Maya woke gasping, lying on something cold.
Stone?
No. Teeth.
She scrambled up — the floor was made of crushed bones, packed tightly like tiles. The ceiling above her dripped something thick. It wasn't water.
A single torch lit the room.
And at the center, laid across an altar made of skulls and spines, was a leather-bound book.
Its cover wasn't leather.
It was human skin.
Maya stepped closer. Her name… was burned into it.
"MAYA."
She opened it.
The pages were ancient blueprints — diagrams of the bridge.
But it wasn't an ordinary bridge. It was built like a shrine. Symbols were drawn in blood-red ink. Under each section of the bridge:
One body. One soul. One scream.
Sacrifices.
Dozens.
Men. Women. Children.
Every ten feet of bridge was built on a buried body.
And next to the final blueprint, one final entry:
> "THE GIRL.
The last sacrifice.
She will awaken the ones beneath."
And scribbled in the corner, in a hand shaking with terror:
> "Forgive me, Maya. I didn't know. Until it was too late."
— Your Father
Her knees gave out.
Her father…
He wasn't just a worker. He had designed the bridge.
But why her?
Maya heard footsteps. Slow. Scraping.
She turned.
From the dark corridor stepped the stitched-mouth woman. Only now, her lips had been ripped open, torn wide in a grotesque grin. Her face was covered in runes, her eyes completely black.
Behind her: a line of the dead workers, their bodies twisted and decomposed, tools still stuck in their chests, some crawling on broken limbs.
And behind them…
The original builders.
They wore robes of skin. Hoods made of scalp. Fingers tipped with nails sharpened into blades. They whispered:
> "Maya must bleed. Maya must finish what her bloodline began."
Maya backed into the altar.
The book pulsed in her hands.
It whispered. "You can end it."
She flipped to the last page.
A ritual. One that would destroy the bridge forever — bury it, along with every cursed soul under it.
But the price…
She had to die with it.
Her blood.
Her breath.
Her soul.
Maya stared at the final words of the book:
> "Only the final blood can silence the bridge."
She looked up.
They were closing in.
No escape.
But Maya stood. Gripping the book. Her hands burning. Her eyes wild with defiance and fear.
"I'm not afraid of you," she whispered.
Lies.
But sometimes lies keep you alive.
And then—
She ran.
Straight toward the heart of the bridge.
Where the ritual must be done.
Where the bones still scream.