The ground beneath the cave floor groaned, a deep, tectonic grinding that vibrated through the soles of my boots.

  Captain Vane drew her sword, her eyes darting to the ceiling where dust was beginning to rain down. "The structural integrity is failing. Kaelen, we need to brace the roof!"

  I didn't reach for a support beam. I reached into my belt pouch.

  My fingers closed around the smooth, dark stone the Game Master had given me long ago. For weeks, it had been silent—just a cold weight in my pocket. But now, it was warm. It buzzed against my palm with a rhythmic, urgent pulse.

  I pulled it out. The faint rune carved into the surface was glowing with a soft, steady white light.

  I held the stone to my ear, ignoring the panicked shouts of the soldiers around me.

  "Talk to me," I said, my voice calm.

  The voice that answered wasn't loud, but it cut through the rumble of the collapsing mountain like a knife. It was a man’s voice—calm, slightly amused, and infuriatingly cryptic.

  "Good morning, Kaelen," the Game Master said. "I trust the landslide was to your liking? A bit dramatic, but effective."

  "We're trapped," I said flatly. "You sealed us in."

  "I placed you in the waiting room," the Game Master corrected. "But you’ve outgrown the lobby. It’s time for the orientation. Please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times."

  "What vehicle?"

  "The floor," the Game Master replied. "Going down."

  The stone buzzed violently once.

  I looked at Faelar and the others. "Drop!"

  CRACK.

  The floor of the cave didn't just break; it vanished. The entire rear section of the cavern, a slab of rock fifty feet wide, sheared away from the walls and plummeted into the darkness below.

  Captain Vane screamed as the ground fell away beneath her. Soldiers flailed in the air, debris tumbling around them.

  I didn't scream. As the wind rushed past my ears, I felt that strange new instinct take over again. Time seemed to slow down. I saw a falling rock the size of an anvil drifting toward Willow. Without thinking, I reached out in mid-air, grabbed the rock, and tossed it aside like a pillow.

  We fell for three seconds. Fifty feet. Sixty.

  BOOM.

  We hit the bottom.

  In any other circumstance, a sixty-foot drop onto stone tiles would have resulted in shattered legs and snapped spines.

  Vane hit the ground with a sickening crunch of armor, rolling instinctively to absorb the impact, but she still ended up sprawling in the dust, gasping for air, her wind knocked out.

  I landed in a crouch.

  My boots hit the ancient stone floor. I didn't feel a shock. I didn't feel pain. My knees bent slightly, absorbing the kinetic energy of the fall as easily as if I had stepped off a curb.

  Next to me, Faelar landed flat on his back. The dwarf bounced. Literally bounced. He sat up, checking his flask, completely unbothered.

  "Smooth landing," Faelar grunted, dusting off his beard.

  Liam landed silently, his feet making no sound at all, settling into a shadow near a pillar.

  "Is everyone alive?" I called out, my voice echoing in the vast space.

  "My ankle..." Vane wheezed, pushing herself up on her sword. She looked at me, her eyes wide with shock. "How... how are you standing? We just fell six stories."

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Good knees," I lied. I lifted the stone to my ear again. "We're down. What is this place?"

  I looked around.

  We weren't in a natural cave anymore. We were in a massive, rectangular hall built of seamless gray stone. It looked ancient, but remarkably preserved. As we stood there, blue flames roared to life in iron sconces along the walls, illuminating the space in sequence—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—all the way to the far end.

  It looked... artificial. The floor was too flat. The pillars were spaced with perfect mathematical symmetry. It didn't look like a ruin; it looked like a stage.

  "Welcome to the Sunken Temple," the Game Master’s voice crackled through the stone. "Threat Level: Minimal. Objective: Re-calibration. You’ve been driving a cart, Kaelen. Now you’re driving a war-chariot. You need to learn the handling before you go back on the highway."

  "We need food," I said, ignoring the metaphor. "We have forty wounded men and no rations."

  "Look at the pillars," the voice suggested. "And trust the dwarf."

  The connection cut with a soft click.

  "Faelar," I said, turning to the dwarf. "Check the pillars."

  Faelar waddled over to one of the massive stone columns. It was coated in a thick, vibrant blue moss that pulsed with a faint bioluminescence.

  "Don't touch that!" Vane warned, limping forward. "Blue moss in deep caves is usually neurotoxic. It causes paralysis."

  Faelar sniffed it. Then he licked it.

  "Hmmm," Faelar mused, his eyes unfocusing for a second. "Notes of thyme... a hint of beef tallow... and a robust earthy finish."

  He pulled a dagger and started scraping the moss into his helmet.

  "It’s dinner, lads!" Faelar shouted. "Get a fire going! This stuff cooks down into a stew that’ll put hair on your chest and strength in your sword arm!"

  "He’s going to kill us," Vane whispered to me.

  "Trust him," I said, though I watched the dwarf closely.

  Ten minutes later, the smell of roasting meat filled the hall. It was impossible—it was just moss and water from Faelar’s flask—but the resulting thick blue stew smelled like a royal banquet. I took a bowl, ate a spoonful, and felt a rush of stamina flood my system so potent it almost made me dizzy.

  "Eat," I ordered the soldiers. "It’s safe."

  As the men ate, color returning to their pale faces, a grinding sound echoed from the far end of the hall.

  A section of the wall slid open.

  "Contact!" Liam hissed from the shadows.

  Out of the darkness rattled a squad of ten skeletons. They were ancient, their bones yellowed and brittle, carrying rusted iron swords and rot-eaten wooden shields. They moved with a jerky, unnatural gait, their jaws clacking.

  "Undead!" Vane shouted, dropping her bowl and drawing her sword. "Shield wall! Protect the wounded!"

  The trauma of the Juggernaut was still fresh. The Misfits reacted not to the threat in front of us, but to the memory of the Void Army. We reacted with maximum violence.

  "Faelar! Front!" I roared, snapping into a combat stance.

  "Aye!" Faelar bellowed.

  The dwarf didn't just charge; he exploded forward. He raised his warhammer, roaring a battle cry that shook dust from the ceiling. He treated the lead skeleton like it was a heavily armored Void Knight. He put his hips, his back, and his entire new strength score into the swing.

  "HAVE AT YOU!"

  CRACK-BOOM.

  The hammer connected with the lead skeleton.

  It didn't just break the bones. The force of the impact was so excessive that the skeleton instantly disintegrated into white powder. The air pressure from the swing created a shockwave that blasted the three skeletons behind it into jagged fragments.

  The hammer continued its arc, missed the target because the target was now dust, and slammed into the stone floor.

  The floor exploded. A crater three feet wide erupted, sending stone shrapnel flying like grenades. The remaining six skeletons were knocked off their feet by the tremor and shattered when they hit the ground.

  Silence fell over the hall.

  The dust settled.

  Faelar stood in the center of the crater, breathing heavy, his hammer buried to the haft in solid rock. There were no enemies left. Just piles of bone dust and a very large hole in the floor.

  "By the ancestors..." Faelar whispered, trying to pull his hammer free. It was stuck. "I... I barely touched him."

  "Barely touched him?" Vane stared at the crater. "You dropped a meteor on him, Faelar! You destroyed the floor!"

  Liam walked out of the shadows. He picked up one of the rusted swords from the bone pile. He snapped the blade in half with two fingers.

  "They were weak," Liam said, looking at the broken metal. "Brittle. Like paper."

  "No," I said, looking at my own hands. I remembered the feeling of the rock I had thrown earlier. "They weren't weak. We’re just... heavy."

  The stone on my belt buzzed again. I lifted it.

  "Combat simulation complete," the Game Master said, sounding like he was holding back laughter. "A bit excessive on the follow-through, Faelar, but effective. Experience awarded."

  "What experience?" I demanded. "That wasn't a fight. That was a massacre."

  "It was a calibration test," the Game Master replied. "You’re running hot, Kaelen. Your team is terrified of everything because you’re used to being the underdog. You need to realize that in this hole... you are the monsters."

  A heavy iron door at the far end of the hall clicked and swung open, revealing a dark corridor leading deeper into the complex.

  "Proceed to the Puzzle Room," the Game Master ordered. "And try not to break the architecture. I’m renting this place."

  I clipped the stone back to my belt. I looked at Vane, who was staring at Faelar like he was a siege engine in the shape of a dwarf.

  "Vane," I said. "Keep your men in the rear. Let us handle the heavy lifting."

  "I don't think I could stop you if I wanted to," Vane muttered.

  I hefted my spear. It felt like a toothpick in my hand. I looked into the dark corridor.

  "Let's go," I said. "Let's see what else we can break."