Scoured Out

The staircase swallowed them, its stones slick and weeping with something too thick to be mere condensation. Tobias had to turn sideways, his broad shoulders scraping against walls that pulsed faintly with remembered heat, his gloves coming away stained with more than mineral deposits—the crust flaked off like dead skin.

Each scuff of his boots echoed back changed—half a second too late, pitched wrong, like whatever answered down there didn't quite understand how human footsteps should sound.

Their flashlights didn't cut through the darkness so much as piss it off, revealing jagged marks that twitched when unobserved, rearranging into patterns that hurt to look at directly. And beneath the mildew and dampness, the stench of a corrupted sacrament: altar wine turned to blood, then left to curdle. It coated Tobias's tongue with the aftertaste of a last breath held too long.

Then the stairwell spat them into the cathedral's belly—a place too deep, too wet, too alive to be called holy. The chamber stretched before them, its vaulted ceiling lost in blackness that moved when the light hit it wrong. Their footsteps didn't echo—they were swallowed whole, the air too thick with waiting to carry sound.

The pillars stood like the ribs of something long-dead, their surfaces polished by things moving in the dark, gleaming with a wetness that had no source. Between them, the darkness pooled thicker, forming shapes that dissolved when stared at. No dust. No cracks.

The silence wasn't just absence—it was the silence of a predator holding its breath. When Tobias's boot dislodged a pebble, the clatter stopped mid-air, cut off by something with perfect timing.

And worst of all: the certainty growing in his gut—

This place recognized them. Not as intruders. Not as victims.

But as long-awaited guests.

Tobias's flashlight beam hit something metal, fracturing across broken gear—not like stained glass, but like light through a sniper's scope, fractured and wrong. Then his vision grayed at the edges: Sarah's pack, ripped open like a corpse on an autopsy table, that fucking red thread still hanging from where she'd stitched it up. The same thread she'd used to sew his arm back together last winter, her rough fingers tugging the needle through his skin as she grinned, "Ain't pretty, but neither are you, Frey."

His breath punched out of him like he'd taken a round to the ribs. The river stone in his pocket felt like a coffin weight.

No. Fuck no—

His hands shook as he grabbed the pack. The fabric crumbled like dry rot, spilling its guts: a journal bloated with swamp water, rusted rounds, and—Jesus fuck—the little wooden horse he'd carved her. Its head was smashed to splinters, one ear gone, just like the mare she'd lost to the swamp.

"Sarah's squad." The words tore out of him, his throat burning with bile and blood. Behind him, Nash made the sign of the cross, his bootheel grinding against stone.

The others' lights swung over the wreckage. A rifle snapped in half. Boots, still laced. A wedding ring—Cross's brother-in-law's, from Sarah's unit—jammed between rocks like a fucking grave marker.

Tobias's vision narrowed to a tunnel. He remembered Sarah's hand on his shoulder before she left, her breath reeking of cheap moonshine as she muttered, "Keep the old bastard from doing something stupid, yeah?" The way her braid slapped against her back as she climbed into the transport, never looking back because soldiers don't get goodbyes.

"No blood," Cross said, voice dead as the air. His light froze on the ring. "No fight."

Tobias doubled over, puking acid and nothing else onto the stones, his body spasming. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, spitting the taste of copper, and met his father's stare—that same ice-eyed disgust he'd gotten at twelve when he cried over a gutshot dog.

"Then where—" His voice cracked like dry kindling. He forced the words through gritted teeth: "Where the fuck did they go, Pops?"

Jonathan's jaw clenched hard enough to crack molars. For one second, Tobias saw it—the vein in his temple throbbing, his grip on his rifle bone-white. Grief. Fury. Something worse. Then the mask slammed back down.

"Focus." A bullet of a word. "On." Another. "The mission."

The squad moved like men ticking off a checklist, but Tobias couldn't tear his eyes from Sarah's pack. A glint of metal—her dog tags, half-buried in the wreckage. He grabbed for them.

Then he froze.

The chain wasn't broken.

It was fucking melted.

The metal had run like wax, fused to the buckle in a twisted lump.

His stomach turned. Not dead. Gone. Not just killed—scoured out.

And they were standing right where it fucking happened.

The tags hit the stone with a dull tink. His flashlight jerked up, carving a slash of light across the far wall—a split too straight to be natural, edges sharp as a knife wound.

Cross's beam shook as it traced the seam.

Tobias was backing up before his brain caught up, boots crunching through Sarah's scattered shit. The river stone in his pocket burned like a hot shell casing. Not luck. A tripwire.

They'd walked into a kill box thinking they were hunters.

Then the walls pulsed—a wet, meaty sigh, the air suddenly thick with the stink of gangrene and singed pork.

Hot, wet air belched from the fissure - stinking of opened graves and communion wine left to ferment in a corpse's mouth. Cross's flashlight beam stabbed into the dark, revealing edges that broke the eye. Nothing met at right angles. Nothing reflected light back. The surfaces swallowed it whole.

"Jesus fuck," Cross's hand jerked in a half-formed cross over his chest. "We found it." His voice dripped with something worse than awe. Hunger.

Kline stumbled back, his boot kicking up dust. His flashlight beam skittered across the stone like a panicked rat. "Ain't how finding works." A thick swallow. "This kind of shit picks you."

The altar wasn't built. It was a gash in the world, its edges too sharp, its surface gleaming like a fresh surgical incision. No dust. No cracks. Just that sick, liquid shine that made Tobias's fillings hum.

His fingers closed around the river stone in his pocket. Burning hot now. Tori's charm. He should've left it with her - kept her safe instead of dragging her luck into this hellhole.

Sweat crawled down his back. Too clean. Too ready. This wasn't some ancient relic - it was a fucking bear trap dressed up as salvation.

The squad's lights locked onto the altar, beams crisscrossing like searchlights over a prison yard. Tobias stayed back, his pulse pounding in the ruined side of his head where the shrapnel still lived. Proof didn't mean shit if they all wound up like Sarah - just gear and unanswered questions.

The ceiling shadows moved wrong—pulsing, oily. Alive.

Nash hawked and spat. "Well? Where is it?"

Jonathan's silence said everything.

Fear was just another weapon. Tobias bared his teeth at the dark - not a smile, but a snarl worn raw from eighteen years of watching good people die stupid. Survivors didn't flinch. They bit first.

Tobias's light swept the chamber again, catching on something wrong - a single sandstone block wedged between the altar's black pillars, yellow and smooth like a corpse's tooth. Too perfect. Too fucking placed.

The stone vibrated before he touched it. Heat pulsed through his gloves - not warmth, but the fever-heat of infected flesh. Tori's river stone seared his thigh in warning.

Don't.

His father's voice hissed in his skull, that old lesson from when he was eight and dumb enough to poke a rattler: Curiosity gets you dead faster than bad luck.

Tobias pressed down anyway.

The chamber convulsed, the sound rattling fillings and shaking marrow. Cross's prayer turned to a choked scream as he drew his rifle.

Then the floor moved.

Flagstones heaved like a living thing. Tobias's legs gave out as the altar split with a wet, tearing sound, gaping open to spew out air that stank of gangrene and rotting incense. The squad broke like startled crows, Nash's rifle swinging wild as he stumbled back.

"Fuck me sideways!" Kline gagged on dust and decay.

Nash spat near Tobias's boots, grinning with broken teeth. "Dumb luck, Junior. Even shit sticks land right sometimes."

The pit exhaled, hot and rank, raising Tobias's neck hairs. From the darkness below came a wet, sucking noise - not rats, but something licking its lips.

Tobias clenched his jaw until his teeth creaked. The insults washed over him the same as always - Nash's latrine-pit "pranks", Brooks carving his face open, all the shit he'd swallowed for being Frey's boy. Their sneers said it plain: he hadn't earned his place. Just inherited a target.

Then Jonathan moved.

Tobias's chest tightened with that same stupid hope - maybe now, with Sarah's tags burning his pocket and hell yawning at their feet—

His father didn't look at him.

"Move out."

Three words. A death sentence. Tobias's guts turned to ice water, but he fell into line, shoulders scraping against walls slick with something too thick to be condensation. The stone pulsed around them - a slow, sick heartbeat. Like the tunnel was digesting them alive.

Then-

Skritch-skritch-skritch.

Not rats. Not settling rock. Something with too many fingers dragging claws along the ceiling.

"You hear that?" Tobias's knife was already in his hand.

Kline barked a laugh. "Wind, dumbass."

Something warm hit Tobias's cheek. He wiped it off. Black. Thick. Reeking of copper and spoiled milk.

"Ain't no wind down here," Tobias muttered. Above them, the darkness twitched.

The squad kept marching, too stupid or scared to notice the scritching keeping pace. The walls now oozed black sludge that stank like burned churches and gangrene. Every breath felt like swallowing wet cement. Only three sounds left: their ragged breathing, the endless scratching, and-

Silence.

The tunnel spat them into a cavern where sound went to die. At the center stood the altar - not built, but grown from fused bones. And on it…

A book.

Kline's face turned corpse-green in the glow. 

"The Codex of Shadow." His father's voice dripped with the same hunger Tobias had seen in starving men eyeing rat meat. "Lost since the first fall." His fingers twitched toward the Codex. "They said it could leash the void itself."

 This was what Sarah died for? Some rotting spellbook? The pages moved without wind, whispering shit that made Tobias's fillings vibrate.

Jonathan moved, jerky and unnatural. His fingers hovered, shaking with that same junkie hunger Tobias had seen in men licking morphine off dirty knives.

"Pops, don't—" The words tore from Tobias's raw throat.

The air twisted like flesh under a brand. The Codex peeled itself open, its "pages" glistening - strips of skin stitched together with blackened veins.

Then the screaming started.

Not sound. A vibration that cracked Tobias's molars. Hot blood poured from his nose. The Codex wasn't warning them—it was ringing the fucking dinner bell.

Kline dropped like a puppet with cut strings, his fingers twitching towards his rifle. His mouth hung open, but no scream came out.

Then the thing dropped on him.

Not an animal. Not even a thing. Just wrongness made solid, rusted nails and barbed wire wrapped in mildewed altar cloth, moving like oil spreading on water. It wrapped around Kline's kicking legs first. The rosary beads dug in deep, leaving burs where they touched bare skin.

Tobias's boots slipped in the shit leaking from Kline's armor. Same stench as Ellison's corpse after three days in the sun - that sweet, gagging rot.

"Fuck! FUCK!" Cross fumbled his rifle like a green recruit. The thing's tendrils squirmed under Kline's plates. Already, black veins spiderwebbed from the wound.

Tobias knew how this went. The screaming. The way the bones would start popping. He'd promised Miriam no more sealed coffins.

Even for assholes who pissed in his canteen.

Cross hesitated half a second too long. The thing's jaw unhinged, strands of black spit stretching between teeth like broken glass. Tobias fired without aiming.

The gunshot cracked like ice breaking. The thing recoiled, shrieking in a frequency that made Tobias's teeth bleed. Not hurt. Angry.

"Move!" Jonathan barked, but Tobias was already lunging for the fallen flashlights. The beams caught snapshots: Nash running, Cross falling, Kline—

—Kline convulsing, his armor smoking where the thing's spit ate through steel.

Tobias put three rounds in the thing's cluster of eyes. It flinched but kept coming. Learning.

"The tunnel!" Jonathan's voice broke. The runes flickered like a dying bulb.

Tobias grabbed Kline's webbing, dragging him backward. The man coughed up blood clots. The creatures surged forward in a wave of clicking joints and gangrene stink.

Five yards. Three. Talons scraped Tobias's pack—

—then they were through. The barrier flashed white. The things howled like dogs in a slaughterhouse.

Kline's fingers dug into Tobias's arm. "Why?" Blood bubbled at his lips. "After all my shit..." His eyes showed black veins.

Tobias had no answer. Only the memory of Sarah's tags in his pocket. 

The runes dimmed. Kline wasn't dying—he was turning. Tobias knew the math: one bullet now or six men dead later.

Then Kline twisted free. "You left me." A wet gasp. "Just like—" His jaw locked mid-word, teeth snapping shut hard enough to draw blood.

Tobias reached for him. "That thing's still in you—"

Kline backhanded the concern away. "Don't." His glare swept the squad, lingering on Jonathan. "You all heard me screaming. Saw me go down." A black-tinged tear cut through the grime on his cheek. "Would've left me to turn if not for Junior here."

The silence that followed was heavier than the chamber's damp air. Nash studied his boots. Cross's fingers twitched toward his sidearm—not in threat, but shame. Only Jonathan's face remained unreadable, though the muscle jumping in his jaw betrayed him.

Tobias's hands curled into fists. Every survival instinct said they should've run. Every memory of Sarah's melted dog tags screamed they'd made the right choice. The contradiction sat like hot lead in his gut.

Then he noticed it—the weight in his palm. A sliver of metal, warm as fresh-spilled blood. The symbols etched across its surface matched the Codex's blasphemous script, glowing faintly with sickly green light.

Jonathan's breath hitched. "Tobias." That single word held more concern than Tobias had heard from his father in nearly a decade. "Drop that. Now."

Tobias closed his fingers around the metal. It throbbed in response, sending tendrils of warmth up his veins. "It's important," he said, more certain than he had any right to be. 

The barrier sputtered. In that dying light, Tobias saw the truth: some locks only open from one side.