Five years had passed since the Charleston War—a battle so sudden and lopsided that the world hadn’t yet figured out how to rationalize it. Elmore's once-quiet valley, hidden in the heart of the Appalachians like some ancient jewel forgotten by time, had since transformed into something staggering. The place that once held modest wooden cabins and stone hearths had become an ascending marvel—an ever-expanding chiefdom bursting with ingenuity, wealth, and quiet power.

  Where there had once been forest and farmland, now rose towers of mithril and stone, gleaming in pale cyan beneath the midday sun. Some reached as high as seven stories, climbing above the tree line with proud, glinting ambition. These weren’t sleek, soulless monoliths, but crafted things—etched with art, reinforced by Aither-reactive metals, adorned with windows that shifted tint to adjust to daylight, and crowned with small, whispering gardens.

  Others tunneled into the mountains themselves—entire families now carving homes straight into cliff faces, complete with balconies looking down over the valley like eyries of forgotten gods. Even more citizens had taken to the depths. Below the surface, the town expanded like roots beneath a tree—vast levels bored through stone with care and artistry, layered with glowing mosses and clever crystal lighting that mimicked the cycles of day and night. The underground neighborhoods—known as the Hollows—had their own plazas, markets, forges, and fields of fungus and hydroponics, all under vaulted ceilings patterned like ancient cathedrals. It was beautiful, eerie, and alive.

  Their feats of engineering, war, and raw will had become legend. Tales of the valley’s rise had spread like wildfire across the fractured country, igniting every bar rumor mill, every livestream conspiracy forum, every politician's whispered strategy meeting. The stories became too big to ignore, yet too strange to believe. A small, isolated community had defeated a major city’s elite force and carved itself into a regional power almost overnight.

  The debates flared white-hot at first. Some called it propaganda. Others, divine intervention. Still more accused Elmore of using forbidden magic, ancient tech, or otherworldly pacts. But after a while, the world simply… got used to it. The disbelief faded into apathy. The accusations turned into memes. In the dark, though, fascination festered. What the people didn’t know, they invented. Rumors became modern folklore. Was Elmore an alien? Was the valley a closed experiment? Did they find a pre-Collapse cache of divine tech? Or worse—were they building something?

  People from all walks of life grew curious. Engineers. Survivalists. Journalists. Outcasts. Nobility. Each of them drawn by that intoxicating blend of mystery and proof. The images didn’t lie: the valley shimmered with Aither-infused life. To the outside world, it shouldn’t have been possible. And yet, here it was—verdant, armored, and very real.

  But perhaps no one hated this reality more than the Adventurer’s Guild.

  The Guild had spread like dandelions across the continent, planting outposts in every major city, promising power, protection, and structure for this new, chaotic age. They had built their reputation on open access and cooperative strength. But here, in this hidden valley, stood the first dungeon ever discovered—the Dungeon of the Ancients. And it belonged entirely to Elmore’s people.

  The Guild had been denied access from the very beginning. Not a single deal, not a single exception. Their offers—covert and overt—had all been rejected. Gold, artifacts, reinforcements, alliances—nothing moved the needle. Not even threats. Not even sending high-ranking Adventurers to “negotiate” with weapons in hand. They had been turned back, again and again, humiliated by the Area Boss and outmaneuvered by Elmore's ever-watchful people.

  To the Guild’s leadership, it was a wound that festered. An insult. A heresy against their vision of a new unified frontier. They accused Elmore of hoarding power, of setting a dangerous precedent. But to the valley, it was simple: you don’t let strangers into your soul, and the Dungeon was the valley’s soul.

  Matters only worsened when the valley stopped hiding what it had. Images leaked online—mithril blades that shimmered like moonlight, armor that weighed nothing and could stop a rail spike, tools that resonated with harmonic frequencies to manipulate Aither directly. None of it was for sale. Not a single ounce of mithril had left the valley. Elmore had made that decision personally—and publicly. Offers in the billions were refused with calm, cold finality.

  And then there was Ash.

  Elmore’s wife had always been a radiant force, but with Silver Tongue and Matriarch behind her words, she became something of a living legend. Graceful, intelligent, powerful in presence, Ash drew eyes like moths to flame. On social media, she emerged as the valley’s unofficial face. Her videos—simple moments from daily life—captivated millions. A sparkling stream running beside a mithril fence. Her son Edward in a sunlit field of glowing moss. An aerial view from a cliffside home as a flock of shimmerbirds soared past.

  Sometimes—rarely—she would post short clips of dungeon delves. Just flashes. A moss-lit cavern. A crystal insect titan walking in the distance. Elmore laughing as he fired his old shotgun at something offscreen. These clips fueled obsession. Rather than discouraging people, they drove demand. Thousands wanted in. hundreds of thousands wanted to know more. But no one got what they truly wanted.

  Still, they came.

  The valley became a beacon. Scholars, adventurers, journalists, mystics—all flooding toward the gate. Most were turned away gently but firmly by Elmore’s guards. Some made it to the lake. Fewer still approached the dungeon entrance itself.

  What Elmore had meant to be a deterrent had become a challenge. The age of the dungeon gold rush had begun.

  To accommodate this relentless tide of humanity, Elmore’s people built not just outward, but inward. The vertical city rose above, yes—but beneath the valley, cities bloomed like veins of light. Massive subterranean levels, structured like layered ant colonies, stretched out under the mountains. The engineering was breathtaking—walls of reinforced stone and shaped Aither alloy, air cycling systems powered by geothermal vents, water sourced from redirected underground rivers.

  In these underground spaces, entire districts sprang up: foundries hammering out new tools, labs unlocking secrets of Aither harmonics, schools teaching everything from blacksmithing to ancient lore to post-Aither biology. Newcomers with talent were folded in quickly, given homes and tasks and belonging. The pace of progress outstripped the outside world at a staggering rate.

  And it fed itself.

  More talent meant more innovation. More innovation meant more output. More output meant stronger defense, stronger industry, stronger knowledge. It was a feedback loop—a whirlwind of advancement that no outside force could slow.

  The world no longer scoffed. Now it watched. And waited. Because no one knew what Elmore’s valley was becoming—but everyone knew it wasn’t done yet.

  Progress in Aither research, however, had stalled.

  It had begun subtly—first as a delay in breakthroughs, then as outright plateaus. The scholars of the valley, brilliant as they were, could only refine what was already known. No new skills were manifesting. No rare materials beyond mithril had been unearthed. Every experiment that attempted to fuse Aither into new forms collapsed in a haze of wasted mana and frustration. tasks became repetitive, and the once-bursting magic workshops grew quieter, humming instead with maintenance rather than discovery.

  The frustration was palpable. For all their manufacturing prowess, all their ingenuity and vision, it seemed as if the town had run full-speed into an invisible wall.

  Unbeknownst to most of the town’s residents, this stagnation was not the result of lacking talent or effort—but of Elmore himself.

  He hadn’t made an announcement. There was no decree, no meeting of minds or council. It was a quiet, internal decision—one rooted in his deeply personal desire to live a slower life for once, to savor the time with his wife and his son, now a boy of twelve whose bright eyes mirrored Elmore’s own. He cooked every day, fished when he could, and walked the streets of his town like any other man. He spoke plainly to the miners, helped hoist lumber, and refused every petition to call him “King” that came from foreign mouths.

  And so, Elmore had stopped leveling.

  He did not enter the dungeon in earnest, and though he trained and sparred, he never once activated the full potential of [Aither Memory] or called upon Aither. In doing so, he allowed his companions to grow beside him. Brent, in particular—loyal, driven, stubborn Brent—now almost matched Elmore’s level. Ten of the valley’s strongest had all reached level 5. They were no longer just his students or his lieutenants. They were champions in their own right.

  Together, they had attempted to challenge the limit that bound them.

  The Shadow Guardian—an ever-standing sentinel deep within the first stratum of the Dungeon of the Ancients—became their singular obsession. They tried every combination of attacks and formations, exhausted every known tactic. Its armor of glimmering obsidian refused to crack, its violet eyes unflinching in the face of even Brent’s berserker fury. The creature fought with cold precision, as if executing a script written in another language. And worse yet—it refused to kill.

  No matter how brutal the fight, the guardian never dealt a finishing blow. It would incapacitate, disable, and then step back into its circle of flame and silence, waiting.

  To Elmore, it was familiar. Almost unnervingly so.

  When he had first entered the dungeon years ago, it had let him pass after a single moment of hesitation. A trial by presence alone. And then… nothing. No violence. No demand. No battle. It simply moved, and allowed him forward.

  And so it remained—a maddening fixture in their journey. A wall they could see but not climb.

  The second stratum loomed beyond it, a great chasm of mystery. Even Elmore didn’t know what lay past that obsidian gate. Its edges glowed faintly with blue flame, and a pressure hung around it like a warning whisper. Despite everything, Elmore had grown comfortable in waiting. They had built something worth preserving. His people were happy. His son was safe. The hunger to push forward dulled beneath the weight of what they already had.

  Until something changed.

  It was a cold, windless night. The kind of mountain stillness where every sound carried and every silence felt deliberate. Elmore had taken to walking the valley’s border during nights like this—no guard, no armor, just the rhythm of his boots and the night insects singing around him.

  But this night was different.

  He felt it in his spine first—a whisper of pressure in the Aither, something brushing up against the thread that tied him to the world. It felt like being watched, not by a person, but by the very system that governed the world. His Aither Nexus shimmered in the corner of his vision, unprompted, and he turned his gaze toward the lake.

  The guardian was gone.

  The lake’s surface—normally churning, even in its idle state—was mirror-smooth. The moon reflected cleanly, whole and uninterrupted, across the water. Not even the frogs dared to speak. Elmore’s heart thudded low and slow in his chest.

  Then he saw it.

  The cavern mouth of the dungeon glowed faintly, as if exhaling light from its throat. The familiar torches burned with new colors—amber and indigo, dancing like sentient flame. The moss at the entrance glimmered as if rain had kissed it, though no rain had fallen. A hum filled the air. Subtle. Reverent.

  His Nexus pulsed.

  A string of foreign characters flickered for a moment—glitched, ancient text not seen before—then resolved themselves into clear Aither script:

  “The Way Forward Has Opened.”

  Elmore stood still. The kind of stillness a man takes when he hears the voice of the world in a whisper. Not fear. Not even awe. But purpose.

  He didn’t turn back for supplies. He didn’t wake the others. He stepped forward, hand brushing the hilt of his axe, his feet finding the old familiar path toward the dark heart of the dungeon.

  It was time.

  The heat struck him first—dense, suffocating, and unrelenting. It slammed into Elmore like a living wall the instant he passed through the shadow of the obsidian arch past the guardians trial. One breath pulled searing air into his lungs, like inhaling through a forge pipe. Sweat bloomed across his back and brow in seconds, soaking into the collar of his shirt. The soles of his battle-leather moccasins mithril plated began to steam where they met the cracked stone beneath him, and every inch of his skin prickled with warning.

  This wasn’t just heat. This was pressure.

  This was the presence of a place that was not meant for men.

  He took a cautious step forward, shielding his eyes with one forearm. The world revealed itself slowly, like some slumbering monster yawning open its maw.

  The cavern he had entered was not like the bioluminescent tunnels above. Gone were the soft glows of mushroom light and glistening stalactites. Here, the stone was charred and striated with glowing lines—veins of magma and burning minerals like the arteries of some buried god. The stench hit him next—acrid, sulfurous, and metallic, like burning blood and rot. There was something else too, something wrong. A sweetness beneath it, the sickly smell of overripe fruit—or decaying meat just on the edge of the heat’s mercy.

  Elmore staggered slightly, blinking hard as his eyes adjusted. The haze was thick and clinging, a mist not of moisture, but of condensed particulate and noxious vapor.

  As the veil of smoke lifted before him, the second stratum unfurled like a fever dream.

  Volcanic peaks reared in the distance, jagged and coiled like the spines of serpents. They spewed glowing ash high into the sky, clouds of cinder trailing upward into a warped, alien sky. Those clouds… they churned with unnatural colors. Not just gray or black, but ink-dark purple streaked with veins of blood-red lightning, their bellies aglow with a deep, internal ember. Amidst the maelstrom, enormous red and violet crystal spires tore through the cloud cover like ruptured bone. They jutted downward, inward, as if some tremendous celestial being had been impaled from above, bleeding color and chaos into the very firmament.

  Then he saw movement.

  Colossal silhouettes drifted behind the storm, visible only in the brief, blinding flashes of lightning—massive, slow-moving forms that resembled titans walking through clouds. One had wings. Another had far too many limbs. Their shapes were maddeningly indistinct, and Elmore couldn’t tell how truly massive they where. Either way, the scale was terrifying.

  The ground beneath him hissed and cracked, paved with twisted, obsidian glass and lava-cooled rock veined with fire. Rivers of molten stone coiled through the valleys like veins of molten gold, and strange stones—crystalline and geometric—floated lazily above the heat, tethered to the ground by thin cords of energy like marionettes made of gemstone.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  But the flora—that was what made Elmore pause.

  The plants here were monstrous.

  Towering stalks of lavender, thick as telephone poles, bent and swayed in the shimmering heat. Their blossoms glowed faintly from within, pulsing like lungs. The color was wrong—too vivid, almost electric. What should have been soft pastels were now neon, radioactive hues that danced painfully against his eyes. Rose bushes bloomed like ancient trees, their trunks gnarled and bark-covered, their petals thick and sharp as metal shavings. Some opened and closed rhythmically, as if breathing.

  Even the lava lakes weren’t spared the madness.

  Around one of them, just a stone’s throw from where he stood, stood a grove of titanic pitcher plants—one of them, a glistening blue vessel the size of a two-story house. It shimmered with unnatural polish, its interior lined with pulsing membranes and acidic mist. Elmore stared at it, entranced by the alien beauty of it.

  Then the lake exploded.

  With a deafening roar, a geyser of molten rock erupted skyward, followed by a monstrous creature. Its body broke the surface in a flash of black and crimson—long, scaled, and jagged like a living obsidian blade. It moved too fast for its size, a predator born from heat and hunger. Its jaws—lined with rows of saw-like teeth—snapped shut around the massive pitcher plant, devouring it in a single, echoing crunch.

  Then, just as quickly, it was gone.

  The lava closed behind it with a hiss, as if it had never been there.

  Elmore’s heart thundered. The air vibrated with leftover tension, and the smell of scorched chlorophyll clung to the wind. He stood frozen, not from fear, but awe. His mind worked furiously to catalog what he’d just seen.

  A beast. A leviathan. It had looked like a Mosasaur, yes—but stretched, warped by Aither and whatever else dwelled in this depth. Its body was not of flesh, but a lattice of heat-hardened bone and jagged scale, black as tar with glints of magma under its hide. Its eyes—briefly visible—had been not eyes at all, but hollow pits that glowed with inner fire.

  This wasn’t a place meant to be explored.

  It was a place meant to be survived.

  Elmore exhaled slowly, letting the Aither flow into him as his nerves settled.

  The second stratum had opened.

  And it was alive.

  Elmore’s gaze drifted to the horizon, his breath catching in his throat as the mist parted just enough for him to see the vast silhouettes beyond.

  Towering necks rose and swayed above a sea of massive, fire-colored poppies—flowers taller than the tallest trees he’d ever known, petals the size of windmill blades.

  Their stalks bent and rippled under the weight of a slow breeze, glowing faintly with bioluminescence that painted the landscape in shades of molten gold and blood-orange. Above them, heads like living mountains craned and turned, each the size of a small cabin, eyes blinking lazily as if in deep thought, or ancient memory. He watched as one of the creatures leaned down to nibble idly at the petals of a giant poppy, its motion ponderous and deliberate, as if time itself moved slower for it.

  He was certain now—these were dinosaurs, or something very much like them, but evolved beyond any fossil he’d ever studied in a book.Not extinct, not imagined—reborn.Brought to life somehow in this buried underworld where Aither bent reality and rewrote the rules.They moved with eerie grace, as though they weren’t bound by muscle and bone, but by something more—some invisible current of ancient will that made them feel more like demigods than animals.They passed through the fields of flowers with total indifference to the rising ash, the ever-rumbling earth, and the great volcanic pillars spewing fire into the sky like titans breathing smoke.

  Elmore stood still, one hand gripping the obsidian lip of the cliff, the other resting lightly near his belt, eyes unblinking.The scale of what he was seeing, the sheer biological audacity of it all, struck him with a reverent sort of terror.Here, in this cavern too wide to map with the naked eye, he’d stumbled into something primeval—older than man, older than myth. It felt wrong to look at them, like he was glimpsing something the world had long since buried.And yet he couldn’t look away.

  This place wasn’t just a dungeon or a cave.It was a crucible, a dark cathedral to the gods of evolution—those that had not stopped crafting, had not slowed their work. Everything here was bigger, meaner, more alive than anything aboveground. A realm where only the strongest, the most ruthless, the most perfect could exist for long.

  As he continued watching the beasts vanish deeper into the jungle of alien flora, the weight of his situation began to crawl up his spine.He swallowed hard, his throat dry because of the humidity, his mind parsing through every instinct screaming for him to turn back. This was not his domain—this was nature unleashed, survival stripped of kindness, forged in the forge of millennia. He wasn’t built for this. Not really. And yet…

  Beneath the fear—beneath the part of him that wanted to pack up, back out, and seal the dungeon shut forever—was something else. It started in his stomach, a tight, electric twist, and spread through his chest like sparks caught in dry grass. Excitement.

  It was the unknown. The real unknown. The next level. The next trial. This was the kind of madness he was made for, the kind of place the Aither whispered about in his dreams. Not just another adventure, but a proving ground—one he’d walk through not as a hopeful, but as a chief.

  He exhaled slowly, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in a grim, wolfish grin. And that’s when he thought of her. Not Ash. Not Edward. But his other love—his old steel warhorse, parked in the cool dark near the cavern’s entry: the Beast.

  He pictured it clearly in his mind, even with the oppressive heat and sulfur in his lungs—the black Ford F-100, moonlight glinting off its mithril-plated frame, still and waiting like a crouched predator. The cab was crammed with supplies, hand-forged tools, jerry-rigged components, boxes of ammo, and more than one surprise. It was more than a vehicle—it was a statement. A challenge hurled in the face of nature.

  His father had built it from the bones of a truck and the guts of a myth, reforging the whole machine for one singular purpose: survival through impossible odds. Every inch of her had been armored with inch-and-a-half-thick mithril plating, dense and shimmering in the right light like star-forged steel. Even the tubes in the engine had been replaced with mithril coils, resistant to heat, acid, pressure—immune to time itself. Aither crystals fused into the joints and wheel wells, their pulse faint but steady, waiting to surge with raw energy.

  The tires were a masterpiece all their own—treaded with rubber made from insect parts, reinforced with crystal powder and woven mithril wire. Each tire could spin through fire, cling to ice, or drive straight up a wall if the terrain allowed. There wasn’t a surface on this continent they couldn’t tear across. And down here? They would hold.

  That truck—his truck—was a juggernaut. Not a machine of convenience, but of war. Of conquest.

  And it belonged down here, just as much as he did.

  He recalled the tunnels he had descended through—each one vast, arched with eerie precision, as if built for monsters and machines alike. There hadn’t been a single obstruction too narrow, a turn too sharp. The deeper he went, the more he’d felt it: the design, the intent.

  This place wanted something like the Beast.

  As if the world had shaped itself in anticipation of its arrival.

  His pulse quickened. He could feel it now—every heartbeat a drum, every breath a step closer to something magnificent. To face these monsters with more than a blade and a clever plan? To ride into this world not as prey but as an equal? No, as a force? That idea—that possibility—lit something deep inside him.

  He didn’t just want to explore this wilderness. He wanted to roar through it. To leave tracks in the ash and let the world know he’d been there.

  Because that’s what he and his people did. They didn’t hide from the wild. They made the wild kneel.

  But even as his mind spun through the future, his hands clenched tighter around his belt. There was still much to prepare. Still a canyon of danger he hadn’t yet begun to understand.

  The Beast was mighty. But this world was lethal. And the rules down here were older than fire, older than language.

  He’d need to be ready. Because in this crucible—only the prepared, the mad, or the divine would survive.

  Elmore pushed his way back up the winding tunnels, muscles burning with effort, boots scraping against damp stone, his mind racing with plans for what lay ahead. The flickering bioluminescent glow that had lit the way down gave way to the growing silver glow of moonlight as he neared the surface. When he finally emerged into the open air, it hit him like a balm. The cool night wind swept over him, brushing sweat from his brow and chasing the heat of the subterranean world from his skin. The sharp scent of pine needles, damp leaves, and rich Appalachian soil filled his lungs—such a stark contrast to the sulfur and scorched rock of the volcanic cavern below that it made him stop for a moment just to breathe it all in. Above him, the sky was still cloaked in night, though the full moon had dipped low in the sky, casting long, slanted shadows across the land. The air was damp with dew and still, hushed in that sacred way only the deep hours before dawn could be.

  And there, beside the familiar shape of The Beast, stood Brent. He was leaning against his own truck, arms crossed over his chest, his silhouette etched sharp by the moonlight. His posture was casual, but his face was unreadable—still and calm like the surface of a mountain lake, betraying none of the thoughts surely swirling behind those eyes. It was clear he’d been waiting a while.

  Elmore’s voice cut across the quiet. “What are you doing here, Brent?”

  Brent looked up, the corners of his mouth turning upward in a faint, unreadable smile. He stepped away from his truck, boots crunching against gravel and dry leaves, and answered with a calmness that made Elmore’s stomach tighten. “I’m here to fight the Shadow Guardian.”

  There was no hesitation in his tone, no bluff or bravado—just quiet resolve, the kind of certainty that comes when you’ve already made peace with whatever’s coming next. Elmore raised an eyebrow, his face tightening with concern, suspicion flickering beneath the surface of his surprise. “Alone?” he asked, crossing his arms. “How do you plan to beat it?”

  Brent’s grin widened, and the faint glint in his eye reflected something wild. “Oh, I’ve got a plan,” he said simply. Then, without another word, he began to transform.

  It was like watching lightning condense into flesh. Elmore stood still, mouth half open, as Brent’s body surged upward. His frame swelled with muscle, arms thickening and elongating, shoulders pulling back with a loud crack of bone and sinew. Fur, dark as a midnight storm, burst from his skin, growing thick and glossy, shimmering faintly under the moonlight like ink across water. His jaw lengthened, pulling forward into a lupine muzzle filled with rows of glinting teeth that looked ready to rip through anything in his path. A long tail uncoiled behind him, lashing once in a lazy arc like the tail of a predator ready to pounce. His stature increased, easily adding two feet to his height, his shadow now looming over Elmore like a monument. The mithril armor he wore—normally segmented plates of turquoise metal and dyed leather—shifted and expanded with him, plates sliding seamlessly into place like scales forming across his transformed body. The turquoise gleamed like river stone beneath moonlight, catching on the hard ridges of his new form.

  There was power in it. Raw. Undeniable. primal. And the way Brent stood, calm in the skin of the beast, made Elmore understand just how much he’d grown.

  “Damn,” Elmore muttered under his breath, letting out a low whistle. He shook his head, still staring. “You look… well, impressive doesn’t quite cut it.”

  Brent’s laugh rolled out of him like thunder, low and rumbling in his newly cavernous chest. He cracked his neck once, claws flexing. “Ready to tear that thing apart,” he said, grinning wide with canines exposed, voice laced with savage glee and fierce confidence.

  The fire cracked in the distant cave mouth, casting warm light across the stone walls, flickering shadows dancing behind the two men like echoes of an older age. Brent stood with his arms folded, the last of his transformation fading.Elmore stood nearby, hands on his hips, watching him with an expression caught somewhere between pride and amusement.

  Elmore grinned, the corners of his mouth curling up like a man who’d just thought of something clever and a little dangerous.

  “You know,” he said, voice low and casual, like the setup to a joke, “since you’re doin’ all this—turnin’ into a damn werewolf, runnin’ around my woods, killin’ bugs, keepin’ folks safe—I got a gift for you.”

  Brent raised an eyebrow. “A gift? What, like a nice steak? Maybe a new pair of pants since I tend to tear through the good ones?”

  Elmore let out a laugh, shaking his head. “Nah, somethin’ a bit heavier than that. More permanent. I been sittin’ on it for a while, waitin’ on the right time. How’d you like to be my Head Warrior?”

  Brent blinked, taken aback. His mouth parted, then broke into a wide grin that showed off a hint of leftover fang. “Wait—you’re serious?”

  Elmore nodded slowly. “Sure am.”

  Brent snorted, half-laughing. “Ain’t that what I already am, more or less?”

  “Yeah,” Elmore said, stepping closer, his tone gentling, “but this makes it real. Official. There's this token I’ve had, sittin’ in my inventory for years now. Says it’s for a companion—didn’t know what it was for till just recently. But tonight? I think it’s time. I think this might be its purpose.”

  The laughter in Brent’s chest faded. He tilted his head slightly, brow furrowing as his eyes glazed over—not from thought, but from something else entirely.

  A moment passed.

  Then two.

  Elmore stood still, watching closely. Brent’s gaze seemed to lose focus, drawn inward like the pull of a silent message. A system notification, perhaps—something only he could see. His shoulders tensed, then relaxed. He blinked and looked up at Elmore, the light of the fire catching the gold in his irises.

  “Well,” Brent said with a dry, breathy chuckle, “looks like the system took you at your word before I even got the chance to ask what exactly that meant.”

  Elmore lifted an eyebrow. “It kick in already?”

  “Yeah,” Brent said, voice a little softer now. He looked down at his hands, flexing them like they belonged to someone else. “Felt it settle in. Deep. Like somethin’ ancient just reached out and shook my soul awake.” He met Elmore’s eyes again, more serious this time. “All right, Chief. I accept.”

  The moment those words passed his lips, something stirred in Elmore’s chest—like a quiet click deep inside the Aither that only he could hear. The world shifted—not violently, not even visibly—but meaningfully.

  He could feel it.

  A thread tying itself into place inside his mind.

  He was aware of Brent now, not in a mystical or grandiose way, but with an intimate clarity. Like hearing someone breathing in the next room. A quiet, distant hum—Brent’s presence, his health, his location, his being. It wasn’t intrusive, but it was permanent. They were linked now.

  More than friends.

  More than kin by choice.

  Their bloodlines had been braided together by something ancient, something powerful, and something that would last.

  Elmore’s own Nexus stirred, finally answering a question he hadn’t realized had been bothering him since the day he’d found that token and been unable to use it.

  Your companion has chosen the title: Knight Vassal.

  Knight Vassal

  A warrior, a confidant, a trusted advisor—one step below royalty or leadership. A Knight Vassal is a lifelong deputy, a vow, a bond not of subservience but of brotherhood from one person to another, giving future generations the choice to gain this title if approved and earned. From this day forth, the Edenheart family will guard the Elmore family.

  Elmore blinked, the words hovering in his vision before fading gently. A new tab settled into the corner of his interface, marked simply: Legacy.

  He stood a little taller.

  He looked Brent in the eyes again—no longer just a man, no longer just a friend—but something more.

  A living pledge.

  A shield for his bloodline.

  A knight.

  “Well Sir Edenheart,” Elmore said, grinning wide, voice full of humor and gravity all at once, “let me tell you my plan.”

  Brent tilted his head. “Oh Lord, here we go…”

  “We’re takin’ the Beast down there.” Elmore jabbed his thumb behind him, toward the dungeon. “Full tank, fresh oil, and righteous fury.”

  Brent’s grin returned, toothy and wide. “Now that’s a plan. Hope those bugs down there know how to say their prayers.”

  Brent’s grin grew wider, and he hopped up into the truck bed, giving it a solid thump with his clawed hand. “Now that sounds like a proper plan,” he said, settling in. “i'm going go introduce that monster to something it's never seen before.”

  Elmore fired up the Beast’s engine, its deep growl rumbling through the night, louder and more powerful than ever. The truck’s mithril-enhanced frame glinted under the moon, and Elmore knew it was ready to handle the hellish terrain below. With Brent in the back, towering in his lupine form, they were more than ready for whatever waited beneath the earth.

  Level 6: Elmore

  Ruler Level 6 : Chief

  - Strength: 20/60

  - Endurance: 10/60

  - Dexterity: 10/60

  - Agility: 10/60

  - Intelligence: 60/60

  - Resistance: 13/60

  - Vitality: 20/60

  - Aither: 30/60

  Points Available: 0

  Tabs:

  [Seat of Power]

  - True Land Ownership:LV1

  - Aither Laws:LV2

  - Aither Taxes:LV2

  - Population: Subjects:10,476

  [Structures]

  -Home

  -Hall of Beginnings

  [Companions]

  -Brent Edenheart

  [Tokens]

  -Immoral Structure: 1

  Level:5 Brent Edenheart

  Level 1: knight vassal

  - Strength: 15/50

  - Endurance: 12/50

  - Dexterity: 20/50

  - Agility: 50/50

  - Intelligence: 10/50

  - Resistance: 11/50

  - Vitality: 14/50

  - Aither: ???