The siren began its wail at three in the morning, a hollow mechanical howl that ripped through the steel-caged tenements of Sector 4. Sunny did not panic. When you grow up in the outskirts of the Outskirts, fear is a luxury reserved for people who have something left to lose.

He checked the glowing mark etched across his left collarbone. It was no longer a dull scar. It pulsed with an eerie violet luminescence, warm against his skin, vibrating like a trapped wasp. The Awakening was not coming; it had already arrived.

“Initiate Sunless,” a whisper echoed inside the hollow cavity of his skull. The voice did not sound human. It sounded like cracked stone grinding over obsidian glass. “The Spell demands your tribute. Enter the Nightmare, or be consumed by the waking world.”

Sunny clenched his fists, feeling the coarse fabric of his worn canvas jacket. “If I die,” he muttered to the peeling wallpaper, “at least I won’t have to pay next month’s ration tax.”

Darkness swallowed the room before he could take another breath. The floor vanished. Gravity tilted ninety degrees, violently hurling him across an expanse of silent stars and collapsing constellations. When his boots struck solid ground again, the shockwave rattled his teeth.

Frost bit into his face. A blizzard howled across a blackened ridge of obsidian stone. In the distance, towering like the ribcage of an extinct colossus, stood the ruined battlements of a forgotten citadel. And on the ground beside his boots lay his own shadow—except it wasn't mimicking his posture. It was looking right back at him, grinning with twin pinpricks of pale, silver fire.