The Backrooms: Pantheon

Chapter IV

Consciousness gradually returned to Ceres like a flickering old lightbulb. Pain arrived first: a dull, pounding headache, almost as bad as the time she got hungover after stealing almond wine from her father’s vaults. She next became aware of the ambience of machinery operating around her. Ceres opened her eyes.

She was suspended in a zero-gravity vacuum, held within an egg-shaped tank of reinforced glass. Unlike humans, she did not need to breathe, yet still felt completely suffocated by the vacuum. Her breath came in quick, panicked gasps as she clutched her chest. All that she could inhale was a luminous silver mist completely saturating the atmosphere within the tank, leaving her feeling disoriented and weak. Her hair hung limp and dim around her face, as if wet. She could feel something in the very air pressing against the glass dampening her, smothering her. Likely the fog she was forced to inhale. It almost felt as if she were being waterboarded.

Beyond the glass, a cavernous chamber stretched into shadow, its walls lined with flickering braziers casting long, wavering fingers of light across the stone. She was underground, that much was obvious from the jagged limestone ceiling veined with phosphorescent fungus and the damp, dank smell that even the Cradle’s filtration couldn’t mask. The stone here had been shaped, smoothed, and etched with the profane geometries of the Church of the Veiled. This was the Third Grand Archdiocese — rebuilt from the rubble of Operation: Shattered Eclipse, in a hollowed cavern where the M.E.G. wouldn’t think to look again. Tattered black banners hung from stalactites, stamped with various symbols of the group: the seal of Asterion (the symbol of the Daethos), the symbol of The Opeh, and numerous arcane glyphs.

Ceres raised her hands, though with great effort, as if her entire body was weighed down by an invisible pressure. Her palms pressed flat against the curved glass, and she felt the keyway-instinct rise in her chest, the urge to imprint, to unlock, to open…

…And nothing. The intent fragmented before it could even crystallize, scattered apart pollen in the wind. A volumetric grid of runic interference threaded through the chamber’s architecture, converting her access syntax into inert heat the moment it formed.

Panic clawed up her throat. She turned her head, scanning her surroundings through the distortion of the glass. Across from her, trapped in an identical tank, Nebula floated with her eyes already open. Her eyes fixed on Ceres with an expression of both relief and profound dread. The slow-swirling markings across Nebula’s skin had dimmed to faint ghosts of themselves, the ionized gas and starlets that normally advected across her frame now sluggish, scattered, dying down. Her dark hair drifted in the fluid like seaweed.

“Nebby?!” Ceres exclaimed with horror.
“Sister, I…I came looking for you.” Nebula replied.
“Oh Gods, I-…I’m so fucking sorry. This is all my fault…” Ceres replied, her voice trembling as tears began to well in her eyes. She forced her gaze outward, past her sister, past the glass, into the room beyond, and found that the two tanks were the center of something vast.

They were housed at the heart of an orrery. Enormous rings of tarnished iron and starmetal interlocked around the twin tanks, rotating on axes that defied understanding—some spinning fast, some crawling, some tilting through dimensions that made eyes ache to follow. The rings were studded with components she half-recognized: superconducting coils that hummed with a magnetic pressure she could feel in her teeth, plates of negative-index metamaterial arranged in icosahedral clusters, nodes of pulsing runic light embedded at regular intervals. The whole apparatus turned slowly around them, a clockwork cosmos with the two of them trapped as its twin suns. This was the Cassiopeia Cradle, heavily modified after having been taken from Level 78. Initially intended for containment, it had been rebuilt and expanded, turning a cage into an engine. But an engine for what?

“Ah, she wakes.” The voice slithered into the chamber from somewhere beyond the rings. Ceres twisted herself around, finding Hubris standing before them on the ground, smugly smirking. He wore something more ostentatious now, royal and tattered, dark fabric trimmed in tarnished gold.

He clasped his hands behind his back and strolled closer, his smirk widening. “Did you enjoy my performance? Can’t say it was my best work, but admittedly I had some fun luring you into my gilded cage.” He tilted his head to study the twins through the glass, like a scientist admiring specimens in jars. “How’s the head?” he asked with mock concern. “Shkan does have a tendency to overcommit. I told him not to crack that pretty skull of yours. We need its contents intact, after all.”
Ceres slammed her palm against the glass, but even with the rage suddenly arising in her, it took great effort. “What the fuck are you doing?! Let us go, you bastard!” She spat.
Hubris cupped a hand around his ear theatrically. “Hm? Can’t quite hear you through that thick glass, darling.” He definitely could, but enjoyed toying with them. He leaned in close, his orange eyes inches from hers through the curved glass, magnified and distorted into something monstrous. Ceres bared her teeth, pressing her palms flat against the glass. The urge to break something thrummed through her like electric current. If she could just reach him, just wrap her hands around his throat—
“I wouldn’t,” Hubris said, as though reading her thoughts. “The Cradle is drawing from you. Every time you struggle, it pulls more. By my estimate, you have perhaps… fifteen minutes of aggressive resistance before you collapse into a coma. And while I’m sure your sister would keep you company in that state, I’d rather you be conscious for this part.” He leaned forward, his smug smirk widening. “But I imagine you have questions.”

“-And I shall answer them.”

Hubris’ demeanor instantly shifted, his smirk falling and his expression hardening into something serious. He took a step back from the tank, then another, his bravado draining out of him in real time. He smoothed his coat with a hand that wasn’t quite steady, dipped his head in something that might have been a bow, and retreated to the far edge of the chamber, melting into the shadows beyond the rings without a backward glance, making way for the true architect of this plan.

It came from the dark beyond the orrery, and the dark seemed to come with it, peeling off its frame in tatters, emerging from it like a wound opening. It was offensively massive, its silhouette wrong against the dimensions of the room, as if the architecture had to rearrange itself to make space. An offensively massive figure, taller than any man and broader than any beast. Grey, hardened and cracked carapace-like skin stretched over a frame of corded muscle and jutting bone. Its face was a skeletal visage draped in sinew, its eyes molten orbs that burned with the heat of a dying star. A crown of jagged metal spikes protruded from its skull, and its hair—if it could be called that—hung in matted ropes of charcoal black. Its draconic wings were torn, broken. They hung at its back like a tattered cloak, and when it moved, they dragged across the stone with a sound like rusted chains.

But it was not an it; It was a he. And he was known by many titles: The Oxidized Saint, Prince of Tetanus, baron of the Alldark, commander of ten hundred thousand fangs, he of the Mutant Shadow, Murderer of Light, Smelter of Hope, Shadow of Shadows, Inheritor of Rust.

But his true name, the one that few would ever dare utter, was SHALTOKOL.

With each step he took, the ground shook, the rusted chains and armor adorning his living cadaver smashing together. He circled the orrery slowly, his clawed feet leaving scorched indentations in the ground. The rings parted their rotation around him, as if even the machine deferred. “Twin scions conjoined. Access braided through Space, Space sheathed in Access.” A long, fused claw rose and gestured almost gently toward Ceres’s tank, then Nebula’s. “Do you even understand what you truly are? I doubt it. I doubt your mother or father told you. They themselves may not even understand. Or…perhaps they wanted to keep you small. Hidden. Safe little godspawn in a glass cage, gazing out at stars they’ll never reach.”

Ceres and Nebula only silently glared at him through the glass.

“Your father unlocks. Your mother spans the dark between worlds. Together, born of Access and Space, you do both.” He stopped between the two tanks, turning his head slowly from one twin to the other. “Do you grasp the implication?” His skeletal mouth could not form expressions, yet the tone of his voice suggested excitement. “Your father can open any door in this reality. Your mother can rupture the firmament of these cosmos. And where their domains overlap… you are keys to doors between realities, space that folds the gaps between universes.” The orange eyes flared brighter. “You can walk the Omniverse. You can tear a hole in the wall of all walls. You are interdimensional gates, wearing the shape of girls.”

At these words, Ceres and Nebula’s eyes had gone wide, and they writhed within their chambers in defiance.

“I see the fear,” SHALTOKOL rumbled. “Rest assured, I do not intend to kill you..at least, not directly. Not by my own hand. What becomes of you after is… beyond my concern, and beyond my control.” He turned to face the great central mechanism, the rings turning around the twin tanks at the orrery’s heart. “What I truly desire is your essence…your power. This ‘cradle’—” He spread his arms toward the rotating apparatus, the stolen, twisted machine. “—was built to cage you. I have given it a new purpose. I have transformed it into a grand engine, a spear to pierce the veil, a drill to bore beneath the ocean of the Ginnungagap. Every key of access, every fold of space, every interdimensional spark in your conjoined lineage…” His claws clenched into fists. “…rendered down. Distitilled. Channeled. Burned.” He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and tilting his head back, as if savoring the concept. “You will be the batteries that power my lighthouse. Twin stars lighting the way to distant shores beyond.” His molten gaze drifted to some far horizon only he could see, and his voice dropped to a near-reverent, almost hungry tone. “A place I have sought for a long, long time.”

“Where?” Nebula finally managed to ask.

SHALTOKOL’s head slowly turned towards her, a hideous screech of rust grinding against rust as he did so. A spark of amusement flickered in the depths of his hollow gaze. “All in time, little gate. All in time.” He turned back away. “Sleep is wasted on you now. Witness instead. It is a privilege, to know what your sacrifice means in the grand design.”

He stalked back toward the dark from which he’d come, the oppressive pressure of his presence slowly bleeding out of the chamber. In his wake, the rings of the orrery resumed their rotation, and Veiled Church cultists — scouts, sculptors, regulators and priests alike — emerged from unseen corners to perform maintenance on the machine, make preparations, and stand guard.

As the cultists busied themselves, they failed to notice Ceres’ hands rising up to her ears; or at least, they failed to suspect anything of it. Her fingers slowly wrapped around the small, antique key-earrings still fastened to her lobes—the ones her father had given her upon his return, the ones Hubris and Shkan and SHALTOKOL had all overlooked, dismissing them as mere ornamental jewelry. Hidden in plain sight.

The keys, in themselves, were not immediately useful in literal escape. But they still had one important function: a direct line to her father, should she find herself in trouble that she could not get out of. Ceres had promised herself to never use them, but self-preservation mattered more to her than pride by now, and this of all situations finally justified it.

She pressed her thumbnail against the teeth of the left earring, psychically pushing her intent against it with everything she had left; threading a thin filament of access syntax through the cracks the deadbolt field couldn’t quite seal.

She felt the connection establish, hearing the vaguely muffled voices of the M.E.G. oversight council discussing something about trade routes. Then she sent out a signal. A pulse. A single, desperate frequency keyed to one being and one being alone.

In Base Beta, The Keymaster stood with the carved figurine of his ancient self still cradled in his long fingers, turning it over with an expression the Oversight Council couldn’t read. “How… quaint,” he muttered, turning the statue in his hands. He intended to dismiss the matter and pocket the statue, but he found himself studying the carved face. It depicted “Gatekeeper” in his aspect of cosmic warden, keys radiating from his form like rays of imprisoned light. The craftsmanship was crude—a Lost artisan working from memory and faith rather than observation. But…
The Keymaster remembered being Gatekeeper. It was so long ago by now that it felt like a dream.But sometimes, in quiet moments, the memory of that ancient power moved through him like an old wound reopening. You were no better than me… he told himself, told the statue. You made the same mistakes. You trusted the wrong people. You—

-DADDY, HELP US!

It struck him like a knife behind the eyes, like a blade twisting between his ribs. His spine went rigid, as if struck by lightning.

The figurine slipped from his grasp. It struck the table and rolled, the soot-darkened bone-white stone clattering against a coffee-ringed manifest before coming to rest. His head snapped up, the two glowing white beads of his eyes narrowing into sharper, brighter pinpricks, suddenly filled with a mix of emotions: bewilderment, rage, fear. The paternal instincts of “Clavis, The Father” had overtaken his stoic, carefully constructed persona of “Clavis, The Keymaster”.

The room around him shuddered with the shift in his presence, office supplies tumbling off of wobbling desks and filing cabinets.

“Keymaster?” Justin rose halfway from his chair, one hand drifting toward the modified rifle leaning against the table’s edge. “Is something—what’s wrong?”

The Keymaster didn’t answer at first. His head tilted, listening to something none of them could hear, his featureless face angled toward a frequency that existed only for him. He stared at an invisible absence as he visualized a vivid scene on Ceres and Nebula’s predicament within his mind’s eye. When he finally spoke, the formal eloquence had drained out of his voice entirely. “…My daughters. My daughters are being held,” he said, his voice climbing, sharpening. “In a Church of the Veiled compound.”

With this revelation, silence fell upon the room, then replaced with a sudden eruption of overlapping voices amongst the Oversight Council.

“Your—daughters?” Kat said, half-rising from her seat. Everyone else was similarly shocked, murmuring and arguing amongst themselves. The Effluvium simply shrugged. “I am rather surprised that you are all surprised…was this supposed to be a secret? This has been documented for years*. It’s logged in the database. Am I the only one who reads it?”

“The entry on ‘Entity 78’ mentions nothing of them being daughters…” Gavin snapped back.

“The Church of the Veiled.” Justin had latched onto the more pressing detail, his brow furrowing hard. He stood fully now. “That’s—no. That’s impossible. We eradicated them in Operation Shattered Eclipse. The Third Grand Parish was destroyed. We executed Grand Lunaire Praetoris himself…”
“With respect, ‘Overseer A’,” Andrew said quietly, though his voice was laced with contempt, “this is precisely the kind of oversight we should have anticipated. What with you blindly promoting ‘Chinmay Aarush’, a man who came from nowhere, onto the oversight council.”
Justin arched a brow. “What do you want from me, Andy? I already promised I wouldn’t fuck up like that again.”

Andrew sighed. “I bring it up because our intel strongly suggested he was working on behalf of the Veiled Church. They have been rebuilding this entire time, right under our noses. But you just dismissed it as ‘residual superstition’.”

Justin wanted to argue further, but knew that there was little he could say in his own defense—and, secretly, he did not want to embarrass himself in front of The Keymaster.

“Keymaster.” Kat approached him, her exhaustion burned away, replaced by the brisk command that had kept the M.E.G. functional through a dozen crises. “Where are they being held? Tell us, and we’ll mobilize. Quick Match can have a strike team armed with firesalt rounds ready in—”

“No.” He turned to face her, his expression grim. “You do not understand what dwells there. I will not have mortal blood on my hands in a matter between parties far beyond the likes of you.”

He stepped back from the table. Behind him, in the darkest corner of the room where the fluorescent light couldn’t reach, the shadows deepened, peeled, and split—a no-clip rift yawning open into the black void.

“Lock your doors,” he stated without looking back. “All of them. Until this is done.” And then Keymaster, for the first time in centuries, ran — faster than he ever had before — into the rift as it swallowed him whole. He moved in a flurry, level keys manifesting in his hands without conscious thought, unlocking shortcuts through space that shouldn’t exist. He tore through the Backrooms like a blade through fabric, reality parting before his passage, reforming imperfectly in his wake.

The dark mist lingered a moment longer on the floor before evaporating, and the lights overhead ceased their flickering. The Oversight Council sat in stunned silence for a moment.
“…Quonqax,” Kat said finally. “Pull every file we have on Level 78. And every file we have on the Church. Now.”
The Faceling was already signing rapid acknowledgment, rising from her chair.

The Effluvium’s wisps settled slowly back around his shoulders. “He told us to lock our doors,” he murmured, mostly to himself. “I would heed him.”

Far away—and not far away at all, in the manner of things in The Backrooms—in the starlit dark of Level 78, Solaris drifted in the deep stillness of her resting state. Her celestial body had dimmed to a slumbering ember, the black hole above her brow contracted to a pinprick. Her purple eyes were closed. The markings across her dark caramel skin undulated slowly. Her vast awareness had pulled inward, coiled, recovering from some recent overexertion that had driven her down into dormancy in the first place.

And then a signal touched her. It was faint—threadbare, half-strangled, scrambled by interference and distance and the suppressing weight of some hateful machine. But it carried a frequency she would have known across the death of a thousand stars. A child’s cry,her child’s cry, carried out to her father but also reaching her mother.

Solaris’s eyes shot open, blazing as twin novae of incandescent purple, so bright the entire starfield seemed to dim by comparison. The black hole above her brow expanded in an instant, a maw of cosmic hunger yawning wide, and gravity itself shrieked and bent around her as she came fully, violently awake.

Where confusion and grogginess typically occupied her awakening, it instantly evaporated. In its place was pure maternal instinct and fury, so old and so vast that it had no human analog—the rage of the void itself when something dares to reach into its cradle and steal what is hers.

The temperature of the entire level dropped toward absolute zero. On the space station, the suspended droplets froze solid and shattered. The overgrown vines withered and blackened. Across a thousand portholes, false stars guttered and fled, snapping to new coordinates as if recoiling from her wrath.

Solaris raised her clawed hands and shredded through the fabric of space to tear open a Blip. And then she dove through it, headfirst, a star plunging into the dark, leaving Level 78 frozen and silent and abandoned in her wake. She tunneled through the void beyond the wormhole like a mole underground.

Across the vast fragments of space, Clavis and Solaris carried the same intention in their minds, the same promise in their hearts.

I am coming, my daughters.