As soon as I stepped into the darkness, my vision failed me—and the rest of my senses followed shortly after.

The kids should have followed—would have followed—but there was no trace of them now. I turned, expecting to see the light beyond the entrance, but there was nothing. On every side, darkness surrounded me.

The ground was gone as well. It wasn’t like walking through sand or snow, but more like both solid and not at the same time. I couldn’t hear my steps, or indeed, anything at all.

“Hello?” I tried to say, but no sound came out.

I took a few more steps and called down Soul Sight at the same time. I immediately regretted the decision, as I was blinded by the magic of this place. I turned it off immediately, instinctively shielding my eyes, but at least I’d gotten something from the spell.

The place I was in, in all its apparent nothingness, was shaped like a tunnel, and a rather short one at that.

A few steps later, my senses returned. It was still dark, but not preternaturally so. Merely the usual dim tones of a cavern.

The silence was broken by the rest of the group appearing out of nowhere.

“Oh, god,” Sarah said as soon as gathered her bearings. “I thought—I thought it was happening again.” Her face was stricken with fear, and the others didn’t look much better.

Cam couldn’t seem to find any words, either. “Yeah, that was…”

David seemed confused. “Again?”

“You don’t remember? Or—you didn’t…?” Sarah asked.

Alexis folded her arms protectively. “Did what? Have you seen that place before?”

“Yeah, when we got here,” Shiro interjected animatedly. “In this world, I mean. At least, I did.”

Sarah nodded. “It was the same for me. Earth, then that void, and then here.”

Alexis hugged herself tighter. “Oh, huh. I was taken in my sleep, so that’s probably why…”

David paced about. “Yeah, I’m definitely not complain about missing out on that experience.”

“It bothered you?” I asked.

David was the first to reply. “I don’t think there’s anyone who’s not bothered, mate. That place was wrong.”

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” Cam said. When the others stared at him, he shrugged. “Unpleasant, sure, but not terrifying.”

I tilted my head in question. “Did you try to analyze it?”

He scratched at the back of his arm as if embarrassed. “I, uh, tried, but the spell didn’t stick.”

I nodded. “That’s understandable. There’s nothing shameful about not mastering a spell that’s not even your specialty.”

“Yeah, of course,” he said. I don’t think he really agreed, though, and I felt just a little guilty about it. The only mages he knew were Archmagi, which meant his benchmark for what a mage should be able to do was more than a bit skewed.

“In any case, it must affect non-mages differently,” I mused.

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter now,” Sarah said, rushing to the front. “Let’s get a move on.”

A crunch echoed through the cavern, and Sarah froze in her tracks. At the same time, I felt one of my necromantic connections snap back to me.

Sarah lifted her foot to reveal the crumbled bones of my former avian minion. “…Damn, that scared me.” Then, sheepishly, “I hope you didn’t need that one anymore.”

I waved her concern away. “It fulfilled its purpose.”

It was interesting to see, though, that the mindless construct had made it past the void as well. I channeled Mind and Soul, searching through my other connections. The kids as well as Winnie shone brightly, but all the others were muted. Just like with the bird, the connections beyond this place were muted. I could still feel them existing independently, and they were still drawing on my mana, but I could send them no input.

I tried anyway. My connections were usually one-way, in that I could send instructions but not receive anything in return, unless special rituals were used. At the same time, I’d still get a hint of a confirmation that my instructions were received.

The poke I sent right now, to one of the wights I’d left in Ravenrock, gave no such confirmation.

“This is just a hypothesis at this point,” I began and then froze. The wight had just acknowledged the poke, in what had been about… ten seconds? I’d never seen it anything short of instantaneous. “But I believe the void took us to a wholly different world.”

“I don’t like this,” Shiro whispered.

“Do you want to go back?” Sarah said. “If anyone wants to go back, I don’t think anyone would mind.” The way she said it, she made it clear she’d be staying no matter what.

“No.” Shiro shook his head. “Let’s just get moving.”

“Are you sure?” Sarah insisted.

Before Shiro snap at her, Alexis interjected. “It’s not like he can. There’s no gate, or even just the creepy darkness. See?”

Indeed, even though it had felt as if we’d walked through an invisible corridor, we’d technically been teleported here. There was a way forward, but behind us was nothing but a wall of stone.

Cam blanched. “Well, that’s that for motivation.”

There was only one path to follow, so we made our way through the tunnel. Long, dark tunnels seemed to be becoming something of a habit by this point.

“Onwards, then.”

~*~

I came to a screeching halt when the blue box popped up in front of me.

Now Entering: The Shifting Layers (Dragon’s Eye Entrance)

The Shifting Layers is a trial dungeon, composed of a series of challenges and layers each aspirant or group of aspirants must conquer.

Rules:

The aspirants may only advance to the next layer upon the successful completion of the previous one.

The number of layers and their difficulty will depend on the aspirants’ levels and performance.

The aspirants may only depart the Shifting Layers upon the successful completion of the entire trial.

The trials may be attempted multiple times, as long as the aspirants remain alive.

Before I could even finish reading, a second box appeared.

Good Luck.

“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” Alexis said.

“This must be what Miranavisr meant when she called it ‘not like the other dungeons,’” Shiro said.

“It feels alive,” Cam whispered.

I cupped my chin. “Indeed. I’ve been through quite a few before all of this, and none attempted to interact with people like this.”

“You didn’t have the System back then, though,” Cam noted.

“That is true,” I ceded, “but even only from the description, it’s clear that this is something else. There’s no dungeon like this in any record. Challenges that adapt to the adventurers? That speaks of a certain degree of intelligence. The whole idea of a dungeon being able to think is… absurd.”

“So is interdimensional travel, and yet here we are,” Sarah said, deadpan.

I disagreed, but I let it slide. Traveling between dimensions was one thing, but a living dungeon was something else entirely. So many questions popped into my head.

Did it have a body to anchor its consciousness? Was the entirety of the dungeon its body? Did it have a soul? Could it have all of these without a substrate? Was it only sentient, or was it sapient as well?

So many questions. I waved them away.

I’d already seen a dungeon core, and I realized now that must have been what Miranavisr had called a seed. I wondered—could any dungeon become like this, given time? I thought back to the Circle of Stars, and the giant tree that had grown around its core.

I wondered. That one had been among the oldest known to man, and still it hadn’t come even close to being called sentient. Now, I was begging to think we had killed a baby in its crib.

“This doesn’t change anything,” I said finally. “If anything, it only confirms we’ve passed the point of no return.”

“Do or die, eh? Good for motivation, at least,” David said wry smile.

~*~

To my surprise, even though it looked as if carved through a mountain, the tunnel did not open into a cavern of some sort.

Instead, it opened into a wide expanse of swamplands. Looking up, I could see the night sky—a night sky, at least. There were no moons, and the stars themselves weren’t as bright as they should have been.

I looked back, half-expecting the tunnel we’d travelled through to have disappeared when I wasn’t looking. Perhaps disappointingly, it hadn’t gone anywhere, remaining embedded into the mountain behind us.

“A whole-ass swamp? In the middle of a dungeon? Pinch me,” Shiro said unwisely.

Sarah obliged. Shiro sighed.

“This has to be where the first challenge is set,” Alexis said, looking to me. “Do you have any idea what we’re supposed to do?”

“I’m afraid this is as new of an experience for me as it is for you,” I said.

“I think,” David began as his eyes scanned a the surroundings, “there’s probably something that triggers it. We probably have to explore till we run into it.”

“Any idea what?”

The boy shrugged. “I don’t know? If it was a video game, I’d say there’s a monster we have to kill, or some artifact to protect. Or,” he grimaced, “some random innocent person we have to escort.”

“Hmm,” I said, and drew Mind. I wove it into a kind of thin netting, and spread it as far as my reserves allowed. A mile, two, more—

I reached the edge of what I could sense with no results. There was nothing that felt smarter than a swamp critter anywhere near, though my spell did have large gaps in its detection range, especially the farther it went.

“Nothing that I could find,” I said a few moments later. “We’ll probably have to search on foot.”

“Should we split up to cover more ground?” Cam asked.

Sarah shushed him immediately. “Are you insane? You don’t split the party. That’s how everyone dies.”

“This isn’t a game, Sarah,” Cam said, sounding tired.

“Exactly. It’s not a game. That’s why we have to be cautious—or do you want to die? Again?”

Cam scowled. Of all the Revenants, he was the one who’d dwelled on his death the last, but it must have still stung that he’d died from a sword through the chest. Mages did not like losing to mundanes, and that they were both from the same planet didn’t seem to have that much bearing.

“I’m not saying to go completely alone. But we can do two groups and still stay in contact.” He looked at me hesitantly. “I think, anyway.”

“That’s doable, yes. Since you’re a mage, I can open a telepathic conduit between us, and you should be able to piggy back on the connection.”

“See?” Cam said, more animatedly this time.

“But,” I continued. “I agree with Sarah on this. Splitting the group prematurely is foolish, at least when we don’t know what we’re up against.”

“That’s fair, I guess. It’s a big swamp, though.”

“Then we might as well start searching now.”

~*~

It didn’t take long for me to decide I didn’t like swamps.

I had been lucky, in life. Back on the Continent, it was mostly fields and forests—swamps you could only find in the far north, and my travels had never taken me there.

Alexis gasped, and everyone fell into battle positions.

“No,” she said, covering her hand with her mouth. “Look…”

My eyes finally fell on what she was looking at. It was still far enough that only she could have noticed, but when pointed out it was undeniable.

We approached the gigantic skeleton almost reverently.

“It’s… this has to be one of Al’vathazen’s siblings, right?”

“Possibly,” I said. I wasn’t sure there were other dragon bloodlines, so I wasn’t ready to discount that it may have been unrelated to him. It was, still, unmistakably a dragon.

“Look at the size of that spear,” Sarah said, whistling. The spear was embedded in the dragon’s chest, and it was as long as three men put together.

“What if…” Alexis whispered, “the thing that killed him—what if it’s still on this layer?”

“Then it’s a good thing we didn’t split.”