It was just past midnight when Star slipped out of bed.

Glenn was snoring softly across the room, and the others were quiet too—four beds, four dreamless silences. The facility never truly went dark, but the lights dimmed just enough to give the illusion of rest. Star padded barefoot across the cold tile, heart racing, breath tight.

He hadn’t been able to sleep—not since what happened to Miriam. Not since the doors. Not since the woman with the unreadable eyes told him no one would answer his call.

The halls were silent. Always silent.

He kept to the edges, skirting security cameras and darting past half-closed doors. Star found himself humming the James Bond theme song, causing him to chuckle slightly at himself as he moved thru the corridors.  Most of the facility looked identical—blank walls, metal-framed doors, industrial lighting. But one hallway near the east wing felt... different. Older, almost. Forgotten.

That’s when he saw it.

A door, nestled between two supply closets, slightly ajar. Mold threaded along the top of the frame in fuzzy black veins, climbing downward like it was reaching. The air around it smelled faintly of rot and wet wood.

As Star approached, he froze.

“Miriam,” a voice rasped.

His spine stiffened.
“Miriam?” he whispered. “Hello?”

No reply. Only the faintest shuffle. A breath. A cough.

“Star…” the voice called again. Definitely Miriam’s. Weak. Pleading. “Please… help…”

His hand trembled as he pushed the door open.

Inside, the room was dark, damp, and wrong.

It smelled like mildew and old blood. The walls were streaked with water damage, and the air was thick with floating spores, dust-like motes catching the flicker of the hallway light behind him. He stepped in slowly, mouth covered by his shirt. The door creaked wider, letting in just enough light to see the clutter within.

Discarded medical equipment lay in heaps—broken machines, empty IV bags, a rusted gurney with dried stains on the vinyl. The floor was slick in places. The temperature was several degrees colder than the hallway.

And at the center, atop a splintered metal tray, lay a stack of yellowed parchment.

Star moved toward it instinctively, drawn. The top sheet was covered in looping black ink, but the letters weren’t anything he recognized. Not English. Not Latin. Not anything he’d ever seen. The longer he looked at it, the more his vision blurred.

His head began to ache, a dull throb that bloomed behind his eyes. The ink on the paper pulsed slightly—as if it were still drying. Or still bleeding.

He touched the corner. His fingers came back stained with something inky, but darker. Thicker. Not quite blood, but close.

His gaze drifted lower, to the bottom margin.

A symbol was scrawled there in stark, heavy lines:
A black goat skull, antlers twisted, vines growing through its hollow eyes and bursting from the jaw like blooming rot.

His stomach turned. The air suddenly felt too dense to breathe.

He didn’t know why, but he stuffed the parchment into his pocket, folding it quickly just as footsteps echoed in the hallway behind him.

He turned.

A woman stood in the doorway.

She wore a white uniform like the others, but her face—her face—was impossible to hold onto. Star’s brain skidded against it like a car on black ice. Her eyes shimmered like oil slicks, colorless and too deep, and her cheekbones looked wrong, as if they were bending inward.

Looking at her made his headache spike to a new level of pain. He flinched, blinking rapidly.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” she said. Her voice was calm, patient. The kind of scold you’d give a wandering child. “This room isn’t for you.”

“I—” Star’s breath hitched. “I heard someone. I thought…”

He trailed off. It was getting hard to string his thoughts together. His skull pounded like a war drum, and something sharp pulsed behind his eyes.

“You heard her,” the woman said, stepping into the room. Her eyes no longer hidden but filled with manic glee. “That’s a gift.”

Star stumbled back a step, gripping the wall. “What’s happening to me?”

“You’re lucky,” she continued, voice still soft, almost dreamy. “Mother doesn’t speak to just anyone.”

His ears rang. Her words were getting harder to follow. They seemed to double, echoing out of sync.

“She chose you,” she said. “You’ll be among the first to be reborn.”

He dropped to one knee, the room spinning.

“What…” Star tried to say. “What are you—”

The woman didn’t help him. She just stood there, towering now. Her presence filled the space like a fog, smothering every breath of air. Her words grew stranger, like lullabies half-remembered, made of syllables he couldn't translate.

“You should be grateful,” she said, as Star collapsed fully to the floor. “She calls to you already. Soon, you’ll sing in Her name.”

Somewhere in the distance—no, maybe inside his head—a goat bleated. Low, distorted. It echoed once, then again, then louder, overlapping like there were dozens of them.

Star clenched his eyes shut.

The bleating kept rising.

His head felt like it was splitting open.

And then—

Darkness.