Lin Moyan awoke to a metallic tang in his mouth and the crushing weight of dread pressing against his ribs. His lungs burned as though he had sprinted for miles, yet his body lay motionless against cold, damp stone.
A single torch flickered in the distance, its feeble light dancing across walls veined with pulsating fungus. The air reeked of rot and wet earth and beneath it, the cloying stench of old blood.
He tried to move, but his muscles refused. Panic clawed up his throat.
"Where am I?"
A drop of thick, black fluid splashed onto his shoulder. He froze. It was sticky, oily not blood, but something older. Darker.
Somewhere in the shadows, stone shifted. The air itself seemed to breathe.
Then a voice, neither male nor female, whispered directly into his mind:
"You woke up too soon."
Lin stiffened. No one should speak inside his head. But the voice was everywhere, an echo without origin.
A jagged spear of bone erupted from his gut. He saw it first in his periphery—twisted, serpentine, dripping iridescent fluid. His mouth opened in a soundless scream as tendons snapped and pain seared through every nerve.
His vision whited out. Memories flickered his sister's laughter, sunlight on temple rooftops, his mother's last embrace before darkness swallowed him whole.
He woke again.
Chest heaving, back pressed against the cold wall. His robes were damp but unmarked. No spear. No wound. Only the phantom agony lingered.
The archway ahead yawned like a beast's maw, its stone carved with faces frozen in eternal torment. He had never seen such architecture not in any sect's stronghold, not in the deepest crypts.
Testing his limbs, he stood. Unbroken. But every breath tasted of iron and fear.
Above him, the ceiling bulged.
Stone rippled like living flesh, then split open. A monstrosity dropped all claws and teeth and gouged eyes. It landed with a wet slap, barely ten feet away, its maw splitting into rows of jagged fangs.
Lin had no time to react.
The thing moved in a blur.
His scream died in the corridor.
Third awakening.
Face down on damp stone. No spear. No wound.
He stood, pulse hammering. The torchlight was gone now, replaced by the eerie glow of bioluminescent spores. The walls seemed to press closer, breathing.
A sound.... glass grinding on stone. Laughter.
"It's learning you," the voice crooned in his skull.
He rounded a corner. Two paths: left, into deeper gloom; right, a low-ceilinged chamber.
He chose left.
The floor gave way beneath him. Spikes rose to meet his fall.
Blackness.
Fourth awakening.
He gripped the wall, forcing himself to think. The screaming faces on the arch pointed left a warning. This time, he went right.
The walls constricted, alive. A whisper:
"Wrong choice."
The ceiling slammed down.
Fifth awakening.
Sharper now. He rolled the instant his body hit the ground claws scraped where his head had been.
The monster crouched before him, its voice his own:
"You're learning. But not fast enough."
It lunged.
Lin sprinted past, skidding into a moonlit chamber. There, slumped in the corner... a corpse in his sect's robes. Ink-black hair.
The corpse lifted its head.
Peeling skin revealed hollow sockets.
Then his own face stared back, lips cracking open in a silent plea:
"Don't… go…"
The shadow beast erupted from its chest.
Sixth awakening.
Tears streaked his cheeks. The beast sat across from him, head tilted, as if waiting for surrender. Its voice was gentle now, coaxing:
"Tired? Do you want to give up?"
Lin charged.
They fell together. Spikes rose like cruel dreams.
Beneath him, the beast's last whisper:
"See you soon, Brother."
Seventh awakening.
Lin Moyan did not move.
He lay on damp stone, breath ragged, eyes tracing the shadows as if memorizing their shapes. The corridor stood silent.....no traps, no shifting walls. A blank page.
His gaze lifted to the archway's screaming faces.
And then.... he remembered.
Xiao Lan.
Only she had called him brother. Only she remembered him when the world forgot.
His throat tightened. If he failed again, her memory would fade too.
The thought burned away despair.
He rose, every movement deliberate, every breath a vow.
This dungeon had learned him.
Now, he would unlearn it.
Fingers curled around empty air, as if gripping an invisible sword.
And then....
He stepped forward.