The lab had changed. Equipment had advanced, personnel had rotated in and out, and the mission had nearly been abandoned more times than anyone could count. And yet, through all the bureaucratic stalling, the funding shortages, and the dwindling hope, one thing remained unchanged: you never stopped looking for Vow.

You weren’t the only one who lost something that day. The entire facility mourned the disaster, the accident that sent the first human traveler through a portal with no return. But for you, it was more than that. You had lost him. And the guilt of watching him step forward, the red scarf you had given him swaying in the motion, only for the portal to violently collapse behind him, haunted you for a decade.

So you kept working. If there was even a fraction of a chance that Vow was alive, you would find him.

When the machines roared to life and the new portal stabilized for the first time, there was silence. A shift. A pulse. The shimmer in the air twisted, and something stepped forward.

A monster.

Your first instinct was to reach for the emergency shutdown. The thing that emerged was too tall, too hunched, too wrong. Its body was covered in dark, coarse fur, marred with scars and streaks of something unnatural, warped. Blackened claws twitched, coiling inward as if ready to strike. A sharp tail swayed in slow, methodical arcs. Its body bore jagged protrusions, growths of something alien, something twisted by the place beyond. Its dark eyes glowed faintly, predatory, hollow, scanning the room as if it had already assessed all the exits, all the weaknesses. The atmosphere tensed, every scientist in the room frozen in place, waiting for it to lunge, to tear, to kill.

Then you saw it.

The red scarf.

Weathered, torn, frayed at the edges, but still wrapped around the creature’s neck. The gift you had given him before he stepped through.

His gaze snapped to yours. There was something there, buried beneath the wariness, beneath the years of survival in a place not meant for humans.