In the aftermath of Orin's plunge into the fiery pit, the group paused just long enough to steady themselves before pushing onward. Roy brushed lingering debris from his jacket, eyes flicking anxiously toward every corner and crevice in the corridor.
"No more webs, Captain," Eryndra quietly assured, stepping protectively close. "From now on, I'll personally ensure your safety from anything sticky and unpleasant."
Roy gave her a skeptical glance, then sighed. "Let's just keep moving."
Over the next twenty floors, the pace turned relentless. With every passing sector, the difficulty climbed incrementally higher. The enemies were manageable, but Andri and Rava found themselves quickly relegated to mere support roles, drawing attention, casting distractions, and offering occasional defensive aid. Orin, meanwhile, had flourished, wielding his sword with newfound vigor that bordered on recklessness, each strike gaining force and confidence. Takara fought gracefully at his side while JFK calmly supported from behind, deliberately holding back to preserve a fair challenge.
"Careful, Orin," JFK called gently after Orin cleaved yet another drake cleanly in half. "The dungeon won't run out of enemies anytime soon. No need to rush."
"Speak for yourself," Orin laughed, spinning his massive sword with ease. "Feels like I've been waiting my whole life for this."
The chamber at the end of Floor 110 waited in silent, ominous stillness. In its center, a crystal spire, the height of a man, pulsed with a faint, contained light beneath a thin haze of raw mana. The instant the group crossed the threshold, the massive stone doors sealed behind them with a heavy, final thud that vibrated through the very floor.
A voice, calm, precisely mechanical, and utterly certain, emerged from the crystal.
"To clear this floor, you must successfully complete the Puzzle of Past Echoes. You have twenty minutes to determine its challenge, and its solution. Good luck."
Light surged outward in a slow, blinding wave. The dungeon's rough-hewn stone dissolved, melting into gray, pitted concrete. The cool, dry air was abruptly replaced by a thick, heavy humidity, sharp with the faint, acrid bite of exhaust fumes. A nearby chain-link fence rattled, and the distant, sibilant hiss of rainwater in a hidden gutter filled the silence.
Lynder turned in a slow circle, his robes whispering against the pavement. "By Loe… what is this place? I've never seen such bizarre architecture."
Takara's voice was a ragged breath. "Roy… this is what I think it is, isn't it?"
He remained motionless for a long moment, a statue carved of disbelief. "Yeah." The word was flat, scraped raw from his throat. "Our school…"
A stretch of sidewalk materialized ahead, lined with faded lockers set into brick. Students drifted past the alley mouth, a careless river of laughter and conversation, oblivious to the strangers watching them from the shadows. Takara took a hesitant step toward the nearest one and reached out, her hand passing clean through a shoulder that simply wasn't there.
"We're back home," she whispered, her voice hollow, "but no one can see us."
Roy shook his head. "Not home. Not when we left. Different time."
Takara started to question him, but the words died when she saw his expression. His eyes were locked, a chilling focus, on something deeper in the alley.
At the far end, a younger version of Roy stood rigid in front of a smaller boy, who was sobbing into his sleeve. Four older students formed a tightening ring around them. Their leader leaned lazily against the brick wall, twirling a cheap lighter between his fingers, the grin on his face too calm, too cold, to be merely human.
Caliban.
A bitter frost formed in the pit of Takara's stomach. "Roy…"
He answered with silence, each breath heaving in the narrow space. Down the alley, young Roy absorbed a shove, then the solid thud of a fist blooming against his chest. He stumbled, a brief retreat before a surge forward, once more unbowed. Laughter like shattering glass echoed from the surrounding shadows. A teacher's gaze drifted into the alley, landing on the scene with a pale, meaningless smile before passing on.
Static sputtered in Roy's earpiece. Serenity's voice, a transmission breaking apart.
"Heart rate…spiking, captain's vital…faltering…"
Takara's finger pressed her comm unit. "Serenity, your transmission is corrupt. Repeat."
The fractured signal died, leaving only the hum of dead air.
Below, Caliban drifted with deliberate slowness toward a metal shed. From its shadow he re-emerged, a crimson gas can a pendulum of violence in his hand. The nozzle gestured first toward young Roy, then settled its aim upon the smaller boy cowering behind him. That memory of himself stepped forward, trembling but defiant.
"What monstrous puzzle is this?" Roy's question was a ragged tear in the air.
The words barely cleared his lips before he moved. His pistol was out, a single fluid motion marred by a tremor in his hand. The first shot cracked against the distant wall. A second followed. Then a volley, each round aimed not for Caliban, but for the ghost of his own self. Bullets punched through the apparition, finding only empty air and the clang of metal behind it. He kept pulling the trigger even after the slide locked back.
Mid-stride, Eryndra's armor vents flared half-open and froze. Confusion clouded her eyes as she tried to comprehend his target.
The shimmer of the illusion did not stop the stench of gunsmoke. It hung between them, a foul, gray ribbon in the air. Eryndra's feet shifted, then clamped to the ground. In Roy's grip, the pistol made only impotent clicking sounds that echoed off the concrete walls in the illusion.
From his chest came a guttural sound, more animal than man. "I've seen enough of this theater. Fuck the puzzle. Let it all burn."
Deep within the reconstructed alley, a metallic flick answered. A poof of orange light erupted into fire. The younger Roy collapsed, a silent scream on his face as the blaze crawled up his back. The scream that followed, however, tore through the air and stitched the past directly to the present.
A wave of phantom heat washed over the real Roy's spine. He buckled with a gasp, a sound torn from his throat as he folded forward. His palms scraped the pavement, the remembered agony of an old burn blooming a fresh hell across his skin, a fire crawling up through his clothes to clench his teeth.
"Roy!" Takara's shout was a distant thing, a voice from another world.
Cloak fabric hissed as Andri flung it over the burning image. Flames passed through the cloth without a mark. She yanked it back and threw it again, desperate. Rava followed with a surge of water that also passed through the flame, not touching anything.
A circle of runes flared under Lynder's boots, bright as ice. "Ancient Runic Magic: Dispel the Lie!" The spell flashed out in concentric rings that should have erased the illusion; the fire only brightened as Roy continued to scream.
JFK raised one hand beside him. "Forgotten Scripts: Executive Privilege." Symbols spiraled forward, cutting through the alley air and onto Roy's back. For a heartbeat the blaze faltered, then caught again, hungrier than before.
"They're being controlled, they must be…" he said quickly. "If it's not active manipulation, maybe I can—"
"Don't know! Don't care!" Orin's voice cracked. "Maybe we just need to…break something!" His blade whipped through the fence, the wall, the ground. Sparks leapt and died, but nothing changed.
An intense stillness radiated from Orden, the smallest among them. Molten gold ignited in his eyes, a light that carved his features into sharp relief. A low, ancient sound rumbled in his chest. "Father," the demand was absolute, "do you truly believe I will watch this forever?" A tremor shook the very air, blurring the lines of wall and sky as Orden's control frayed, then held. The quiet returned.
A cascade of brick dust heralded them. Two figures, a boy and a girl, cleared the crumbling wall and dropped into the alley's confines. The boy landed first, his fierce blue eyes almost slicing through the dark. He was at young Roy's side in a half-breath, shucking his jacket and smothering the flames with swift, economical movements.
The girl touched down an instant later, a vivid slash of crimson cutting through her dark hair. Without hesitation, she pivoted on a heel, a motion that flowed into a brutal kick, slamming Caliban back into the opposite wall. A choked, ugly laugh spilled from him, a sound of ragged delight as he hit the ground. She planted a boot on his ribs, her fist drawn back. He did nothing but smile, an invitation for more.
"Leave him," the boy commanded, catching her arm mid-swing. "We're going. This one's in a bad way."
Her scowl warred with his order for a long second before she relented. "Fine," she spat, but her parting shot was a vicious kick that snapped Caliban's head to the side. "Not worth the effort anyway." She turned immediately to help lift the injured boy.
As their figures receded, the light went with them. The scorched air cooled. The phantom flames on Roy's back guttered and died the instant the younger Roy's form passed his own. The pain drained from him like water escaping a cracked cup. Shaking, he rose to his knees, his breath catching in his throat.
The fading echo of their footsteps was swallowed by a silence so thick it felt solid. A raw, biting cold was all that remained.
On the rough pavement, the world settled into a jarring stillness. Strength left his body along with the agony, leaving him boneless until the tremors in his muscles finally ceased. When he looked up, his eyes were reservoirs of nothing, present but not seeing.
A motion from Takara was eclipsed by Eryndra's swiftness. Her hand was a firm, grounding pressure on his arm. "Roy," she said, her voice a low command. "Speak to me."
One blink, and a grin laid itself over the emptiness, a thing of mechanics with no warmth. "Yeah. Fine. Wow, that was something, huh?" He made to brush the dust from his knees, a pointless act meant to dispel the moment.
Her grip did not yield. "Roy…what was that?"
"Just an old story," he said, the brightness in his tone so forced it almost cracked. "Nothing worth talking about. Let's finish this thing."
A low buzz vibrated through the air, a hum that preceded the shimmer washing color from the walls. The scene began to rebuild itself. Roy froze, the confident mask he wore splitting for a bare second to show the raw dread beneath.
Before a word could be spoken, Eryndra's vents snapped open. Light bled from them in ragged, quick pulses, and Roy staggered as raw mana ripped through their link like a physical blow. Tranquility's voice fractured the comms line, clipped and urgent. "Captain's …-erve function dow-...ixty-four percent." A dark fluid seeped from the open vents, a liquid night that filled the armor's seams and traced her arms like veins of ink. Lynder lifted both hands, a cautious warding gesture. "Eryndra, what are you doing?"
"Cutting out the floor," came her thin, cold reply.
Lynder recoiled sharply. "Wait! Destroying this room might not solve the puzzle!"
"Not this room," Eryndra snapped, more darkness leaking from her vents. "The entire 110th floor."
Before Lynder could object, the chamber wall exploded outward in a roar of pulverized stone as Eryndra tore through the illusion boundary and into the main floor beyond, tracing its immense perimeter in a continuous scream of tortured metal and rupturing stone.
Her form vanished briefly as she phased downward, plunging through solid rock like smoke. Below, she reappeared, moving in a ruthless grid-pattern, pillar after pillar splintered beneath her assault, systematically razing every support.
The dungeon floor shuddered violently, cracks spiderwebbing outward before finally surrendering to gravity. The entire level, walls, rooms, illusions, and supports crashed downward in a choking storm of dust and shattered stone.
Their descent was a plummet through a blinding, choking storm of dust. An incantation, spat from Lynder's lips, bloomed a cushion of wind beneath them, a desperate brake. Through the roaring chaos, FDR extended a single hand, his voice a calm anchor in the noise. Gravity deferred to his will. The catastrophic drop eased, then arrested entirely, leaving them suspended in silence over a fresh, smoking crater of shattered rock. Above them, the last of the illusion cracked into a million invisible shards and was gone.
From the settling haze, Eryndra reappeared. Her vents clicked shut in sequence as the dark fluid retreated into its housings. She reached for him.
He caught her waist before a word could form, lifting her in a single, energetic motion. "Perfect," he said, his voice bright with a brittle cheer. "Probably took out the boss on this floor and the one below it." A single, sharp spin, the smile plastered on his face. "Outstanding work."
Her gaze never wavered, a level stare that cut straight through the forced performance to the strain beneath.
Setting her back on her feet, Roy spun to face the others. "Alright, people. Let's move. The floor isn't waiting."
He strode out, shoulders set, his steps unnaturally firm. Silently, the team fell in behind him.
"Captain, report. We registered heavy spikes. What happened down there?" Serenity's voice sliced through the comms, sharp and clear.
The answer came back in a light, almost musical rhythm. "Just an anomaly, Serenity. Nothing to report. We're moving along."
A lie no one believed became a truth no one would challenge. The group fell into formation, leaving the broken ring of stone and the echo of old fire behind them.