The nightmares returned the very first night Felix made it back to the surface. He hadn’t even unpacked the duffel bag still smeared with blood and ash before collapsing onto his bed, but sleep didn’t bring the escape he’d hoped for.
In his dreams, the Tunnels were alive again, endless and hungry. The Heart, shattered in the depths, now pulsed within his chest. He could feel its rhythm—a slow, heavy beat echoing in his ribs. Around him, the walls whispered, calling him back.
He woke drenched in sweat, gasping for air, only to find a faint glow emanating from the corner of his room. For a moment, he thought it was the sunrise. But the light was wrong—cold and red, like molten metal. It came from his shadow.
The Whispers Begin
For days, Felix tried to convince himself he was imagining things. He threw himself into distractions: cleaning his tiny apartment, drinking himself into numbness, staring at his phone, wondering if Emma would ever contact him again.
She didn’t.
The whispers started a week later. They were faint at first, just at the edge of hearing. Words he couldn’t understand, but their tone was insistent, seductive, and unrelenting. By the second week, the voices were louder, and Felix realized they weren’t coming from outside. They were inside his head.
“You belong,” one voice whispered, soft and sinister.“Return,” another hissed.“The Heart isn’t gone. You carry its spark now.”
Felix tried to drown them out with pills and alcohol, but it was no use. No matter where he went, the voices followed.
The Shadow Knows
It wasn’t just the whispers. Felix began to notice his reflection acting… strangely. In mirrors and darkened windows, his shadow moved on its own. Sometimes it stretched unnaturally, slithering across walls like a living thing.
One night, after finishing an entire bottle of whiskey, he stumbled into the bathroom. His reflection stared back at him, but the eyes weren’t his anymore. They glowed faintly red, pulsing with that same, familiar rhythm.
“Leave me alone!” Felix shouted, slamming his fist into the mirror. It shattered, shards scattering across the sink. But in the broken pieces, his shadow twisted and writhed, a hundred distorted versions of itself moving independently.
Felix stumbled backward, tripping over the edge of the bathtub. He hit the tile hard, gasping for breath. For a moment, everything was still.
Then, from the largest shard of glass on the floor, his reflection leaned out. It leaned, impossibly, as though the mirror no longer obeyed physics.
“Stop running,” it said in his voice, but deeper, layered with something inhuman.
Felix screamed.
The Call of the Tunnels
By the time the third week rolled around, Felix was no longer sleeping. The whispers had grown louder, more distinct. They didn’t just call to him—they commanded him. He could feel the pull, like invisible strings tugging at his soul.
The Tunnels wanted him back.
At first, Felix resisted. But the pull grew stronger each day, until he found himself standing on the outskirts of town, staring at the broken bridge that led to the entrance. His feet moved before his mind could stop them, carrying him down the crumbling steps and into the darkness.
A Return to the Depths
The Tunnels were different this time. The air felt heavier, the walls closer. Felix’s flashlight flickered, its beam swallowed by the oppressive black.
The whispers, once faint, now roared in his ears. They guided him deeper, turning his hesitation into certainty.
“This way,” they said. “Faster.”
He didn’t know how long he walked. Hours? Days? Time had no meaning down here. He passed the rusted gate where Emma had dissolved the runes. The symbols were back, glowing faintly, but they parted for him without resistance.
The lair of the guardians lay ahead, the claw marks on the walls still fresh. Felix’s heartbeat quickened as he entered the chamber where the Heart had once pulsed.
It was empty.
But not silent.
The Guardian’s Bargain
A voice echoed through the chamber, low and guttural.
“You return, carrier of the spark.”
Felix froze. The air shimmered, and a shape began to form in the darkness. It was one of the guardians—a massive, spider-like creature, its legs bristling with jagged blades. But its face was different this time. Human. Familiar.
It was Emma.
Or what was left of her. Her face was embedded in the creature’s abdomen, her eyes wide and unblinking, her lips twisted into a cruel smile.
“You took the Heart from us,” the creature growled, its many voices blending into one. “But it cannot die. It lives in you now.”
Felix stumbled back, shaking his head. “No. I don’t want it. Take it back!”
The creature laughed, a horrible, grating sound.
“You have no choice. The Heart chose you. But there is… another way.”
Its many eyes glinted, and the chamber grew colder.
“Surrender yourself. Become one with the guardians. Serve the Heart, and the voices will stop. Or…”
The creature’s limbs clattered against the stone as it crept closer.
“Resist, and the Heart will consume you. Slowly. Painfully.”
The Ultimate Choice
Felix’s mind raced. He thought of Emma, of her obsession with the Heart, of how it had destroyed her. Was this her fate? To become a guardian, a slave to the very thing she’d sought to control?
He glanced at the jagged knife still strapped to his belt—the same one Emma had used to destroy the Heart.
“You think I’ll just give up?” Felix growled, gripping the blade tightly.
The creature hissed, its limbs tensing. “You are already ours. Fight, and you only delay the inevitable.”
Felix didn’t wait. With a roar, he charged forward, plunging the knife into the creature’s center.
The chamber exploded into chaos.
The Spark Awakens
Felix wasn’t prepared for what happened next. The knife, still glowing with ancient runes, pulsed violently as it pierced the creature’s flesh. A torrent of energy surged through him, lighting up every nerve in his body.
The whispers screamed, louder than ever, but they weren’t commands anymore—they were pleas.
“No! Stop!” the voices cried. “You’ll destroy us all!”
Felix gritted his teeth, driving the blade deeper.
The Heart’s rhythm thundered in his chest, faster and faster, until it felt like it would tear him apart. But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t.
With one final push, the creature let out a deafening shriek and disintegrated into ash.
The Cost of Freedom
When Felix woke, he was back on the surface, lying on the edge of the broken bridge. The morning sun burned his eyes, but for the first time in weeks, his mind was silent.
The whispers were gone.
But so was his shadow.
As he stood, unsteady and hollow, he glanced down at his reflection in the river below. His eyes glowed faintly red.
The Heart wasn’t finished with him yet.
The Shadow’s Hunger
Weeks passed, but Felix’s new existence felt less like living and more like waiting. The silence that followed his last descent into the Tunnels was a void that threatened to devour him.
The glow in his eyes, faint at first, grew stronger each night. Mirrors became his enemy—his reflection seemed to mock him, the faint, rhythmic pulse of the Heart still flickering within. Worse, his shadow began to reappear, but not as it once was.
At first, it moved subtly—just a ripple in the wrong direction, or a slight delay as he walked past a light. But soon, it became bolder. It reached out, tendrils stretching like liquid smoke, clawing at walls, curling around doorframes.
And then it started whispering.
“You’re wasting time,” it murmured one night, its voice dry and cold like dead leaves.
Felix bolted upright in bed, clutching the knife that hadn’t left his side since the Tunnels. “Who’s there?”
The shadow shifted on the wall, forming an amorphous shape, its edges writhing.
“We are still here, Felix,” it hissed. “The Heart is still in you. And it hungers.”
The Missing
As Felix wrestled with the growing darkness within, Argento began to fracture. The disappearances returned, worse than before.
It started with the outcasts—vagrants and addicts nobody missed until their numbers swelled. Then came the shopkeepers, the old woman who sold flowers by the square, the father walking his child home from school. The city turned desperate, and whispers of the Tunnels spread like wildfire.
Felix saw the signs everywhere: broken windows scrawled with runic warnings, hastily drawn symbols painted in blood. He knew better than to believe it was random.
The Heart was calling others.
The shadows began to tug at Felix more insistently, their whispers turning into shouts.
“Return! Reclaim what is yours! You cannot fight what you are!”
But Felix refused. He stayed locked in his crumbling apartment, trying to drown the voices in alcohol and painkillers, each night worse than the last.
And then came the woman.
The Hunter
Her name was Delilah Graves, and she broke into Felix’s apartment with the precision of someone who had done it a hundred times before.
Felix barely had time to grab his knife before she pressed the barrel of a pistol against his temple.
“Easy,” she said, her voice low and sharp. “If I wanted you dead, you’d already be gone.”
Felix stared at her, his heart hammering. She was tall, with dark, piercing eyes and the unmistakable air of someone who had seen too much and survived it all.
“What do you want?” Felix asked, his voice hoarse.
Delilah pulled a leather satchel from her shoulder, tossing it onto the table. It fell open, revealing maps, old photographs, and strange, glowing artifacts that made Felix’s stomach churn.
“You’ve been to the Tunnels,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “You’ve touched the Heart.”
Felix tried to deny it, but the red glow in his eyes betrayed him.
“I need you,” Delilah continued. “The disappearances, the killings—it’s spreading. Whatever you unleashed down there isn’t done. And you’re the only one who can stop it.”
Back to the Depths
Delilah didn’t give Felix a choice. Armed with her maps and relics, she dragged him back to the Tunnels.
“You don’t understand what you’re dealing with,” Felix warned as they descended into the darkness. “The Heart isn’t just a thing—it’s alive. It’s everywhere. You can’t kill it.”
Delilah’s eyes were cold. “You tried running. How’s that working out for you?”
Felix had no answer.
The Tunnels were worse this time. The air was thicker, the walls covered in pulsating growths that oozed dark liquid. The runes Emma had once dissolved now glowed brighter than ever, throbbing in time with the rhythm Felix could feel in his chest.
The shadows moved ahead of them, flitting and whispering like predators waiting for the right moment to strike.
The Ritual Chamber
At the heart of the labyrinth, they found it: a massive chamber, far larger than the one Felix had seen before. The Heart wasn’t here, but its presence was overwhelming. The walls dripped with black ichor, and the air hummed with the sound of distant screams.
In the center of the room stood an altar, surrounded by figures cloaked in shadow. Their forms were twisted, part human, part… something else.
“They’re conduits,” Delilah whispered. “The Heart’s feeding through them.”
One of the figures turned, its face a patchwork of flesh and metal. Felix’s stomach churned as recognition dawned—it was the flower-seller from the square, her eyes glowing faintly red.
“They’re still alive,” he said, his voice barely audible.
Delilah nodded grimly. “Not for long.”
The Confrontation
The figures attacked as soon as they stepped into the chamber. Their movements were jerky, unnatural, but their strength was terrifying.
Delilah fought with precision, her bullets tearing through the conduits one by one. But for every one she dropped, another seemed to rise from the shadows.
Felix, clutching his knife, could feel the pull of the Heart growing stronger. The whispers returned, louder than ever.
“Join us, Felix,” they hissed. “End the suffering. Embrace your destiny.”
He screamed, driving the blade into the nearest figure. It howled, collapsing into a pile of ash, but the act sent a surge of pain through Felix’s body. The Heart retaliated, its rhythm pounding in his skull.
“You can’t fight it!” Delilah shouted, pulling him to his feet. “You have to sever the connection!”
“How?!” Felix roared, his vision blurring.
Delilah pointed to the altar. “That’s its anchor! Destroy it!”
The Final Sacrifice
Felix staggered toward the altar, the shadows clawing at him with every step. The closer he got, the stronger the pull of the Heart became. His vision darkened, his limbs felt heavy, but he pushed forward, gripping the knife tightly.
As he reached the altar, the shadows surged, forming a massive, writhing shape. It towered over him, its many eyes glowing red, its voice a cacophony of screams.
“You cannot kill what is eternal,” it roared.
Felix gritted his teeth, raising the blade. “Watch me.”
With every ounce of strength he had left, he drove the knife into the altar. The chamber erupted in blinding light, the shadows shrieking as they dissolved into nothingness.
The rhythm in Felix’s chest slowed, then stopped.
A New Beginning
When Felix woke, he was back on the surface, lying in the ruins of the broken bridge. Delilah was gone, but her satchel lay beside him. Inside was a single note:
“The Heart’s gone, but it left its mark. Watch your shadow.”
Felix stared at the rising sun, its warmth breaking through the chill that had gripped him for so long.
For the first time in weeks, his mind was quiet.
But his shadow still didn’t move quite right.
