Chapter 1
A suffocating darkness pressed down on her chest. Kaylin snapped her eyes open to a dimly lit room, the faint glow of a lone desk lamp doing nothing to clear the thick, heavy air. She couldn’t breathe. Gasping for oxygen, she realized her own hands were wrapped around her throat, squeezing tightly as if trying to strangle her own existence. Around her bed, the shadows twisted into the looming figures of her mother, her father, and a suffocating crowd of relatives. Their voices echoed in a deafening, distorted chorus, hammering into her skull :“Don’t write. Burn the diary. Stop painting. Don’t do this , Don’t to that .”The room vibrated with their judgment, the air turning to concrete as she thrashed against her own grip, fighting to take a single, clean breath.
Her eyes snapped wide open. She was lying in her bed, staring at the ceiling as she realized the nightmare was over—but the reality wasn’t any better. She let out a heavy sigh, her skin slick with sweat. Sitting up, she took a long, deep breath to steady her hammering heart. Just then, a sharp voice cut through the door from outside the room.
“Wake up, Kaylin.”
“Hmm,” Kaylin muttered, her voice thick with sleep.
She slid out of bed and walked out onto her room’s small balcony. The morning was cloudy, and a cold, sharp wind brushed against her face. She closed her eyes, taking a deep, long breath of the fresh air before heading back inside to freshen up.
The moment she stepped out of her room, reality hit her. Her mother looked up and instantly told her to go make tea for the family. Her dad was already leaving for work, the heavy silence of the house trailing behind him. Kaylin ignored her empty stomach—she didn’t want to eat anything anyway. Instead, she grabbed her phone, slipped it out of sight, and checked the screen. There it was: a notification from Edie, her best friend.
Edie was a bit of a computer geek, always hunting for strange, hidden websites across the dark corners of the internet. That morning, her text wasn’t just a casual greeting—she had stumbled onto something massive. Her message contained a link to a highly classified, heavily encrypted network. It belonged to an elite, underground organization known only as The Erebus Network.
“Kaylin! The tea!” her mother’s voice barked from the kitchen, sharper this time.
Her mom called her twice more, reeling off a list of endless household chores. Kaylin reluctantly put her phone down, shoved the thoughts of The Erebus Network to the back of her mind, and went to face her family. She spent the next several hours trapped in the mundane routine of the house. Finally, at three o’clock in the afternoon, her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a direct call from Edie.
“Hello, Edie? What happened?” Kaylin asked, keeping her voice low.
“Why did you leave me on read?!” Edie’s voice erupted through the speaker, frantic and annoyed. “You didn’t even reply to me!”
Kaylin sighed. “I had to do chores, that’s why I put the phone down.”
“Forget the chores,” Edie urged, her tone turning dead serious. “Look at that website I sent you. I found it, and it is way too mysterious. I have never seen anything like this in my life.”
Kaylin walked back into her room, rolling her eyes slightly. “You found another weird website?”
Still on the call, Kaylin tapped the link. The page loaded slowly, cutting through the screen until a heavy, pitch-black interface appeared. Written across the center in a cold, sharp font were the words:
THE EREBUS NETWORK. An eye for an eye...
Beneath the main slogan, a large, bold title glowed on the black screen. It felt less like a question and more like a demand:
“Write a crime that did not get justice.”
Kaylin stared at the words, her thumb hovering over the empty text box directly below it. The screen cast a pale, cold light over her face, the silence in her room suddenly feeling very heavy.
“Are you seeing this?” Edie’s voice whispered through the phone speaker, completely stripped of its usual playful tone.
“Bro, there are so many cases out there,” Kaylin said, shaking her head as she stared at the screen. “Someone probably just made this website for fun. What if we write something and it’s just for an article, or someone trying to steal ideas to write a story? I’ve never even heard of this website. I don’t know how you keep finding these weird links. Just leave it.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Edie muttered, sounding a little disappointed but giving in.
“Stop looking at weird websites at night and get some sleep, dude,” Kaylin said, glad to finally shut the topic down.
She opened her laptop and forced herself to watch a series, trying to drown out her own thoughts. By the time the sun went down, she finally stepped out of her room, plastering a fake smile on her face to show everyone she was perfectly fine.
“Help me make dinner,” her mother ordered the moment she saw her.
Kaylin quietly stood by the stove, helping her mother chop vegetables and prep the meal. Soon after, her father returned from work, and the family gathered at the dining table—her parents, her brother, and herself. But dinner wasn’t a peaceful break. Every time Kaylin managed to take a couple of bites, her mother would cut her off.
“Go get the salt.”
“Bring some more side dishes from the kitchen.”
She was constantly being interrupted, forced to get up and serve them in the middle of her own meal. By the time she sat back down for the final time, her appetite was completely gone. She barely ate a thing.
After dinner, she stood at the sink, the cold water running over her hands as she washed the heavy pile of dishes. Her family’s chatter faded into background noise. Her mind was completely somewhere else. As she scrubbed the plates, the dark black screen and those chilling white words kept flashing in her head:Write a crime that did not get justice.
She dried her hands on a dish towel and walked back to her room, locking the door behind her. The house was finally growing quiet, but her mind was screaming. As the darkness of her bedroom closed in, she couldn’t block it out anymore. The fake smile dropped.
A specific horror flooded her thoughts—a brutal case from the city that everyone knew about but tried to hide from the public. A monster had brutally assaulted a girl, using shards of broken glass to mutilate her body and destroy her eyes before taking her life. He deserved the death penalty, but because he was incredibly powerful, he escaped execution entirely. The corrupt court gave him a pathetic seven-year prison sentence. It was a complete joke, and now he was freely roaming outside, completely untouched by real punishment.
Kaylin sat down at her desk, her breath hitching as she looked at her laptop. She pulled up the link Edie had sent. She paused, her finger freezing over the trackpad. Wait, she thought. This is a global network. They won’t even know where this happened. She moved her cursor into the text box and typed the location first, keeping it safe and fictional.
Location: Sector 9, old veridia london, uk
He is a monster. He brutally assaulted her, using broken glass to mutilate her body and destroy her eyes before killing her. He deserved the death penalty, but his power bought out the corporate courts. They didn’t give him any real punishment—just a pathetic seven years. This isn’t justice. Look into this case if you want to. I’m not telling a lie.
With the text finally locked in, Kaylin didn’t hesitate any longer. She pressed her finger down and clicked[SUBMIT].
The screen flickered once, turned pitch black, and then displayed a single, pulsing crimson light that rhythmically faded in and out. Exhaustion suddenly hit her like a physical blow. She slammed the laptop shut, collapsed into her bed, and fell into a deep, jagged sleep.
The nightmare returned instantly. She was back in that dark room, but this time, the glass was everywhere—shimmering on the floor, embedded in the walls, and reflecting her own terrified eyes in a hundred jagged pieces. She woke up gasping, her throat dry and burning.
Stumbling out of bed, she grabbed a glass of water, her hands trembling as she drank it down in one go. The house was dead silent, the air still thick with the humidity of the night. Seeking a moment of cold, sharp reality, she walked out onto the balcony.
The city lights of veridia flickered in the distance, distant and uncaring. She pulled her phone from her pocket, intending to check the time, but the screen glowed bright, showing an unfamiliar notification that made her blood run cold. She froze, the glass slipping slightly in her grip. Her face went pale, her jaw dropping in sheer, absolute shock as she read the message waiting for her on the screen.
The cold metal of the balcony railing pressed into Kaylin’s lower back, but she couldn’t feel it. All the warmth had drained from her body.
She stared down at her phone screen. The notification wasn’t an email, and it wasn’t a notification from a secure app. It was a standard, direct SMS text message sent straight to her personal phone number.
The preview text read: From: Unknown Number Okay. We will look into the case.
A drop of cold sweat rolled down the back of her neck. A wave of intense paranoia washed over her, making her breath catch in her throat. She had been completely careful. She had used a hidden link, encrypted browsers, and a fictional location tag. She had never typed her name. She had never entered her phone number. Yet, the moment she clicked submit, The Erebus Network didn’t just receive her data—they took hers. They knew exactly who she was, where she lived, and how to reach her.
Kaylin forced herself to take a deep breath, trying to stop her hands from shaking. She calmed herself down, telling herself it was just a system glitch.
Acting fast, she opened the text message and hit delete, wiping it completely from her phone. Then, she went back to her laptop, closed the tab, and deleted the website link entirely from her history, removing every single trace of that network from her device.
Thinking it was all gone, she closed her laptop and walked back out to the kitchen to get another glass of water.
The next day, the thought of that website hung heavy in the back of her mind. Every time she looked at her phone, a small knot of anxiety tightened in her stomach. But as the morning rolled in, reality took over. Her mother kept her busy with an endless list of household chores, forcing her to scrub, clean, and stay on her feet for hours. By mid-afternoon, the exhaustion from the physical labor finally made her forget about the website entirely.
By the time 5:00 PM arrived, she was ready for a break. She got dressed and left the house, heading out to meet Edie at the local mall for a much-needed shopping trip to clear her head.
“So what for today, dude? Let’s do some shopping and have some fun today!” Edie said, slinging an arm over Kaylin’s shoulder and steering her toward the massive rows of stores.
Kaylin laughed, finally letting her guard down. “Seriously, I need this. I’ve been doing chores all day, my brain is fried.”
They spent the next hour drifting from one clothing store to another, pulling outfits off the racks, laughing at the ridiculous high-fashion pieces, and trying on things they had no intention of buying. For a while, the dark corners of the Erebus Network and that creepy text message completely vanished from Kaylin’s mind. She was just a normal girl hanging out with her friend at the mall.
After hitting a few more shops, Edie dropped two heavy shopping bags onto the floor and pointed toward the food court. “Alright, my feet are killing me and I’m starving. Let’s go grab something to eat.”
They walked over to the food court, found a table, and quickly placed their food orders. As they sat down waiting for their numbers to be called, the loud buzz of the crowded mall seemed to fade into the background. The quiet gap in conversation made Kaylin’s mind immediately drift back to the night before. The anxiety she had pushed down all day came rushing back.
She leaned across the table, lowering her voice so no one around them could hear.
“You know about the Erebus Network website you sent me the link to?” Kaylin said, her eyes fixed on Edie. “I wrote a case on that. And you know what happened?”
Edie stopped adjusting her shopping bags, her eyes widening as Kaylin spoke.
“I got a message from them,” Kaylin whispered, her voice tight with leftover panic. “And you know what’s shocking about it? I never put my number on it. I never gave them any personal details. But I got a text message straight to my phone number saying, ‘We will look into the case.’"
Edie’s jaw dropped, her playful mood instantly evaporating. She stared at Kaylin in pure disbelief, her face losing its color as she processed how impossible—and dangerous—that actually was.
“So I deleted everything,” Kaylin added quickly, trying to shake off the lingering chill. “You also do the same, okay? And leave this topic. Understood?”
Edie nodded slowly, still looking stunned, but agreed to drop it. They both finished their food in a tense silence, the fun mood completely gone. They stood up from the table, grabbed their shopping bags, and walked out of the mall toward the busy street outside.
The evening air was thick, and the traffic was loud. Edie stepped closer to the curb, raising her hand and calling out to hail a taxi. Kaylin was walking a few steps behind her, distracted, when she suddenly collided hard with someone.
She stumbled backward as her shopping bags slipped from her hands, spilling onto the pavement. The man she had crashed into was tall, dressed completely in heavy black clothes.
“I’m so sorry,” Kaylin muttered, immediately dropping down to scramble and pick up her things.
Without saying a word, the man knelt down and helped her, his gloved hands quickly gathering the scattered items and handing them back to her.
“Thank you...” Kaylin said, her voice trailing off as she looked up at him.
He was already looking straight at her while his hands grabbed the last of the scattered things from the pavement. Up close, his dark eyes were sharp and unblinking, holding her gaze with an intense, calculated focus that made her breath hitch. There was no apology on his face, just a cold, deliberate stare.
The man stood up, handing over the last bag, and abruptly turned away without saying a word. He pulled out his phone, quickly typing something or looking at the screen as he began speaking rapidly into his earpiece.
Moving fast, he walked straight past her and headed right into the crowded mall, looking completely consumed by his phone call, as if he were incredibly busy or in a massive hurry.
Kaylin stood there on the pavement, holding her bags tight, watching his black-clad figure disappear through the glass sliding doors. Her heart was still beating fast from the collision, but the sheer rush of his exit left her standing there, completely frozen.
“What a weird man,” Kaylin muttered under her breath, shaking her head as she watched him vanish into the crowd.
She brushed the dust off her shopping bags and walked over to where Edie was finally waving down a taxi. The strange encounter left a cold, uneasy feeling in her chest, but she forced herself to shrug it off, stepping into the cab and leaving the busy mall behind. The taxi pulled up to the curb with a screech of its brakes. Kaylin and Edie quickly opened the door and slid into the back seat, piling their shopping bags between them.
The man hurried into the mall, completely focused on his business. As he walked, he briefly stopped and glanced back over his shoulder, watching Kaylin step into the taxi.
Speaking into his phone, he muttered to his contact, “I’m following him.”
He wasn’t talking about Kaylin at all. He was tracking a completely different target inside the mall, and Kaylin had just randomly bumped into him during his stakeout. After that quick glance, he turned around and vanished deeper into the crowd to catch his guy.He turned back toward his real target: a man walking through the mall with a friend.
He trailed them silently through the crowds, keeping his distance. He watched patiently as the target finally split up from his friend, got into his car, and drove home. The man in black followed him all the way to his apartment building.
The target pulled into the dimly lit basement parking plot, stepped out of his car, and started talking on his phone, completely off-guard.
Moving like a shadow, the man in black closed the gap from behind. Before the target could even react, the man in black struck him hard across the back and neck, knocking him instantly unconscious. The phone clattered to the concrete floor. Without wasting a second, the man in black grabbed the limp body and began dragging him into the darkness.
Inside the taxi, Kaylin leaned her head against the cool glass, staring out at the passing streets. The dim streetlights and the neon signs of the city blurred together in the dark window.
Edie looked over at her, noticing her silence. “What happened? Why is your mood so off?”
“Nothing,” Kaylin said quietly, her eyes still fixed on the outside world. “I just like this view. The lights and the people. I also want to be that free... that I can go anywhere without begging for permission.”
The taxi finally pulled up outside Kaylin’s house. She grabbed her shopping bags and turned to her friend.
“Bye, Edie. I’m going. Be safe, okay?”
“Bye! Text me later!” Edie called out as Kaylin shut the car door.
Kaylin walked inside, but the moment she stepped through the front door, the heavy atmosphere of her home hit her. Her parents looked up, their faces strict and disapproving. “You are late. Why are you never on time?”
“I’m sorry,” Kaylin said quietly, looking down. “It was just... we lost track of time.”
Not wanting to start an argument, she quickly took her bags, headed straight upstairs to her room, and shut the door. Finally, she could breathe. She dropped the bags onto the floor, collapsed onto her bed, and let out a long sigh of relief. She pulled out her phone, mindlessly scrolling through it to numb her brain, until her eyelids grew heavy. Within minutes, she fell fast asleep, the phone slipping loosely from her hand onto the mattress.
Meanwhile, miles away in a dark, secluded location, the scene shifts.
The man who had been stalked in the parking lot slowly opened his eyes, groggy and terrified. He was trapped in a cold room, tightly bound to a heavy wooden chair with thick ropes wrapped around his wrists and legs. He tried to move, but he couldn’t budge an inch.
In the shadows, the man in black moved silently. He walked over to a metal table and picked up his instruments—aheavy iron hammer and a pair of long metal pliers. The cold, sharp clink of the steel echoed off the concrete walls, making the bound man shiver in horror.
The man in black turned toward a massive wall in the room. Hanging there was a huge investigation board, covered in pinned documents, strings, and profiles of suspects involved in a major criminal case.
As he stepped toward the terrified victim with the instruments in his hands, the camera focuses on one specific spot on the wall.
Pinned right in the middle of the board was a printed profile document. On it was a clear photo of Kaylin, along with her full name and identity details—marked cleanly.
[END OF EPISODE 1]
