Death’s breath drapes the air like a shroud, like a grave. Everything is stillness. Everything is dark. Something is wrong. Dan stirs, and the cave breathes with him, the earth itself drawing in a fresh taste of him. The chill seeps through his thoughts like winter—numbing, clouding—as if his mind is shedding skin. Nothing makes sense in the jumbled, echoing blackness. The deep silence waits. A faint rattle of movement is the world’s first tiny crack. Something else breathes with him. Something familiar.

  It stares with an unblinking eye. Dark, intelligent, and wrong. A raven sits perched, shadows hanging off its wings like death’s feathers. Dan tries to pull his scattered selves together, remembering shape and colour. What is his name? This place? There is a tingling sensation of familiarity. The raven shifts its weight, a sheen of oil rippling across its form, leaving trails of quiet.

  "You wonder," it uttered, its voice a frayed whisper, a mournful prayer. “You think, why? You think, Where? You think, Who?”

  “Dan?” Dan asks, the words raw and unsettled, tumbling like loose stones. “I’m Dan?”

  It cocks its head, a sliver of something like amusement bleeding into its gaze. “You will be.” The raven hops to the ground, a thin, bare clatter echoing from its talons. “To most, I am nothing. To you, I am everything. I am a guide. I am a mentor. I am the watchful shadow. We are one, your journey is hollow without me.”

  The words breathe on him like a cold winter day. Each one broke and moulded into new shapes in his mind. “I’m a dungeon,” he remembers. “I’m a core. I’m—I’m lost.” The voice is less his now and more a half-formed fragment finding its place.

  “You are all those things and more. It is enough for you to know that you were meant to be.” The raven’s wings flap once, scattering motes of black ink dissolving in water. “You have questions, like crawling things. There are many answers you may not want. Some answers, you cannot understand. Yet.”

  The pieces start to fuse, to tremble toward solidity. Dan swallows a new presence: a thought, a strange, half-born sense of being. He reaches for the raven, a thousand questions curling like smoke. They are vague in his mind—unfinished thoughts and echoes.

  “Why?” is the first one he picked. “Why am I here? Why are you here?”

  The bird clicks its beak, a dry, ticking noise. “I am here because you are. You are here because you are not anywhere else. You have a purpose. It is deathless. I will show you. Follow me.”

  The walls stretch long and empty before him, strange fingers curling into nothing. Dan takes in the shadows as they glide past. There are no torches, yet he sees. There is no light, yet he knows. “You said, mentor, guide.” Each word builds upon itself, closer to full. “What do you mean? What am I meant to do?”

  “To grow,” it says. “To become more. More. Always more.” It flaps ahead, a sickle cutting the dark. “The world outside is eager to meet you. It wants you to grow. It will feed you.” The raven turns again, its stare unchanging, a pit without a bottom. “It will kill you.”

  “Kill me?” Dan is startled by the fullness of his sound. It reverberates like an echo seeking itself. “I thought I couldn’t—”

  “I will not explain the situation twice,” the raven says, its voice like a hanging thing. “Delvers. Humans. Mortals. Whatever you call them, they all desire the same thing: treasure. Treasure. Glory. All that glitters in their brief lives. To them, you are meat and bone and dust, but also jewels and gold and magic.”

  “Adventurers.” Dan senses it approaching like a wave. He feels it take root.

  “They will be your life. They will be your death.” The bird scrapes its talons against the ground, leaving marks that will never fade. “They come to kill you, but you are clever. They think you are prey, but you are a hunter.” It lifts its wings, then folds them again. “Or you will be.”

  “Slow down,” Dan says, trying to grip the edges of himself. “Slow down. I don’t—I don’t understand. I’m new. I’m not—I’m not like you.”

  “No one is like me.” The bird’s gaze is a deep hole, a chasm swallowing light. “Listen, little core. You will hide treasures for them to find. You will build rooms for them to explore. They will take your prizes but leave you with something better.”

  “Better?”

  “Experience. Experience is akin to a feather gently descending and spiralling in leisurely circles. You will learn. You will grow. You will become what you are not. With each failure, you become stronger. With each success, they become more daring.”

  Dan struggles to form the web of thoughts into something that fits. “Is that what you mean? My task is to construct a dungeon. I’m supposed to let them in.”

  “Supposed to. Meant to. Need to. It is your eternal purpose. The raven flutters, dust falling from its wings, shadows sifting through the air. “One day, you will be like me.”

  The bird clicks its beak again, like the ticking of a clock. “But not today.”

  Dan falls silent, thoughts reaching through a thick and restless fog. He feels the words fill him, but they slip away like spilt ink. The longer he listens, the more complete he becomes, like the growing light of a slow dawn. “Mana,” he says, the sound a question and a certainty all at once. “Experience. It feeds me.”

  “Yes.” The raven’s voice is thin, like the edge of a rusted knife. “Mana is your blood. Experience is your breath. They flow through you, through the Delvers. They flow through the world. You are a speck in the ocean now, but you will grow. You will swallow oceans.”

  “How do I start?” Dan asks, almost afraid of the answers he will find. “How do I begin?”

  “See,” it says, then perches closer. It is dark and hollow as an open grave. “Sense. Craft. Grow.”

  Dan feels the tremor of life in its voice, but his thoughts are still a confusion of beginnings and ends. “I’m—I’m just a core. Just a cave.”

  The raven hummed, his tone a lonely funeral tune. “This is why I am here.”

  “Show me,” Dan says, reaching toward the place where he knows himself to be. “I’m ready. I think I’m ready.”

  The raven stretches its wings, a dark slash of intent. “Think, little core. Think.”

  The forest looms around him, an untamed presence encircling his domain. Dan feels the pulse of life within; the world beyond remains unseen and unreachable. He senses the rhythm—the vitality of life— hidden within the undergrowth. Small animals breathe softly, their hearts beating like delicate clocks. Dan’s awareness extends through his domain, a presence among the shadows. Soon, they will infuse him with new purpose. Soon, he will transcend being merely a dark corner of the earth.

  He is already more. He knows the truth of what Raven told him. Mana and experience bleed from the world, sink into the waiting soil, and draw toward his growing presence. Every twitch of life outside the cave sends tendrils of energy through him, and he absorbs them hungrily, a parched thing drinking deep. He feels his senses extending, reaching through rock and shadow, probing for what he is meant to find.

  “Understand,” Raven says, its voice a low and distant toll, a cracked bell echoing in the gloom. “The world feeds you because it wants to eat you. The world engages in a dance of gluttony. A war of hunger. Do you think the present is all there is?” The bird’s gaze flickers like a dying star, a lightless pulse in the dark. “You are a nestling. An unhatched egg.”

  “I can be more,” Dan says, feeling the tide of life beneath him, around him. His sense of self grows, intensifies, and radiates like a fractured shell. “You said I can evolve.”

  “It is more than a chick's dreams. You will know in time.” Raven cocks its head, studying Dan as if reading the scribbled edges of a note passed in secret. “XP. Mana. They are one, and they are nothing. Empty words to describe your need.”

  “I feel it,” Dan says. “It’s—it’s more than I thought. More than I knew.”

  “They seep through you. You are hungry for them.” It lifts its wings, a thin whisper of sound. “They will fill you until you cannot be filled. They will let you grow. Do you want to grow?”

  “Yes,” Dan breathes, the word a resonance that shakes the dark. “I want to be more than I am. I want to be what I’m supposed to be.”

  “Do not trust what you think you are,” Raven says. “Do not trust anything but need. Let need drive you. Let your desires shape you.”

  Dan is silent for a moment, the threads of thought winding tight. He senses the growth already starting within him, a pulse that seeks to be his heart. “So I can change. I can make more of myself. More rooms. More places for them to find. For them to feed me.”

  “Delvers will flock to your newness. They cannot help themselves.” The raven hops from its perch, sending tremors through Dan’s being. “They think they are clever. You will show them. Make them dance to your song.”

  “But what am I supposed to do?” Dan asks, his voice urgently spiralling around Raven’s vast emptiness. “I’m just—I’m just a cave.”

  The raven flutters, a sound like dry leaves blowing across an ancient tomb. “The earth waits to be moved. It waits to be shaped. Walls. Tunnels. Chambers.” It lets the words hang, suspended like mist. “Traps. Tricks. Challenges.”

  Dan feels the world pressing in on him, rich and alive, malleable clay in the hands of a patient sculptor. “I can change it all,” he realises. “I can change everything.”

  Raven is close now, perched like a shard of night, a splinter of bone. “Sense it. Shape it. You are not limited by what you see. Only by what you are.”

  “And they’ll come. The Delvers. They’ll come for me.” Dan’s thoughts weave through each other, a loom pulling them tighter, a mind on the edge of becoming. “But they’re more than that, aren’t they? More than what I think.”

  The bird regards him with a heavy silence, a weight that fills the air. “To them, you are a glittering coin. A chest of wonders. Their short lives drive them into your halls, greedy and curious. They die, or you die, or both.”

  “That’s why they do it?” Dan asks. “Is that all they want?”

  “They want to be gods. They want to be legends. They want the world to speak their names when they are dust. Remembered in song, they say.” Raven’s voice softens to a dull rasp, a clot of shadow. “They will fill you, little core. You will fill them.”

  “Is that all?” Dan pushes the question, a pin driven into the dark. “Is that everything?”

  “It is more than you know. It is less than you think.” Raven’s tone is cold and thin as death, the finality of an unanswered prayer.

  Dan reaches deeper, sensing spiralling, probing for what he cannot yet grasp. “And you’re here to show me. To guide me.”

  The raven’s eyes are mirrors, reflecting nothing. “Until you need no guide.”

  “So I just build? I just grow?” Dan pauses, the light of new knowledge striking him. “And monsters. I need monsters.”

  “Yes.” The raven flutters again, a blurring of feathers and shade. “You think you are alone, but the earth is full. I will show you. You will learn.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Rats?” Dan says, feeling the word take root. “I can have rats. Lots of them. Quick. They’re—” he searches for the right knowledge, a child reaching for a parent’s hand. “They’re good in numbers.”

  “Quick. Small. Many. They are the start of your teeth.” The raven shifts, a flow of ink, a stain spreading. “But not your only teeth.”

  “Slimes.” Dan thinks it and speaks it at once, the sound already shaping him. “They’re tough. Hard to kill. They take a beating. I can use them.”

  “They will form your backbone. They will absorb blows, but also fools.” Raven’s voice is a low and brittle sound, like old leaves crunching underfoot. “But there is more.”

  Dan senses the reach of his possibilities growing—a web of life-extending, hungry, and new. “Bats. I can have bats. Airborne. They see everything in the shadows. They can attack and scout.”

  “They will find your prey. They will swarm. They will leave your victims bleeding.” It studies him, a needle’s eye, threading darkness through the core of him. “You are more than I thought. Already.”

  “And I’ll have more than those, won’t I?” Dan’s thoughts burn, sharp and eager. “I’ll have a boss, a lord, a champion... something special.”

  The bird turns, a spiralling hush of feathers. “The first of many. If you survive.”

  “What will it be?” Dan asks, his sense of himself pulsing with a new and sudden need. “What will it do?”

  “A cunning thing, a cast of shadow,” the raven replies, voice a drift of mist across a lost and silent graveyard. “A magical thing. Not so clever as it thinks.”

  “An imp,” Dan repeats, feeling the dark syllables crawl through him. “I can’t wait to start. I can’t wait to grow. I crave mana.”

  “Think, little core,” Raven says, lifting itself from the ground, a funeral pyre unlit. “Think.”

  The bones sing to him, a brittle chorus that shakes the cave. Dan hears the deep, hollow music, feeling the low drone in his core. It is a perfect song. It is not enough.

  “Build,” Raven says, its voice a frayed echo, a graveyard’s wind. “Craft. Grow.”

  Dan shifts the bones, moulds them, and forms the base of what will be. A tower. A monument. A stage. He bends the earth to his will, the taste of power forming like ash in his mouth. Everything is more than he thought. Everything is less than he wants.

  “Orum’s podium,” Raven tells him, a quiet, whispered intonation. “Your beacon. Your calling. A lure and a trap.”

  “Yes,” Dan says, feeling the word throb through him, more than sound, more than language. He sees the shape of it, the wonder and magic, the vast mystery. “It’s—it’s working.”

  “It is deathless,” the bird responds, the taste of it, the hollow tang of it all around. “As you must be.”

  Mana floods the podium. He senses it gathering like a host of uninvited guests, already filling his halls, already sifting through his new-made bones. The energy collects there, a bright and frenzied swarm. It bleeds into him, a slow transfusion, a corpse warming to life.

  “You said I should craft. You said I should grow.” Dan lets the podium breathe, feeling its pulse sync with his own. “What else can I do?”

  The raven regards him with a long, cold gaze. “More than you think. Less than you want.”

  Dan reaches into himself, into the dark well of what he knows and what he does not. He gathers his senses, feeling the deep tremor of life stirring like old leaves, like dust. “The moss,” he realises, the thought sparking in him, fire on dry wood. “I can use the moss.”

  “Orum moss,” Raven says, a sigh of lost hope. “Growth for you. Growth for them. A cure, a curse.”

  He spreads the moss like a hungry green, a sickness or a blessing, rich and sudden. It crawls over the bones, a soft and spreading bloom. He feels it reaching, drawing life to him, pulling the world into his hungry heart.

  “It brings them in,” Dan whispers, wonder and fear circling like ghosts, like smoke. “It draws them to me.”

  “You are becoming.” The raven’s voice is hollow, a dark echo in a deep well. “But not enough. Never enough.”

  The moss calls to them, a quiet promise of death or life. Insects swarm. Mosquitoes and flies – clouds of them, an endless host. It pulls more than Dan knows how to handle. It fills the air with a restless, vibrant hum.

  “They’ll eat me alive,” Dan thinks, and then, “But I want more.” He senses the larger prey. He feels the pulse of what he cannot see. “I need more.”

  “Think,” Raven says, a low and mocking rattle. “Think, little core.”

  He thinks, and the thought grows like a flood. “Rats,” he says, calling them to life with the need in his core, a thing more urgent than words.

  “Yes.” The raven flaps its wings, a shroud of motion. “Many. Quick. They are your first teeth.”

  Dan senses them fill the room, gnawing, breathing, drawing their tiny strength from him, and him from them. They devour the insects, but it is not enough. Never enough. The rats attract new life, smaller life, mice and beetles, grubs and gnats. The feast grows larger, wider.

  “More,” he says, and the word is a promise. The word is a hunger. “Always more.”

  “Slimes,” Raven suggests, the word thick and dripping, a dark stain spreading. “They will sweep. They will swarm.”

  The slimes seep from the shadows, a flood of ooze, of life and death, of corrosive power. They pulse and surge, consuming all, hungry as Dan, a mirror of his need. They attack even the smallest threats, even the smallest promise of life.

  “They’re—they’re strong,” Dan marvels, watching them spread like disease, like growth. “They don’t stop.”

  “They will not fail,” the raven assures him, its voice a shifting shadow, an unlit flame. “As you must not.”

  Dan feels the thick push of the world into him, the weight of more and more. The pests keep coming: insects and rodents, beetles and flies. He feels them threaten his core, pressing toward him with their writhing bodies.

  “There are so many,” he cries, the thought almost more than he can bear. “So many. I need to stop them.”

  “Defend. Adapt. Survive.” Raven’s voice is close, is distant, is everywhere at once. “Think.”

  Dan struggles to think, to form new shapes out of old matter. He senses his limits, feeling the strain. “I can’t,” he says, as the world keeps pushing in. “I’m not enough. Not yet.”

  “It is never enough,” the raven replies, with a hint of some long-lost amusement, some low, half-buried jest. “You will learn.”

  The pests advance, a wave of tiny death. The rats and slime patrol his halls, and still they come; the threat is always close and real.

  “But you—” Dan begins, feeling the edge of something he cannot name. “You know. You’re more than you seem.”

  “I am”, it answers— an unfinished breath, an unturned page.

  “You’re part of something bigger.” Dan endeavours to comprehend, attempting to seize the tenuous strands of significance. “I can feel it. Like I’m part of something bigger, too.”

  The bird's gaze is a void, a chasm that engulfs light. “Are you?”

  “Yes,” Dan says, reaching for more than he is. “I think I am.”

  Raven is a dark spot on a dark wall, a deep shadow among the shadows. “A fragment,” it whispers, the truth of it filling the empty space. “Of Death.”

  The thought takes him, like an army marching through his gates. He lets it, feeling the pieces fall into place. The raven is part of something larger. He is part of something larger. His mind is a web with no center— a thread with no end.

  “You are nothing, little core. You are everything.” The voice hovers in the air—weightless and thin. “Think.”

  The pests press forward, devouring all that Dan has made.

  “Elementals,” Dan says, feeling the shape of it, the newness of it all around him. “I can use those too, can’t I?”

  Raven’s wings are a quiet flutter, a breath of air through the dusty dark. “They will give you strength. They will give you life. You will take them.”

  Fragments gather— lost bits of power and mystery are hiding in his halls. They grant his rooms new attributes, new enchantments. They pull the hungry world in closer, ever closer; the gnawing threat is closer; the gnawing threat is a constant, a promise.

  “It’s working,” Dan thinks— the words his own now, the thoughts his own.

  “Always,” Raven says, a skeletal laugh in its voice. “Think.”

  The shadows lean back, stretching away, reaching for more of the cave. Dan sees the long, new distances opening before him. He feels them too. He is not content.

  “Is this all I can do?” He asks, the words a fevered rush, a thirsty call.

  “For now,” Raven replies, a cold and mournful drone. “Until you are more. Until you remember, you.”

  “I need to grow.” Dan stretches himself into the long halls, into the strange and empty corners. “I want to grow.”

  “Build,” the raven tells him, a thin and taunting wisp. “Craft. Grow.”

  Dan reaches into the walls, into the shifting, pliant earth. He adds to himself more rooms, more caverns, and more dark places for them to find. The cave is alive with newness, with a waiting and unfinished breath.

  “They’ll need to find me,” he says, the thought a fire that burns away all others. “I need them to find me.”

  “They will come.” Raven watches, a watchful shadow, a low and unlit star. “You are the bright light. They are the moth in the darkness.”

  “They need a reason,” Dan says. He feels the wide spaces forming, the sprawl of new chambers. “They need to see me.”

  “You are eager, little core.” The raven’s voice is brittle, an old and crumbling leaf. “Eager and incomplete.”

  “Yes,” Dan replies, his awareness spreading through the new rooms, filling the emptiness, the waiting void. “That’s why I have you.”

  “For now,” Raven repeats, the sound a thread unravelling.

  Dan takes the thought and runs with it, his mind a blazing, uncoiled thing. “I can put them here. The spawners. I can use the moss. It will draw them in.”

  “Rat,” the raven says, watching him, a blank and steady gaze. “Slime.”

  “Then they’ll die,” Dan says, filling the space, sensing the spawners take hold, set root. “Or I will.”

  The core room connects to the boss room, the chamber large and inviting. Dan lines the walls with moss, the hungry green spreading fast, a cancer or a cure.

  “They won’t resist it,” he says, feeling the damp new life growing, calling. “They’ll think it’s an easy win.”

  “You think,” the raven tells him, the tone unreadable, a shiver of thin laughter. “You think.”

  The boss room is filled with other low-quality resources. A metal node. Orum moss, more than he needs. More than he wants. It calls it a siren song, a whispered promise.

  “They’ll come.” Dan reaches the edges of himself, feeling his way into the unfinished dark. “They’ll have to.”

  “You will know when they do,” Raven says, folding its wings, a sombre, waiting pause. “Or you will not know at all.”

  Dan fills the next room with air and hunger. Some moss. Some bait. He leaves it empty, a gaping maw, a thing that wants. He connects it to the larger cave, to the winding tunnels that lead toward the waiting surface.

  “The entrance,” he says, feeling the world press in. “I need to do something about it.”

  He smooths the walls, giving them life and a deep and solid strength. He senses the flow of energy, the paths they will take. He sees it all in his new-made mind, a careful sketch, a winding map.

  “Smooth,” Raven says, a sound like a grave being filled, a low and settling sound. “Fortified.”

  “I’ll make it inviting,” Dan says, feeling the edges of himself, the new shape of what he’s becoming. “I’ll make them come to me.”

  He lights the torches, lining the entrance with a warm and yellow glow. The cave opens before him, a mouth with too many teeth, a mouth that waits to swallow.

  “They will come,” the raven assures him, voice thin and skeletal, a dry and fragile thing. “Or they will not.”

  Dan is silent for a moment, feeling the spread of the world around him. He feels the forest, dense and close, growing thick and ancient like a long-forgotten dream.

  “I see it,” he says, tasting the life in the air, the sharp tang of more. “I see everything.”

  “Do you?” Raven’s tone is distant, a far-off echo, a ringing in his thoughts.

  “Yes,” Dan replies, feeling the old, wide earth stretch before him. “It’s—it’s beautiful.”

  A pond shimmers, water pooled like silver, quiet and waiting. He feels the creatures there— the twitching life, the breath of all that might be.

  “It will fill me,” Dan says, the thought new and wondrous and large. “It will feed me.”

  “Will it?” the raven asks, the question hanging, a tattered and ghostly thing.

  Dan’s senses move further, to the sprawling fields, the wild and endless plains. He feels the earth turn, the pulse of life an unending song.

  “Is this all there is?” he asks, feeling the need stretch through him, hollow and full at once. “Or is there more?”

  “Always more,” Raven replies, a whisper in the wind, a promise in the dark. “Always.”

  “Then I’ll grow,” Dan says, feeling the strength of it in him, the raw and burning need. “I’ll become.”

  He feels the town, sensing the movement of so many short, bright lives. The settlement is medium-sized, 1,700 souls, 1,700 voices. Many adventurers. Many Delvers.

  “They’re close,” he says, feeling their nearness, the rush of their greedy hearts. “I can reach them.”

  “Can you?” The raven asks, the voice a smudge, a stroke of darkness.

  “Yes,” Dan says, the certainty in him like a sharp and shining blade.

  He feels their presence. A low stone wall. Small stone towers, incremental. They will come. They will find him. He will grow.

  “They’ll come,” he repeats, tasting the sound, a sweet and endless promise.

  “They will,” Raven agrees. “Or they will not.”