Episode 53 – Descent

  Kade’s eyes fluttered open, but the world around him was nothing but void. A thick, suffocating darkness pressed against his skin, making it hard to breathe, harder to think. The very air felt wrong—like it was holding its breath, waiting.

  He could feel the others. He could hear their ragged breathing, their faint movements, but it was as if they were trapped in separate worlds, their voices distorted and muffled.

  “What happened?”

  Kade’s voice felt alien to him, too faint in the oppressive silence. He pushed himself up, his hands gripping the cold, slick ground. His body ached, like it had been twisted and pulled apart, yet he was still here. He still had a purpose. He had to keep moving.

  “Naomi? Mason? Owen?”

  A long, jagged inhale filled the air—then a soft cough. Naomi’s voice broke through, low and distant, but still steady. “Kade? Are you… are you there?”

  “I’m here,” Kade croaked, his throat dry as dust. He pushed himself to his knees, taking slow, cautious breaths. The pressure in the air was suffocating, yet strangely still, as though nothing—nothing—could escape the crushing weight around them.

  The darkness was all-encompassing. Even the light of their flashlights seemed to be swallowed up by it, as if they were in some kind of limbo—some space between worlds.

  “This isn’t real,” Naomi said, her voice trembling. “This can’t be real.”

  Kade felt it too. There was something wrong about this place. Not just the feeling of dread that clung to them like a second skin, but the very fact that this void—this non-place—was so alien. Like it didn’t belong to their dimension.

  Kade’s eyes darted around, trying to make sense of it all. There were no walls, no floor, no sky. Just this inky expanse that stretched into infinity. No sense of direction. No sound except for the thudding of his own pulse.

  “It’s a prison,” Owen whispered. His voice, though faint, carried the weight of a hundred fears. “We’re trapped…”

  A sudden, violent wave of nausea hit Kade. His stomach churned, his head spun, and for a split second, he could have sworn the world around him flickered—like a bad signal, a corrupted feed. He closed his eyes and fought against the dizziness, focusing on Naomi’s voice.

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  “What happened to the others?”

  “I don’t know.” Kade’s breath was shaky, but he kept moving, reaching out with his hands to find anything, anything that wasn’t just this oppressive emptiness. He could feel something shifting beneath him, a subtle pulse, a vibration that ran through the air, but it was too faint to grasp, too far to understand. He clenched his fists, trying to steady his mind, but a cold sweat broke out across his brow.

  Then, a sound—a deep, guttural hum—pulsed through the air, reverberating in Kade’s chest like the sound of a thousand voices whispering at once. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as the hum grew louder, growing in intensity until it drowned out everything else.

  The vortex.

  Kade’s thoughts snapped back to what had happened before they fell into this abyss. The creature. The monolith. That man—or whatever he had been. The entity that controlled this place.

  “It’s not over,” Naomi muttered, as if reading his mind. “We’re still connected to it. Whatever that thing is, whatever Azazel2 is, it’s still here… controlling us. It’s pulling us into something we don’t understand.”

  Kade gritted his teeth. He couldn’t accept that. Not after everything they had been through. They had to find a way out.

  The air around them seemed to pulse, like a heartbeat. The sound grew louder still, until it became unbearable—a cacophony of shrill voices, twisted, alien, incomprehensible. The more Kade tried to block it out, the clearer it became. It was them. The dead. The ones who had been brought back by Azazel2, the ones who had crossed over, their voices twisted and distorted beyond recognition.

  Suddenly, Naomi screamed.

  Kade spun around, his heart leaping into his throat. She was standing just a few feet away, her eyes wide with terror. Her hand was outstretched, fingers trembling as they pointed into the blackness.

  “Kade, look…”

  Kade followed her gaze. And he saw it. In the distance. A figure. Not a man—something far worse. It was a mass of shadows, undulating and shifting like liquid darkness. Eyes—dozens of them—glowed faintly from within the swirling mass. The eyes fixed on them, the same empty, abyssal gaze as before, but this time… there was something more.

  It was laughing.

  Or at least, it sounded like laughter. But it was broken, distorted, inhuman.

  “Run,” Mason hissed, his voice sharp with panic. “It’s coming.”

  But before they could react, the figure shot forward, a blur of darkness that moved faster than any human could follow. It reached them in an instant. The shadows wrapped around Kade, pulling him in like a vice, constricting his chest, his throat, until he could barely breathe.

  He fought against the grip, but it was like trying to wrestle with smoke, with nothingness. His mind spun, and for a moment, he was sure he was going to suffocate in the void.

  And then, just as quickly as it had come, the pressure released. Kade gasped for air, his heart racing, but the figure was gone. The laughter, however, remained—echoing in his mind.

  “What is it?” Owen asked, his voice trembling.

  Naomi’s eyes were wide, almost crazed with fear. “It’s not just one of them,” she whispered. “It’s something worse. Something ancient. Something beyond Azazel2.”

  A cold chill crawled down Kade’s spine. “What do you mean?”

  Naomi stepped back, her voice quivering. “Whatever it is… it’s been waiting. And we’ve awakened it. We’re not in our world anymore. We’ve crossed into something else. Something darker.”

  Kade’s breath hitched. Could it be true? Had the entire reality they’d known been shattered? Had they crossed into the realm of something that defied every law they knew?

  Before he could voice his thoughts, a piercing, high-pitched scream echoed around them. It wasn’t from any of the team—it was something else.

  Something that had been waiting.

  Kade’s mind raced. They were running out of time.

  “What do we do?” Mason shouted, his voice cracking.

  Naomi reached for her rifle, her hands shaking. “We fight.”

  But Kade knew. They couldn’t fight it. Not like this. Not in this place.

  There was no escape.

  But there was one option left.

  They had to understand what this place was. They had to uncover the truth.

  And they had to do it before whatever was hunting them found them again.

  End of Episode 53.