Bartholomew stopped at the edge of the stairs, peering down into the gloom. His usual arrogance had been replaced by a quiet, grim focus. The fur along his spine was slightly raised.“The connection point lies below,” he stated, his voice a low murmur that seemed to be swallowed by the yawning darkness. “The heart of the corruption. This is where the real work begins, Paige.”

  He used my name. He almost never used my name.

  I stared down into that black maw, into the cold, silent depths. The level-up, the fight with the hound, the bruises, and the filth—all of it felt like a childish preamble to this. This felt like the final exam I hadn’t studied for. The adrenaline from the fight was a distant memory, replaced by a cold, heavy certainty. Whatever was down there, it was ancient, powerful, and very, very wrong.

  Taking a deep breath that did nothing to calm my hammering heart, I moved to stand beside him.“You know,” I said, looking down into the abyss, “I’ve faced down inflation, student loan debt, and that one professor that kept asking for ‘favors’. After that, how bad can this really be?”

  Bartholomew offered no comfort, just a flick of his tufted ear in my direction.“Compared to the eternal damnation of a corrupted soul, your terrestrial woes are but a fleeting inconvenience. I do hope you can appreciate the distinction.”

  A new voice, steady and calm, joined ours.“Appreciate it or not, we must face it.” Ser Kaelen said. He was so quiet, even in his armor, that I had forgotten he was there. He moved with the quiet efficiency of a man who had spent his life in armor, his boots making no sound on the scorched earth. He didn’t even seem to be breathing hard. His gaze swept over the perfectly carved opening, then down into the darkness, his expression unreadable behind the visor of his helm. He gave a single, curt nod, as if the impossible sight was exactly what he had expected. Of course he did. Knights and their stoic brand of lunacy.“The air is foul with ancient power,” he said, his voice slightly muffled by the steel. “The Shadow Lord’s influence runs deep here.”“You don’t say,” I muttered, kicking at a loose piece of fused glass. “I thought maybe someone just left a magical space heater on for a few centuries.”

  Kaelen ignored me, his focus entirely on the task at hand. He drew his sword, the polished steel catching the dim light with a hungry gleam. Not for a fight, I realized, but for illumination. A soft, silver light bloomed from the runes etched along the blade, pushing back the immediate darkness of the stairwell’s entrance. It revealed the first dozen steps, each one a flawless slice of obsidian-like stone.“I will take the lead,” he stated. It wasn’t a suggestion.

  Bartholomew hopped gracefully onto the first step.“Your martial prowess is admirable, Knight, but this is a place of magic, not muscle. Your blade may light the way, but my senses will warn of its true dangers. I shall precede you.”“And I,” I added, forcing a bravado I didn’t feel, “will be in the back, where it’s safest. You know, for moral support. And witty commentary.”

  Without another word, the gray cat began his descent. Kaelen followed, the silver light of his sword a small, brave star being swallowed by a black hole. I gave one last look at the desolate, familiar wasteland, took a deep breath that tasted of ozone and dust, and followed them into the earth.

  The descent was a masterclass in psychological warfare. The spiral seemed infinite, a corkscrew drilling into the planet’s core. The air grew colder, heavier, pressing in on me. The only sound was the faint scuff of Kaelen’s sabatons on the stone and my own ragged breathing. The walls were unnervingly smooth, without a single tool mark or crack. It felt less like something that was built and more like something that had simply willed itself into existence. My comms degree had prepared me for a lot of things—awkward networking events, writing press releases for products I hated, defusing arguments about the Oxford comma—but it hadn’t included a chapter on spelunking into the bowels of a corrupted fantasy world.

  My mind started to wander, a desperate attempt to distract itself. I thought about my apartment, my wilted succulent, and the half-finished season of a show on my watchlist. They felt like memories from someone else’s life, blurry and distant. Down here, in the cold and the dark, the only reality was the next step, and the one after that.

  Just as I began to think we would be walking forever, that this staircase was some kind of eternal punishment, the spiral ended. We stepped out onto a wide, semi-circular landing of the same polished black stone.

  The space that opened up before us was vast enough to steal the breath from my lungs. We were standing on a gallery, perhaps thirty feet above the floor of an immense, cavernous chamber. High above, a barrel-vaulted ceiling was lost in shadows that even Kaelen’s sword-light couldn’t pierce. The scale was inhuman, built for giants or forgotten gods. There was no wind, no sound, just a profound and echoing silence that felt heavier than stone.

  And below us, there was the water.

  It wasn’t a pool or a lake. It was a perfectly still, perfectly black expanse that filled the chamber from wall to wall. It didn’t reflect the light from Kaelen’s sword; it drank it. But it had its own source of illumination. Woven through the inky blackness were shimmering, sluggish threads of a nauseating purple light. They moved with a slow, deliberate pulse, like veins on a living thing. The sight was hypnotically horrible. It was the visual equivalent of a wrong note held for an eternity.

  On the far side of the chamber, maybe a hundred yards away, was a single, arched doorway. It was our only exit. There was no bridge, no path, no ferryman waiting with a jaunty tune. Just the landing, the black water, and the door.“Well,” I said, my voice sounding small and thin in the vastness. “That’s not creepy at all. Who wants to go for a swim?”

  Ser Kaelen walked to the edge of the landing, his armored form a stark silhouette against the sickly purple glow.“There must be a mechanism. A pressure plate, a hidden lever…” He scanned the walls, his practical mind searching for a practical solution.“Your mechanisms are of no use here,” Bartholomew said, his voice a low thrum. He sat near the edge, tail wrapped neatly around his paws, utterly unfazed. “This is not a moat, Sir Knight. It is a crucible. A filter.”“A filter for what?” I asked, inching closer to peer over the edge. The metallic scent was stronger here, sharp and cold, like blood on steel.“For intent. For memory. For burden,” the cat explained, his gaze fixed on the slow dance of the purple threads. “That is not water, Paige. It is liquid oblivion, a confluence of collected despair and corrupted magic. To touch it is to have your mind, your very soul, unwritten.”

  I recoiled from the edge.“Okay, so definitely no swimming. Got it.” My heart hammered against my ribs. Soul-unwriting was leagues above student loan debt on my list of anxieties.

  Kaelen knelt, his gauntleted hand hovering just above the stone of the landing.“Then how do we cross? There is no other way forward.”“There is always a way,” Bartholomew murmured. “This place was a nexus, a point of connection long before the Shadow Lord poured his poison into it. It tests those who would enter its heart. It demands a toll.” He looked from Kaelen’s rigid posture to my wide-eyed fear. “It demands that you leave your burdens behind. To cross the water, one must walk a path that is not there. A path of pure will, unclouded by fear, regret, or attachment. The water will claim anything heavy.”

  I stared at him.“You want us to do a magical trust fall over a pool of soul-eating goo?” I laughed, a sharp, humorless bark that echoed weirdly in the silence. “Bartholomew, have you met us? This guy is Sir Broods-a-lot, carrying the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders. And me? I’ve got enough anxiety and unresolved emotional baggage to sink a battleship. We’re not walking on that.”

  As if to prove my point, Kaelen picked up a small, loose shard of stone from the landing and tossed it out over the water. It didn’t splash. The moment it touched the surface, the purple threads swarmed it. They wrapped around the stone like hungry tentacles, and in a blink, the rock was simply gone. Not dissolved, not sunk. It just ceased to be, leaving a faint, violet shimmer that quickly faded back into the black.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry.“Point taken.”“The path will reveal itself only to the one who takes the first step,” Bartholomew continued, as if we hadn’t just witnessed a piece of reality get deleted. “It must be an act of absolute conviction.”

  Silence descended again, thick and final. We all looked at the water. The water seemed to look back. Kaelen stood, his shoulders set. He was a knight. His whole life was about conviction, about taking the first step into danger. I was a communications major. My whole life was about crafting careful messages to avoid danger.

  Slowly, deliberately, Ser Kaelen walked to the very edge of the landing until the toes of his steel boots were hanging over the abyss. He sheathed his sword, plunging us into a deeper darkness, illuminated only by the faint, sinister glow from below.“My conviction is the safety of this realm,” he said, his voice ringing with an iron certainty that I almost envied. “My burden is my duty. They are one and the same. If that is too heavy a price, then this quest ends here.”

  He took a deep, steadying breath, a man of steel and faith preparing to step onto nothingness, over a pit of absolute oblivion. And I could only watch, my own heart a frantic, terrified mess, wondering what in the hell he was about to prove.

  He didn’t fall.

  There was no scream, no sickening splash, no flash of purple annihilation. One moment, his boots were on solid stone. The next, they were planted firmly on nothing at all, a good foot beyond the edge. He just stood there, suspended over the abyss, as calm as if he were waiting for a bus. A bus to the afterlife, maybe. My brain stuttered, trying to process the visual. It was like a badly edited movie, a special effect that didn’t quite land because it made no damn sense.“What in the seven levels of hell…” I whispered, the words puffing out in a cloud of disbelief.Bartholomew, perched on a nearby rock, began to groom a paw with meticulous, infuriating calm. “A slight miscalculation in your theology, Mistress Paige. The Hells are entirely separate, and frankly, a far more pedestrian destination.”

  Kaelen didn’t seem to hear us. He took another step, his weight settling with a faint, inaudible something. He was walking on air. Honest-to-god, Wile E. Coyote-level walking on air, except he wasn’t looking down and he wasn’t plummeting. He advanced another two paces before turning back to face me, his form a dark silhouette against the hungry purple glow. The light caught the silver griffon on his breastplate, making it flare with a cold, ghostly fire.“The path is here,” he called, his voice steady, though it seemed strangely dampened by the vastness of the cavern. “It is solid. Unseen, but solid. Like a ribbon of light. It’s…beautiful.”“Solid is a word I’m having a really hard time applying to what I’m seeing right now,” I muttered back, my own voice a pathetic squeak. “Which, for the record, is jack shit.”

  He held out his gauntleted hand. The gesture was simple, an invitation. But across that gulf of swirling, soul-eating magic, it looked like a dare. It was a perfect, heroic tableau: the stalwart knight offering salvation to the damsel. The damsel, however, was currently hyperventilating and seriously considering the merits of just setting up camp right here on this ledge for the rest of her unnatural life.“The path eschews the vacillating soul,” Bartholomew intoned from his rock. “Hesitation is an invitation to the void.”“Could you be any more helpful?” I hissed at him. “Maybe a fun fact about the terminal velocity of a falling millennial?”

  Ignoring me, the cat stretched with a luxurious ripple of muscle, then leaped. Not towards the path, but onto my shoulder. His claws pricked through my leather jerkin as he settled his weight, a furry, judgmental parrot. “The Warden must accompany the Key. It is the law of the Threshold. Now, if you would be so kind as to proceed? The damp is quite ruinous for my coat.”

  My heart was doing a drum solo against my ribs. I looked from Kaelen’s outstretched hand to the shimmering, lethal water, then back again. His expression was unreadable in the gloom, but his posture radiated a certainty that was both terrifying and magnetic. He believed. I, on the other hand, believed in peer-reviewed studies, sensible footwear, and the overwhelming probability that stepping off a cliff leads to a rapid, gravity-assisted demise.

  But what choice did I have? Stay here and starve? Try to find my way back through the blighted valley alone? My options had narrowed to a single, insane point: trust the knight who was standing on a miracle.“This is the stupidest thing I have ever done,” I said, my voice trembling, “And I once survived finals by snorting lines of Adderall.“Incorrect. You once ‘did’ a fellow named Daryl. That was far more reckless.” Bartholomew interjected, “Could we proceed?”“A formidable trial, I am sure,” Kaelen said, his lips twitching in what might have been a smile. “But this one has a guide.”

  Taking a breath that felt like sucking down shards of ice, I shuffled forward. My worn leather boots scuffed against the stone, the sound echoing like a death knell. One inch from the edge. Then half an inch. I squeezed my eyes shut, reached out, and my trembling fingers found his.

  The contact was a shock. The cold, unyielding steel of his gauntlet was the most real thing I had felt in hours. It was an anchor in a sea of madness. I held on like he was the last branch over a waterfall.“Open your eyes, Paige,” he said, his voice softer now, closer. “Conviction is not blindness. It is seeing the truth and choosing to walk toward it.”

  Easy for him to say. He was probably seeing some divinely lit, yellow brick road. When I peeled my eyelids open, all I saw was the same purple oblivion.“Okay,” I breathed. “Okay. Just… don’t let go.”“I will not.”

  My right foot lifted. It felt impossibly heavy, a lead weight chained to my sanity. I moved it forward, out over the abyss, into the space where physics went to die. I expected to feel nothing, to feel the lurch of a fall, the final, horrifying second of weightlessness.

  Instead, my boot landed with a soft, solid thump.

  My breath hitched. I couldn’t feel anything beneath my sole, not stone or wood or glass, but my foot was supported. It was like standing on a magnetic field, a tangible pressure that held me fast. I wobbled, my balance screaming in protest at the lack of visual data, and Kaelen’s grip tightened, steadying me.“One step,” he said. “Now another.”

  I brought my other foot forward, planting it beside the first. I was standing. I was standing on nothing, over a pool of instant death, with a talking cat on my shoulder and a fantasy knight holding my hand. My life had become the weirdest fever dream imaginable.“Okay,” I said, a hysterical giggle bubbling in my throat. “Okay. We’re doing this.”

  He began to walk backward, drawing me along. Each step was an act of pure, terror-fueled trust. The path, whatever it was made of, was about two feet wide, and it was not straight. It curved and wound its way across the vast chamber, a serpentine route that only Kaelen could see. My eyes stayed locked on his, the only fixed point in a swirling world of purple and black.

  The air grew colder as we neared the center of the pool. A faint hum vibrated up through the soles of my boots, a low, predatory thrum. The purple threads below seemed more agitated now, writhing like a nest of spectral snakes. I could feel their pull, a strange, static-like energy that tugged at the edges of my being, whispering promises of peace and dissolution. One of them, bolder than the rest, spiraled upwards, reaching, its violet tip barely a yard from my dangling foot.“Do not look down,” Kaelen commanded, his voice sharp.

  Too late. A choked gasp escaped my lips. His gauntlet squeezed my hand, a painful, grounding pressure. “Look at me, Paige. Their hunger is for the doubting mind. Keep your focus here.”

  I snapped my gaze back to his face, my heart hammering. Bartholomew pressed his head against my cheek, a surprisingly comforting gesture. “The Warden’s presence confounds lesser spirits,” he murmured, his purr a tiny engine against my ear. “Temporarily.”

  We walked on in silence, a slow, painstaking procession. Left foot, right foot, breathe. Don’t look down. Don’t think about the soul-eating goo. Don’t consider the fact you’re following a man who thinks ‘conviction’ is a viable building material. The mantra looped in my head, a fragile shield against the rising tide of panic.

  Slowly, agonizingly, the far landing grew closer. I could make out the details of the stone, the dark chiseled arch of the doorway that awaited us. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. Just a few more yards. Ten feet. Five.

  Then, with a final, lunging step, my boot hit actual, tangible, gloriously solid rock. I stumbled forward, my knees buckling with relief, and would have collapsed if Kaelen hadn’t held me up. I leaned against him for a moment, chest heaving, the stone beneath my feet feeling as steady and reassuring as a mountain.

  He released my hand, and the absence of his grip was as jarring as its presence had been. I straightened up, pushing my hair back from my clammy forehead. Bartholomew hopped gracefully from my shoulder to the floor, shaking his fur as if to dislodge the lingering magic.

  I turned back. The cavern stretched out before us, vast and empty. The purple pool shimmered, placid and serene, as if nothing had ever disturbed its surface. There was no trace of the path, no hint of the miracle we had just traversed. It was gone.“Well,” I said, my voice hoarse. “That’s one way to cross a room.”

  Kaelen was already facing the door, his duty once again his focus. “The trial is passed. The way forward is clear.”

  I looked at the massive, rune-etched door, then back at the man of steel and faith beside me. He was right. But as I took my first step on solid ground, I couldn’t help but feel that the most dangerous part of this journey wasn’t the monsters or the magic. It was learning to walk on nothing but a madman’s conviction. And worse, realizing it actually worked.