Magnus surfaced from the station like a man coming up for air.
The escalator carried him out into the open with a tired mechanical whine, spitting him onto the pavement beneath a bruised, overcast sky. It wasn't late, barely evening by any honest standard, yet the foot traffic moving past him had a purpose that made his skin itch.
Party-goers.
Too many of them. Too early.
They clustered in loose streams, all drifting in the same direction with lazy confidence. Sequins and synthetic leather. Bare arms despite the cold. Glowing wristbands, shimmering makeup, pupils already blown wide from something chemical or anticipatory. Laughter rolled through the air, loud and brittle, as if they were already halfway gone.
Magnus adjusted his jacket and fell into step behind them without meaning to.
Clubs shouldn't be doing this yet, he thought. Linden had rules. Noise curfews. Licensing windows. Time still mattered in this city, no matter how loud the nightlife pretended otherwise.
He'd checked online twice before leaving. Reviews. Rankings. Endless loops of neon-soaked footage and breathless praise.
The Ascension Pit. Open 24/7, 365 days a year.
No holidays, downtime, or closure.
The idea alone made his jaw tighten. Buildings were meant to rest. People too.
The street narrowed as they went, brick giving way to concrete, charm bleeding out of the architecture with every step. Magnus slowed when he saw it.
The Ascension Pit didn't belong here.
It rose from the street like a mistake that had decided to stay. All black glass and burnished chrome, hard lines cutting through the older buildings around it like a surgical incision. LED strips pulsed faintly across its surface, not flashing but breathing.
Magnus grimaced.
He hated new-age architecture. Always had.
He thought it was too clean and too 'in your face'.
Buildings that looked like they'd been designed by committees and algorithms instead of hands that understood weight, weather, history. Give him cracked stone, iron railings worn smooth by generations, timber that remembered fires and winters.
This thing had no memory, no history, and nothing that had more intent than functionality.
It didn't even pretend to.
There were no posters. No signage worth the name. Just a subtle glyph etched near the entrance and the low, ever-present thrum of music leaking into the pavement. Not loud enough to hear properly, but loud enough to feel throughout your entire body.
People seemed to just arrive. Slipping inside as if drawn by an invisible current, smiles already forming and their bodies loosening up.
Magnus stopped across the street.
He reminded himself. That was why he was here. Not curiosity or the gnawing pull he refused to name. Brad hadn't answered in weeks. No texts, voice notes, or activity pings. Just silence after one half-joking message about "finding somewhere that finally gets it."
And this place, this club, kept appearing like a bad penny in every corner of his life.
He crossed.
The doors parted without being touched, a seamless gesture that made his teeth ache. Warm air washed over him, carrying bass and perfume and something sharper beneath it.
As he stepped inside, Magnus had the distinct, unwelcome thought that the building noticed him.
The building welcomed him.
And didn't care whether he liked it or not.
He stood across the road longer than he meant to.
And now this place kept coming up. In videos, comments, and the phones of strangers on the train.
Magnus breathed in deeply and crossed the street.
Just like all of the other partygoers, Magnus was let in after a brief flash of his ID.
The moment he stepped inside, the door sealed behind him with a soft hydraulic hiss. The sound was swallowed instantly by the music.
Techno beats mixed with low tones. A crushing, omnipresent sound.
Light fractured the air in slow-motion strobes, blues and purples and violent reds washing over bodies packed too tightly together.
The crowd moved wrong.
Not chaotic or messy like people in a club.
The movement was too smooth. People swayed in near-perfect synchrony, faces slack with awe or bliss or something disturbingly close to devotion. Eyes half-lidded. Mouths parted. Sweat gleaming like oil under the lights.
Like a practiced ritual.
Magnus felt a prickle crawl up the back of his neck.
He pushed through to the bar, heart hammering harder with every step. The bartender noticed him. Almost immediately. A woman with mirrored lenses and an expression carved from indifference slid a glass toward him before he even opened his mouth.
"On the house," she said.
Magnus stopped. "I didn't order anything."
She tilted her head slightly. "You've got questions on your mind. I can see it."
His stomach tightened. "My friend. Bradley Hopkins. He was here earlier this week."
The bartender's fingers paused for just a fraction of a second. Not long enough for anyone else to notice. Long enough for Magnus to.
"Oh," she said lightly. "Right. Complimentary drink still stands."
He looked at the glass. Clear liquid. No garnish. No smell he could place. It caught the light in a way that made his eyes ache if he stared too long.
"I'm good," he said. "I don't drink."
Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Suit yourself."
Magnus turned away from the bar, scanning the room again, dread pooling low in his gut. Every face blurred into another. No Brad. No familiar crooked grin or nervous tapping foot.
'Where are you?' he wondered.
That was when the thought came.
'You could stay.'
It wasn't exactly a voice. More like a suggestion that had always been there and had only just been noticed. The music softened around the edges. The press of bodies felt… comforting. The lights seemed warmer now. Kinder.
'You're tired. You've worked so hard. You don't have to leave.'
The idea sank its hooks in deep. Permanently staying didn't sound frightening in that moment. It sounded like relief. Like surrendering something heavy he hadn't realised he was carrying.
Magnus's breathing slowed.
Then the pressure hit.
Not from the crowd, but from above.
His head snapped up.
High above the main floor, an open window cut into the club's upper level. A private overlook. And standing there, framed by the darkness of the blacked out windows and the lights of the club, was a man with black hair filled with streaks of gold and eyes that burned amber even at this distance.
Tobias Kairn.
A name and face he saw only once. An online article from five years ago. It was a huge story about a boy surviving a mass suicide attempt. The sole survivor, Tobias Kairn, said only one thing to the journalists and police.
"I just didn't want to do it."
Even if his face had aged and he'd changed his hair, Magnus couldn't mistaken the amber eyes and pale complexion.
Tobias wasn't smiling or moving.
He was simply watching, his head slightly tilted and gaze locked onto Magnus with surgical precision.
The warmth of the environment evaporated.
Cold flooded Magnus's veins as the gnawing thoughts recoiled, suddenly exposed. Whatever had been nudging his mind wasn't his.
It had weight and something more...
Intent.
He backed away instinctively and collided with someone solid.
"Easy there," a voice murmured.
Three men stood behind him, dressed too cleanly for a place like this. Not bouncers, not staff, but something in between. They watched him carefully.
"Mr. Kairn would like a word," one of them said.
Magnus swallowed. "I was just looking for a friend. He's not here."
The man studied him for a moment, as if weighing something unseen. "You sure?"
"Yes," Magnus said quickly. "And I'm leaving."
A pause.
Then a nod from all three men. "Your choice."
They parted just enough for him to pass. Magnus didn't look back at the window as he pushed through the thinning edge of the crowd, every instinct screaming at him to move.
Near the exit, he caught a fragment of conversation.
"…Boss is still looking for some sort of Anvil," one regular muttered to another, voice slurred but intent.
"Anvil? Like the thing people used to make swords with and stuff?"
"Yeah. Supposed to be some hoodoo voodoo thing."
"What, like a relic?" the other snorted.
"Dunno, but he wants it bad."
"Why?"
A firm hand pressed between Magnus's shoulder blades.
"Out," a bouncer growled.
The door opened.
Magnus tried to listen as closely as possible to the conversation, but couldn't hear anything over the street full of people waiting in line to enter the club.
Magnus was shoved out.
Cold air hit him like a slap. The music cut off mid-beat as soon as the door slammed shut.
The Ascension Pit sealed itself away behind him.
Magnus staggered a step onto the wet pavement, lungs burning, heart racing.
But the feeling lingered.
That something had seen him.
Measured him.
And decided not to let him go so easily next time.
'I need to do more research on this place and try again another time.'