His old house never failed to fill him with nostalgia.

  Matthew didn’t know exactly what caused his parents to divorce, though he did recall their arguments in the years that followed Perse’s death. By the end, they couldn’t stay in the same room without shouting at each other; and when they failed to settle the question of their shared home, they simply elected to sell it and pocket the money to start over elsewhere.

  Although both of his parents insisted that he had nothing to do with their separation, Matthew knew better. Dealing with a depressed child on top of their own issues had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was around this time he began to joke around more often.

  Nobody wanted to hang out with an Eeyore.

  “Your new neighbors have terrible taste, Maggie,” Matthew said upon noticing a digital clock over his old fireplace. “Round numbers are way classier!”

  “They certainly like their tech,” Kari said after she finished fiddling with the alarm system. “That should take care of the cameras.”

  “We shouldn’t break into someone’s house like this,” Sasha complained behind her. The group had her use her portal power to bypass the locked door, much to her chagrin. “What if someone saw us?”

  Then I’ll put a hole in their memory, Matthew almost blurted out before shame washed all over him. Did… did I do it to others too?

  Matthew hated distrusting his own mind. It led him to doubt everything, and he found that tiring.

  “No one saw us,” Kari insisted before calling out to the rest of the group. “John, Petro, did you find anything?”

  “I wouldn’t check this part out if I were you,” John called out from the dining room to their left. “They put printed monkey NFT faces on every shelf. It’s distasteful.”

  Matthew felt soiled in his soul. His house had been bought by tech bros of all people. He truly lived in the darkest timeline yet.

  Whatever the case, the new owners had mostly stuck to changing the furniture—such as replacing the old sofa with a leathery one and filling the bookshelves with Blue-rays—without touching the house’s architecture. Matthew wondered if his old bedroom had changed since his last visit.

  Nostalgia rarely let go of those in her tight grip.

  Matthew glanced around the room until his gaze lingered on a wall near the fireplace. A sudden chill traveled down his spine as he focused on the sickly yellow wallpaper. He heard music echo in the back of his mind growing louder the more he fixated on it, with Perse’s laughter resonating in the distance alongside the screech of a door’s hinge turning…

  “Brings back memories, doesn’t it?”

  Maggie’s voice startled Matthew enough to draw him out of his… episode. He peeked over his shoulder to find her and Amélia standing right behind his back, their eyes filled with slight concern.

  “The door thing,” Maggie said. “I recall you hit that wall and we all laughed at you for it.”

  “Yes, I… I remember,” Matthew replied, though that was half a lie. He recalled the recording session well enough, but he had a festering hole in his memory of that door. “It happened here.”

  Kari frowned and then appraised the wall for a moment. “I detect faint traces of Yellow Flux lingering in the air, though nothing that would suggest a Dungeon’s presence.”

  “Told you,” Maggie said with a snort. “Matt lived in this place for years, so he rubbed off on it. My place reeks of Orange too.”

  “I still find it odd…” Kari scratched her cheek. “When did you leave your house, Matt?”

  “Over a year ago,” Matthew replied, though he couldn’t remember the exact date. Funny how fast time flew. “My parents split up before we met.”

  “The Flux traces should have faded away by now, yet they linger.” Kari crossed her arms and mulled over the matter for a while. “You said you found your first Dungeon in your closet?”

  “That sneaky little bastard caught me in my bedroom upstairs,” Matthew confirmed. “It trapped me there for days.”

  “Days?” Amélia shuddered. Spending hours trapped in a Dungeon had already nearly traumatized her, so she could hardly imagine fending for herself for days inside one. “That’s awful.”

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  “I remember,” Maggie said, a scowl forming on her face. “We looked everywhere for you. Your parents feared that you had run away, or worse.”

  “But that happened five years ago,” Matthew told Kari. “And the door incident took place four years before that.”

  “I’m sure there is a correlation of some kind,” Kari insisted. “We should check the whole house.”

  Matthew grinned ear to ear. “In that case, I’ve got the perfect cat for the job!”

  He opened his bag while his teammates watched in confusion, then pressed his notebook against the wall. A black drawing of a cat moved from the page to the wallpaper before condensing into a large black hole.

  A cartoon character peeked out of it.

  Matthew could only smile in paternal pride when his creation partly materialized in the living world. The hole widened like a portal to reveal the torso of an anthropomorphic black cat creature with big white eyes and a wide smirk full of fangs.

  Unfortunately, like any avant-garde art piece, his creation only caused outrage among the plebes. Kari and Sasha both screeched in surprise at its sudden appearance while Maggie turned her fists to stone and Amélia stared at it with fascination. The commotion quickly caused the rest of their allies to run into the living room.

  “What’s happening?” John asked before catching sight of the creature. His hand reached for his gun, though Petro drew his own quicker. “What the–”

  “Hey, stop!” Matthew immediately moved between his creation and his allies’ line of fire. “You don’t see me pointing guns at your pets!”

  “Your pet?” Kari paled like chalk. “Matthew, what did you do?”

  “I improved my Art Attack spell!” Matthew grinned in triumph. “I found it unjust how Dungeons had a monopoly on monster creation, so I decided to compete with them in that field!”

  Maggie stared at his creation in a mix of horror and disbelief. “You’ve created a monster?”

  “Sort of!” Matthew announced with pride. He scratched his pet behind the ears and earned himself cartoony meows of gratitude in return. “I call him Articat! Since he feeds on my Flux instead of people, he’s completely harmless and obedient! Come on, you can pet him!”

  None of his allies appeared all too enthusiastic to try—having suffered through bad experiences with monsters recently—though Petro warily mustered the courage to scratch Articat behind his whiskers. The creature’s lack of hostile response only encouraged him to continue.

  Sasha squinted at her b-friend with clear concern. “Petro…"

  “Seems like a normal cat to me,” Petro replied calmly. His girlfriend winced when Articat responded to his attention by licking his fingers with a forked red tongue, but Petro didn’t mind at all.

  “He’s so creepy.” Amélia giggled upon caressing Articat’s rubbery black fur. His affectionate meowing quickly won her over. “I love it.”

  “I don’t,” Sasha replied while shuddering. “Cartoons are cute on TV, but freaky in real life.”

  “You do realize that you’ve created a monster capable of existing outside a Dungeon, yes?” John asked Matthew with a frown. “We already have enough troubles with one.”

  “Articat is an extension of my sorcery, so I can erase him with a snap of my fingers,” Matthew replied. Articat’s head snapped in his direction with what could pass for kitten-like dread. “Not that I would do that unless forced to, of course! You’re a good boy!”

  “And you’re sure it’s not hostile?” Kari asked Matthew with suspicion.

  “Not unless I ask him to be,” Matthew reassured her. He had yet to test his creation in battle, but surely he would handle himself well. “Articat can move from one flat surface to another so long as they connect in some way, so I figured we could use him as a scout and messenger. He’s still vulnerable to Disbelief, so I can only summon him inside Dungeons or when there are no normal people around.”

  Mollified by his explanation, John finally saw the potential in his new spell. “How many of these creatures can you manifest, Matthew? Can you create more than one?”

  “Do you take me for a sellout, John?” Matthew scoffed. “There’s only one Articat. I haven’t tried drawing new monsters yet, since I wanted to compare my work with Amy’s.”

  Kari paled like chalk. “Compare work?”

  Amélia blushed slightly, then opened up her bag. The team watched on in silence as a critter crawled out of it. Hardly any bigger than a chihuahua, it resembled a ball of silvery fur with two human hands for feet, a wide mouth filled with fangs, and a small horn protruding in between two big black eyes staring at the group with innocence.

  Matthew found it incredibly cute, in a weird adorably ugly pug kind of way.

  “I created him from my hair with my Key,” Amélia said shyly. “I call him Handy.”

  “He’s way cuter than the horror cartoon cat,” Sasha said with cautious enthusiasm. She tried to touch it, but the creature let out a small cry and quickly took cover behind its creator’s leg. “And twice shyer too.”

  “I’m…” Kari took a long deep breath. “I don’t know how to react to this, to be honest.”

  “We could always use them for target practice, or have them fight for money,” John suggested, which earned him plenty of glares.

  “Let’s just make sure these two don’t cause issues first, please," Kari insisted. Articat tilted his head in her direction, which only unsettled her further. “You think these two can help us study the house?”

  “Yup!” Matthew patted his pet on the back of his head. “You heard the lady! Go look around the place and come back to me if you find anything interesting! And don’t go outside!”

  Articat nodded obediently, then retreated back inside his hole. The drawing traveled along the wallpaper across the living room and then moved into the kitchen. Handy glanced at his mistress, then clumsily ran after its fellow otherworldly creature.

  “We should open a zoo one day,” Matthew suggested.

  “No,” Kari said flatly. “Can we please focus back on exploration?”

  “Agreed,” John replied with a nod. “I say we’re done with the ground floor. One group should move upstairs and the other will investigate the basement.”

  Matthew was about to say this sounded like a plan, until a detail caught his attention. From Maggie’s frown, she had noticed it too.

  “What basement?” Matthew asked.

  John led them to the staircase leading to the upper floor and pointed at an opened black door on its left side. Stone steps past the threshold led into thick and impenetrable darkness.

  That shouldn’t be here.

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