Chapter 4:DEAD ZONE EAST

Rain fell like knives.
The boy tightened his coat, dust-covered and torn at the shoulder.
Behind him, Zair coughed—again, blood.
Aya lit a soaked match, and in that flicker, the truth of the old hallway revealed itself.

A spiral symbol.
Carved deep into the wall.

It wasn’t recent.
It had always been there.

“We found it,” Aya whispered.

The Spiral Door.

They’d heard stories. A hidden entrance beneath Dead Zone East.
Some claimed it led to Sector X.
Others said it was the Cradle of Lies.
Zair used to joke it was where the world began and ended.

Now they were standing in front of it.

Rusty steel, blackened by old fire.
Chains, thin and loose.
Etched words that looked like they’d been written with a nail:

Open me only when the sun bleeds.

The boy stared.
The air vibrated with a low, eerie hum.
And then, somewhere far away, a voice came through—like radio static whispering through wind:

You are watched. You are warned. The Spiral waits.

They didn’t open it.
Not yet.

Instead, they turned back to prepare. But then they saw something in the dirt.

Tracks. Fresh ones.

And not boots.
Bare feet.

That night, the boy asked Aya to stay on watch.
But when he woke up, she was gone.

In her place, a drawing on the wall in white chalk.

A strange symbol: three stacked lines.
And below it, written in crooked letters:

The crows fly low tonight.

Zair was the first to react.
His face turned pale.

“That’s enemy code,” he said.

The boy stiffened. “How do you know?”

Zair lowered his voice.
“Because I used to write it.”

Everything cracked.

Was Aya taken?
Was she the traitor?
Or had Zair been lying since the beginning?

Trust snapped like wire.
The boy didn’t sleep again that night.

The next morning, they moved underground.
Through shattered rail tunnels and broken maintenance lines.
There they discovered:

A tunnel lined with mirrors

A room that repeated enemy propaganda on loop

And a table holding an old device blinking with blue light


Zair recognized it instantly.

“This belonged to the old world,” he said.
“And it’s sending out a signal.”

At the end of the tunnel was no door, no ladder, no map.
Just the scent of ash…
And silence.




To be continued