UNINDEXED

Vaelor Mire ran through Tunnel Nine with blood on his sleeve and stolen bio-batteries strapped to his back.

The alarms above Dredge were screaming again. That wasn’t unusual, in Dredge, something was always exploding. Pipes burst, gangs fought, and people disappeared, but nobody cared. Tonight, however, felt wrong. The tunnel lights flickered violently as Vaelor jumped over a broken rail line, boots splashing through black water. Far behind him, voices echoed through the underground, "He went this way!" Great, the Skarr Vultures were still chasing him.

Vaelor cursed under his breath and shoved harder through the crowded maintenance corridor. Rusted pipes lined the walls, and steam hissed from cracked vents overhead. The stolen batteries on his back weighed like bricks. Three more turns and if he reached Sector Hush, he could disappear into the lower alleys. A gunshot exploded behind him, metal sparked beside his head, and a voice yelled, “Stop running, Mire!” Vaelor laughed once between breaths, “try shooting straighter!” Another shot rang out, too close, and he turned sharply down a narrow passage and the entire tunnel suddenly shook.

A deep sound rolled through the underground, not an explosion or machinery, but something bigger and impossible. The lights died instantly, darkness swallowed everything, and people screamed. Then gravity twisted as Vaelor slammed into the wall, the floor lurching sideways beneath him. The air itself seemed to vibrate, cracks ripped across the concrete ceiling, and a deafening boom interrupted him. The tunnel split open ahead, not shattered, but opened like reality itself had torn apart. White light poured through the crack, cold, endless, and wrong.

Every instinct in Vaelor’s body screamed at him to run. Then the whispers started, thousands of voices crying, laughing, and begging. The sound flooded the tunnel from nowhere and everywhere at once. The Skarr Vultures behind him stopped chasing, and one of them whispered shakily, “Do you hear that?” Another screamed, and Vaelor turned to see the man’s body dissolving. Not burning or melting, but erasing, chunks of him vanishing into drifting black static. His arm disappeared first, then half his face, as the others stumbled backward in horror.

“What’s happening to him?!” The dissolving man looked around wildly, crying for someone named Toren. Nobody answered, and the other gang members stared at him blankly, like they didn’t recognize him anymore. Fear crawled into Vaelor’s chest as the man screamed louder, then his voice cut off completely. His body vanished into black particles, gone. Silence filled the tunnel until one of the gang members frowned, asking, “Who were we chasing?” Vaelor’s stomach dropped; no one remembered him, not even seconds later.

The whispers suddenly became louder, then every screen in the tunnel turned on at once. Phones, broken monitors, and train displays all flickered with violent static. Words slowly appeared across them: WELCOME. The temperature plummeted as more words appeared, THE THRONE MAZE HAS AWAKENED. People across the tunnel froze, nobody spoke, and nobody breathed. Then the city above screamed as a massive roar shook the underground. Vaelor sprinted toward the nearest staircase without thinking, knowing that if he stayed underground, he would die.

He burst through the emergency exit doors and reached the surface, then stopped cold. The sky was gone, and in its place hung gigantic black doors stretching across the heavens. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, were floating above Earth itself, covered in glowing crimson symbols. The entire city of Dredge had fallen silent beneath them as cars crashed into buildings and people stumbled through the streets crying. Some knelt, some prayed, and others pointed upward in horror as one of the giant doors slowly opened. Darkness poured out of it like liquid—not clouds or smoke, but something alive.

Vaelor backed away slowly, his pulse hammering violently. This wasn’t terrorism, war, or anything human. A little girl nearby tugged her mother’s sleeve, but the mother didn’t answer, staring at the sky. The little girl’s body flickered suddenly, black static spreading across her skin. Vaelor’s eyes widened. The child looked confused, crying for her mom, as her hand and part of her face disappeared. The mother finally looked down, but her expression changed instantly to confusion. “Sorry,” she whispered softly, “do I know you?”

The little girl froze, fear filling her fading eyes as her voice cracked apart into static. Then she vanished, gone. The mother blinked once, then looked back toward the sky like nothing had happened. Vaelor felt ice crawl through his veins, people weren’t just dying, they were being removed. The giant doors above the city suddenly pulsed crimson, and every person in the streets screamed simultaneously. A burning symbol carved itself into Vaelor’s wrist, pain exploded through his arm, and then blue light erupted before his eyes: WELCOME TO THE THRONE MAZE.

Voices cried out across the city, and system windows appeared everywhere. Vaelor stared at his own screen and froze, his interface was breaking apart. Static crawled across the words, the light flickered violently, and then new text appeared, different from the others: ERROR. Vaelor stopped breathing as the message glitched again: UNINDEXED LIFEFORM DETECTED.

The crimson doors above the sky began opening wider, screams echoed across Dredge, and the final message appeared: CORRECTION PROTOCOL INITIATED.

Somewhere far above Earth, something opened its eyes.