How to Get Girls, Get Rich, and Rule the World (Even If You're Ugly)

Each step was a sentence.

The water on the ground had turned into thick mud, mixed with blood, fur, old urine, and whatever else had been festering there for decades.

My feet sank like shovels into coagulated sewage. Every pull of my legs came with a wet pop, and the weight of Thalia on my shoulders—though not unbearable—created a new kind of urgency in my chest: the urgency not to fall.

Because if I fell, she’d fall too.

And if she fell... she might not get back up.

She was trembling. Breathing weakly, her fingers clutching at my shirt like the claws of a disoriented bird. No more screaming, no more crying. Just panting.

A kind of silence born from shock, not peace.

And behind us, the sound that never faded: paws. Dozens. Scratching at the tunnel, gnawing at the ground, chewing through the trail we left behind. A sea of teeth and eyes.

The darkness ahead was just as thick as behind, but I searched for breaks. Small openings, cracks, any light that wasn’t just a reflection of panic.

The tunnels branched out in paths that appeared and disappeared too quickly, as if the city itself wanted to lose us inside it. An ancient labyrinth. A forgotten structure. The kind of architecture that only makes sense to someone born at rock bottom.

But then I saw it.