The streets of Lost Angeles were still waking up as the crew moved, the neon glow of the city flickering between the cracks of broken skylines. Steam hissed from rusted pipes, distant voices murmured in half-forgotten dialects, and the smell of fried rat skewers and arcane incense mingled in the air.

  Ciel and Raze walked at the front, leading the way toward the oldest subway station still intact. It had long since been abandoned, repurposed into something far stranger—because, of course, it was built beneath the Church of the Blessed Pink Saint.

  Or as most people in the city knew it: The Church of Holy Meow.

  Ciel sighed loudly as they approached the massive, pastel-covered structure, its cracked pillars adorned with murals of a smiling, featureless feline face, its soulless black eyes gazing into the abyss like some kind of eldritch deity disguised as something adorable.

  The double doors were shaped like a giant cartoon head, its whiskers made of rusted pipes, and right above the entrance, a faded neon sign flickered—the words barely holding together:

  "BE CUTE. BE PURE. BE CLEANSED."

  Raze stopped next to her, exhaling through his nose. “Every time I see this place, I want to set it on fire.”

  “Same.” Ciel stared at the massive, unsettlingly friendly cat statue at the front of the entrance, which stood at least three stories tall, its paws outstretched as if waiting to embrace her. “I don’t know how it happened, but somehow, this is worse than the Electric Pope.”

  Sylva, adjusting the strap of her rations pack, sighed as she walked up behind them, her crimson eyes narrowed at the bizarre religious monument before them. “So let me get this straight. People actually believe this thing is a saint?”

  “Oh yeah,” Veyra drawled, leaning lazily against a cracked pillar, chewing on the edge of a ration bar. “They think she was a child prophet who never spoke, only smiled. And when the world fell, she didn’t cry, she just…”

  Veyra gestured vaguely at the horrifying, soulless cat face staring down at them.

  Sylva pinched the bridge of her nose. “That’s a death cult.”

  Ciel clapped her hands together. “Yup! And today, we’re using it to get into the sewers!”

  Miri, absolutely delighted, spun in place, arms outstretched toward the pink and white horror of a building. “I love the aesthetic! It’s so… unsettlingly pure. Like the mask of a killer who doesn’t know she’s killing.”

  Sylva stared at her. “That is not a normal reaction.”

  Miri smiled. “That’s what makes it fun.”

  Ciel waved them forward, leading the way toward the church entrance. “Alright, let’s get moving before we get stopped by one of the priests.”

  As they walked, Sylva finally brought up the other disaster of the day.

  “By the way, I did an inventory check before we left.” She adjusted her satchel, the faintest glow of enchanted storage runes visible along the leather. “We have exactly two weeks’ worth of rations.”

  Ciel’s steps slowed. “…That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “We spent every coin we had on two weeks of rations?”

  Sylva exhaled. “More like we spent every coin we had on rations and literally nothing else.”

  Gorrug grunted, hauling Skrimp under one arm as the creature squirmed. “At least we are well-fed.”

  Sylva shot him a deadpan look. “That’s not well-fed, that’s barely surviving.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Raze let out a slow breath, rubbing at his temples like this conversation was physically painful.

  “So let me get this straight,” he muttered. “We’re dead broke. We didn’t upgrade our gear. We didn’t buy more ammunition. We didn’t level up, we didn’t do anything except buy enough food to delay our deaths by two weeks.”

  Sylva, stone-faced, nodded. “Yes.”

  Raze took out his cigar, stared at it like he was debating lighting it, then just sighed.

  “This is the dumbest mission I’ve ever been on.”

  Ciel clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, at least know what’s waiting for us. Death.”

  Raze let out a low, exasperated groan.

  Veyra snorted. “I mean, at least if things go south, we can just start eating Skrimp.”

  Gorrug hissed so violently it was borderline demonic.

  Skrimp, as if understanding, let out a horrible wheeze-screech and snapped his teeth at Veyra’s ankles.

  Ciel rolled her eyes as they finally approached the hidden access point near the back of the church, a rusted metal grate leading into the forgotten subway tunnels, which would, in turn, lead them straight into the sewers.

  She reached up, gripping the iron bars, and took a deep breath.

  They were officially at the point of no return.

  If the sewers were really some kind of living defense, if the Sunken Quarter was as cursed as everyone said…

  Then in two weeks, they’d either be dead or they’d be legends.

  As they continued deeper, the subway station beneath the Church of Holy Meow was… exactly as cursed as Ciel had expected.

  The flickering remnants of old-world advertisements were still plastered along the tiled walls, their once bright colors now washed out, cracked, and barely legible under layers of grime. Every so often, a glitching screen would come to life, its visuals skipping and looping, flashing out half-corrupted messages:

  “BE PURE. BE CLEAN. BE CUTE.”

  “DO NOT STRAY FROM THE PATH. THE BLESSED PINK ONE IS WATCHING.”

  One screen glitched particularly violently, the text breaking into nonsense symbols before resolving into a crude drawing of the soulless feline saint, its unblinking eyes staring directly at them.

  Ciel shivered.

  “I hate it here,” she muttered, stepping over a pile of what might have once been offering candles, now just a mound of melted wax and questionable stains.

  The station itself had clearly been half-preserved, half-ritualized by the followers of the church. The old turnstiles were draped in tattered pink and white banners, scrawled with slogans and prayers written in a language that almost resembled English but was just slightly… off.

  Sylva traced her fingers along the wall, her crimson eyes narrowing. "They've turned this place into a pilgrimage site."

  Raze grunted, stepping past a crude altar built entirely out of repurposed subway seats. "I'd say that’s excessive, but then again, I’ve seen people try to worship a vending machine before."

  Miri, absolutely delighted by everything, skipped ahead, her bare feet making no sound against the cracked tiles. She paused before a particularly ornate mural, tilting her head at it.

  “Oh,” she murmured, smiling in that eerie way of hers. “I think this one’s a prophecy.”

  Ciel sighed, walking up beside her. “Miri, if it’s another ‘holy ascension’ thing, I don’t wanna hear it.”

  “No, no, it’s different.” Miri traced her fingers along the wall, her silver-black eyes gleaming in the dim light. “Look—this one is about the Final Meal.”

  Ciel stared. “The… what?”

  Miri gestured grandly. "The Great Feast! The day the world ends, and the Blessed Pink Saint consumes all things in one final act of divine hunger."

  Silence.

  Veyra let out a slow whistle. “You know, I was really hoping that wasn’t the implication.”

  Gorrug, stroking his massive green chin thoughtfully, nodded. “A warrior’s death. I respect it.”

  Skrimp, still squirming in his arms, let out a wheezy honk.

  Ciel dragged a hand down her face. "Can we please just find the sewer entrance before I start questioning existence?"

  Sylva, ever efficient, was already ahead of them, pulling back a set of rusted maintenance doors that led down into the deepest, darkest tunnels of the old subway.

  The air shifted.

  The deeper they went, the less the Holy Meow nonsense lingered and the more they felt the weight of something else entirely.

  The walls became damp, slick with condensation and something faintly glowing. Old pipes lined the ceiling, some of them leaking, their fluids shimmering faintly with residual alchemical runoff.

  Raze stepped forward, kneeling to test the ground, his fingers dragging through a thin layer of sludge.

  “We’re close,” he muttered, standing.

  Ciel didn’t need the confirmation—she could feel it.

  There was something wrong with the air down here.

  It was thick, like stepping into a place that hadn’t been disturbed in centuries. The walls weren’t just old—they felt like they were breathing, pulsing, shifting just beneath the surface.

  And then, finally—they reached the entrance.

  A massive, circular sewer gate, its rusted bars twisted and bent, like something had forced its way through from the other side. The metal itself was blackened, corroded, covered in deep claw marks.

  No one spoke.

  Because they all felt it now.

  That creeping, suffocating sensation of being watched.

  Raze gripped the handle of his greatsword, his stance shifting. "Weapons ready. We're not getting through this without a fight."

  Ciel exhaled, spinning her revolvers. “Figured as much.”

  Gorrug grinned wide, his tusks gleaming in the dark. “Good.”

  Sylva flicked her wrist, her twin daggers gleaming as she muttered an incantation under her breath. "Let’s move."

  And with that, they stepped into the darkness.