The path to Depth Two was long.

  It was not a dramatic spiral or a yawning shaft, just a wide, sloping ramp that sank into the rock at an angle. The stone at the lip was worn smooth by ancient foot traffic, the walls close enough that Greg’s shoulders brushed them when he forgot to hunch. Faint light seeped up from below, a sort of bluish-gold gloom that reminded Greg of mixing all the flavors together at a soda machine.

  A soft chime blinked in his peripheral vision.

  New Floor Reached: Shattered Vault – Depth Two

  You do not meet the minimum recommended level for this area.

  Sucks to be you.

  “Sometimes, yeah…” Greg said.

  “Quit muttering to yourself,” Violet muttered. She had her goggles down and one hand on the wall, fingers splayed a few inches from the stone. “The symbols on this level are different, anyone notice that? Suns and moons still, but...”

  “More spooky?” Nars asked, “Or less?”

  “We’ve gone deeper, so more,” Doran answered for her.

  “Different… priests built this level,” Elowen said quietly, stumbling on the word priests. “The ancient builders did not agree on everything. Possibly anything. These… are their doubts, carved in stone.”

  “Sounds like a bad tattoo,” Greg said, flippantly. “Can we skip art history class? We need to keep moving.

  Elowen’s mouth twitched in annoyance. She wanted to respond but decided against it. He wasn’t wrong. Explaining the complex iconography to Greg would be wasted time, even if he understood. They needed to find Petar’l before it was too late.

  * * * ?╣[-_-]╠? * * *

  They descended.

  The air smelled different the deeper they went; less like dust, more like cold iron and something sour, the aftertaste of blood. They reached the bottom of the ramp and stepped into a broader passage. Here, the walls were more heavily decorated. Relief carvings of figures in flowing robes stretched along both sides, their hands upraised, faces tilted toward some unseen point above. Gold and silver inlay traced around them in patterns Greg could not decipher, circling their heads, linking their hands, weaving between them like an elaborate circuit.

  Violet slowed, then stopped altogether.

  “Hold up,” she said.

  Greg nearly ran into her. He dug his heels in, muscles creaking, and managed, just barely, not to crush her in his path. “Something wrong?”

  “No,” she said, reaching out to hover her fingers over one of the inlaid lines. “Maybe. Elowen, look at this. These aren’t just glyphs. It’s a schematic! These are instructions?”

  “A map,” Elowen supplied, her voice sharpening with interest. She stepped forward, tracing the same lines with her eyes rather than her hands. “Not of mountains and rivers and cities, but cause and effect. Forces in concert, and conflict.”

  They emerged into a chamber. It was not the largest room Greg had seen in the Vault, but it felt like it might be the most important. The floor was a single slab of polished, black stone. The ceiling arched high overhead, disappearing into darkness despite the scattered glowstones embedded there. And on the far wall was another enormous carving, only this one looked like…

  No, Greg thought. It can’t be.

  “Can we get more light?” Nars asked.

  “On it,” Violet said. She rummaged in her satchel and produced three small glass spheres. With a flick of her wrist, she sent them rolling across the floor. As they spun, they flared to life one by one, shedding steady, warm illumination like captured sunsets. The light climbed the wall, revealing more detail with every inch.

  Greg’s unease grew steadily, rising with each new detail revealed.

  Giant, rippling muscles. Long, flowing hair. Blue topaz for the eyes, beneath carved stone eyeglasses. In his hands, a giant fucking sword.

  A chill walked down Greg’s spine.

  “So,” Nars said slowly. “That looks… familiar.”

  Greg’s throat went dry. “That could be anyone,” he said.

  The others did not look convinced.

  “No,” Violet considered, “It’s you. It looks a lot cooler than you do, sure, but I’d know those eyes anywhere.”

  Elowen stepped closer to the wall, her limp still pronounced but her posture utterly focused. She tilted her head, squinting. “The old Elven is fractured here,” she murmured. “Phrases… repeat. ‘Old Friend.’ ‘Stranger.’ ‘The Key to Destruction.’”

  “That could still be anyone,” Greg said, scrambling. “Maybe it’s Nars.”

  “Greg,” Violet said gently, “these murals don’t just recount the history of Aegis, they tell the future. Sun and moon out of balance, corrupted Vaults, then… this guy shows up. You show up. And then…”

  “Keep reading,” Nars said. “What does it say this asshole does?”

  Elowen moved her hand along the mural, following the story from left to right. In the panel where the Stranger first appeared, the sun and moon above him were still separate, lines of light and shadow in uneasy harmony. In the next, the figure stood between them, arms outstretched, chains of gold and silver running through his hands. In the third, cracks radiated from the point where he stood, running through the chains, up into the sun circle, down into the moon.

  “The Stranger arrives in a time of unraveling,” Elowen translated slowly. “When the sun’s path wavers and the moon’s reflection grows… jealous. He comes from… ‘beyond the counting of days.’ That is a poetic way to say not from here.” Her brow furrowed as she squinted at a cluster of particularly dense glyphs. “The ancient scribes argue. Some call him ‘The Great Balancer.’ Some call him ‘The Destroyer.’”

  “That’s what I figured,” Nars said. “Thanks for confirming.”

  Violet had moved lower down the wall. Her hand traced a series of images beneath the main scene: smaller vignettes showing the Stranger striding through stylized Vaults, monsters at his feet, chains snapping, light and shadow twisting around him. “He descends into the hearts of the anchors,” she murmured. “Breaks the chains that bind sun to sky, moon to tide. In some panels, that saves the world.” She gestured to one carving, where people knelt in the horizon to greet the rising dawn.

  “In others…” Her hand shifted to the next. In that one, the same people lay crumpled, twisted into shapes not unlike the Rattlings, while the moon hung huge and swollen over a tiny, cracked sun. “…not so much.”

  Greg realized he was holding his breath and tried to force himself to relax. Breathe. “Maybe it’s an old prophecy? Maybe this already happened. I mean, the sun and moon have been out of balance for centuries, right? I’m only 31. Maybe this is about some other incredibly handsome and muscular stranger.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Elowen’s gaze slid sideways to him. For a moment, she looked like she wanted to tell him what he wanted to hear. Then she sighed, almost inaudibly.

  “Some of this is written in predictive tense,” she said. “Future-facing. Some of it is conditional. ‘If he comes, this may happen. If he does this, that follows.’” She touched the glyphs again. “Here, it speaks of rage. ‘A heart bound to anger, fed by sorrow.’”

  Violet followed that line further. The gold and silver inlay kinked around a carved spiral at the Stranger’s chest, a whirl of lines that seemed to drill into the stone itself. It was inlaid with some darker metal, neither gold nor silver, which drank the light rather than reflecting it.

  “Oh gods,” Violet said softly. “Look at this. They modeled a feedback loop. Rage stokes corruption, corruption amplifies rage. The more he draws on it, the more the Vault responds. He’s like… like a walking resonance engine.”

  Doran made a thoughtful noise deep in his chest. “He pulls on the Vault,” he said, “and the Vault pulls on him.”

  “I miss being a tuning fork,” Greg said. His mouth was dry. “So, we’ve established that whoever this is, he’s a bad idea. Additionally, the evidence for him being me is zero. We can move on now.”

  Violet did not move on. She had found more glyphs, circling the spiral. Her lips moved as she parsed them, eyes flicking left and right. The glowstones in the ceiling buzzed faintly.

  Elowen shifted her hand higher. Above the main scene of the Stranger there was another, larger panel. In it, the figure had grown even more abstract, more symbol than person. He stood on a cracked bridge of light over a chasm filled with stylized waves and things with too many eyes. Above him, the sun hung at an angle, half off its path, while the moon hovered close, thread-thin chains reaching down toward him.

  “The scribes were not of one mind,” she said quietly. “Some say his coming is necessary to repair what Totth and Velyun broke between them. Others say his presence alone is enough to tear the last bindings apart. There is a line here about choice. About whether he sees himself as a tool or as a person.”

  Greg swallowed. His heart beat harder than it should in the cool chamber. He wanted to laugh but couldn’t.

  “How much of this looks like Petar’l’s plan?” Greg offered desperately. “He is breaking Vault hearts, corrupting chains. Trying to shake the sun off its leash.”

  “I have no doubt, he’s aware of the prophecy…” Elowen said, “But it’s not about him. He may be one of the smaller figures. But he is not the Destr—the Stranger.”

  “That part there.” Doran pointed with the butt of his axe to a small panel near the bottom. In it, crowds of tiny figures cowered under jagged lines raining from above. The sun was reduced to a small, pale circle, ringed by rough, angular shapes that might have been towers or spikes.

  This scene was smaller, almost tucked into a corner, as if the artist had added it as an afterthought. The Stranger stood alone now, no chains in his hands. Behind him, the Vault walls cracked, light and dark pouring through. In front of him, a tangle of lines radiated outward, not neat rays or beams but wild scribbles. At their ends, small circles hung suspended; some were filled with light, some with darkness, some with both.

  Violet squinted. “The script here is sloppy. Rushed. Not like the main text.”

  “Like a margin note,” Nars suggested.

  “Apocrypha…?” Elowen wondered.

  Violet traced the glyphs. “If he breaks the last anchors, he shatters… choice? If he refuses, he drowns under it.” She frowned. “He will either bind the world to a new path… or crack it like an egg? No. Like a…’” Her hand stilled on the final cluster of words, frustrated. Her breath shortened.

  “What,” Greg said. “What does that bit say?”

  Violet was quiet for a heartbeat too long.

  “Violet,” he pressed.

  Elowen finished for her. “It says, if his heart is not tempered, if his rage is used without understanding, the Stranger’s arrival will herald the last dawn. He will unmake the Light.”

  Silence fell like a dropped stone.

  Greg felt the chamber tilt under his feet.

  Endless shadow. No dawn, no day, just… the kind of world Petar’l wanted. A world where Rattlings crawled out of every shadow and nobody remembered what sunlight felt like on their face.

  He heard Elowen’s voice as if from a long way away. “Text like this is speculative,” she said carefully. “The ancients argued about possible futures. It does not mean this is fixed. It does not mean you, Greg, are destined to—”

  “To destroy the world,” Nars said.

  Elowen shot him a look that could have carved stone. He lifted his hands. “What? That is what it says. Isn’t it?”

  Greg stared, and the giant, stone prophecy of himself stared back. He could pretend it was coincidence, but… how many coincidences did it take to form a pattern? This couldn’t be real.

  There was that word again. The Rage inside him stirred.

  Real.

  What if none of this is real?

  The thought rose unbidden, ugly and irresistible. What if Violet’s irritation, Doran’s loyalty, Nars’ smirk… wasn’t it, all of it, just code wearing a face? Advanced AI routines, dialogue trees, whatever they called it now. Non-player characters, NPCs. People built out of data points, whose feelings were scripted, whose pain was just animation and sound design.

  What if she isn’t real?

  His eyes went to Elowen.

  She stood a few paces from him, one hand still hovering near the mural, the other resting lightly against her bandaged ribs. There was a smudge of soot on her cheek she had missed when she cleaned up. Her hair, haphazardly re-braided after the fight with the Warden, had come loose again, a thin strand falling across her forehead. Her mouth was set in that familiar line of determination and worry.

  Greg’s heart clenched, as if it wanted to fold in on itself.

  He had died for her. He had walked into a dungeon that wanted to rearrange him at the molecular level for her. Was he falling in love with a character model?

  The Rage flared.

  It surged up his spine like a flash flood, snapping from simmer to boil in an instant. His vision sharpened, then fractured, the edges of the mural’s carvings turning too crisp. His hands clenched on the sword hilt without his permission. A high, thin whine crept into his hearing, like pressure building in his ears.

  PRIMAL RAGE – Destabilizing

  Source: Emotional Disassociation

  Still haven’t checked your Character Journal, have you?

  The chamber was tilting harder now. He gritted his teeth, trying to bear it.

  “Greg?” Elowen’s voice. Closer now. Concerned. “Greg, look at me.”

  He tried. His head turned toward her, but the world split. For half a heartbeat, he saw two Elowens overlaid on each other: one as she was now, dirt-smudged and exhausted, eyes luminous with worry; the other a simplified version, cleaner lines, high-resolution but somehow less real, like a character portrait in a game menu.

  His grip tightened. The Rage roared, offended at the idea that anything here was less real than him. Or more. Or something.

  The stone beneath his boots shuddered.

  Very faint at first, a tremor like the heartbeat of some giant beast far below. Then stronger, a low rumbling that vibrated in his bones. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. One of Violet’s light orbs quivered on the floor, its glow flickering.

  “Greg,” Nars said. “Talk to us, buddy. You’re not thinking about… destroying the world, or anything… right?”

  Cracks spidered across the far wall, thin and dark, racing across the stone like ink. They lanced through the gold and silver inlay, making the metal jump and spit tiny sparks.

  Greg could feel the Vault tremble when he clenched his fist.

  Violet swore in a language Greg did not recognize. “He’s resonating,” she snapped, already moving. “Greg! Stop feeding it. You’re syncing with the Vault’s field.”

  “I’m not doing shit,” Greg managed to groan. His teeth ached. The Rage was trying to claw its way out of his skin; it wanted to punch, to smash, to break something big enough to match what was happening inside him. The mural, the prophecy, the idea that none of this was real…

  Another chime flickered in the edge of his vision, erratic.

  New Status: Volatile Resonance (Greg ? Vault)

  Effects:

  -Burning AOE Damage On Hit

  -Enemies suffer -5 to all rolls due to intimidation

  -Friends never look at you the same again

  The floor moved.

  Not like a tremor or quake. It moved in a slow, gliding way; a thick, almost liquid shift under their boots. Greg’s reality, if that’s what it was, snapped back into clear focus.

  “Everyone. Move!” Doran snapped. They obeyed on instinct, retreating toward the wall.

  Something transparent and faintly shimmering bulged up from the floor’s center. For a second, Greg’s brain refused to process it, because it did not look like much. Just a distortion, like heat-haze over stone. Then the distortion thickened. Edges defined themselves. A cube, perfectly square, slid into view, pushing dust and pebbles up as it rose.

  The cube was clear. Almost perfectly. The stone beneath it was magnified, warped by the viscous medium. A few bits of debris, a shard of bone, and the rusted head of a spear floated in slow procession inside it, suspended like flies in amber.

  The cube stopped rising when it reached about chest height. One entire face bulged slightly, then slumped forward, a pseudopod of jelly drooling toward the floor before rejoining the main mass.

  The system identified it with entirely too much cheer:

  New Monster Encountered!

  VORACIOUS JELLY CUBE: Dungeon Janitor

  Irritated that you’ve tracked in dirt.

  The cube oozed a single, slow scoot in their direction. Where it passed, the stone floor underneath was cleansed to bare, fresh rock. The bits of debris it touched vanished, dissolving into the clear jelly with faint fizzing sounds.

  “Of course,” Nars said faintly. “A carnivorous block of acid. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  Violet made a dismayed noise. “Oh, no,” she said. “No, no, no, I did not pack enough solvent for this.”

  Greg lifted the Giant Fucking Sword, muscles tense. His Rage felt like acid in his veins. With no thought in in his mind but destruction, he charged the cube.

  Its semi-liquid surface wobbled in anticipation.