The inky void had not vanished with the morning light.
The dungeon entrance still pulsed, an impossible scar on the familiar landscape of Roris Marini, looming just beyond the crumbling stoop of Giovanno's abandoned house.
The sheer audacity of its
presence, coupled with the chilling memory of his parents' fate, gnawed at him.
College students got lessons on this. He didn't. But his pride, that unyielding core of his being, refused to let a mystery go unchallenged, especially one that mocked his deepest trauma.
He watched the street.
Empty.
The early morning fog, thick and cool, swirled around the edges of the anomaly, obscuring it from casual passersby.
This was his chance. He took a steadying breath, the familiar thrum of Arcanum Vitae flowing through him. He wouldn't run from this. Not anymore.
With a final, defiant set to his jaw, Giovanno stepped through the shimmering membrane.
The air was cold, damp, and smelled of ancient stone and something else, something metallic and faintly sweet, like old blood.
The space was a vast, echoing cavern, dimly lit by a faint, phosphorescent moss clinging to the craggy walls.
He scanned the immediate vicinity, his senses sharpened, his Potentia flowing readily. Nothing.
No monsters, no treasure chests, no obvious threats. Just… emptiness.
He walked forward, his footsteps echoing unnervingly.
The cavern stretched on, featurelessand unending. Panic, cold and sharp, began to prickle at the edges of his control.
This wasn't a dungeon; it was a void. He turned, ready to step back through the shimmering entrance, back to the mundane, miserable reality he at least understood.
But where the swirling portal had been, there was now a solid wall of obsidian, polished to a terrifying sheen.
Carved into its impenetrable surface, glowing with a faint, internal luminescence, was a single, elegant line of script.
Below it, a set of shifting, runic numbers began to count down: 02:00.
Giovanno's blood ran cold. This wasn't just a wall. This was a trap.
The glowing script pulsed, and a voice, disembodied and ancient, echoed through the cavern, vibrating in his very bones.
It was neither male nor female, but seemed to emanatefrom the stone itself, calm and utterly merciless:
"I speak without a mouth and hear without ears.
I have no body, but I come alive with wind.
What am I?"
The countdown flickered to 01:59.
Giovanno's mind raced, a whirlwind of frantic calculations. A riddle? He was a sorcerer, a Transmutatio scholae, a master of reshaping reality, not some ancient scholar. His gaze snapped to the obsidian wall, then to the glowingnumbers, now at 01:50.
Panic, cold and unfamiliar, began to claw at his throat.
He lashed out, instinctively pouring his Potentia into a concentrated burst of Transmutatio.
The air around his hand warped, shimmering with raw force as he focused it on the wall, intending to pulverize it, to bend itsvery structure until it cracked and gave way.
But the obsidian held. Not a crack, not a tremor. The polished surface merely absorbed the impact of his magic, reflecting his furious, desperate face back at him. He tried again, channeling more Arcana Vitae, envisioning the wall as pliable clay, then as brittle glass, then as mereair. Nothing.
His most fundamental ability, the power that had always made him supreme, wasutterly useless here.
The disembodied voice from the wall remainedsilent, its riddle hanging heavy in the oppressive air. The numbers continued their relentlessdescent: 01:00... 00:50...
A cold sweat slicked Giovanno's skin. He slammed his fist against the unyielding stone, a growl of frustration escaping his lips. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the rapidly shrinking time.
He couldoutwit foolish classmates, out maneuver lazy guards, but this… this was a different game entirely. He was trapped.
00:20... 00:10...
The very air in the cavern began to press in. A low, grinding rumble vibrated through the stone beneath his feet. The distant phosphorescent moss flickered, dimming.
The vast chamber was undeniably shrinking, the walls slowly, imperceptibly, closing in. He felt the squeeze, the claustrophobic pressure, as if the dungeonitself was inhaling him. This was it. This was the end.
His grand ambitions, his pursuit of the apex, all of it reduced to a whimpering finish in a dark, forgotten hole.
As the last few seconds drained away, a memory, sharp and vivid, pierced through his mounting terror. His mother's face, softened by the flickering candlelight of their small, comfortable home.
She had been an important figure in the church, her faith as strong as her magic, and she had often spoken with a quiet conviction that had always irritated hispragmatic young mind.
Her words, once dismissed as childish admonitions, echoed in the terrifying silence of the shrinking dungeon:
"Giovanno," she'd said, her eyes kind but firm, "the Arcana Vitae is a gift, but also a responsibility. One day, you will have to answerfor the actions you commit on this earth."
The words resonated now, heavy with meaning, as the last number on the wall blinked to 00:00.
The grinding roar intensified, filling the space as the obsidian pressed closer, closer, threatening to crush him into oblivion.
Giovanno's next conscious moment was a jarring transition from crushing darkness to th e stark, sterile white of a hospital ceiling.
His body was a symphony of dull aches and throbbing pains, a testament to the ordeal he couldn't quite grasp.
He tried to move, but a dull throb in his limbs reminded him that he was heavily bandage. Days. It must have been days.
The silence was profound, broken only by the rhythmic beeping of machines. No hurried footsteps, no hushed voices. No one came to visit. He was alone, as always.
Then, the door creaked open. An old man stepped in, his gait slow but purposeful.
He wasn't a doctor. His robes, though simple, bore a subtle elegance, and his eyes held a depth that spoke of vast knowledge and quiet power. A familiar, yet distant, aura clung to him.
"Ah, you're awake, Giovanno," the old man said, his voice a low, gravelly timbre that somehow felt both ancient and kind. He pulled up a chair and settled into it with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of centuries. "My name is Caius."
Giovanno stared, bewildered. Caius. The name echoed in some distant corner of his mind, connected to a vague sense of obligation he'd long suppressed.
"I am the one who has been paying your school fees," Caius continued, his gaze steady, perceptive. "Since... your parents' passing."
Giovanno's eyes narrowed, a flicker of his usual pride attempting to assert itself despite his weakness. So, the faceless benefactor finallyrevealed himself.
But before he could demand answers, Caius spoke again, his tone turninggrave.
"That dungeon," Caius murmured, almost to himself, his gaze drifting to the window as if he could see the city beyond. "It shouldn't have appeared here. Not in Roris Marini."
He turned back to Giovanno, his eyes sharp. "Many long ages ago, the king of sorcerers, in his wisdom, cast a powerful shield over this city, a grand spell meant to protect it from such incursions.
The shield must have been breached. Severely."
The words sent a jolt through Giovanno. A breached shield? The king of sorcerers?
His mind, though sluggish, began to connect the terrifying dots of his experience with this new, unsettling information.
"How... how did you find me?" Giovanno rasped, his voice rough from disuse. His questions tumbled out, urgent and unbridled, abandoning any pretense of pride or strength.
"What kind of dungeon was that? And... why? Why were you paying my school fees? Why anonymously?"
Caius watched him, a faint, knowing sadness in his ancient eyes. He started to speak, his voiceshifting into a more formal, almost professorialtone. "Dungeons are complex phenomena, young man. They are tears in the fabric of reality, manifestations of concentrated Arcanum Vitae gone wild, often linked to ancient magical disruptions or-"
"No!" Giovanno cut him off, a spark of his old fire igniting despite the pain. He struggled to sit up, wincing as his bandaged ribs protested.
"Who are you? You're not just some old man. You know about my parents ? Why are you here? Why me?"
His gaze, though still weak, bore into Caius, demanding answers that went beyond the academic. The mysteries of the dungeon were important, but the mystery of Caius felt far more immediate, far more personal.
Caius merely offered a small, knowing smile. "I'm an old friend of your mother," he finallysaid, his voice soft, almost a whisper, as if sharing a cherished secret.
He paused, letting the words hang in the air, a vague connection to a past Giovanno barely remembered.
"She was a remarkable woman."
He then rose, his movements fluid and silent. "As for the dungeon," Caius continued, his tonehardening, becoming gravely serious, "know this: no one else knows it appeared here. And you must keep it that way.
This knowledge is far more dangerous than anything you faced within its depths. Speak of it to no one."
Before Giovanno could utter another word, before he could demand an explanation for the secrecy, Caius simply… vanished. Not a shimmer, not a sound.
One moment he was there, a solid figure, the next the chair wasempty, and the only proof of his visit was the lingering scent of old leather and refined magic in the otherwise sterile room.