Laughter echoed off the labyrinth walls for the third time as Dusk and I raced toward the source.

  It came from the direction of the marker on my map.

  We had to be close.

  It had been nearly a week of constant pursuit, the marker never staying still for long. It drifted, doubled back, vanished into dead ends, then reappeared somewhere deeper. I was grateful for my storage space. After seeing what passed for food down here, I was glad I’d packed enough rations and water to last far longer than I ever planned to remain in the Labyrinth of Ending.

  Dusk and I had fought our way through countless creatures. Creeping things that clung to ceilings. Monsters grown wrong by the dark. Undead and shadow beings stitched together by foul aether.

  Entropy had been our saving grace. Without it, the undead would have been terrifying in a way I did not care to imagine.

  Dusk’s anti-aether breath dealt with most shadow creatures and necrotic constructs as well. It was devastating, but costly. We saved it for emergencies or moments when a fight needed to end immediately.

  Everything else we handled the way we handled all threats.

  Swiftly.

  The closer we came, the more the sounds multiplied. Steel rang against bone. Skeletal screeches scraped against the stone. Another peal of ghastly laughter rolled through the tunnels, layered and wrong, echoing long after it should have faded.

  Explosions shook the passage ahead. Dust and stone rained down as a wide opening tore into view just ahead of us.

  With every step forward, my tremor sense sharpened. The labyrinth resolved into perfect clarity beneath my awareness. Vibrations painted the cavern beyond in detail before my eyes ever saw it.

  At the center of the chamber, a woman fought alone.

  Her skin was violet and pale white hair clung to her face and shoulders, slick with sweat and blood. Veins as black as night spiderwebbed across every inch of her exposed skin.

  She stood at the very edge of death.

  A horde of skeletal monsters pressed in around her, closing from every angle. She moved like a storm barely held together. Her weapons were a pair of chained sickles, spinning and snapping with lethal precision. Each strike severed bone, crushed skulls, or yanked enemies off balance to be shattered against the stone.

  Between physical blows, she unleashed bursts of dark aether. Waves of power tore through clustered undead, reducing them to fragments that skidded across the floor.

  She was magnificent, and she was dying.

  At the far end of the cavern stood a massive open door. Beyond it loomed a twelve-foot-tall faceless figure draped in a battered green cloak. It held a lantern glowing with the same sickly light as the laughing skulls that darted through the air.

  Glowing threads of aether stretched from the lantern to every skeletal creature in the room.

  With each undead that fell, a green flame tore free and streamed back into the lantern. It was swelling, pulsing brighter with every harvest. I could feel the pressure building inside it through my tremor sense.

  It couldn’t hold forever.

  The woman had to be the initiate we were sent to rescue.

  With no time to plan, we charged forth.

  Dusk plunged into the earth mid-stride and erupted beneath the left flank of the horde. The impact sent a shockwave roaring through the cavern. Stone cracked. Bones exploded outward. Undead were hurled through the air like broken marionettes.

  I followed, blades already in motion.

  Knife after knife left my hands, each wrapped in a thin weave of entropy and their impacts leaving Scars. I had learned to lace my affinities efficiently, letting them coat the blades. Skulls shattered on impact and vertebrae disintegrated as entropy gnawed through them.

  I closed the distance and shifted into my astral claws.

  The earth swallowed me, then flung me upward on the right side of the chamber. I burst from the stone beside the woman, ripping through three skeletal warriors in a single fluid motion. Bone parted beneath my claws as if already rotting.

  For the first time since we entered the fight, she had space.

  The moment she no longer needed to defend herself or die, her body gave out. She collapsed hard against the stone, unconscious, blood pooling beneath her.

  Dusk moved instantly.

  She unleashed her anti-aether breath in a wide arc behind us. The air screamed as it passed, forming an opaque wall of annihilation. Anything that touched it unraveled. With the rear sealed, the undead could no longer surround us.

  We went to work.

  My gravitational entropy aura intensified, warping the space around me. Bones grew brittle. Weapons splintered when they struck. Many shattered simply from trying to block.

  Dusk crushed what remained with brutal efficiency. Each strike carried monstrous power, enough to fracture stone. Each movement was precise, practiced, relentless like the true apex predator she was.

  Green flames poured into the lantern in constant waves.

  Time lost meaning as we fought.

  Then, all at once, the lantern screamed.

  It ruptured in a violent explosion that tore the faceless figure apart. Cloth and shadow shredded into nothing as green fire scattered across the chamber.

  Every undead collapsed simultaneously as if a single invisible string had been cut.

  The green torches lining the cavern extinguished at once, plunging the room into darkness. Only our tremor sense kept the world visible as Dusk and I waited, muscles coiled, expectant for anything.

  Nothing came.

  After a long, terrible silence, the torches reignited.

  This time, with ordinary flames.

  “You should see if there’s anything to Consume from that thing,” I said to Dusk.

  One of her traits allowed her to consume fallen foes who rivaled her in strength, taking a fragment of what made them dangerous. It was never everything. Just a fraction of their greatest attribute such as strength, agility, or constitution.

  Still, those slivers added up.

  She had grown a great deal over the last year because of it.

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  Dusk dipped her head once, then dove back into the earth, flowing toward the place where the creature had fallen apart in tattered fragments. She swam through the stone with supernatural grace.

  I quickly turned my attention to the woman.

  She lay still on the cavern floor, blood dark against pale stone. Her breathing was shallow and uneven, each inhale a struggle that scraped faintly against my tremor sense. She would not last long like this.

  I reached into my storage space and pulled free one of the few healing potions I carried.

  I knelt beside her and uncorked the vial.

  First, I poured it over her worst wounds. The potion soaked into torn flesh and broken skin, glowing faintly as it worked. Then I lifted her head carefully, supporting her neck, and tipped the remaining liquid into her mouth in slow, measured pours.

  Her throat worked instinctively.

  Gradually, the bleeding slowed. Gashes knit together. Bruising faded from deep purple to sickly yellow, then vanished entirely. Her breathing evened out, settling into a steady rhythm.

  It would be a long time before she wakes as the potion used what little energy her body claimed in unconsciousness to heal. I pulled a small sack filled with feathers out and lay it under her head.

  Dusk returned not long after, rising from the stone with dust clinging to her scales.

  She told me she had increased her aetheric potency and overall capacity. Which spoke to the strength of the thing we had defeated. Whatever that faceless figure had been, it was powerful. We had only made it to the last portion of the fight by the state of the room when we arrived.

  We decided to stay where we were for now.

  If the woman woke, I wanted her to see us as allies, not strangers dragging her deeper into the labyrinth. If we had to move her, we would. But not yet.

  Dusk volunteered to patrol the chamber entrances, circling through the surrounding tunnels to watch for anything drawn by the noise of the battle. I began setting up a small camp near the woman, keeping my awareness stretched outward.

  The labyrinth was quiet again.

  But down here, silence never lasted long.

  —

  Something was watching me.

  That was the first thought that surfaced through the pain. Followed shortly by the fact that I was still alive.

  Every bone in my body throbbed, a deep, aching pressure that made it feel as though I had been shattered and poorly reassembled. My muscles screamed with every shallow breath, protest layered atop protest.

  How did I survi—

  The question never finished. Memory came crashing down on me like a cave-in, and my head pulsed with fresh agony.

  Undead. Endless waves of them. Laughter echoing through the labyrinth. Green fire. The lantern.

  Then the earth itself had erupted.

  A creature unlike anything I had ever seen burst from the stone, tearing through bone and shadow as if they were nothing. And beside it— a man. Scarred with a shaved head and black-beard. His movements mirrored the creature’s violence with terrifying precision. Bone-bleached scars crossed his body like a map of suffering, and his presence had cut a path through death itself.

  He had landed near me.

  Cleared the monsters away.

  Then… nothing.

  Warmth brushed against my skin, faint but unmistakable. Fire. Real fire. Not the sickly green glow of the labyrinth. I leaned toward it instinctively, craving it even as my body trembled.

  With great effort, I forced my eyes open.

  The world swam, then slowly settled.

  A small fire burned several paces away. Just beyond it stood the man from my memory.

  He had removed his chest armor and was cleaning it carefully, methodical despite the carnage that must have preceded this moment. Firelight traced the pale scars crisscrossing his skin. There were so many of them. Both the jagged marks of torture, and the clean certainty of survival. I noticed then that his entire left arm was bleached white, bone-pale from shoulder to fingertips.

  He finished scrubbing the armor and set it aside.

  Then he turned.

  His sharp green eyes met mine instantly, as if he had known the exact moment I would wake.

  I froze.

  His expression caught me off guard. I had expected hunger. Cold calculation. Curiosity, perhaps. What I saw instead unsettled me far more.

  Kindness.

  Or something dangerously close to it.

  He spoke softly, voice low and careful, but the words meant nothing to me. I blinked, trying to focus as he repeated himself once, then again. Each time slower. Each time gentler.

  I shook my head weakly.

  He paused, studying my face, then exhaled through his nose as if accepting a complication rather than a failure. After a moment, his eyes shifted, unfocused, as though he were searching for something unseen.

  Then, suddenly—

  Bryn Has Sent You A Request To Join His Party:

  Accept/Decline

  —

  She kept denying the party invitation.

  I sent several more and waited patiently until, finally, on the seventh attempt, she accepted.

  I knew she would be given a brief introduction to the interface’s capabilities, so I didn’t rush her. I simply waited.

  On the mainland, nearly everyone learned Common. It was only during my travels far from established nations, or along their fractured edges, that I encountered people who spoke only their native tongues. That was where I learned one of the more subtle benefits of my interface: when someone joined my party, it automatically translated between our languages. After a while, it would learn the language, and I would be able to understand and speak with those not in my party.

  That was exactly what I needed right now.

  Seeing her name appear on the display brought an unexpected sense of relief.

  Skithara.

  Her health bar glowed full red at the top of my vision. Her stamina bar, however, remained dangerously low, drained by the fight and the healing that had followed. Still, she was alive.

  After several long minutes, she finally spoke.

  “What is this?” Her voice was hoarse and exhausted. “And who are you?”

  “My name is Bryn,” I said calmly. “And this is something called an interface. You were probably given a brief explanation when you accepted the invitation. It’s an ability I have. When we’re in the same party, it translates language. That’s why I invited you.”

  She swallowed, then winced as if the motion itself hurt.

  “Why—” She coughed, dry and painful. “—why did you help me?”

  “Dusk and I were given a quest to rescue an Umbral Initiate from the Labyrinth of Ending,” I replied with a shrug. “We didn’t know what that meant at first, only that the interface led us to you. We spent over a week tracking the marker before it finally brought us here.” I gestured around the chamber. “You were under attack when we arrived, so we intervened.”

  She frowned, confusion mixing with suspicion as strength slowly returned to her eyes.

  “Why?” she asked again. “No one down here risks themselves for another.” Her gaze sharpened. “And who is Dusk?”

  “I’m not from the depths,” I said honestly. “We came from the surface.” I paused briefly, sending a silent signal through our bond. Then, gently, “Dusk is my companion. She won’t harm you. She’s coming to join us.”

  Slowly, Dusk walked into the firelight.

  Skithara flinched violently, sucking in a sharp breath that turned into a pained gasp. Her body tensed, instinct screaming at her to flee even as her strength failed her.

  “Easy,” I said quickly. “You’re still recovering. That healing potion used the last of your body’s reserves.” I turned slightly, keeping my posture relaxed. “There’s no need to fear Dusk unless you attack her.”

  Dusk stepped fully into view.

  Her black scales caught the firelight, reflecting it in muted glimmers. Pale scars traced across her body, scattered like constellations against a night sky. The familiar bleached white of her left limb mirrored my own, stark and unmistakable.

  She nudged my side as she lay down beside me.

  Dusk had grown over the last year, both through age and through Consume. She now stretched nearly twelve feet from snout to tail, her massive form weighing several thousand pounds. Even crouched, her back rose over six feet from the ground.

  She was beautiful and terrifying.

  Skithara didn’t move, and for several long minutes, she simply stared at us. Her gaze searched every detail, every scar, every stillness. Her body remained coiled tight, ready to run despite knowing she couldn’t.

  Eventually, she spoke.

  “You said you gave me a healing potion,” Skithara said quietly. “Why would you waste something so precious on someone you don’t even know?”

  I gestured to the scars covering Dusk and me, the pale marks standing out clearly in the firelight. “We have a very powerful regeneration ability. We don’t need them.” I shrugged. “I carry a few for emergencies. You were the one we came to save, and you needed it.”

  She scoffed, the sound sharp and disbelieving, as if she couldn’t comprehend someone using a healing potion so casually.

  Though she bore few visible scars on the surface of her skin, I could tell she carried just as many inside as I did on the outside. The tension in her posture, the way she held herself ready to bolt or strike, spoke of wounds that had never truly healed.

  Every movement she made was that of an injured, cornered animal.

  “Would you like some food and water?” I asked at last.

  She hesitated, eyes narrowing, as if expecting a trick or a delayed strike.

  I moved slowly, and cautiously. Walking to the fire, I pulled out a cooking pan, some fresh meat, and a container of water from my storage space. I was grateful, as I often was, for how much larger that space had grown over the years as my strength increased.

  I took a long drink from the water first and set it down where she could see it clearly. Then I began to cook the meat over the fire, the sound of it sizzling softly in the quiet cavern.

  No one spoke.

  Dusk had already curled in on herself and fallen asleep, her steady breathing echoing faintly through the stone.

  Skithara’s eyes grew heavy as exhaustion finally caught up to her, but hunger kept her awake. When I summoned a blade into my hand from the bracer, she jolted violently, a sharp gasp tearing from her throat before she forced herself still again.

  I sliced the meat into thin strips and carried both the food and the water over to her. I took one piece and ate it myself, then drank from the container again before setting everything within her reach to show her they weren’t poisoned.

  Without another word, I walked back across the camp, settled beside Dusk, and closed my eyes.

  Through my tremor sense, I felt her hesitate.

  Just for a moment.

  Then she grabbed the water and drank deeply, followed by the unmistakable rhythm of someone devouring food both too fast and too carefully, driven by hunger and fear in equal measure.