The rippling web of silk and tangled limbs swayed overhead as the horde of man-sized spiders lay in restless slumber, mercifully oblivious to her presence… for now.

  Any sane person would have backed away. A magic user would have just mumbled some nonsense about “channeling the arcane” and fried them with lightning. Or maybe put them to sleep with a whisper.

  But Ashe?

  Ashe hated magic. It was stupid, unreliable, dumb little fairy tales for children.

  And no, not just because she couldn’t use it. That was a coincidence. Also, not her fault. The books were broken. The words were defective.

  Reaching into her pocket, she retrieved a raw mana crystal. Holding it high, she funneled a thread of energy into it.

  For a moment, as she channeled her mana, the stark white strands framing her face ignited with a fiery red glow, pulsing like embers in the dark.

  Then—

  With a crackling snap, a bolt of fire erupted from the crystal, latching onto the nearest silk strand. The flame hungrily slithered across the webbing, weaving a beautiful, destructive tapestry overhead.

  Ashe grinned as the flames danced across the silk above.

  Then her grin faltered.

  Because, Crud Monkeys!

  The entire ceiling was now on fire.

  And the spiders? The ones that had been so blissfully still?

  They were now very much awake.

  And also on fire.

  And also falling.

  “Ah, crap.”

  A flaming, eight-eyed horror plummeted right in front of her, its chitin cracking, its face melting. Ashe stumbled back, nearly gagging as the stench of burning flesh and liquefied spider guts filled the air. More of them crashed down, their spindly legs thrashing, shrieking in unearthly tones as they blindly attacked anything in their path.

  Ashe ran. But in her haste, she stumbled over something and tumbled to the ground slamming hard on her back.

  A second later something swung down for the sealing stopping just and in from her face. To her horror, it was a charred skull, its jaw agape as it dangled from a half-melted spine.

  She didn’t scream.

  Mostly because her body had already made the executive decision to throw itself backward and scramble the hell away.

  Bolting for the nearest exit, she dove into a side corridor, pressing herself against the wall. The fire spread unchecked behind her, silhouetting the writhing nightmare she had unleashed.

  [Enemy defeated!]

  [Enemy defeated!]

  [Enemy defeated!]

  The notifications cascaded across her vision. She didn’t look.

  She was too busy trying not to throw up.

  “Wé?l d?nê.”

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  The voice slithered through the silence, snapping her out of it.

  Some said a demon lurked in the dungeons' depths, whispering promises of power and glory to desperate fools, only to strip them of their souls as payment.

  Others believed the spirits of the long-dead still waged war, locked in eternal battle between these crumbling walls.

  Ashe didn’t care what the stories said. She just knew there was something down here.

  Sometimes. Even above ground, when she was alone-when it was dark, the whispers would slither in—faint at first, just a dull scratch at the edges of her mind.

  But down here, they were constant. A pressure behind her eyes. A crawling sensation beneath her skin. A headache that pulsed in time with something other.

  She tried to ignore it. Focused on her mission. Repeated the escape route in her head like a mantra. Right at the broken pillar. Left at the collapsed corridor. Avoid the submerged section. If she just kept moving, if she kept her thoughts occupied, she could drown them out.

  “Turn right.”

  The command came soft, insidious. It slipped into her mind so naturally that her body obeyed before she even realized what she was doing.

  Ashe froze.

  The path she had been following was gone. She had stepped through a passage she hadn’t noticed before—one hidden between the shifting shadows of the ruins. The walls had changed. No longer rough stone and shattered debris, but smooth marble, gleaming as if untouched by time.

  A cathedral.

  That was the only way to describe it. Towering statues lined the walls, carved with impossible precision. Warriors frozen in time, their weapons gleaming under the ghostly glow of unseen light. Beasts crouched at their feet, eyes hollow, waiting.

  And at the far end of the chamber…

  An altar? No. A console. A screen pulsed with a faint, rhythmic glow, embedded into the structure like an offering to something unseen.

  The interface was unlike anything she had ever encountered—neither mechanical nor arcane, yet humming with a presence that made her stomach turn.

  The whispers surged. Urgent. Insistent.

  She should turn back.

  She should run.

  But her feet carried her forward. The pressure in her skull built with every step, the air thick with something unseen, something waiting—

  Ashe hesitated before the strange device, its surface pulsing faintly with an almost imperceptible rhythm—like a heartbeat. Her breath hitched. Something about it felt… aware.

  A voice, neither human nor machine, echoed in her mind.

  “Can you hear me?”

  She flinched. The voice was vast, layered, as if countless whispers spoke in unison. And then she saw her hand—bare.

  Her gloves were gone.

  When had she taken them off?

  Panic tightened around her ribs. Without them, her power was unfiltered. Uncontrolled.

  She tried to pull back, but it was too late.

  It hit her like a freight train through glass.

  Images exploded behind her eyes. Fragments, shattered and bleeding into one another—The Great War, The Ruin, The. Nightmare Child—a sky burning black. Cities crumbling. A world lost. Something vast, something endless, something consuming.

  “They are coming.”

  A warning, a plea, a desperate scream lost in the void.

  A million stars winked out, one after another, swallowed by the dark. Darker and darker. Darker still.

  It—shuddered against her touch—his touch—their touch. Not enough. It needed more. More weapons. More assets. More strength. They must evolve.

  Before the end came.

  Before they lost everything.

  Ashe staggered backward, her heel catching on uneven stone. She barely registered the ground before she hit it, hands flying to her head as her vision blurred, burning with the last remnants of what she had just seen—no, felt.

  Her breath came in short, ragged gasps, each inhale clawing at her throat like barbed wire, each exhale too shallow to bring relief. Her pulse thundered. Her ribs ached. Panic pressed in from all sides, constricting her like a coiling serpent.

  What the hell was that!?

  Was it the past? The future? Was it happening right now? So much blood. So many bodies. Twisted limbs. Screams swallowed by fire and shadow.

  She clenched her fists, nails biting into her palms. Think. Move. Breathe.

  She couldn’t.

  Instead, the memories surged, dragging her under like a riptide.

  The scent of burning—charred wood, scorched stone. The dungeon floor beneath her palms, impossibly cold. But something else, something warm, spreading from her core, pooling beneath her fingers.

  Blood.

  Hot. Sticky. Everywhere.

  Her fingers trembled as she lifted them, drenched in red. It dripped between her knuckles, soaked into the fabric of her sleeves. Her stomach twisted.

  So much blood.

  His blood.

  Dying. Dying again.