Breaking In.

The front entrance was locked.

He exhaled, scanning his surroundings. There had to be another way inside.

His gaze drifted to the pile of broken toys where the Huggys had emerged earlier. At the very top, a jagged crack split the prison's exterior wall-just big enough to squeeze through.

Climbing over the discarded limbs and shattered plastic, he hoisted himself up. The air reeked of oil, rust, and something sour.

With a final push, he slipped inside.

---



The moment his feet touched the ground, his walkie-talkie crackled to life.

A familiar voice-Ollie.

"Hey, it's me again... Ollie."

There was hesitation in his voice. A weight behind his words.

"I wanted to... I wanted to talk to you. Before you go inside, I mean."

He exhaled sharply, glancing around. The shadows stretched long, the air thick with the lingering scent of rust and decay.

"Everything you've seen out here-the piles, the dead-they all came from inside."

He felt his grip tighten on the device. "I figured as much," he muttered.

"Believe me, everything Poppy said about this place is true. It's hell..."

A pause.

"But she hasn't seen it like I have."

The static hummed between them, like the place itself was listening.

"It's worse now. Worse than ever."

His gut twisted. "How bad are we talking?"

"Bad enough that I don't think even the monsters in here understand what's happening anymore."

A chill ran down his spine.

"Just try to stay safe. Please. Don't let your guard down for even a second."

A flicker of warmth in Ollie's tone, barely there but genuine.

"I'll try to help you when I can."

He sighed and hung up.

The area was dimly lit, the air thick with dust and old blood. To his right-a locked room. To the left-a walkway with a terminal.

And above him?

A small cell, suspended from a crane.

His stomach twisted. Move.

Then-a body.

Slumped beside the locked room, flesh sunken, hands curled. And next to it... a note.

Shaking, he picked it up.

The final journal entry.

Riley.

And somehow, he already knew it wouldn't end well.

---

Journal Entry 5.

This place is a prison. I don't know what I thought it'd be, but it wasn't this. I mean, what did I do wrong?

They made me into this, and put me in a cell. There must be hundreds, maybe even thousands of others here. How could this happen?

There's no food here, only the bodies, and I refuse to eat them.

The train, that's what takes everyone here. The conductor's dead, but he has a key, a key that makes the train move.

I don't know if there are people elsewhere, or if they intend to come back here with more like me. I'll take the key, make sure no one else can come here. I'll put it where no one can find it.

I don't know how little or how much my life mattered, but I can do this.

This one thing.

Maybe it'll save someone.

Anyone.

Even just one person. That would be enough.

Nobody else should hear what I've had to hear inside this place. Nobody else should know hell like this, or the demons that live there.

What's important:

That I helped someone the way I wanted to someday when I thought I was adopted. That my life mattered to someone.

Why:

So that I'll know, wherever I go now (hopefully to my parents) that I fulfilled a little of what I said I would, and made life just a little better for someone else, even if this place took everything else.

---

His breath hitched.

Behind the divider, he found her.



Or what was left of her.

Riley's remains were slumped against the wall, her once plush body now a skeletal husk. The fur had mostly rotted away, revealing brittle, yellowed bones.



Sunken, blackened eye sockets stared back at him, what little skin remained stretched taut over her skull.

But something was missing.

Her limbs. Gone.

Like something had ripped them away.

God.

The bile rose in his throat. His fingers trembled as he took a shaky step closer.

That was when he saw it-the key.

Sticking out of her torso.

She swallowed it.

A lump formed in his throat.

He didn't want to do this.

But he had to.

Steeling himself, he reached out, fingers brushing against the rusted metal protruding from her hollowed chest. The second he gripped it, something crunched beneath his fingers-her ribs, brittle and weak, collapsing inward.

He yanked the key free.

And whispered, "I'm sorry."

Then, he left.

---

The locked room clicked open with a satisfying snap.

Deeper inside, he found it.

A train car.

Finally-a way forward.

He moved quickly, fixing the power, mind laser-focused on escaping this hellhole. But then... something caught his eye.

Blood.

A massive stain smeared across the train's exterior, dark and dried, its trail leading over the top of the cars. He followed it with his gaze, dread sinking in.

It led back to Riley.

His stomach twisted.

The blood on the walls, the hollowed-out torso, the missing limbs.

The realization hit him like a freight train.

She didn't just die here.

She was eaten.

Something had ripped her apart, devoured her-bit by bit. And after she wrote her last words, after she held onto hope for just a little longer...

She was taken.

He swallowed hard.

The walls seemed to breathe, the shadows growing darker.

He needed to move.

Now.



As soon as he stepped inside the train, the doors slammed shut behind him.

Before he could react, the train lurched forward. It was moving.

His pulse quickened. He hadn't activated anything.

Something else had.

With nothing to do but wait, he exhaled and leaned against the wall, eyes scanning the dimly lit cabin. The rhythmic clatter of the tracks beneath him filled the silence.

Then-

The TV screen in the corner flickered to life.

His head snapped toward it, muscles tensing.

Static. A distorted hum.

Then-an eye emerged from the darkness of the screen.



A single, unblinking eye, staring directly at him.

The train's speakers crackled-and then came a voice.

A voice he knew.

A voice he wished he didn't.

"Mmm... now, what's this?"

The voice slithered through the speakers, smooth yet brimming with something unnatural.

"Do I feel something squirming its way beneath my skin? An invasive, foreign little germ? After all this time?"

The voice laughed, low and knowing.

"Ah, but I see... You."

A cold weight settled in his chest.

"Well, little germ, let's make a game of you."

The train rumbled violently as if the whole world was shifting around him.

"You've blundered along the shadows above, squirming your way down here by the barest skin of your teeth."

The eye on the screen narrowed.

"But there are no shadows here to save you. Not even the ground beneath your feet is truly yours."

The temperature in the train seemed to drop.

"There are no places you can hide...

Not from me."

Then came the laughter-a cruel, wicked sound that sent a shudder down his spine.

And then-

The train crashed.

For the second time.

Fuck! I don't want to get on a train again..

Pain exploded through his body as he was thrown forward. The world whirled violently-a mess of metal, sparks, and impact.

Then-blackness.

The last thing he heard was the lingering echo of that laughter, twisting and warping into the darkness of his mind.

And then-nothing.

But just before the train could collapse in on itself, something stopped it.

A sickening crack of metal echoed as three massive, segmented tails shot out from the red mist, coiling around the wreckage.

With unnatural strength, they yanked the train back from the brink—just enough.

Then, with a piercing shriek of metal, the doors were ripped open.

A rush of oxygen flooded the cabin.

A figure stepped inside.

Red eyes gleamed through the dust.

She crouched beside him, silent, watching.

His chest rose and fell—shallow, but steady.

A hand hovered just over his face, feeling for breath.

No blood. No broken skull. He got lucky.

Her gaze lingered for a moment longer.

Then, in a voice barely above a whisper—

"You’ll face worse than this… so stay alive."

With that, she turned.

Leaving the wreckage as if no one had ever been there.