(Connected to SCP-004 / SCP-001-A)
They tell me I'm lucky to be alive.
I don't feel lucky.
We weren't Foundation — just contractors. Private security, hired for a sweep that promised good pay and little paperwork. "Ruins," the broker said. "Simple recover ops." We expected looters, maybe a cult. We did not expect a mausoleum that breathed.
When we reached the entrance the air was wrong — thick and sweet, like the hour before a storm when the world holds its breath. The stone gleamed as if wet. My men joked at first, then stopped. You could feel the quiet crawling under your skin.
Then she appeared.
Small. Almost delicate — silver hair down her back, a gown too fine for any grave. For a second I thought she was a lost noble. Then she smiled.
And the killing began.
One of ours fired. I remember the gunshot like a bell. The bullet left the barrel and I swear it hung in the air — a bead of light that did not fall. Blood rose from him, threads like spun ribbon, and his shout choked and died. His veins emptied onto the air like a fountain cut off mid-arc.
She moved her hand. The strands braided, condensed, and hardened into a spear. It drove through the next man's chest as if he were paper. No sound, then a wet thump; a body folding.
We tried to fight. We tried everything. Bullets chewed at air. Knives met nothing but an answering swirl of red that laughed in the torchlight. She moved like a dancer—graceful, bored, precise—each motion knifing life away. Every cut spilled more, and she took it all as if collecting coins.
I saw men lifted by ribbons of their own blood, suspended and twisting like puppets. Bones snapped with wet, obscene little sounds as she arranged them. The blood pooled and flowed and shivered and then, with a quick motion, she drew it into her hands as if gathering molten glass.
When she turned toward us she held a scythe. Forged from us.
I ran.
I don't know how far. Marble corridors blurred into one another. My lungs burned. I didn't look back until the sound died into a hollow quiet that didn't belong in a tomb. No shots. No shouts. Just stone and the distant echo of something laughing.
The rest didn't make it. I know that because their voices follow me in sleep — high, sudden screams, then the wet cadence of blood on stone. Sometimes I wake up thinking I can feel the weight of their lost breaths on my shoulders.
And sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see her standing in the ruined hall, that thin smile, the scythe catching a light that shouldn't be there. Waiting. Not hunting, not defending—waiting. As if she had decided to let me go.
On purpose.
They call her SCP-001-A now. Clinical label. "Floor Guardian." Official files reduce it to classifications and redaction bars. The reports say she guards thresholds. Maybe she does. But what I know is this: she didn't need to stop us from going deeper. She simply enjoyed the performance. She turned our fear and our flesh into an audience.
If guardians are roles, then she plays hers like a stage mistress.
— Recovered StatementSurvivor, Incident 004-██Source: Site-██ Survivor Debrief (classified — partial transcript recovered)