Luk took a few steps forward, then stopped.
He didn’t want to look back, but something inside him was tearing itself apart, urging him to turn around anyway.
He looked at his hands.
Most of the blood had been wiped onto the robe, but the warmth between his fingers was still there. No matter how much he rubbed them, it never felt completely clean.
He paused.
“Unintentionally,” he told himself. “Just to survive.”
He had heard that thought before.In whispers.On the lips of the Havarites who had taken his mother away.
His stomach tightened.
The same sentence.Just different hands.
This wasn’t a story filled with heroic sacrifices meant to comfort children.
This was real life—ice-cold enough to freeze your bones, suffocating enough to rot you from the inside.
Luk shook his head sharply. If he let himself sink into these thoughts, he would die here. In these tunnels, regret was just as lethal as mercy.
He unfolded the map again. The paper trembled under the light. The marked point was close.
But something would happen before he reached it. He could feel it.
The tunnels never gave anything without a price.
As Luk moved silently through the darkness, the glow ahead of him grew clearer with every step.Light pierced through the black of the tunnel, spilling toward him.
He stopped.
An old, heavy banner hung before him, completely blocking the entrance.
The fabric was worn, its edges torn and frayed.
There were no symbols of the Children of God.No blood.No markings.No sacred words.
Only a single line of text:
“WELCOME TO NEW JERUSALEM.”
The voices coming from behind the banner shattered the tunnel’s silence.
A crowd.Noise.Human breath.
From a distance, his armor might pass him off as a Havarite. But the moment he stepped inside, hiding his identity in that crowd would be impossible.
Being noticed here didn’t mean getting shot.
Being noticed here meant getting filleted like a fish.
As he scanned the area, he spotted an open ventilation shaft. Too open. Too inviting.
If he went that way, he might escape…or crawl straight into his grave.
He slowed his steps as he approached. Just as he was about to slip inside, a whisper he had heard before surfaced in his mind.
The fanatics deliberately left some paths open.Passages that looked like hope were nothing more than tombs.Those who entered never came back out.
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Luk had no other choice.
He couldn’t move through the crowd. And he wouldn’t turn back and leave Nerida’s child behind again.
There was no time to think anymore. He had come this far—and he wasn’t going back.
He grabbed the edge of the vent and pulled himself inside. It was obvious no one had been here in a long time; the air was foul, rancid. If someone had set a trap here, it would have shown by now.
Crawling forward, he soon reached a metal grate.
As he drew closer, he noticed two figures leaning against the wall just below it, talking quietly.
They were directly beneath him, unaware of his presence.
Fanatics.
— “Did you hear? The First Children are holding two sacrifice rituals this month.”— “Two?”— “Apparently one wasn’t enough. More than one person will be offered.”— “Good… The more blood flows, the more we cleanse ourselves of sin.”— “Exactly. How else would we wash our sins away?”
The last words echoed inside the ventilation shaft.
How else would we wash our sins away.
Luk closed his eyes. For a brief moment, his mother’s face appeared in the darkness. The same words. The same faith. Only the names of the victims changed.
They slaughtered people in the name of religion and belief—and believed it would absolve them of their sins.
When the conversation ended, the two fell silent for a while.
Then one of them tilted his head slightly.
— “Did you hear something?”— “No… you?”— “Must be rats in the vents again.”
Luk clenched his teeth to silence his heartbeat. He could feel the cold, dust-coated metal of the ventilation shaft against his palms.
He looked down at the men.
Their voices were calm. Casual.
Like they were discussing something ordinary.
Luk held his breath.
One more second—and all it would take was one of them looking up.
He had to move. Time was running out.
If he didn’t find Nerida’s child before the ritual, they were both already dead.
As he crawled through the tight shaft, voices rose again from below—muffled, but still clear.
— “I heard there are two sacrifices today.”— “Two? Wasn’t there only that woman offered by the Red Council?”— “They found a child in one of the stations.”— “A child?”The man lowered his voice.— “Then they must have taken him to First Child Nikolas.”— “For the ritual?”After a brief silence—— “The ritual is always secondary for him.”
What Luk heard made the earlier conversation seem almost mundane.
He couldn’t think anymore. If he waited, he’d be too late.
He picked up his pace. The metal scraped against his body, tearing the skin on his elbows raw. Blood left faint streaks behind him—but Luk didn’t stop.
Pain didn’t matter.
The first cracking sound froze him from the inside.
He stopped.
One more move and it would collapse.
As he slowly reached forward, the metal finally gave way with a deafening crash.
The moment he hit the ground, he instinctively drew his pistol. His breathing was ragged. His eyes swept the darkness.
No one.
An empty room.
A small armory.
Crates. Weapon racks. And on every single one of them, the same symbol:
The Red Council.
The equipment on the table immediately caught his attention. Two gas masks—and an unused set of armor.
He didn’t hesitate. He stripped off what he was wearing and put the new gear on.
Just as he was about to leave, he stopped.
Continuing with only a pistol would be stupid.
He turned back to the weapon rack. His eyes locked onto one model.
AKMS Carbine.
The Red Council’s preferred weapon for close to mid-range combat.
The moment Luk held it, he felt this wasn’t a coincidence.
He slowly cracked the storage door open. No one outside.
When he opened it fully, he stepped into a massive corridor draped in deep red fabric.
As he looked around, he saw the corridor was filled wall to wall with crates marked with the Red Council’s insignia.
He opened one.
Then another.
Then another.
They were filled to the brim—ammunition, explosives, weapons.
This wasn’t stockpiling.
This was preparation.
His throat went dry.
The Red Council…with the Children of God…
Why?
In these tunnels, only two stations were considered real threats.
And these weapons… weren’t meant for defense.
Luk slowly closed the crate.
This wasn’t the warning of an upcoming war.
This was the silence of a war that had already begun.
And Luk was standing right in the middle of it.
As he moved down the corridor, a scream echoed from ahead.
It wasn’t the scream of a woman.Or a man.
It was higher-pitched.
More desperate.
The kind that gnaws at you from the inside.
This map is incomplete.
Like everything underground, it reflects what is known, not what is safe.
As the story progresses, new routes, sealed areas, and forgotten zones may appear.
Not because the tunnels change —but because people finally dare to look.
