By eight in the morning, the streets in the capital’s central district had frozen into a sprawling gridlock of steel and glass. The traffic lights at the major intersections died simultaneously, triggering massive gridlock during the morning rush hour as thousands of vehicles vied to squeeze into the corporate quarter. Car horns blared endlessly, building an ear-shattering symphony of urban fury. Motorcyclists cut ruthlessly across lanes, pedestrians sprinted across the asphalt between trapped cars, and the crisp morning air turned thick and suffocating with exhaust fumes.

Amidst the panicking sea of humanity, Zulfa Arditama weaved swiftly between the hoods of stalled vehicles, his black hooded jacket pulled tight to evade the overhead street surveillance cameras. His breath came in ragged gasps—not from physical exhaustion, but because the glowing red threat on his office monitor was still burning a hole in his mind:

DO NOT DIG TOO DEEP, ENGINEER.

They were watching him. Aethel Corp wasn't just covering up last night's incident; they were tracking his every move. If he returned to his desk at the municipal office, his fate would likely mirror Bagas’s—vanished without a trace behind a wall of melting steel. The only safe haven where he could lie low and search for answers to his late grandfather's handwritten notes was the Central Municipal Archive Building, nestled within the old colonial quarter. It was an ancient red-brick landmark entirely disconnected from Aethel Corp's modern digital fiber network.

Zulfa quickened his pace, vaulted over a rusted roadside iron barrier, and darted sharply into a narrow alleyway leading to the archives' rear loading dock.

The atmosphere inside the archive building stood in stark contrast to the roaring chaos of the streets outside. The moment the heavy teakwood doors slammed shut behind him, the blaring horns and shouting commuters were instantly muffled by stone walls over a meter thick. The air smelled thick with aged dust, brittle paper, and beeswax. Towering rows of rusted iron shelves packed with stacked documents stretched as far as the eye could see, forming a labyrinth of paper that looked untouched by direct sunlight in decades.

"Hello? Who's there? Public visiting hours don't start until ten!"

A sharp voice—nervous yet firm—suddenly pierced the stillness of the paper labyrinth, followed by the clatter of a stack of paper folders spilling onto the floor.

Zulfa flinched, instinctively pulling his hood down further as he ducked behind the nearest shelving unit. He peered cautiously through a gap between stacks of nineties property records.

At the far end of aisle four, a young woman with short shoulder-length hair and thick-rimmed glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose was squatting, frantically gathering a dozen loose sheets of architectural blueprint paper. She wore a field vest stained with ink smudges and held a small flashlight clamped between her teeth.

"Damn it... why do the colonial Sector Four drainage blueprints always end up in the bottom shelf? This isn't even regular sewage paperwork," she grumbled under her breath, pulling the flashlight from her mouth and wiping a smudge of dust from her forehead.

Zulfa took a slow breath, stepping out from the shadows with his hands raised in a non-threatening gesture. "Hey... sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I'm not looking for trouble."

The girl jumped violently. She scrambled to her feet, clutching a roll of blueprints tightly to her chest, her sharp eyes glaring at him from behind her lenses. "Hey! Who are you? How did you get in through the back service door? That deadbolt is supposed to be locked from the inside with a manual latch!"

"The deadbolt is worn out; the latch sticks halfway. I just gave it a little extra leverage," Zulfa answered honestly, keeping his palms open to stave off her panic. "My name is Zulfa. I'm... I work for the Sector 4 municipal public works department. I need access to the original civil blueprints from the city's initial expansion in the nineties."

The girl's eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. Far from looking terrified, her expression shifted into a mix of cynicism and intense curiosity. "A municipal engineer? Sneaking into an old archive during work hours, wearing a hood, and smelling like sulfur? You're running from Aethel Corp private security, aren't you?"

Zulfa froze, lowering his hands slightly. "How do you know about Aethel Corp?"

The girl let out a dry snort, pushing her glasses back up her nose with an index finger. "Never underestimate an archivist. My name is Naya. I'm the only intern in this building who wasn't fired—instead, I got exiled down to the basement vaults because I was too loud about how dangerous and unhinged Aethel Corp's urban modernization project really is."

Zulfa stared at her in disbelief. The encounter felt too convenient, or perhaps guided by some strange hand of fate. "Wait... you said dangerous? What makes you say that?"

Naya sighed, placing her blueprint roll onto a rickety wooden table nearby and unrolling a massive map covered in red pen annotations and complex calculus notes.

"Because this city wasn't designed using modern civil engineering principles, Engineer Arditama," Naya said, her tone dead serious as she locked eyes with him. "If you study the original colonial-era blueprints I dug up last week, you'll realize that the layout of the drainage grids, the primary power substations, and the underground utility tunnels form a massive geometric sigil when overlaid."

Zulfa frowned, stepping closer to the table to peer down at the parchment. "What kind of geometric sigil?"

Naya pointed the tip of her metal ruler at several marked red nodes on the map. "A mystical locking symbol. In ancient engineering terms, it's known as The Great Seal. The city planners of the past—including your own family lineage, if I read the municipal ancestry records right—deliberately built this modern infrastructure not just to route water or electricity, but to hold down something buried beneath us so it can't crawl back to the surface."

Zulfa felt a chill race through his veins. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his grandfather's black leather-bound diary, and laid it flat beside Naya's map. "You're right. I found this this morning in the main office archives before my terminal was locked out by the corporate network."

Naya flipped open the weather-beaten journal, her eyes wide with a mix of awe and dread. She read the scrawled red ink entry titled The Bleeding Pulse Point written in Zulfa's grandfather's hand. "Good lord... So this journal is real? Your grandfather wrote these warnings firsthand?"

"And last night, I saw the proof with my own eyes down at Manhole 402," Zulfa's voice dropped, the horrific image of Bagas flashing back into his mind. "Steel pipes melting like butter. There's a living cavity behind those walls, Naya. And my partner... Bagas was dragged down into the dark. The corporation scrubbed all the sensor telemetry clean, pretending nothing happened."

Naya went quiet. She looked up at Zulfa with a sympathetic gaze before slowly nodding. "That explains why the traffic lights crashed across the city this morning and why cellular networks in the downtown districts are experiencing widespread blackouts. Aethel Corp is ramping up energy extraction capacity at the Main Valve. They're forcing that gateway wide open."

Before Zulfa could reply, a sharp electronic chime suddenly echoed through the silent archive room.

Beep... Beep... Beep!

It wasn't coming from a computer, but from Naya's handheld emergency signal transmitter resting on the table. The small screen flashed erratically, displaying a flat red telemetry line that suddenly spiked straight up to its maximum threshold.

Zulfa snapped his head toward the main archive entrance.

The incandescent overhead bulbs hanging from the high ceiling—which had been casting a warm yellow glow—flickered twice, then died together in absolute unison. The room plunged instantly into a suffocating, pitch-black void.

"Damn it... our exterior perimeter security's been breached," Naya hissed in panic, sweeping her hands across the table to grab her flashlight.

From deep within the pitch-black labyrinth of tall document shelves piled with dusty paper, a strange sound began to ripple outward.

Tap... tap... scree... tap...

A slow, rhythmic metal tapping, paired with the chilling sound of sharp claws scraping across the concrete floor. The noise crawled closer through the darkness of the aisles—matching the exact rhythmic cadence Zulfa had heard echoing from the utility tunnels the night before.

Zulfa held his breath, sliding his hand into his jacket pocket to grip the heavy wrench tightly, as the darkness ahead began to reveal a pair of glowing red pinpricks glaring from behind the rows of ancient files.