**Chapter 1: The Unseen World**
New Eden was a corpse of a city, its bones picked clean by fire and time. Skyscrapers leaned like drunk sentinels, their shattered windows winking in the jaundiced light of a sun that no longer knew its name. Marverick Daveson navigated this graveyard with the ease of a ghost, his boots crunching over debris that whispered of dead civilizations. Here, the familiar was a razor's edge—rusted playgrounds, pharmacies picked bare, the hollow-eyed shells of homes. But strangeness lurked in every shadow: graffiti that pulsed like veins, air that tasted of burnt copper, and the low, ceaseless hum of something *alive* beneath the earth.
His family's refuge crouched in the carcass of a church, its spire snapped like a spine. Rachel Daveson moved through the makeshift infirmary like a wraith, her hands stained crimson with poultices and defiance. She'd buried her husband in the first year of the end, planting him under a crooked oak that now clawed at the sky. Her healing was a rebellion—a middle finger to the reaper. Marverick's sister, Emily, was a creature of this ruin-born world. At ten, her eyes held the sharpness of a crow, her laughter a jagged thing honed on scavenged knives and the hushed tales of things that slithered in the dark.
The day Marverick found Ava, the sky was bleeding.
He'd been picking through the corpse of a bank, its vaults yawning like hungry mouths, when a sound froze him—a breath, too steady, too deliberate. Beneath a slab of concrete, a girl crouched, her curls a riot of autumn leaves matted with ash. Her eyes stopped him cold: not green, but *alive*, phosphorescent in the gloom, like a cat's caught in lantern light. She held a rusted pipe like a sword, her knuckles white. "You alone?" she rasped, voice sandpapered by smoke and suspicion.
Ava wore her past like armor. A scar split her brow—a pale, twisted river—and her jacket bristled with blades fashioned from shrapnel. When Marverick mentioned the tome, her gaze sharpened. "Let me see it," she demanded, not a request but a challenge. As he unwrapped the book, the air thickened. Ava recoiled, hissing as the symbols on the cover writhed. "You shouldn't have this," she muttered. "It's a beacon."
They talked in the corpse-light of afternoon, perched on a girder above a street choked with skeletons of cars. Ava's voice dipped low, serpentine. "They're everywhere," she said, nodding to the empty air. "Demons don't just kill. They *infest*. Twist a soul until it's a puppet with their hand up its back." Her parents, she explained, had been Hunters—not the fairy-tale kind, but butchers with holy oil and shattered hymnals. "Mom cut a demon's throat with a psalm," she said, grinning like a blade. "Dad burned three with a splash of baptismal water. Didn't stop the bastards from ripping them apart."
Marverick's tome lay between them, pulsing like a second heart. Ava traced a finger over its pages, recoiling as the ink *moved*. "The Great Transgression," she whispered. "Heard about it in campfire tales. Some idiot opened a door that wasn't meant to be opened. Let the dark things crawl through." Her laugh was bitter. "Angels could've slammed it shut. Instead, they folded their wings and watched."
As dusk gnawed at the horizon, they returned to the church. Rachel greeted Ava with a healer's scrutiny, then a nod—a silent pact. Emily circled the newcomer, a feral spark in her gaze. "You smell like blood," she declared. Ava smirked. "Yours or someone else's?"
That night, over stew made of rat and rainwater, Marverick felt it—a warmth in his chest, unfamiliar and dangerous. Hope. Ava's knee brushed his under the table, her presence a live wire.
But beyond the church's crumbling walls, shadows thickened. Something scuttled in the steeple, its breath a wet rattle. Far off, a howl tore through the night—not animal, not human. Ava's hand slid to her blade. Emily froze, her spoon hovering midair.
Marverick's fingers found the tome's edge. The pages trembled.
The unseen world was watching.
And it was hungry.