I took aim with my bow, ready to end things, but I didn’t have time to finish him off. The floor beneath Kingsley buckled with a tortured groan, ancient stone giving way once again beneath his weight—and mine along with it.

  The world tilted. A deafening crack echoed through the chamber as stone shattered and support beams splintered. I reached for anything—air, light, balance—but there was nothing to grab hold of.

  I struck the muck with a bone-jarring splash, the impact blasting the air from my lungs as frigid, sludge-thick water swallowed me whole. For a moment, there was only darkness and disorientation—a whirlpool of pressure and weightless spinning, where up and down traded places like liars. Then instinct kicked in. I thrashed toward the faintest hint of surface and broke through the filth with a ragged gasp, dragging in air so foul it felt like breathing tar.

  A second splash followed—louder, heavier—accompanied by a groan that bubbled through the mire.

  “Thumbs? You okay, buddy?

  Thumbs surfaced beside me, sputtering violently. He looked like a corpse steeped in spoiled stew—skin pale and slick, clothing streaked with gray-brown sludge that peeled away in clumps. His voice came hoarse and hollow, threaded with disbelief. “ Dead? Dead. I wanna leave. Leave! No more dark. No more wet. No more wet!”

  I wiped muck from my eyes with a trembling gross sleeve and staggered upright. The floor beneath us was a curved channel of ancient stone, slick with algae, grime clinging to every seam—possibly the remains of a forgotten aqueduct or derelict maintenance tunnel. Cold radiated up through my boots, settling deep in the bones.

  “You’re not dead,” I muttered, shaking out my limbs as my sodden gear clung to me like a second, heavier skin.

  The darkness surrounding us wasn’t like the shadows above. It didn’t wait to be banished by fire or magic. It lingered—thick, unmoving, like it had been here so long it had learned to feed on memory. Every step echoed too loudly. Every breath stirred something ancient.

  Above me, Aurentum spun in slow, deliberate arcs.

  When it finally spoke, its words rang out with the sterile finality of a clock striking midnight.

  {Rod… this place is not on the map.}

  “No kidding? The almighty god of greed defeated by a sewer.” I muttered. With a thought a torch appeared in my hand. My fingers trembled despite my efforts to steady them, each movement feeling too slow, too loud. When the flame finally appeared, it hissed and bloomed into a weak orange halo, barely strong enough to push back the dark.

  I almost wished it hadn’t worked. The walls were covered in carvings, and I jumped back in fear of triggering a Mural… but it wasnt one. Confused, I walked back to the wall and reached out a hesitant hand.

  At first glance, they might have passed for rats—if rats ever stood upright, hunched like broken marionettes and draped in scraps of what might have once been clothing. Their bodies were too long, torsos stretched thin like chewed taffy, with limbs that bent at sickening angles. Skeletal arms ended in too many fingers, each tipped with chipped claws. Their faces, once vaguely human, had warped into a grotesque mockery: muzzles elongated into tapering snouts like carved daggers, mouths twitching with wet teeth. Clusters of eyes—some bulging, others sunken—crowded their skulls in chaotic, senseless patterns, as though something had tried to rearrange a human face by memory and failed.

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  They all faced the same direction.

  Every single one of them—hundreds, maybe thousands—tilted toward the same point: a massive door at the far end of the chamber. There was no mistaking it. Whatever lived here, whatever made this place, had built it around that door. I had the strangest sense of deja vu, which I couldn’t put my finger on.

  Thumbs, who had gone unusually silent during my inspection, finally whispered, “Rod… this is bad. Really bad. I’ve mapped out most of Floor 1 by now. I’ve seen ancient paths, collapsed zones, even a couple of admin chambers. But this? This isn’t Floor 1 anymore. This is something buried under it.”

  His voice cracked at the edges, like he was trying to convince himself he hadn’t just said that aloud.

  The torchlight faltered, its flame bowing to some unseen breeze. But there was no draft. No stir of movement. The shadows shifted, not with motion, but with weight, as if they had been still too long and were beginning to notice us.

  Then the door began to open.

  Not with a grind or a deep rumble. There was no dramatic groan of ancient stone, no warning at all. It simply parted—seamlessly, silently—like it had been waiting for us, and now it had grown tired of waiting.

  {This is not part of the current floor. This shouldn't be here, you shouldn’t be able to move back a floor.} he said.

  His voice was as flat and detached as ever, but the words landed like a knife pressed against my spine.

  I glanced up at him, heart thudding like a drum in my throat. “So should I turn around?”

  {I am saying… You are here.}

  Of course. Always helpful.

  I swallowed, more from instinct than belief that it would calm anything, and stepped forward. The sound my boot made was unpleasant—a thick, wet squelch that echoed longer than it should have. My brain kept insisting I was about to fall through the floor, or sink, or worse.

  Then something landed behind me with a sound that didn’t belong in any sane space—a wet, final thud that left no room for guessing.

  I turned slowly, every nerve screaming that I didn’t want to see what was there.

  Kingsley.

  The GrendelKing’s massive body lay sprawled across the stone, limbs at odd angles, as though his joints had forgotten how they were supposed to work. His mask was cracked clean down the center, one jagged piece hanging off his cheek like shattered porcelain. One of his eyes still glowed—barely—pulsing with the weak, dying rhythm of a creature that hadn’t yet accepted its end.

  I couldn’t move.

  Not out of fear, though fear was there, thick and heavy, but because something about this place reached down into the marrow and held it still. As if even my intent to flee or fight or scream was being recorded and measured. He laughed.

  The sound that poured from his throat was not human–or even goblish. It gurgled through blood, cracked with pain, and bubbled with something far more dangerous than death—madness. His chest heaved, bones visibly shifting beneath ruined flesh as he rasped out the words:

  “You think… that was the end?” His eye, barely lit, flickered toward me like a dying ember. “You haven’t even seen the surprise. ” He cackled as he died, the blue flying from his mouth a pale echo of a forgotten memory. So it was no surprise when an orb descended from the ceiling.

  A Memory Core.

  The moment I saw it, my stomach turned to ice. It floated, golden and humming, each pulse of light synced to a rhythm I hadn’t heard in years but had never stopped feeling. Something deep inside me—something old, buried and locked away—began to stir.