Prologue:

  The old sanatorium loomed like a forgotten scar at the edge of the forest, its crumbling facade half-swallowed by ivy and years of neglect. Wind moaned through broken windows as the team stepped into the decaying entrance, their fshlights slicing through yers of dust and shadow.

  “EMF’s already acting weird,” Richie muttered, holding up the blinking device. The lights danced erratically. “Either we’ve got a serious electromagnetic surge… or this pce is pissed off.”

  Akash led the way with practiced calm, his eyes scanning the faded murals on the walls—angels and saints, though some had long since worn away, their faces distorted. He adjusted the strap of his bag. “This used to be a pce for the lost,” he said. “Abandoned children, mostly. Some say the building itself remembers them.”

  Kai paused near an arched doorway, brow furrowing. “Something’s watching.”

  They all froze.

  Ava’s hand instinctively rested on the hilt of her ritual dagger, concealed beneath her jacket. “You sure?”

  Kai nodded slowly, eyes distant. “Not human. Not angry… but aware.”

  The investigation continued—cold spots, static whispers on the recorder, flickers of motion at the edge of vision. Maya uncovered a wall hidden behind a false panel—scratched with markings unlike any nguage she’d seen before. Akash photographed them with intense interest.

  “This one,” he said, tapping a circur pattern, “looks simir to a boundary seal I read about. Mythology says it separated the spirit realm from ours… centuries ago.”

  Richie gnced up. “You thinking this has something to do with the ‘veil’ stuff you mentioned before?”

  Akash didn’t answer right away. He just looked down the dark hallway beyond the symbol.

  “No. I’m thinking it’s nothing,” he said, though his voice cked conviction.

  The night ended without any incident. Just another creepy site. Just another job.

  Back at their HQ—a brick building tucked between warehouses and forgotten corners of the city—the team dumped their gear and started their routine data dump. Richie was sorting through corrupted thermal files when Maya’s voice cut through the quiet.

  “Hey… guys?”

  She stood by the front door, holding a thick, aged envelope sealed with red wax—no return address.

  Inside: a brittle piece of parchment, edges burnt, the ink still dark despite its age. Symbols curled across its surface—none that matched any known script. It wasn’t Latin. It wasn’t Sanskrit. Not even Aramaic or Sumerian. Maya’s eyes narrowed. It was a hybrid, a mosaic of ancient tongues woven into something older... something no one should be able to read.

  “This isn’t just old,” she whispered. “This is… pre-history.”

  “It speaks of a fracture… a barrier thinning between worlds. It mentions symbols—same as what we saw at the sanatorium.”

  Akash stepped closer. “This was no coincidence.”

  As Kai approached the parchment, something shifted. A faint shimmer pulsed across the top corner—barely visible, like heat rising from stone.

  A symbol revealed itself beneath the ink: a narrow eye, split by seven jagged lines.

  Kai blinked. “Did you see that?” The shimmer vanished before anyone else could speak. The room felt suddenly colder.

  Kai’s breath caught. “We weren’t just being watched back there…”

  They all looked at each other.

  Something had begun....