The world turned into a white-hot screen of static.

  A mana explosion ripped through the intersection, the shockwave hitting my chest with the weight of a freight train. I had to throw my arm up to keep my retinas from being seared out of my head. The sound wasn't a bang. It was a high-pitched, metallic shriek that vibrated through my very marrow.

  When the light finally died down and my vision stopped swimming in purple spots, I looked at the crater.

  The hunter was gone. In his place, a swirling, dark violet vortex had torn through the asphalt. It was a gate. A dungeon born directly from the corpse of a man who had been breathing seconds ago.

  I felt the bile rise in the back of my throat. It was a skeletal nightmare. A massive, bleached-white skull floated at the very top of the portal, its hollow eyes staring at nothing. The rims of the gate were jagged and uneven, constructed from the very bones of the hunter who had just died there. Ribs and splinters of white calcium formed a grotesque frame around the swirling mana.

  I gulped. My brain was searching for a category, a report, a single line in a textbook that explained this.

  Nothing.

  "What in the world is this...?"

  My voice felt small. It was a phenomenon that shouldn't exist. Dungeons were dimensional fractures that leaked into our world. They didn't grow out of people like some kind of parasitic weed.

  "There's no way... We have to go in."

  Seraphina took a step forward, her eyes fixed on that bone-rimmed vortex. I reached out and grabbed her hand, my fingers digging into her wrist.

  "Are you crazy?" I hissed. "You are not going anywhere without proper preparation. We have to be careful. Look at that thing, Seraphina. That isn't a normal gate."

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Seraphina opened her mouth to argue, but a harsh, ragged cough tore out of her instead. She buckled, her knees hitting the frosted ground. I lunged forward, catching her under the arms to keep her from face-planting into the crater. Hana Ryu was there a heartbeat later, her shoulder supporting Seraphina’s other side.

  The three of us stood there, a mess of tangled limbs and heavy breathing, staring at the gate. It felt like the floating skull was laughing at us.

  The air in the Ashen Gryphon office felt sterile and fake compared to the smell of bone and ozone.

  The massive screen on the wall was muted, but the headlines were flashing in bright, sensationalist red.

  [Emergency: Localized Mana Event in Shopping District Neutralized.][Newest members of Ashen Gryphon identified as heroes in the center of the anomaly.][Hana Ryu, the returning A-Rank, and Strategist Elara Klein take the lead.]

  Seraphina’s identity was kept out of it, as usual. To the public, she was just a blur of frost in the background. Hana and I were the ones getting the "credit," but none of us felt like celebrating.

  "It was unlike anything I have ever seen," Seraphina said, her voice sounding thin and tired. She was sitting on the edge of the couch, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. "A corrupted hunter turning into a dungeon? Since when has something like this been going on?"

  The door to the office buzzed and slid open.

  Gloria Sherban walked in, her presence filling the room with a sudden, sharp weight. She didn't look at the news. She looked straight at me.

  "It is odd for a hunter to be corrupted in the middle of the city in the first place, isn't that right, Elara?"

  I nodded, my mind already running the numbers. "Usually, corruption requires a massive, sustained exposure to dimensional energy. You see it in long-term raids or near high-rank fractures. For a hunter to just snap in the middle of a shopping district... it makes no sense for things to be this way."

  "Is it because the gate was already forming that he went haywire?" Hana Ryu asked. She was leaning against the wall, her eyes narrowed at the floor. "Maybe the dungeon used him as a lightning rod."

  Seraphina looked up, her expression hardening. "Regardless, I think we should clear that gate out—"

  "No." Gloria Sherban cut her off with a single word. "You guys won't be entering the dungeon. The Ashen Gryphon is going to clear it, but not the Ice Team."

  Seraphina opened her mouth to object, her eyes flashing with a spark of that old S-Rank pride. Gloria didn't give her the chance to speak. She stepped closer, her shadow stretching across the desk.

  "I have a more important job for you."