The air smelled of stone that had been wet for too long, the kind of damp that settled into joints and stayed there. Dust and old iron and something sweet underneath, something that had rotted and dried and rotted again. He could feel the weight of the tower pressing down from above, though above was exactly where he needed to go. The corridor stretched before him, pillars rising into darkness like the fingers of a buried giant, and the young man standing at its mouth could not remember a time before the cold. He knew his own name once. Now it sat in his chest like a stone he had swallowed, too heavy to cough up and too dull to cut.
His sword hung from his right hand. The blade was clean. It always was at the start, before the chitin and the blood and the endless grinding of bone against steel. He flexed his fingers. They moved without pain, without the memory of the six thousand breaks and tears and dislocations that had carved themselves into his muscles. The tower had healed him again. It always did. It needed him whole for the next death.
He walked forward.
The first monster came scuttling from the shadows, its limbs bent at angles that made his own knees ache in sympathy. Dark chitin gleamed with a sickly wetness, and its mouth clicked open and closed, open and closed, a sound like small bones being snapped one by one. He had fought this thing before. He had died to it forty seven times before he learned the pattern, and now the pattern was written into his marrow.
It lunged.
He sidestepped. His sword rose and fell in a single motion, the edge finding the joint between its head and its thorax, and the chitin gave way like wet paper. The creature crumpled. He stepped over it without looking back.
'Forty eight,' he thought.
The corridor widened into a chamber where the shadows seemed to breathe. A knight emerged from the darkness, clad in armour that drank the light, its visor empty and hungry. It carried a greatsword that dragged along the floor, sending sparks across the wet stone. The young man had died to this one too. One hundred and twelve times. He remembered each death. The first time the knight had taken his head. The thirty seventh time it had pinned him against a pillar and crushed his ribs one by one. The eighty ninth time he had almost won, almost, and then his foot had slipped on a patch of moss.
He did not slip now.
The knight swung. He ducked under the greatsword and came up inside its guard, his own blade punching through the gap between its breastplate and its pauldron. The knight staggered. He twisted the sword and pulled it free, then drove it through the visor. The armour clattered to the floor, empty and final.
He wiped his blade on the knight's cloak and continued.
The arena came into view. Shallow water covered the floor, reflecting the dim light from above like a thousand broken mirrors. Pillars rose around the edges, their surfaces carved with scenes of battles he did not remember fighting. And there it was. The worm. It descended from the ceiling, its body segmented and pale, its dozens of eyes swiveling to find him. The water rippled as it touched down.
He had died to this worm three hundred and seven times. The first fifty had been learning. The next two hundred had been refining. The last fifty seven had been mastery. He knew every twitch of its segments, every flutter of its eyes, every tell that preceded each attack. He knew when it would lunge and when it would feint. He knew the exact angle to strike its eyes and the exact force required to blind it.
The worm lunged.
He was not there. He was already moving, his boots skimming across the water, his sword tracing an arc that ended in the creature's largest eye. The worm recoiled, but he followed, driving the blade deeper, twisting, pulling. The worm thrashed. He rode the motion like a sailor riding a wave, his left hand grabbing a ridge of chitin to steady himself. He pulled his sword free and drove it into the next eye. And the next. And the next.
The worm went mad. It slammed its body against the pillars, sending dust and stone raining down, but he was already on the ground, already moving to its flank, already driving his sword into the soft flesh behind its head. The worm shuddered. It collapsed into the water with a sound like a mountain falling, and the waves washed over his boots.
He stood still for a moment. No injury. No broken wrist. No torn flesh. He had passed through the worm like a knife through old meat, and somewhere in the hollow of his chest something flickered. Not satisfaction. Satisfaction required a self to satisfy, and he was not sure he had one anymore. But something. A recognition. A quiet note that said, 'Yes. This is what it looks like when you have died enough times.'
He walked to the exit.
The corridor beyond was narrow, its walls lined with shelves that held nothing but dust and the skeletons of old books. The light was dimmer here, the shadows thicker. He moved slowly, not from exhaustion but from caution. He had learned caution. Six thousand deaths had taught him that the smallest thing could kill you if you forgot to look.
The goblin came scuttling from behind a shelf.
It was small, no taller than his knee, its skin green and warted, its teeth yellow and filed to points. It held a makeshift spear in its hands, the tip still wet with something dark. It saw him and grinned. It raised the spear.
He moved before it could throw.
His sword took its arm off at the elbow. The goblin shrieked, a high thin sound that echoed off the stone, and he followed with a kick that sent it sprawling onto its back. He stepped on its chest, felt the small bones crack beneath his boot, and drove his sword into its belly. He pulled upward, gutting it from sternum to throat, and the goblin went still.
Eviscerated.