Then, late afternoon light. The sun hung low on the horizon, already bleeding toward dusk.
They emerged from a drainage culvert half a mile north of Kelidor's walls. The sewer dumped into a sluggish creek that wound through scrub brush and dead grass. Kellen dragged himself onto the bank and collapsed, gasping for air that didn't make him want to vomit.
Torian climbed out behind him, armor dripping filth. His golden aura had dimmed to almost nothing, a faint glow barely brighter than a dying candle.
Behind them, Kelidor's walls rose in the distance. Smoke drifted from chimneys. Guards patrolled the ramparts, tiny figures searching for "a fugitive Leonine and his accomplice."
They were already gone.
The trade road stretched north through rolling hills dotted with scraggly trees that looked like they'd given up on life sometime last season. Kellen's legs burned. Each step was a negotiation between forward momentum and collapsing into the dirt.
[QUEST UPDATE: STABILIZE KELIDORIAN ANCHOR]
Time Remaining: 16h 22m
Sixteen hours. Less than a day to reach the anchor, stabilize it, and prevent reality from eating itself.
No pressure.
The sun crawled toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of amber and rust. Torian set a brutal pace, his long strides eating up distance while Kellen struggled to keep up. The Paladin didn't complain. Didn't slow down. Just walked with the grim determination.
Kellen checked his stats.
[VITAL STATISTICS]
Condition: Minor Injuries
Stamina: 34/65
Mana: 91/120
Damage Reduction: 2%
Not great. But survivable.
The sun dropped below the hills. Dusk bled into night. The temperature plummeted, and Kellen's breath misted in the air.
And then he saw it.
On the horizon, silhouetted against the rising ghost-moon, stood an obelisk.
Kellen stopped walking.
The Kelidorian Anchor rose from the earth like a broken finger pointing at the sky. Even from this distance, had to be two miles, maybe more, he could see the damage. Cracks spider-webbed up its surface, glowing with sickly violet light. The air around it shimmered, distorted, like heat waves rising from scorching pavement.
"It's worse than I thought," Kellen breathed.
Torian's ears flattened. "It's failing."
The obelisk flickered. Just for a second. And in that heartbeat, Kellen saw through it, saw the landscape beyond warped and twisted into impossible geometries that made his eyes water.
"We need to move," Kellen said.
They pushed forward. The road narrowed, then vanished entirely, swallowed by overgrown grass and dead brush. The anchor pulled at him now, a pressure in his chest that grew stronger with each step. The Codex at his belt hummed, resonating with the failing structure ahead.
The air tasted wrong. Metallic. Sharp.
And then the world tore.
A sound like ripping fabric. Reality split open ten feet in front of them, a jagged wound in the night that bled violet light.
Something fell through.
It hit the ground in a tangle of limbs and shadows, a creature of smoke and bone that shouldn't exist in a world with functional physics. A Shade-Wraith. Humanoid, but wrong. Too tall. Too thin. Its body flickered between solid and translucent, never quite settling on either state.
It rose to its full height,eight feet of writhing darkness and hollow eyes.
And screamed.
The sound was glass breaking. Nails on slate. A frequency that bypassed Kellen's ears and went straight to his spine.
"Combat formation!" Torian roared, shield snapping up.
Kellen's hand hit the Codex.
[QUICK SUMMON ACTIVATED]
VINE CREEPER (-15 MP)
The vines erupted beneath the Wraith, thorned tendrils wrapping around legs that weren't entirely there. The creature shrieked, clawing at the bindings. Half the vines passed through it harmlessly. The other half held.
"It's phasing!" Kellen shouted. "Fifty-fifty corporeal!"
Torian charged. His warhammer swung in a wide arc, the golden aura flaring as it connected with the Wraith's torso. The creature stumbled, a chunk of shadow ripped away, dissolving into mist.
But it didn't fall.
It lashed out with claws like obsidian razors. Torian caught the blow on his shield, the impact ringing like a gong. The Wraith's other hand phased through the shield entirely, raking across Torian's pauldron. Spectral claws left gouges in the steel.
[TORIAN - LVL 7 PALADIN - VITALS: HEALTHY → MINOR INJURIES]
"Kellen! Tie it down!"
Kellen focused, pushing intent into the Vine Creeper. Hold. Tighten. Don't let go.
The vines obeyed, coiling tighter. The Wraith's lower half solidified, trapped by the bindings. It couldn't phase while held.
Kellen's vision swam. The connection to the summon pulled at him, draining stamina with every second it stayed active. His legs trembled. Just hold on. Just a little longer.
Torian didn't waste the opening. He brought the warhammer down in a two-handed overhead strike that would've caved in a boulder.
It caved in the Wraith instead.
The creature shattered. Not blood. Not flesh. Just fragments of shadow and a scream that faded into static. Its form collapsed inward, dissolving into black mist that evaporated before it hit the ground.
Silence.
[SHADE-WRAITH (LVL 6) DEFEATED]
+75 XP
Kellen dismissed the Vine Creeper. The notification blinked:
[SUMMON DISMISSED]
Mana refunded: 0 MP
Current Mana: 76/120
Shit. He'd held it too long. No refund.
He was down forty-four points, and they hadn't even reached the anchor yet.
He walked to where the Wraith had died. Umbral energy still clung to the air, wisps of dark mist that curled around his boots like smoke.
"[BANISH]."
The mist shattered into white light, streaming into him. The relief was immediate—a cold flood of power that chased away the exhaustion.
[MANA RECOVERED: +44]
Current Mana: 120/120
Full tank.
"You alright?" Kellen asked, turning to Torian.
The Paladin examined the gouges in his armor. Three deep scratches across the pauldron, but no blood. "I'm fine."
"Good." Kellen looked back at the tear in reality. It had already sealed itself, leaving nothing but a faint shimmer in the air. "That thing didn't attack us on purpose. It fell through. The Veil's so thin here the Umbra's leaking."
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"Then we're running out of time."
They kept walking.
The anchor grew larger on the horizon. The obelisk dominated the skyline now, a monolith of cracked stone pulsing with dying light. The distortion around it had spread, warping the landscape into a crater of suspended physics.
Kellen stopped at the edge.
"Tell me you see this too," Kellen said.
Torian's footfalls stopped behind him. A long pause. "If you're seeing a hole in reality that shouldn't exist, then yes."
"Good." Kellen stared at the impossible sight. "Just wanted confirmation I hadn't completely lost it."
The road didn't just end. It hung. Cobblestones floated in mid-air suspended in a violet-hued void that pulsed with a rhythm like a slow heartbeat. A cart wheel turned lazy circles at eye level. A merchant's dropped coin bag hung frozen mid-fall. Coins spilled out in a perfect arc of suspended gravity.
Kellen reached out and plucked the coin bag from the air.
"You're looting a disaster zone?" Torian's voice carried flat disapproval.
"Collecting," Kellen corrected, testing the weight. A good thirty silver, maybe more. He tucked it into his pack. "If we find the owner floating around in this mess, I'll give it back.... I promise."
Maybe.
Torian stared at him.
"What? It's not really theft," Kellen said. "Just... you know, safe-keeping."
The Paladin shook his head but didn't argue further.
Kellen stepped closer. The temperature dropped instantly. That unnatural cold that had nothing to do with weather and everything to do with reality breaking down. The air tasted metallic. Like licking a battery.
His UI erupted.
[VEIL ANCHOR DETECTED]
DESIGNATION: KELIDORIAN ANCHOR
STABILITY: 12%
WARNING: CRITICAL FAILURE IMMINENT
"Oh good," Kellen muttered as text exploded across his vision. "Warnings. I love warnings."
Diagnostic strings. Errors. Corruption warnings. His UI had apparently decided this was the perfect time to vomit every possible alert at him. A wireframe overlay painted the crater in angry red lines. All of them radiating from an obelisk far below.
"We need to go in. I need to get closer to the base of the obelisk."
Kellen opened the Codex. Fingers finding the familiar page.
The book pulsed. Warm. Insistent. The pages glowed violet, resonating with the failing Anchor below.
The crater screamed.
It wasn't a sound. It was a tear in the fabric of the night. Reality splitting at the seams with a noise that Kellen felt in his teeth. The Codex had triggered something, some threshold, some response from the unstable Veil.
The sky shifted from black to a bruised, bleeding purple. The ghost-moon vanished replaced by a pale lavender disc that hurt to look at. The world lurched stomach-churning as the Veil Pocket fully manifested around them.
[DUNGEON ENTERED: FRACTURED ANCHOR]
What remained of the old bunker jutted from the crater walls—stone stairs carved centuries ago, now twisted by crystalline growths that sprouted from every crack and seam. The steps descended in a spiral, following what must have been an old mining shaft. Support beams, long rotted away, had been replaced by pillars of violet crystal that pulsed with the same rhythm as the failing Anchor below.
Someone had built this place. Excavated the tunnels. Protected the obelisk in a fortified underground complex.
Then abandoned it.
The destabilizing Anchor had ripped it all apart from the inside out, tearing the earth open and exposing what was meant to stay buried.
"This was a garrison," Torian said quietly, pointing to rusted iron brackets still embedded in the stone. "Ancient, possibly before Kelidor was established."
"Lot of good it did," Kellen muttered.
"They protected against external threats." Torian's voice went grim. "Not the Anchor itself failing."
Kellen tested the first step. The stone held, but the crystal formations made every footfall treacherous—razor-sharp edges jutting at odd angles, slick surfaces that seemed to shift when he wasn't looking directly at them.
"Careful," Torian warned. "The structure's unstable."
"Everything about this is unstable."
They descended.
Kellen stopped at the bottom step while his brain struggled to process what he was seeing. A garden. Crystal trees rising in geometric perfection. Trunks splitting at right angles that nature would never allow. Leaves catching the violet light and scattering it into rainbows that had no business being that beautiful.
It should have been gorgeous. Instead it made his skin crawl.
Nothing moved. No wind. No sound. Just dead beauty frozen in mathematical precision.
"Movement," Torian hissed.
A clicking sound drifted from the nearest tree. Then another. Then a hundred.
The canopy came alive.
"Watch out!" Kellen shouted.
Torian's tower shield snapped up just as the first spider dropped. Massive. Crouched low like a gargoyle. Its body faceted like a diamond with legs comprised of translucent crystal blades. It hit the shield with the sound of shattering glass.
Then the rest of the swarm descended.
Kellen dove left. Rolling under a crystal root. His shoulder screamed protest. The Codex fell open in his hands.
Crystal carapace. High physical defense. Sharp but...
He watched the nearest spider pause. Its faceted head tracked the movement of a stray beam of light. The violet glow reflected off its eyes scattering in a thousand directions.
Refractive. They're living prisms.
"Torian! Shield your eyes!"
Kellen flipped pages searching. He needed something bright. Something fast.
"Summon: Glimmerling!"
The construct materialized in a burst of sparks. A hummingbird-moth made of pure photons.
MANA: 100/120 (-20)
"Dazzle!"
Flash.
The Glimmerling's wings flared, blinding white.
"Dismiss!"
Mana refunded: 6 MP
MANA: 106/120
"Summon!"
The creature vanished and reappeared instantly. Quick Summon working overtime.
MANA: 86/120 (-20)
"Dazzle! Dismiss! Summon!"
Mana refunded: 6 MP
MANA: 72/120 (-20)
Flash. Flash. Flash.
Kellen's hands moved on autopilot, cycling the summon as fast as his passive would allow. Summon. Dazzle. Dismiss. Repeat. Each cycle cost fourteen mana net—twenty to summon, six back on dismiss. He was burning through his reserves, but the effect was worth it.
The crystal spiders screeched.
The light hit their faceted bodies and bounced internally. Trapped inside the crystal structure. Each spider turned into a glowing, blinding strobe-light of violet and gold. Their own bodies betraying them.
Kellen didn't stop. He kept cycling. Summon-dazzle-dismiss. Summon-dazzle-dismiss. Over and over, hands moving on autopilot, turning his Glimmerling into a living strobe light. Each flash cost him fourteen mana. Each flash drove the spiders deeper into sensory overload.
Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash.
His vision swam. His mana reserves scraped bottom. Not enough for another cycle. He dismissed the Glimmerling one final time.
Mana refunded: 6 MP
MANA: 8/120
A migraine slammed into him like a freight train. Sharp. Hot. The kind of pain that made his eyes water and his vision blur at the edges. Rapid summon cycling had consequences.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
Sensory overload.
The spiders thrashed. Blinded by their own armor. Disoriented. Helpless.
"Now! Smash them while they can't see!"
Torian didn't hesitate. He became a whirl of steel and gold. Shield bash followed by hammer swing. Every strike found a target left helpless by the blinding light. The disoriented spiders couldn't defend. Couldn't coordinate. Couldn't do anything but flail uselessly.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
The swarm broke. One by one. They fell apart in showers of crystal shards.
The last spider hit the ground with a final crystalline shriek.
His UI pinged.
[COMBAT COMPLETE]
+420 XP
LEVEL UP! 1 → 2
Kellen swiped the notification away without reading it. He didn't have time for attribute allocation. Not with the Anchor failing.
He'd figure out his build later. If there was a later.
"Internal refraction," Kellen said panting. "Their armor traps light. Flicking that light on and off disoriented them."
"Effective," Torian said wiping diamond dust from his pauldron.
Kellen pushed off the tree and knelt beside the most intact carcass. Running his fingers over the faceted surface. The carapace was cool to the touch. Almost glassy. He could feel the residual mana thrumming inside. Faint but...
The spider moved.
Not much. Just a twitch of one crystalline leg. But enough.
"Shit!" Kellen scrambled backward, boots slipping on crystal shards.
The spider's body shifted. Pulled itself upright on trembling legs. Three of its eight limbs were shattered stumps. Its faceted body was cracked like dropped glass. One segment barely hanging on.
[PRISM SPIDER - LVL 4]
VITALS: CRITICAL (8/120 HP)
It took one wobbling step toward him.
"Torian!"
The Paladin spun, hammer raised.
"Wait!" Kellen threw up a hand. "Don't kill it!"
Torian stopped and held a defensive stance.
"It can barely walk!" Kellen circled right. The spider tracked him with what remained of its clustered eyes. "Keep it from escaping!"
Torian moved left, shield up, cutting off the spider's escape. The creature turned, confused, injured, trying to track both threats at once.
It clicked once. A weak, broken sound.
Then it lunged.
Not at Kellen. At the gap between them. A desperate scramble for freedom.
Torian's shield slammed down, blocking its path. The spider bounced off, legs skittering.
Kellen didn't hesitate. He threw open the Codex and slapped his palm to the page.
Bind!
Violet light erupted from the book, wrapping around the spider like glowing chains. The creature thrashed, but it was too weak. Too broken. The light sank into its cracked carapace, silver threads weaving through the fractures.
The spider went still.
[NEW SUMMON ACQUIRED: PRISM SPIDER]
Rank: Rare (Tier 2) | Cost: 40 MP
Ability Unlocked: Refraction Web
The entry appeared on a fresh page complete with rotating wireframe diagram.
[PRISM SPIDER]
Rank: Rare (Tier 2)
Type: Construct / Defensive
Mana Cost: 40 (Summon) / 5 Stamina per second
Primary Ability: Refraction Web—Creates a crystalline barrier that absorbs incoming magical attacks and stores them for redirection.
Passive: Crystal Armor, reduces physical damage by 25%.
Kellen grinned. A mobile shield that could catch spells and throw them back? That could be fun.
He turned to the other five piles of shattered crystal.
"Banish. Banish. Banish."
Each banishment released a cloud of white sparks that rushed into his chest filling the hollow ache of the mana drain. The sensation was like drinking cold water after a desert march. Relief tinged with the knowledge that it wouldn't last.
[MANA RESTORED: +50] (58/120)
Kellen's migraine had faded to a dull throb. The mana felt good. Too good. Like the sugar rush before the crash.
He stood, dusting crystal shards from his knees. Torian was examining the wreckage, prodding a shattered carapace with his boot.
"These weren't random," the Paladin said. "They were guarding something."
"The Anchor," Kellen said. "Has to be."
"Maybe," Torian said. "Spiders don't organize themselves into ambush patterns. Not without direction."
Kellen hadn't thought of that. "You think there's something worse down there?"
"Always is." Torian adjusted his grip on his warhammer.
"Great. So we just fought the welcoming committee."
Kellen checked his mana. 58 out of 120. Not great. Not terrible. He had the Prism Spider now, at least. And if Torian was right...
"We need to move," Kellen said. "Before whatever's in charge sends reinforcements."
"Agreed." Torian started walking toward the deeper violet glow. "But carefully."
Kellen followed.
The violet glow ahead pulsed brighter. Deeper. Whatever was down there, it wouldn't be friendly.
The question was whether they could handle it.