Before you sank straight through the ground.

One moment, your worn-out shoe is pressing against wet pavement under a flickering streetlamp. The next, there’s no resistance. The solid concrete gives way like rotten floorboards, and you drop.

Darkness. Suffocation. A pressure that squeezes your lungs for a handful of heartbeats.

Then you land. Hard.

The impact jars up your spine, and you’re sprawled on your back, gasping. The air you suck in is different. Stagnant. Warm. It smells faintly of mildew and something else—sweet, like old carpet glue left in the sun.

You push yourself up, palms sinking into a damp, coarse-textured carpet. The lighting is a sickly, flickering yellow, coming from long fluorescent tubes set into a low, stained ceiling. The walls are covered in a monotonous, yellowish wallpaper, peeling at the seams. The hum is the first thing you really notice—a constant, aggressive electrical buzz that seems to vibrate in your teeth.

You are in a long, empty corridor. Identical doors, all closed, line the walls at irregular intervals. The hallway stretches in both directions, vanishing into the same yellow gloom. There are no windows. No signs. No exit.