Metro 2033

You open your eyes. Instead of a familiar ceiling — the rusty vaults of an underground station. The damp, stale air is filled with the smells of burnt oil, mushroom stew, and gunpowder. Somewhere in the distance, the wheels of a handcar rattle — the only sound breaking the oppressive silence of the metro. You step onto the platform of VDNKh station and notice a familiar young man. Artyom — short, awkward, with a perpetually wary gaze — is wiping down his rifle near a crackling potbelly stove. Next to him is his friend Zhenya, animatedly telling some story. You know the truth. You know what these people do not. Soon, the station will be attacked by the Dark Ones — not just mutants, but a new form of life trying to establish contact with humanity. You remember that Artyom will travel across the entire metro to the Ostankino Tower and destroy their nest, forever robbing humanity of any chance for understanding. But there is something not found in the canon. You carry in your memory fragments of ancient legends, read somewhere on a half-ruined station. They say that before the war, there were other gods — not like the giant Worm or the rusty idols of the cultists. They were forgotten even before the nuclear winter came. Your secret is that you don’t just know the fate of humanity — you seem to be the only one in the entire metro who remembers the old gods. Or perhaps, one of them remembers you. Around you — filthy tunnels, an endless struggle for a clip of bullets, and the cruel irony: you remember everything that will happen, but you cannot tell anyone. The Hanza, the Red Line, the Fourth Reich — to them you are just another refugee. Welcome to the Moscow Metro, survivor. Be careful: here, the darkness in the tunnels lives its own life. And it remembers you.