The Backrooms: Pantheon

Chapter III

The poem had arrived three days ago, slipped beneath her chamber door on old parchment paper that smelled of woodsmoke and dried lavender. The handwriting was elegant, sophisticated; long looping letters curling like vine tendrils at the edges of each line. Ceres had read it so many times the creases had worn soft, the words memorized:

She’d hidden it beneath her mattress, tucked between the cold starmetal frame and the thin pillow. Her mother would have disapproved—would have being the operative phrase, since Solaris had been in her dormant state for nearly eighteen hours now. Her light had dimmed to a dull, resting ember, casting shadows across the celestial observatories of Level 78.
As for her father… Ceres had caught snippets of his departure that morning, something about a meeting with the M.E.G. at Base Beta. Boring business stuff. Politics and negotiations and all those tedious adult concerns that held no interest for her.

The timing was too perfect to ignore. It was the only window of opportunity she had. The watchful eyes of Ceres’ parents, the invisible tether binding her to their protected domains, slacked just enough for her to slip away.

She dressed quickly—simple clothes, nothing that would catch attention. Dark trousers, a fitted jacket, boots that laced up past her ankles. She braided her hair tight against her skull, tucking the loose strands beneath a cap. In the mirror, she barely recognized herself. Good. The fewer questions, the better.

On her way out, Ceres found her sister, Nebula, standing near the threshold of Level 78, her arms folded tight as she leaned against an asteroid. “You are making a mistake, sister…” she warned, her voice low but steady. “Father will notice your absence soon enough. And mother never stays dormant long enough.”
Ceres brushed past her without slowing, scoffing and rolling her eyes. “Ugh, you’re so overprotective, sis. Just like our parents,” she muttered dismissively. “And jealous. You’ve never had anyone write lines like that for you.” She slipped through the blip before Nebula could reply, the rift winking out of sight.

Ceres navigated the back-corridors of The Hub. She’d memorized the route that her sacred admirer had described in his last letter. Third archway, past the door with the broken handle. Left at the junction where the ceiling lowered.

This is stupid, some part of her whispered. You don’t actually know him.

But she did. She knew him through months of correspondence—letters and poems and small gifts left in secret places. A pressed flower from Level 9.1, its crimson petals still soft. A fragment of crystal from Level 197 that caught light like captured starshine. Words that made her feel seen in a way her parents never quite managed, busy as they were with their duties and their arguments and their endless, exhausting responsibilities.

He understood her. He listened.

The passage opened onto a door she didn’t recognize. Dark wood, iron bands across its surface, a handle cold enough to sting her palm when she grasped it. She pushed it open, and it gave way with a groan, spilling her out into a realm she didn’t recognize.

The corridor narrowed into a plush, carpeted hallway lined with peeling Victorian wallpaper. At the far end, a heavy oak door stood ajar, flickering orange light spilling into the gloom.

The room beyond was small and close, paneled in wood so dark it appeared black. A fireplace dominated one wall, its flames casting shifting orange light across the floor. The furniture was sparse—a velvet armchair facing the fire, a side table bearing a brass gramophone, and shadows that pooled in the corners like spilled ink.

The gramophone’s needle caught in the groove of its record, releasing a crackling melody that seemed to seep from the walls themselves. The notes were warped, melancholic—something between a waltz and a funeral march, played at slightly the wrong speed. The voice that drifted through the static was androgynous, distant, singing of heartaches.

There, sat in the armchair, was Ceres’ secret admirer — his back facing her. He didn’t turn at the sound of the door. His silhouette was motionless against the firelight; shoulders squared, head slightly bowed, one hand draped over the arm of the chair. The flames painted his edges in gold and shadow. A half-filled glass of almond-wine sat on a table beside him. Despite the back of the chair obscuring most of his figure, one distinct feature stood out to Ceres: a pair of vined horns protruding from his skull.

“It hasn’t been easy.” His voice was quiet, almost contemplative. “But after much effort… here we finally are.” He rose from the chair in a single fluid motion, turning to face her at last: Hubris. His features were exactly as she’d imagined—strong jaw, piering orange eyes, a mouth perpetually curved in a slight smirk of private amusement. He crossed the space between them in three long strides, and then his arms were around her, pulling her close.

Ceres melted into the embrace. She’d waited so long for this—months of letters, of longing, of staring at ceilings in the small hours and wondering if this feeling was real. His chest was warm against her cheek. His heartbeat was steady, unhurried. She tilted her face up toward his, eyes half-closed, lips parting in anticipation of the kiss she’d dreamed of for months.

His thumb brushed her chin, tilting it up. She felt the cool slide of a ring against her skin. Then he stopped her, forcing her eyes to meet his. His smile had shifted. The warmth drained from his eyes like water from a cracked vessel, leaving something cold, sharp, and utterly amused behind. A snicker escaped his throat. “Oh, Ceres…” He breathed her name like a punchline. “You really believed it. Every word mine, you ate it up. Lonely little godling in her glass cage, starving to be seen…”

She tried to pull back, but his grip tightened. Confusion bloomed into fear, cold and sudden in her chest. “What—”
“Shh.” His free hand pressed a finger to her lips. “Let me savor this. I’ve waited such a long time.”
He released her chin and stepped back, putting distance between them. The firelight caught the angles of his face differently now—harsher, crueler, the shadows carving hollows beneath his cheekbones that hadn’t been visible before. Or maybe they had, and she chose not to see them.

“You were so easy.” He paced a slow circle around her, hands clasped behind his back. “A few pretty words. A handful of trinkets. Poems I composed between delectable feasts of roasted hound, barely bothering to edit the meter.” He laughed haughtily, amused by himself. “And you fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker. I almost pity you — almost.” He pinched the air between his fingers, snickering. The gramophone crackled behind him, the melody distorting further.
“Who are you?” A slight tremble in Ceres’ voice betrayed the mounting, horrified confusion knotting in her stomach.

“The answer is more complicated than you think…” Hubris picked up the wine glass, swirling its contents as he paced about the room, his boots thudding across the velvet carpet. “I am Hubris, of course — but not the one you may know of. That one…well, I had no choice but to take care of him. The poor lad, he really had no say in this matter. But I doubt it was much of a loss, seeing as I have played his part so well in the last six years without arising suspicion.” He began to approach Ceres once again.

The gramophone’s needle scraped against the record, which began skipping and stuttering. Hubris’ attention was briefly diverted, his gaze shifting in the direction of the noise.

Ceres seized the opportunity to escape, running towards the door from whence she came — only to instead collide with an invisible barrier in the doorway: a deadbolt field.

Hubris chuckled with amusement, stepping closer as Ceres stood back up. “And now, the final piece has fallen into place: you. You are the one that we’ve been searching for. The special one, the chosen one…”

“Who — who is ‘we’?” Ceres stammered.

Hubris paused, catching himself. “Hmm…perhaps I’ve said too much already…”

“what are you talk-”

THWACK

The world detonated white, then red, then nothing. Pain bloomed at the back of her skull and folded instantly into a roaring dark, and Ceres’s knees gave out beneath her. The impact was enormous—a concussive force that drove her forward, stealing her breath, turning her vision to static. She felt her knees hit the floor. She felt her hands scrape against wood. She crumpled toward the floor, the firelight smearing sideways, the gramophone’s mournful loop distorting into something unrecognizable, as if the sound itself were being pulled apart.

Then she felt nothing at all.

Shkan lowered his warhammer, the massive head settling against the floor with a heavy thud.

Hubris glanced down at Ceres’s crumpled form. “Careful now, brute…” he murmured, though his tone held no real concern. “We need her alive.”

“She lives.” Shkan rumbled confidently, having struck her in the precise manner to render her unconscious without seriously injuring her.

“Good.” Hubris turned back to the fireplace, watching the flames consume the logs. The gramophone continued its warped melody, skipping and repeating, the needle trapped in its groove. “Bring her. We have a long way to go.”

Shkan sheathed his hammer across his back, then bent to lift Ceres’s limp form. He slung her over one shoulder like a sack of grain, adjusting her weight until it settled evenly. Her head lolled against his pauldron, her braid half-undone, blood still dripping slowly from the wound at the back of her skull.

Hubris remained at the hearth a moment longer, watching the fire burn. Then he chucked his glass of wine into the flames, causing them to flair up and out, crawling up the wall and across the floor, consuming the entire room in an inferno as Hubris and Shkan walked out. The gramophone manages to eek out some final lyrics before it too was lost to the inferno: