Chapter 2: No Way Back
Cole hit stone like he had been thrown out of a moving car.
The impact knocked the breath out of him. Pain flashed through his shoulder, hot and immediate, and his cheek scraped grit. For a second his vision narrowed, tunneling on the rough floor beneath him.
He lay there long enough to confirm one thing.
He was still alive.
“God,” he rasped, voice thin.
Dust and old smoke filled his nose. The air was cold. His fingers pressed into stony ground that was uneven and pitted, slick in a couple places, as if something had seeped into it over time.
Cole pushed up, groaning, and sat back on his heels. His shoulder throbbed. He rolled it carefully.
A sharp click ran through the joint and settled into a deep ache.
He got to his feet, swaying once. His legs felt heavy. The adrenaline that had been holding them up finally decided to leave him to his own strength.
He looked around.
He was in a corridor, carved from stone. Wide enough for a few people to stand shoulder to shoulder. The walls were old blocks, worn smooth in places, the color of faded brass and deep browns. Iron brackets held torches at regular intervals, flames steady and bright, lighting the corridor in pools of warm gold that could not reach the far end.
A dungeon.
He turned, quick, to check behind him.
The green tear in reality still hung there. It swirled, Cole stared at it, chest rising and falling too fast.
“Please,” he muttered. “Please don’t just drop me back out there in pieces.”
The tear pinched shut.
It sealed as if the world was stitching itself back together. One heartbeat it was there, the next it was gone.
Cole’s stomach dropped.
He stepped forward and put his hand out, just to test, like an idiot. His fingers touched nothing but cold air. No buzzing. No heat. Nothing.
He was alone.
He listened, desperate, as if he could hear Indianapolis through stone.
No sirens. No screaming. No shouting. No children crying.
Only torch crackle and a faint scrape deep in the corridor, distant enough that he could pretend it was stone settling.
Cole drew a shaky breath.
A lot had happened. Too much. His mind kept trying to replay the daycare. The glass cracking. The green light. The way the kid’s faces had pressed to the window.
The last thing he had seen was a terrified child staring at him as he fell.
Cole squeezed his eyes shut for half a second. His throat tightened.
He opened them again and forced his brain back into the corridor.
He checked behind him again.
Dead end.
A solid stone wall blocked the corridor where he had landed. The wall was marked by faint black streaks and old scorch scars. The stone near the ground had gouges, shallow and curved.
Cole swallowed hard.
He turned and stared down the corridor ahead.
Torches stretched forward, each one lighting a few yards of stone, then giving up. Beyond them was darkness that looked thicker than it should. Waiting.
With no exit behind him, he had one direction.
Forward.
Cole exhaled slowly. “Yesterday I was arguing with dispatch about missing packages.”
His laugh came out as a single harsh breath.
Yesterday he had been thinking about gas prices and whether his knee would hold up on the last route. He had been thinking about lunch and rent and the stupid text Jennifer had sent him that he still had not replied to because any reply would turn into a fight.
Now some twisted version of Dungeons and Dragons was real.
The photo in his pocket pressed against his thigh, and his awareness snagged on it. That relentless reminder that his body refused to let him forget.
Nathan.
A kid’s smile. A face he was not supposed to see anymore except in that worn photo and in his head at night when his apartment was too quiet.
Cole inhaled through his nose and held it until his chest ached. Then he let it out.
He could not die here.
He needed to get out. He needed to find out if his son was alive. Jennifer might not have wanted him around, and sure, part of that was his fault, but it did not change one simple thing.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He was a father.
He had an obligation.
He forced his mind back to the task.
Orient. Assess. Survive.
Something flickered at the edge of his vision. A small blink of light that refused to go away.
Cole froze. His muscles tightened.
He focused on the flicker.
A translucent screen unfurled in front of him, crisp and indifferent.
400 EXPERIENCE GAINED.
Cole stared at it. Then he waved a hand in an effort to brush it away.
The message faded.
“Experience,” he muttered. “Sure.”
There would be time later to contemplate video game mechanics, assuming he survived long enough to have later.
He focused again, deliberately.
Another message appeared.
YOU HAVE ENTERED A DUNGEON RIFT.
DUNGEON TIER: 2.
RECOMMENDED PARTY: 4.
CURRENT PARTY: 1.
REWARDS TO BE CALCULATED UPON COMPLETION.
Cole stared at it.
“A party of four,” he said out loud.
His voice sounded small in the corridor.
He did not know what Tier 2 meant, but he did not need a genius IQ to understand how systems worked. The higher the tier, the more dangerous. The more dangerous, the more dead he would be.
He was Level 1.
He was one person.
This place wanted four.
Cole’s mouth went dry.
“No,” he said softly. Then he said it again, with more force. “No. I am not dying in here.”
His mind jumped, instantly, to Nathan.
Jennifer might have lawyers. She might have a court order. She might have a list of reasons why Cole was not fit to be around their son.
None of that mattered if monsters were eating the city.
Cole’s jaw tightened. “I have to get back.”
His shoulder throbbed again, as if agreeing with the urgency.
He forced himself to breathe.
What did he have to work with?
The System, whatever it was, had said his character sheet was updated. He had been too busy not dying to look at it.
He thought of the words: character sheet.
It unfurled in front of him.
CHARACTER SHEET
Name: Cole Rourke
Race: Human
PROGRESSION
Title: Black Halo (Mythic)
Title Stage: I
Class: Wizard (Locked by Title)
Level: 1
ATTRIBUTES
Authority: 1 (Active)
Strength: Locked
Dexterity: Locked
Constitution: Locked
Mind: Locked
Willpower: Locked
Allocation Rule: All future attribute points must be assigned to Authority (Title Constraint)
SKILLS
Magic Branch: Black Halo Magic (Tier I access)
SPELLS (Tier I)
[Black Halo Lance]
[Ashen Aegis]
[Edict: Disarm]
SYSTEM RECORDS
War Deed: War Proof Complete (Pre Convergence Victory)
Cole scanned it, then scanned it again, slower.
Locked. Locked. Locked.
So he was not going to grow in the normal ways. He was not going to become some apocalypse action hero with a stat line that turned him into a tank. No health pool. No mana pool. Just one number.
Authority.
He frowned.
He remembered the spears clattering to the pavement outside the daycare.
Cole’s throat tightened.
That had been him.
He flicked his eyes down to the spells again.
Lance. Aegis. Disarm.
Simple.
That was good. Simple meant usable when terrified.
He willed the character sheet away. It faded.
Then, he heard it.
Scraping.
Rhythmic.
Cole froze, listening.
The scrape became a scuttle.
Then a wet breath.
Something moved in the darkness ahead. Shadows bulged and split as if they were being pushed apart from the inside.
Cole’s body offered him three options.
Fight. Freeze. Run.
He remembered a self defense class the company had forced everyone to take. Half the guys had laughed through it. Cole had actually listened, because he delivered in places where people got robbed in broad daylight.
The instructor had said something that stuck.
If you freeze, you die.
Cole lifted his hand.
He did not know how magic was supposed to feel. He did not know what gestures wizards did.
He said the name, calling for the tool.
“Black Halo Lance.”
Cold weight settled behind his head, that ring sensation he could not see. The air seemed to lean toward him. Black light formed in his palm, thin and sharp, humming. A distant choir note held too long.
He pointed down the corridor.
Four shapes barreled forward, low and fast. Twisted things with claws, gray skin, eyes the color of infected bruises. Saliva flew from their mouths in strings that caught torchlight.
The Lance snapped forward and hit the first one in the face.
It screeched once and collapsed into ash mid stride.
Cole’s stomach clenched.
No time to stare.
The other three came on, faster now, as if the first death had only made them hungrier.
Cole threw his other hand up.
“Ashen Aegis!”
The first creature leaped and slammed into it. Its claws scraped at nothing. It thrashed, snarling, confused.
Cole did not waste the moment.
“Black Halo Lance!”
Ash.
The second creature tried to circle, low and quick, searching for a gap. Cole shifted his stance and kept it in front of him. Corridor fighting. Keep the threats in your lane.
It lunged anyway.
Cole recast Aegis. His shoulder protested as he lifted his arm, pain flashing bright.
The air said no.
The creature bounced off invisible resistance, claws skittering, teeth snapping.
Cole fired Lance point blank.
Ash exploded across the stone.
The last creature hesitated for half a second, as if it had learned.
Then it charged anyway, mouth open wide enough to show rows of broken yellow teeth.
Cole’s breath came hard. His hands trembled. The halo weight behind his head felt heavier now, as if listening closer.
“Come on,” Cole muttered. “Come on.”
“Ashen Aegis!”
It hit the barrier and flailed, claws scraping. Spit sprayed. It shrieked with frustration.
Cole leaned in and fired Lance again.
Ash.
Silence dropped back into the corridor.
Cole stood there shaking, breathing so hard his chest hurt. His shoulder throbbed. Sweat trickled down his spine, cold in the dungeon air. His mind tried to catch up with what he had just done.
He had killed four monsters in seconds.
It felt easy if he ignored the part where his heart was trying to punch out of his ribs.
“Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. Then, “Fuck.”
He rubbed his face with the heel of his palm, smearing dust across his cheek. He listened again, waiting for more.
Nothing.
Only torch crackle and his own breathing.
A blink of light appeared at the edge of his vision.
Cole focused, wary.
50 EXPERIENCE GAINED.
He barely registered it before the next message followed.
TRIAL GATE AHEAD.
Cole’s gaze lifted.
The darkness ahead shifted. Now he could see a stone gate set into the corridor. A carved slab of stone with grooves and faded symbols. Torches near it burned brighter.
His skin prickled.
Trial gate.
Cole took a careful step forward, then another. The stone under his boots was slick in places, worn smooth by something that had walked this corridor far too many times. The torchlight made the gate’s carvings dance. He could not read them.
He kept his hand half raised, ready to cast again.
“Okay,” he muttered. “One problem at a time.”
He approached the gate.
No enemies emerged. No trap triggered. The gate simply waited.
Cole’s shoulder tightened. His stomach churned.
He stepped past the threshold.
The moment his boot crossed, the stone gate slammed shut behind him with a hollow boom that echoed through the chamber.
Cole spun, heart jumping.
The gate was sealed. No handle. No crack. Just stone.
He turned back, breathing hard.
The room was larger than the corridor, torchlit and circular, with stone floor etched by faint lines that formed a pattern he could not decipher. In the center, under that pattern, was a person.
Bound.
Ropes around his wrists, ankles, and torso. Head lowered. Hair hanging into his face.
Cole’s breath caught.
He took one step forward, eyes narrowing, and the man lifted his head just enough for Cole to see the fear in his eyes.
