When He Calls (Moons of Nibiru - Book #1)

chpt - 20: the comfort of darkness

ELLE OPENED HER EYES. SHE FELT exhausted, felt wrung out—not just tired, but undone, like her body had been twisted dry from the inside. Her eyes flickered, then cracked open as if peeled back by force. Everything was shaking: her hands, her legs, the weak throb of her pulse. She tried to rise and failed, collapsing back into the filth beneath her. It welcomed her like rot welcomes a carcass.

The water was thick and tepid, slick with oils and things she couldn't name. It clung to her skin, seeping under her nails, into her clothes, her scalp, her mouth. She gagged and rolled over, palms sinking into the foul slop, and managed to push herself upright. Her limbs felt foreign—borrowed, broken, waterlogged.

The chamber around her loomed, silent and sunken. Not just a room, but a forgotten place. The walls—concrete, damp, towering—bore stains like old wounds. There was only one visible exit: a yawning tunnel to her left. Everything else was swallowed in darkness. Deep. Unbreathing.

Elle staggered forward, the sound of her own wet footsteps betraying her. Her shoes slipped; she dropped with a grunt and her hands slapped into the black water again. A breath escaped her lips, shuddering. She caught her reflection—warped and wavering. A split ran across her cheek like a crack in porcelain. Blood webbed through the grime, sluggish.

She forced herself up. Her gaze lifted.

Above—far above—a circular shaft opened into light. Sunlight slanted through the opening in thin, tired beams, catching on the suspended filth in the air. The tunnel above seemed strange: not just a hole, but patterned. Alternating light and dark. A striped veil. A tent. The only tent in Marbel.

Then she felt it. A shift. A hush that deepened.

She turned her head.

A figure had joined her. Standing at the far end of the chamber. Cloaked. Still. As if it had always been there, just outside perception, and only now had stepped into her awareness.

It wore black. The robe hung in wet folds. Its hood cast a shadow so deep she could see nothing within. No face. No glint of eye. Just absence.

"Hello?" she tried. Her voice broke on the silence, small and rough. "Who... Who are you?"

Nothing.

Above the figure, a pale moth circled once, twice, drawn by some unseen warmth, or perhaps lost.

Elle's feet shifted back. One step. Two.

And then a sound scraped into being. A low, dragging rasp. Something wet, heavy, wrong. It oozed from the tunnel on her left. The shadows shifted, thickened, and began to form.

She stared, breath strangled in her throat.

Shapes emerged—not entirely visible, not fully hidden. Their bodies clung to the dark. Flesh glistened where it shouldn't. Limbs bent the wrong way. Joints bulged under taut, wet skin. There was the sense of bone, of too much bone—ribs pressing out like fingers beneath a membrane. Their mouths—if they were mouths—twitched and parted. Something slack and sharp moved within.

Elle stepped back again, but her legs shook. Her balance faltered. She looked to the figure.

It hadn't moved. Except—

Its hand was rising. Slowly. Deliberate.

The skin was not whole. It flaked and peeled, revealing layers darker beneath—not blood, but something rawer. The flesh was stretched thin over long bone, the joints knotted and wrong, as if time had tried to take the limb and failed.