System Report:

  Three Weeks Earlier

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  Yenna shivered under her hood as the sea whispered secrets she didn’t want to know. The wind, being the sort that had spent a lifetime at sea and resented anyone with dry socks, hurled a fine spray of salt and cold at her face.

  She hadn’t pictured it like this.

  Some months ago, when she’d resolved to become a Delver, she’d imagined the usual things: glittering caverns echoing with destiny, forgotten tombs politely offering their treasures, and the kind of monsters that waited their turn to be defeated. There would be loot, of course, and interviews. Cameras. Cheers. A dramatic spotlight and perhaps some tasteful backlighting.

  What she had not imagined was Ashenmoor.

  The Tutorial she’d ran had been closer to the brochure: a cheerful bloodbath with good lighting. Hundreds of aspiring Delvers all swinging wildly at horned-rabbits and slimes that had long ago accepted their lot in life. There had been experience points, there had been stages, there had even been a Class Selection Ceremony.

  Yenna had done well.

  Well enough to be noticed.

  Well enough to win a slot in one of the real parties.

  And now here she was.

  The dockworkers passed in silence, faces carved in stone as they moved crates with a reverent gloom. Even the ship they'd arrived on—the Gullywag—was doing its best impression of a cautionary tale.

  When they had left the sunny ports of Lanchist, it’d been a sprightly thing—bright sails, a fresh coat of paint, and a captain who spoke in the future tense. Then came the voyage.

  The sails, affronted by the storms they’d braved, had given up in strips. The paint had vanished in flakes, leaving the wood beneath dark with exposure and damp with memories. And the captain, now a harrowed man, barely spoke at all.

  It was a different ship. A haunted cousin of the original.

  Another shiver shook her.

  “What kind of bloody luck makes this our first dungeon?” she muttered into the drizzle, hunched against the wind.

  Her jacket, though quite stylish, had been designed by someone who thought weather was just a narrative inconvenience. It had spell-casting bonuses, yes. It had flair. What it did not have, crucially, was enough jacket.

  It left most of her arms heroically exposed to the elements, which seemed to find this deeply amusing. Rain wasn’t falling so much as prowling in midair before pouncing up her sleeves. Cold was a creature with teeth.

  By contrast, Gami—her companion for the morning, just like she’d been for the past dozen mornings—did not seem particularly concerned. Then again, the young woman rarely did.

  She stood nearby doing a convincing impression of a marble statue on break. Her cloak, which might have once belonged to a very disciplined bear, shrugged off the damp like a soldier ignoring an insult, and the woolen undershirt looked like it had won awards for stubbornness.

  While Yenna hunched and shivered and tried to glare meaningfully at the horizon, her friend leaned against a crate with the air of someone waiting for the apocalypse to announce itself. She chewed an apple with slow, philosophical purpose, staring not at the grim-faced dockworkers, nor at the hunched silhouettes of Ashenmoor’s architecture—those towering, soot-streaked holdovers of a different time with more chimney than wall, their wrought iron balconies sagging like tired eyelids.

  She wasn’t even staring at the fog, which slithered down alleys and across cobblestones like it had paid rent.

  No. Gami stared at the water.

  “Who knows?” she said, eventually.

  She tore her eyes away from the sea and scanned their surroundings like a wolf evaluating a pasture.

  Six foot four with shoulders to match, Gami had chosen a path very different from Yenna’s.

  Where Yenna’s eyes had sparkled at the promise of spells, ancient knowledge, and a chance to shout incantare! while things exploded nearby, Gami had taken one look at the same future and opted for something simpler. Heavier. More direct. Something that could be swung.

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  And yet now, even Gami—whose expression normally ranged from “mildly indifferent” to “mildly annoyed”—held her spear like she planned to use it.

  Ashenmoor. Their first real Dungeon. Not just a tale about what could and should be. Something real. Something vastly different from what they’d expected.

  When they had stepped onto the creaking docks with the rest of their mismatched, underfunded, and suspiciously optimistic party, there had been a certain mood in the air. Anticipation. Camaraderie. The smug inner glow that comes from assuming everything will probably be fine.

  Now that glow had been replaced with a damp and clammy feeling, as though someone had wrapped their hope in wet wool and left it on the porch overnight.

  And then there was that message.

  You feel as if someone is watching you.

  They beckon you closer.

  It hovered at the edge of Yenna’s vision like a guilt-ridden conscience, flickering faintly whenever she dared look directly at it, like it was trying to be polite about its eldritch intentions.

  It had once thrilled her, this connection to the System. Direct access to arcane energies, objective feedback on her performance, the comforting sense that the universe was paying attention. That it had plans for her.

  Now, with this being the sixth unsettling message in half as many hours, she was beginning to suspect that the System's "plans" involved fewer heroic poses and more mysterious drownings.

  “Ready to call it yet?” Gami asked. “It has to be from the water. Why else would the message disappear whenever we step behind the crates, or head up the street?”

  Or do any of another hundred pointless tests, was the rest of the sentence the woman was too polite to utter.

  This had been the better part of their morning: not breakfast, not tactical preparation, but the surprisingly meticulous art of haunted-message triangulation. A noble tradition wherein two people repeatedly walk in and out of cursed influence zones until one of them gets a migraine or eaten by fog.

  So far, all signs pointed to the sea.

  Gami held her half-eaten apple to her lips.

  When either it or Yenna failed to answer, she took a bite, chewing slowly.

  “I mean,” she continued between mouthfuls, “the only way to know for certain would be to get into the water. But… well, yeah. Can’t say I feel inclined to cross this particular T. Do you?”

  Yenna didn’t. Not even a little.

  Still, the part of her that had dreams—proper, flashy ones with dramatic lighting and triumphant orchestral swells—resented the idea of walking away from a mystery just because it dripped.

  If she ever wanted to be more than just a footnote in someone else’s loot-drop summary, she had to take risks. Be bold. Stand out.

  Of course, she reminded herself, “stand out” did not mean the same as “float face-down in ominous brine.”

  “Maybe the others have made better progress on their end?” Yenna offered at last. For over ten minutes now, she hadn’t moved any closer to the sea, and she wasn’t planning to either.

  Her only real weapon—Spark Bolt (level 1)—remained a faint glow in her mind’s periphery, like a nightlight in a cathedral. Granted, it had impressed her when she first cast it–delighted her, even. But now, armed with it and not much else, she didn’t much fancy her odds against… well, an entire sea.

  Or maybe an ocean–an infinite, brooding hole with maritime ambitions.

  They’d crossed something on their way here. That much was certain. Not just borders or biomes, but something. A line that didn't exist on any map. And whatever it was, Ashenmoor sat squarely on the far side of it, sulking.

  Cities, towns, settlements, camps—any place where people gathered in sufficient numbers to share stories—tended to be significant in the Underfold. Not just in terms of logistics, but in the sense that every one of them had a reason to exist.

  A story. A warning. A secret to share.

  Ashenmoor, Yenna was beginning to suspect, had nothing but smell and ill omens to offer. There was something in the way it hunched. The angle of the rooftops, the way the signs creaked but never swung, the windows all either too dark or too bright.

  The locals—if that word could be applied to people who looked at visitors like a butcher looks at underweight pigs—had given them nothing. No quests, no greetings, not even a good old-fashioned warning in cryptic verse. Just shutters slamming, doors locking, and the unmistakable body language of people hoping you’d die somewhere quiet.

  Down the jetty, a few dockworkers had paused their half-hearted cargo-hauling to mutter among themselves.

  Muttering, not whispering.

  Whispers implied secrecy, subtlety, the exchange of information. These men were conversing the way one might warm up before throwing someone into the sea. Loud enough to be heard. Just quiet enough that no words in particular could be made out.

  Yenna felt the activation sequence of Spark Bolt stir within her like the memory of a toothache. She’d never imagined herself becoming the kind of Delver that met every encounter with violence and murder, but since coming here, she’d realized she valued some lives more than others. Her own, in particular, lay quite high on the list.

  The cluster of dockworkers grew from three to five, then six, all of them sharing that same sullen look—somewhere between you’re not welcome here and your bones would look better rearranged.

  Another shudder ran down Yenna’s spine. Not from the rain this time, but from the kind of evolutionary reflex that tells small mammals to leave when the trees go quiet.

  “Yeah,” she said, turning away from the docks. “Let’s check in with the others.”

  Gami didn’t follow immediately.

  The taller woman stood there a moment longer, framed by the gray gloom and the stink of brine. Then, slowly, she took one last bite of her apple and tossed the core into the sea–maintaining eye-contact with the dock workers all the while.

  It hit the water with a splash.

  The apple bobbed for a moment, turning lazily. Then, as the two young Delvers stepped past the first of the derelict buildings and into Ashenmoor proper, it was pulled under.

  Not swallowed. Not snapped. Just… taken.

  There was no ripple. No trail. No trace.

  Just the sound of rain, the stink of salt, and half a dozen men who stared too hard and said too little.