The feeling was intoxicating. A heady mix of adrenaline, relief, and the kind of deep, soul-satisfying vindication you only get when you prove someone completely wrong about you. Puzzle master. I could get used to that. The title had a nice ring to it, far better than ‘drunken moose’ or ‘girl who talks to a cat’.

  Kaelen took a torch from a sconce by the new doorway, its flame casting long, dancing shadows that made the mosaics on the wall seem to writhe. He gestured with his head for me to follow, his earlier silence now a comfortable quiet rather than a judgmental one. I hitched up my trousers and fell into step behind him, the silent knight and the sarcastic puzzle-solver, a buddy-cop movie waiting to happen.

  Bartholomew, naturally, leaped gracefully onto Kaelen’s pauldron, affording himself the best view and saving his precious paws from the strain of walking.

  “Do try to keep pace, Mistress Hawking,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble. “These ancient passages are ready to crumble on a whim. It would be most inconvenient to have to retrieve you from beneath a wall.”

  “Gee, thanks for the concern, fuzzy-butt. Warms my heart,” I muttered, my voice echoing slightly in the narrow stone spiraling downward.

  The descent was long and cool, the air growing heavier and smelling of damp earth and something crisp and electric that I was coming to associate with magic. Like an olfactory residue. The only sounds were the rhythmic clink of Kaelen’s armor, the soft scrape of my boots, and the occasional, deeply put-upon sigh from our feline overlord. We didn’t talk. There was nothing to say. The puzzle was solved, and whatever lay below was the prize. Or another, bigger problem. My money was on the latter.

  After what felt like a hundred steps, the staircase opened into another chamber. I stopped dead at the threshold, my hand instinctively going to the hilt of the short sword at my belt—a weapon I was still more likely to injure myself with than an enemy.

  The room was a perfect replica of the one we had just left. The same rectangular design, just without a flowchart on the floor. It had the same high, vaulted ceiling that seemed to drink the torchlight. But there was one glaring difference. The center of the room was empty. The brazier was just gone. Well, I guess not gone, since it was a different room, but it was not present. The rest of the braziers were there and had lit, one by one, as we approached, but the big one in the center was missing.

  It was the emptiness that set every nerve in my body on edge. It was wrong. It was a blank space on a map where there should have been a dragon.

  Kaelen held the torch high, his gaze sweeping the room.

  “It is… the same,” he said, his voice low and cautious.

  “Not quite,” I replied, my eyes narrowed. “It’s too perfect. The other room was a lock. This one…” I trailed off as the realization hit me, a cold, familiar dread mixed with a sick sense of excitement that I recognized from a half-dozen game-obsessed boyfriends. “Oh, I know this one.”Bartholomew’s ear twitched.

  “Do enlighten us with your otherworldly premonitions.”

  “This is a boss room,” I said, the words feeling foreign and prophetic on my tongue.

  Kaelen turned to me, his brow furrowed in confusion under his helm.

  “A… boss room? Is there a master of this place we are to meet? A warden?”

  “No, no. Not a boss like a manager you complain about to your work friends,” I explained, gesturing vaguely at the empty space. “A boss like… the final exam. The big kahuna. The head honcho you have to fight after you prove you’re smart enough to solve all the little puzzles. This is the arena. The main event.”

  Bartholomew let out a sound that was somewhere between a scoff and a cat trying to cough up a hairball.

  “Utter poppycock. Your primitive lexicon is assigning narrative structure where there is none. This is merely an antechamber, likely for meditation or celestial observation. The absence of the primary focal point suggests its purpose is passive, not aggressive.”

  “Yeah, well, my ‘primitive lexicon’ has gotten us this far, you pompous furball,” I shot back. “And every instinct I have is screaming that stepping into that room is a very, very bad idea until you’re ready for a throwdown.”

  Kaelen listened to our exchange, his head tilted slightly. He looked at me, then at the room, his hand resting on the pommel of his greatsword. He was a man of action, not esoteric debate. Words, to him, were the preamble, not the event itself.

  “Your instincts have proven sound, Paige. But fear cannot be our guide.”He moved before I could protest, his stride long and confident.

  “Ser Kaelen, wait!” I hissed.

  He stepped over the threshold, his armored boots making a solid, definitive clang on the stone floor. He walked slowly toward the center of the chamber, his sword still sheathed but his entire body coiled like a spring. He reached the absolute center of the room, standing where the brazier should have been. The air didn’t shimmer. No fire erupted. Nothing happened.

  He turned back to us, a silhouette against the far wall illuminated by his own torch. The light carved his chiseled jaw and the grim line of his mouth out of the darkness. Through the open visor, I could see his eyes scan the room one last time.

  “You see?” he called out, his voice echoing in the profound silence. “There is nothing to fear.”

  The word ‘fear’ had barely left his lips when a deafening BOOM shook the very foundations of the dungeon. I stumbled back with a cry as the stone doorway we had just come through slammed shut behind us, plunging us into near-total darkness. An instant later, the entrance from the staircase slid shut with a final, tomb-like thud.

  We were trapped.

  Before the panic could fully set in, the mosaics on the walls flared to life. But this wasn’t the brilliant, warm light from the puzzle room. This was a cold, predatory, icy-blue glow. The light of a bug zapper. The light of something ancient and hungry.

  Kaelen, stranded in the center, drew his sword, the hiss of steel cutting through the sudden, oppressive silence. He was in a fighting stance, turning in a slow circle.

  “Bartholomew, what is this?” he demanded, his voice tight.

  “I… appear to have miscalculated the chamber’s function,” the cat admitted, his usual pomposity replaced by a rare, clipped urgency. He was flattened against Kaelen’s pauldron, his fur standing on end.

  Then, the walls began to move.

  The tiles directly opposite Kaelen shifted. With a low, grinding groan of stone on stone, they lifted from the wall. Dozens of them. They hovered in the air, the blue light pulsing within them, and began to assemble. More tiles ripped themselves free from the other walls, flying through the air like magnetized shards of rock and clicking into place. They formed a leg, then another. A torso of interlocking glyphs. Two massive, blocky arms ending in fists the size of boulders. Finally, a featureless, rectangular head swiveled into place, two glowing runes burning like cold blue eyes.

  It towered over Kaelen, a golem made of the dungeon’s very own puzzle pieces. A Mosaic Sentinel. It had no mouth, but a low hum vibrated through the stone beneath my feet, a resonant frequency of pure, single-minded purpose: Eradicate the intruders.

  My inner self wanted to scream, ‘I told you so’; to rub it in their faces that I was right yet again, but I couldn’t.

  My outer human just shrieked.

  I drew my sword and sprinted to join the others at the center of the room. I falsely assumed that there was safety in numbers.

  “This must be what you called a ‘boss’…” Kaelen trailed off as he watched the beast assemble itself.

  “You think?” I shrieked, clinging to Kaelen’s armored back as if he were the last life raft in a sea of existential dread. Bartholomew, the pompous furball, was now a furry, gray blur, a miniature hurricane of claws and teeth batting at the construct’s colossal legs. Honestly, the cat had more guts than sense, but at least he was contributing something other than lore.

  The Mosaic Sentinel was a walking, grinding testament to poor life choices—specifically, our poor life choices in entering this ridiculously designed death trap. Every tile on its body pulsed with that same unnerving blue light, and with every slow, deliberate step it took, the floor vibrated like a tuning fork struck by a titan. Its massive fists slammed down, sending tremors through the chamber, each impact a deafening crack that echoed off the moving walls.

  Kaelen, bless his chivalrous, probably-going-to-die-anyway heart, was trying to land blows on the golem’s stony limbs. His sword, ‘Gryphon’s Fang’ or some equally ridiculous name, scraped across the tiles with a high-pitched screech, leaving only shallow gouges. It was like trying to chop down a mountain with a butter knife.

  “Less screaming, more contributing!” Kaelen bellowed, his voice strained. He twisted, trying to dodge a sweeping arm that could have flattened a small village.

  “Easy for you to say!” I yelled back, my voice cracking. “You’re not the one with the distinct possibility of being turned into a greasy set decoration!” My mind raced, searching for any flicker of an idea, any scrap of Eldorian lore I might have inadvertently absorbed from Bartholomew’s endless ramblings. Most of it was about artisanal yarn bombing and the proper airing of crypts, which, frankly, wasn’t proving all that useful right now.

  Bartholomew, having morphed into a mountain-lion form, was doing his best. He’d managed to cling to one of the golem’s knees, his claws digging in, his roars a surprisingly accurate imitation of my terrified screams. But even he was being thrown around like a rag doll. He looked thoroughly unimpressed, despite the imminent danger. ‘Honestly, Paige,’ I imagined him thinking, ‘must we always be subjected to such primitive security measures?’

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The Sentinel’s head, that blank, blocky thing, swiveled, its glowing runes fixing on Kaelen. The hum intensified, a palpable pressure building in the air. The tiles on its chest began to shift, rearranging themselves, forming an intricate, almost hypnotic pattern.

  “It’s… it’s changing!” Kaelen grunted, parrying another blow.

  My eyes, however, were drawn to something else. A flicker. A momentary break in the interlocking tiles on its chest, just where the runes seemed to converge. A single, oddly smooth stone, glowing with an inner light that was brighter, more volatile, than the rest.

  “The chest!” I yelled, pointing with a trembling finger. “Kaelen, Bartholomew, aim for the chest! There’s a… a heart! A weak spot!”

  I had no idea if that was correct, but in this swirling chaos of moving rock and impending doom, it was the only thing that made any kind of sense. It was the classic RPG trope, wasn’t it? Every boss had a glowing weak spot. Even a giant magic golem made of wall tiles.

  Kaelen, bless his adaptable, knight soul, didn’t hesitate. He changed his attack, aiming for the center mass of the Sentinel. Bartholomew, with a guttural yowl that was surprisingly effective, scrambled higher, latching onto the golem’s shoulder and launching himself towards its chest.

  Bartholomew’s desperate dive was met with a crushing blow from the Sentinel’s fist. The cat let out a pained yowl, but his momentum carried him forward. He struck the golem’s chest with all his might, his enlarged fangs sinking into the glowing edges of the tiles.

  At the same time, Kaelen’s sword sliced, not against tile, but against something that felt soft and yielding. A shard of the blue-glowing tile chipped away, and beneath it, a pulsating orb of pure, condensed magic flared into existence. It was the size of a human heart, radiating a blinding white light that momentarily drowned out the blue. Threads branched from it to each of the tiles like arteries filled with pulsating magic.

  “Now!” I screamed, my voice raw. “Hit the heart! Hit it again!” I ducked under a wild stone fist that would have taken my head off and, now inside the Golem’s guard, I jumped for its chest, Rusty poised to plunge into the magic heart. The blade hit home, its edge grinding against the tiles.

  The Sentinel recoiled, a low, discordant screech replacing its hum. It seemed surprised, even hurt. Its movements became clumsy, its devastating blows less precise. A cluster of the glowing threads went dark.

  Kaelen, grinning fiercely, surged forward, sword held high. Bartholomew, shaking himself off and looking remarkably unruffled for someone who had just been pummeled by a giant stone fist, let out another defiant roar, his claws raking at the exposed core.

  The chamber, which had been a symphony of grinding stone and echoing roars, now held a new sound: the desperate, frantic clang of steel against magic, the furious hissing of a magical cat, and the increasingly panicked groans of a construct built for destruction that was now facing its own.

  We were making progress. Glacial, terrifying progress, but progress nonetheless. Maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t end up as a permanent exhibit in this ridiculously elaborate suicide trap.

  Of course, hope is a four-letter word, and right now, so was ‘tile’. The moment we let up, the damn thing started to heal. Shards of ceramic and coloured glass would lift from the chamber walls, drawn by an invisible current, and slap themselves onto the Sentinel’s wounds like grotesque, crystalline scabs. Its core might not have been regenerating, but its body armor certainly was. It was like fighting a boss with a built-in healing potion addiction, and frankly, it was getting on my last nerve.

  “It is endeavoring to mend its corporal form!” Bartholomew yowled, expertly dodging a clumsy sweep of a stone arm. He was perched on a fallen pillar, fur bristling, looking like a very angry, very eloquent decorative throw pillow. “We must press the advantage! Cease your lollygagging, Miss Hawking!” His lion form must have timed out again. He’d be back.

  “I’m not lollygagging, you pretentious furball, I’m trying not to get turned into a modern art installation!” I yelled back, ducking as a chunk of marble the size of a microwave sailed over my head. My arms burned, my lungs felt like they were full of ground glass, and I was pretty sure I’d pulled a muscle in a place I didn’t even know I had. This was officially the worst workout of my life.

  Kaelen was a whirlwind of grim determination. He moved with a brutal, efficient grace, his sword a silver blur. Every time a new set of tiles patched over a wound, he was there to shatter them anew, his jaw set, sweat plastering his hair to his temples. He was the unstoppable force, Bartholomew was the precision instrument, and I was… well, I was the highly motivated amateur who was really, really good at finding an opening and stabbing it. It wasn’t a glamorous role, but somebody had to do it.

  The fight devolved into a grueling, rhythmic cycle of violence. Kaelen would shatter a section of the Sentinel’s leg; I’d dart in and drive my shorter, nimbler blade into the newly exposed network of glowing threads beneath; Bartholomew would launch himself like a furry cannonball at the central core whenever it was momentarily unguarded. The Sentinel would screech, swat at us, and then pull more tiles from the wall to patch itself up. Smash, stab, pounce, heal. Repeat. For what felt like an eternity.

  I lost track of time. The chamber became my entire world—the groaning of stone, the hiss of the cat, the clang of Kaelen’s steel, and the pounding of my own heart. I had worked read a lot of the ‘For Dummies’ books, but ‘how to dismantle a magical murder mosaic’ had not been among them.

  We were all flagging. Kaelen’s movements were a fraction slower, his parries less perfect. Bartholomew’s hisses were starting to sound more like weary sighs. I was running on pure adrenaline and the primal, stubborn refusal to die in a place with no Wi-Fi.

  Then, we got our break.

  In a coordinated, unspoken assault, Kaelen swept his sword low, shattering the Sentinel’s ankle completely. The construct staggered, its entire five-ton weight shifting onto one leg. At the same instant, Bartholomew, with a final, furious shriek, clawed a deep gouge right next to the central core, severing a thick bundle of the magical threads. The construct’s right arm went limp, crashing to the floor with a deafening boom that shook the very foundations.

  It was off-balance, wounded, and for a split second, its defenses were wide open. The core, that nexus of angry blue light, pulsed violently, completely exposed.

  “Paige, now!” Kaelen roared, his voice raw.

  There was no thought. No plan. Just instinct. I charged, my worn leather boots slipping on the debris-strewn floor. The world narrowed to that single point of light. It was like the glowing heart of a dying machine, a malevolent blue that promised only oblivion. I leaped onto the fallen arm, using it as a ramp, my short sword held in a two-handed, white-knuckled grip.

  The Sentinel’s head, a featureless block of granite, turned towards me. The low hum intensified into a piercing shriek of pure, unadulterated warning. It was a sound that said you do not belong here, little mortal thing. You will be unmade.

  “Yeah, well, you’re ugly and your mom’s a quarry,” I gasped, the words nonsensical, fueled by exhaustion and terror.

  I raised the sword high above my head and triggered Targeted Strike. I brought the blade down with every ounce of strength I had left, channeling all my fear and frustration into that one, desperate blow. I wasn’t aiming for a thread. I was aiming for the whole damn thing.

  The tip of my sword plunged into the center of the glowing core.

  For a moment, nothing happened. The shriek cut off. The blue light intensified, blindingly bright, and I felt a jolt of energy surge up the blade, up my arms, and into my chest. It felt like being struck by lightning and dunked in ice water at the same time.

  “Die!” I grunted through clenched teeth and twisted the blade.

  Then, with a soft, final pop, the light went out.

  Silence. A profound, ringing silence that was more shocking than the noise had been.

  The magic that held the Sentinel together vanished. The invisible force that bound stone to stone was simply… gone. For a heartbeat, the colossal figure stood there, a silent statue of its former self. Then, it began to crumble. Not with a crash, but with a sigh. The tiles and shards lost their cohesion and slid apart, cascading to the floor in a shimmering, musical rain of broken ceramic and shattered stone. It sounded like a thousand tiny wind chimes being dismantled at once.

  The avalanche of debris swept me off my makeshift ramp. I landed hard on my side, the air punched from my lungs, my sword clattering away. I lay there, gasping amidst the glittering ruins, dust and motes of dead magic filling the air.

  I did it. Holy crap. I actually did it.

  “A satisfactory conclusion, I suppose,” came a dry, slightly breathless voice from nearby. “Though my claws shall require a thorough cleaning after such vulgar masonry.”

  I pushed myself up onto my elbows, my body screaming in protest. Bartholomew was meticulously licking a paw, trying to regain some semblance of his usual aristocratic composure. Kaelen was leaning heavily on his sword, his chest heaving, but a weary, triumphant smile touched his lips as he looked at me.

  “Well fought, Paige,” he said, and coming from him, it felt like being knighted.

  “I need… a Gatorade and a three-day nap,” I croaked, my throat raw. “Not necessarily in that order.”

  We sat there for a long time, the three of us, soaking in the quiet victory. The air slowly cleared, revealing the sheer devastation. The chamber looked like a ceramics factory had exploded. Shards of every color glittered under the light of the single torch Kaelen had managed to keep lit.

  It was Kaelen, of course, who moved first. Ever the knight, he couldn’t rest, even in victory. He began to gingerly pick his way through the rubble, his eyes scanning the floor.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked, finally managing to sit up. “The warranty? I think it’s expired.”

  He didn’t answer, his focus absolute. He nudged a pile of granite dust with his boot, then knelt, pushing aside a few larger pieces of tile. Amid the dull, lifeless shards of the Sentinel, something was still glowing.

  He reached down and picked it up. It was a piece of crystal, clear as a diamond, but faceted in a way that seemed to defy natural geometry. It was the size of his palm, and from its core emanated a soft, rhythmic pulse of white light, like a sleeping heart. The angry blue of the Sentinel’s magic was gone, leaving only this pure, gentle luminescence.

  “By the Ancients…” Kaelen breathed, his voice filled with a reverence I’d never heard from him before. He held it up. The light cast shifting, complex patterns on the chamber walls.

  “Behold,” Bartholomew said, padding closer, his usual cynicism replaced by a rare note of awe. “The Sentinel was not merely a guardian. It was a vessel. That, Ser Kaelen, is a Heartstone of the First Artifice.”

  “A Heartstone?” I asked, getting to my feet and hobbling over. “So, not an Infinity Stone. Bummer. Does it come with an owner’s manual?”

  Kaelen turned it over in his hands. “It’s more than that. The legends say the Heartstones are keys. They were used to seal away the great powers of the old world; powers the Shadow Lord now seeks to unleash.” He looked from the stone to me, his eyes burning with a new, fierce purpose. “This isn’t just a trophy, Paige. This is a beginning. This is how we fight back.”