The moment we stepped through the portal, the air changed.
And not in the usual hey, welcome to your latest near-death experience kind of way.
No, this was different. Slow. Creeping. Like the dungeon wasn’t just waiting for us—it was watching. Studying. Thinking.
A shallow breath shuddered out of me. I looked around as the portal’s glow faded into nothing.
Great. No turning back now.
We stood at the entrance of what looked like it had once been a temple, but time hadn’t been kind. Towering stone walls loomed, their carvings so faded they could’ve been ancient graffiti. Crumbled pillars clawed toward the ceiling like skeletal hands, jagged and broken, the edges sharp enough to make my skin crawl just looking at them.
The whole place felt abandoned—but not empty. Like whatever used to live here had never really left.
And then there were the vines.
Not the nice green leafy ones that make ruins look all scenic and mysterious. No—these were black. Thick. Twisting. Pulsing.
They sprawled across the floor like they were just waiting to snag an ankle and drag someone under, twitching faintly, as if responding to the subtle tremors of our footsteps.
Nobody spoke.
The first few chambers were quiet. Too quiet.
And not the usual “between fights” kind of quiet, either.
This was… wrong.
No skittering creatures. No distant growls. Just the occasional drip of water, the groan of shifting stone, and the sound of my own extremely justified paranoia tapping a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
Every step felt louder than it should have. Every breath, too sharp.
Then Maria broke the silence.
“Okay,” she muttered. “I hate this.”
Rez, of course, rolled his eyes. “We literally just got here.”
“Exactly,” Maria snapped. “Which means something should’ve tried to kill us already.”
…She had a point.
And just to make things worse, something felt… off.
Rez must’ve felt it too, because he glanced at Maria. They didn’t say anything, but tension crackled between them, sharp and sudden, like a wire pulled tight.
Then Rez lifted a hand, muttering under his breath. A small glow flickered at his fingertips—then immediately dimmed, like someone had turned the brightness down.
Maria frowned. “Magic feels weird here.”
Rez exhaled sharply. “It’s being dampened.”
I did not like the sound of that.
I was already betting my survival on these two blasting everything in sight. If their magic was being suppressed?
Yeah, we were all a lot closer to dying than I was comfortable with.
And just when I thought things couldn’t get worse—
I saw it.
Or, well, them.
Flickering shadows.
Not ours.
Not cast by any of our torches.
They moved wrong. Stretching and shifting at the edges of my vision, like they were lagging a fraction behind reality.
I froze mid-step, heart hammering.
Tilted my head. Strained my ears.
There.
Low. Just at the edge of hearing.
A whispering voice—no real words. Just a sound. Like someone muttering from another room.
I turned, scanning the ruined temple.
Nothing.
The others kept moving. No one else reacted.
Which meant either they hadn’t noticed—
Or my brain had decided to mess with me.
This wasn’t just a ruined temple.
This place was wrong.
And judging by my current luck?
I was about to find out exactly why.
 
The hallway led to a massive stone doorway, its surface covered in glowing glyphs that pulsed faintly through the thick fog.
Of course, it was locked. Because dungeons couldn’t just have normal doors like civilized people. No, that would be too easy. Too kind.
Maria groaned. “Great. A puzzle.”
Rez, already rolling up his sleeves, smirked. “What, too much for you?”
Maria crossed her arms. “Oh, please. I could solve this in my sleep.”
I sighed, stepping back as the two Acolytes immediately started poking at the glyphs, muttering like this was a fun academic exercise and not a life-or-death scenario.
Which left Thorne and me standing near the back, doing the one thing that felt remotely smart: keeping an eye on literally everything else.
Because something felt off.
Really off.
Thorne shifted slightly, resting a hand on her sword. Her eyes were scanning the room just as sharply as mine. “You feel that?”
I nodded. “Yeah. And I don’t like it.”
The air had that too-quiet, too-heavy weight you only ever heard about in horror stories.
The kind of silence that wasn’t just absence—it was suppression. A hush that sank into your bones, made you second-guess every sound, every step.
Like something was holding its breath. Waiting. Watching.
I scanned the room again.
Nothing moved.
But I could feel it.
Something was lurking.
Something that wasn’t going to stay hidden forever.
Behind us, Maria and Rez were still bickering over glyph placements like this was a pop quiz and not a potentially fatal mistake.
“No, it’s a sequence,” Rez insisted, tapping a glyph like that would make it behave. “You have to align them based on the original temple inscriptions.”
“Which would be great if we had a key for those inscriptions,” Maria shot back. “Unless you feel like guessing.”
Thorne exhaled slowly, the sound practically a growl. “I’d rather not deal with monsters while they’re playing archaeologist.”
“Yeah, me neither,” I muttered. “But I don’t think we get a say in it.”
Because the moment Maria pressed the final glyph into place—
The floor shifted.
My stomach dropped clean out of my body.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
And then we were falling.
 
We hit the ground hard.
Dust exploded around us in thick clouds, my shoulder slamming into cold stone before I managed to roll with the impact. My ribs screamed in protest, but I forced myself up, heart pounding.
My brain scrambled to catch up, but all I knew for certain was that we’d just fallen way farther than I was remotely comfortable with.
I checked my HP: 110/160. Damn, I lost almost a third of my health just from that fall?
I groaned, pushing myself onto my elbows. “So… that was fun.”
Maria coughed beside me, waving away dust with one hand like it was an annoying bug. “I’m going to kill Rez.”
“Excuse me?” Rez shot back, bristling. “You’re the one who solved the damn puzzle.”
“We both solved it!”
“Exactly.”
The way Rez said it somehow made it her fault, anyway.
I sighed, ignoring them, and pushed myself to my feet.
The chamber stretched out around us, vast and dark, the faint runes etched into the walls giving off just enough light to see the shapes waiting in the gloom.
The air was thicker down here, almost syrupy. Like this place had been sealed shut for centuries, and now that it had been disturbed, it wasn’t happy about it.
Then I saw them.
Statues.
They stood in a circle around the room, carved from glistening black obsidian, their surfaces slick and polished like wet stone.
Humanoid—but wrong.
Broad-shouldered. Towering. Featureless faces where expressions should’ve been. Long, curved weapons clutched tight in stone hands, as if they were just waiting for a signal.
Still.
Watching.
Silent sentinels ready to come alive the second we turned our backs.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
“…Please tell me these are just for decoration,” I muttered, already knowing the answer.
Thorne rose, brushing dust off her armor like it was just another Tuesday. “Doubt it.”
And right on cue—
The runes on the walls pulsed.
A deep, grinding rumble filled the chamber.
The statues moved.

The nearest statue lurched forward, its movements too fast for something so massive. What should have been heavy, deliberate motions were instead unnervingly smooth—inhumanly quick.
I barely had time to shout before the first one swung.
A blade the size of my torso carved through the air where I’d been standing a second ago. I threw myself sideways, rolling across the cold stone floor just in time to avoid being cleaved in half.
“Little help here!” I yelped, scrambling to my feet.
The statues closed in.
Six of them, weapons raised, shadows flickering across their featureless faces like living nightmares.
And then Maria and Rez let loose.
A shockwave of magic erupted across the chamber, fire and lightning slamming into the advancing sentinels with explosive force. One staggered back, molten cracks forming across its obsidian chest, but it didn’t fall. Its weapon twitched in its hands like it hadn’t even noticed the damage.
Rez stepped forward, both hands raised, expression flat. “Die, you ugly bastards.”
Twin bolts of searing light lanced from his palms, striking another sentinel dead center and sending chunks of obsidian flying across the floor like shrapnel.
Maria wasn’t far behind, her hands flashing as she hurled a sphere of flame straight into the ranks. It detonated on impact, bathing two statues in roaring fire that made the whole room flicker like a strobe.
The entire chamber lit up with destructive magic, the air vibrating with every impact.
Thorne, meanwhile, was doing what she did best—getting hit so the rest of us didn’t have to.
A sentinel brought its massive blade down on her, the blow heavy enough to shatter stone. Thorne caught it with her sword, muscles straining under the force. Her boots skidded backward across the dusty floor, leaving gouges in the stone, but she didn’t fall. Didn’t falter.
Absolute tank.
And me?
Yeah, I was… significantly less impressive.
While the others unleashed hell, I was doing my best impression of a very nervous rabbit.
Darting between attacks. Using every ounce of speed I had just to stay one step ahead of getting flattened.
I threw a dagger—it bounced harmlessly off a sentinel’s armored shoulder with a sad little plink.
I slashed at a joint—barely a scratch.
Another statue swung at me, and I dropped into a roll, feeling the rush of air as the blade sliced the space where my head had been a heartbeat earlier.
Awesome. Real helpful. Go team.
The difference between the Proving Grounds and this?
Night and day.
In the Trial, it had been me against the dungeon. One enemy at a time. I could think. Plan. React.
Here?
It was chaos.
No time to think. No time to breathe. Only survive.
I wasn’t orchestrating anything. I was improvising. Desperately.
Rez and Maria launched another combined attack, their spells colliding midair and twisting together into a blast of crackling blue fire.
The explosion was massive, sending a sentinel crashing into the far wall hard enough to crack the stone. Its runes dimmed, then sputtered out completely.
One down.
Thorne didn’t miss a beat. She pivoted smoothly and drove her sword straight through another, the blade shattering its torso into glittering shards of obsidian that rained across the floor.
Two down.
The fight raged on.
But little by little, the tide turned.
I kept moving, slipping into openings, tagging weakened enemies wherever I could.
A dagger between a cracked shoulder plate.
A slash across an exposed joint.
Small hits. Barely noticeable.
But enough to matter if someone else had already done the heavy lifting.
Finally, the last statue collapsed with a heavy, echoing crash that made the floor vibrate under my boots.
Silence fell across the chamber.
I slumped against a pillar, breathing hard, my daggers still clutched in shaking hands, my body aching in places I hadn’t even known could ache.
Rez ran a hand through his hair, barely winded. “Well. That was a workout.”
Maria stretched lazily, rolling out her shoulders. “You didn’t get hit once, did you?”
Rez smirked. “Was I supposed to?”
Thorne didn’t even dignify the exchange with a comment. She just cleaned the dust off her blade with a calm efficiency that made me wonder if she ever actually got tired.
Typical.
I stayed quiet, processing.
Because underneath the relief of surviving… there was something else.
A knot twisting in my gut, low and sour.
I hadn’t helped.
Not really.
Yeah, I’d dodged. Stayed alive. Landed a few quick hits here and there.
But Rez and Maria had carried the fight with overwhelming force.
Thorne had stood her ground and tanked blows that would’ve snapped me in half.
Me?
I’d been background noise. A distraction at best.
Rez glanced over, raising an eyebrow. “You good, Shadowborn?”
I pushed off the pillar, forcing a breath through tight lungs. “Yeah,” I muttered. “Just… taking it all in.”
Maria nudged me as she passed, her grin a little softer this time. “Relax. You didn’t die. First rule of dungeoning: surviving means you did your job.”
I tried to smile back, but it felt thin. Fragile.
Because if this was just the start of the dungeon?
If this was the warm-up?
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep up.
I slid my daggers back into their sheaths, flexing my aching hands.
Maybe I wasn’t useless.
But I was still green.
Still way behind.
And if I wanted to survive whatever was waiting deeper inside this place—
I needed to be better.
Fast.
Thorne’s voice cut through the heavy silence. “Move out. We don’t want to be here when the next wave wakes up.”
Right.
No time for self-pity. No time for doubts.
I straightened up, adjusted my gear, and fell into step behind the others as they moved deeper into the shadows.
One fight survived.
A thousand more waiting in the dark.
I just had to make sure I was ready for the next one.
 
Rez and Maria were catching their breath, casually throwing comments at each other about who did more damage. Thorne was already moving with her usual no-nonsense efficiency, checking the remains of the statues for anything useful.
I wasn’t paying attention to any of them.
I was staring at the walls.
Because they were moving.
Initially, it was subtle—a shift at the edges of my vision, like a trick of the light. The faint runes along the stone flickered unevenly, their glow stuttering like a dying candle about to wink out. I blinked hard, thinking it might just be dust in my eyes.
But then the change became impossible to ignore.
A hallway that hadn’t been there before stretched out into the distance, narrow and winding, its edges still faintly shimmering like the stone hadn’t fully decided it wanted to exist yet.
I sucked in a slow, careful breath, my heartbeat picking up speed. “Uh… guys?”
Rez was wiping lingering sparks from his hands, not even looking up. “What?”
I pointed at the very obvious, very unsettling new hallway. “Yeah, so… did anyone else notice the dungeon is, you know, rearranging itself?”
Maria turned, her brows furrowing the second she spotted it. “Wait… that wasn’t there before.”
Thorne followed my gaze, her entire posture shifting. She tensed like a drawn bowstring, hand drifting toward her sword hilt. “No. It wasn’t.”
The team fell silent, the tension threading between us like a living thing.
And then the air changed.
Not in a way you could see, but in a way you could feel—dense and cloying, sinking into your skin, wrapping around your lungs. It pressed in heavy and thick, like we were standing inside something’s open mouth, and it had just noticed we were there.
Rez’s fingers twitched toward his staff. “Alright. That’s… new.”
Maria stepped cautiously toward one of the shifting walls, frowning, tracing a finger along the newly formed carvings. Her touch left a trail in the dust that hadn’t been disturbed in what felt like centuries. “These symbols weren’t here before, either.”
I swallowed hard, throat dry.
Then, just as I opened my mouth to say something appropriately sarcastic about this being the worst idea ever—
The whispers started again.
Faint. Distant.
But this time… closer.
Rez stiffened, his head snapping toward the sound. “Tell me you guys heard that.”
I nodded slowly, my skin crawling. “Yeah. We heard it.”
And this time, there was no mistaking it.
We weren’t alone.
The dungeon continued to twist around us, the walls groaning and creaking like bones settling into place. Doorways stretched and collapsed, pathways appearing and vanishing just as quickly. It felt less like we were navigating a place and more like we were being guided.
But somehow—somehow—we pressed forward.
 
A massive set of stone doors loomed ahead, towering over us like the jaws of some ancient beast. They were carved with the same ancient runes that had been haunting us since we stepped inside this place. As we approached, the doors shuddered—then slowly, groaningly, they opened on their own, spilling stale, cold air out into the hallway like a breath from the grave.
The moment we crossed the threshold, I knew.
We’d made it.
The Core Chamber.
It was enormous—far bigger than anything I could have imagined.
The ceiling arched so high it vanished into gloom, lost to sight. Thick, ancient columns framed the vast space, and the faint runes etched along the walls flickered weakly, casting the chamber in a sickly, pulsing light. It wasn’t comforting. It wasn’t reassuring. It was the slow, stuttering rhythm of something dying—and something else waiting to be born.
And at the center of it all—
The obelisk.
Thirty feet tall, forged from the same glistening black stone as the sentinels we had fought. Its surface was cracked and weathered, lines spiderwebbing across its face like the scars of countless failed attempts to destroy it.
It didn’t feel inert.
It felt aware.
Like it had been watching us. Waiting.
The ground shuddered beneath our boots, a low vibration rolling through the stone like the heartbeat of some massive creature.
I froze, adrenaline flooding my system.
Rez muttered a curse under his breath. “That’s not good.”
Maria’s hand darted toward her spellbook, her face pale. “You think?”
Thorne didn’t speak—she was already moving, sword clearing its sheath with a soft metallic whisper, her stance dropping into a ready guard.
And then—
The obelisk split.
A jagged fracture ripped down its center, the sound sharp and visceral, like flesh tearing instead of stone. From within, black mist billowed outward, thick and choking, swirling like it was alive.
The whispers that had stalked us since the beginning rose into a deafening roar, a chorus of voices just on the edge of comprehension.
I stumbled back a step, my instincts screaming at me to run, to get out, to survive.
Because something was stepping out.
Something wrong.
Something that had been waiting far too long.
And in that moment, staring into the broken heart of the dungeon, one thing became crystal clear:
This wasn’t just another monster.
This was the thing the whispers had been warning me about.
And now it was awake.