—bloodstains, Ethan realized, sniffing flaked residue.

As the elevator ascended, crimson emergency lights bathed the compartment. Between floors, a bestial eye glared through closing doors—pupils slit like a predator's. Ethan tightened his grip on the cards.

At Floor 32, the elevator jolted to a stop.