Every week Ascenders would venture into the Dungeons above their city hoping to claim whatever prize awaited them at the top. Though not all of them were focused solely on being the salvation of humanity. Some just wanted to test out the skills that they had been practicing while others sought the riches that could be found within. Whatever their incentives they filed up the stairs in droves. Most ascended together in small groups or pairs but a few brave souls went alone.

It was highly discouraged for Ascenders to enter the Dungeon by themselves but there were no laws against it. One of the few things the Council of Plinth and Ascension Academy had no say in was how and when a Fate Holder ascended.

If by some miracle a child was gifted their Fate as soon as they could walk, none could stand against them if they chose to climb the marble steps. Many children however, went along with older and more skilled Ascenders. Usually family, friends, or guild members accompanied the young and inexperienced.

Even the Corpse Hunter had to be escorted when he first started hunting corpses in his youth. Not that he cared to think back that far. He had almost three decades of Dungeon delving under his belt now and he was more than competent enough to travel by himself. His usual company came in the form of his Ethereal vulture and the bodies of any unfortunate Column Dwellers that he met along the way.

While Aiden only became an Ascender because his duties required it, others did so to better themselves and their households. There were dangers to be faced in the Dungeons, none would disagree, but there was glory to be found as well.

Some families had risen from poverty to prominence solely on the back of a single Ascender who happened to retrieve a fortune in gold or an invaluable relic. Even the greatest craftsman in the Column struggled to replicate such wondrous items as those found in the Dungeons. For this reason it had become tradition for exceptionally rare magical items to be passed down through a family line for generations.

The entrance to the Dungeon was a massive staircase that was large enough for five adult humans to walk shoulder to shoulder with one another. Its steps were carved out of white marble and some had a golden tint to them. There were exactly one hundred in total, with the first thirty seven steps glittering like gold. That was the highest number of floors anyone had reached this week as the Column tracked its inhabitants' progress through its Dungeons.

Some of the more zealous of the Ascenders saw this as proof that the gods were watching their progression and took it to heart when carving their way through the floors above. Those who viewed the Dungeon with a more scholarly mind were less enthusiastic, being wary of how or why their sanctuary was able to track their movement so easily.

Despite the Column Dwellers’ lack of understanding into the inner workings of the marble stairs and the things that existed beyond them, there were a few well known facts. Every dungeon changed at midnight on the seventh day of week. The layout of each Dungeon, its topography, its traps and monsters, its climate, and all other features rotated weekly. This made it impossible to map out the Dungeon and was the single largest wrench in the Ascension Academy’s efforts.

Years worth of record keeping with the goal of identifying a pattern were rewarded with nothing but frustration and wasted resources. The Dungeons had a seemingly endless supply of new floors to thwart those who sought to unravel the Column's secrets. On the upside, anyone who was still within the Dungeon at the end of the final day of the week awoke at the base of the marble stairs in the center of town. In this manner a number of Ascenders had survived floors that were too strong to be conquered by simply hunkering down and waiting out the clock.

When the Corpse Hunter approached the stairs the small crowd of people gathered around the city center parted like a sea. They gave him twice the space he needed to pass by. Though none looked directly at him, some glanced nervously between the stairs and the direction man in gray. Who was going to return in the back of the Corpse Hunter's cart? Would it be a friend, a spouse, a child? It was that fearful sense of unknowing that caused the crowd to give way to the man in gray.

Standing at the foot of the staircase the Corpse Hunter looked up at the one hundred steps that stood before him. The onlookers watched quietly as he said something just loud enough for them to hear but too quiet to understand. Perhaps it was a prayer to the fallen that he would meet along his journey.

"I fucking hate stairs," Aiden said to himself.

He pulled the empty cart up the long staircase, bitching and moaning the whole way.

"Why'd it have to be a magical staircase? It couldn't be a magical ramp? Or a magical grain elevator? Or maybe a magical worm that carried you to your destination? Anything would've been better than stairs…"

Aiden could already feel the muscles in his lower back starting to stiffen by the time he reached the top. A large marble doorway was the only thing left standing between him and the threats beyond it. He looked upon the beautiful script that was carved into the door and began to read it aloud.

"Standing before you is a body ready to be tested. A mind ready to be challenged. A soul ready to be measured." After the last words left his lips the doors slowly opened and the Corpse Hunter ventured inside.

Aiden passed straight through a stone wall and found himself standing in a room that looked like someone's cellar. The doorway behind him was gone along with any trace of the marble stairs. Once inside the Dungeon he would have to clear the floor before being given the option to leave.

Looking about the room the man in gray spotted an old wooden door that matched the equally decrepit looking furniture. The first floor wasn't much of a threat, even to the youngest and most inexperienced of Fate Holders. That still wasn't an excuse to be careless though so he moved with caution. When it was clear the room was empty he focused on the door, checking it for traps.

His side of the doorframe seemed normal but he didn't trust the opposite side so he cracked the door slightly and examined the gap. There was a rope tied across the bottom of the door's threshold. "A snare trap?" Aiden asked the room quietly. The room offered only silence in return, deciding not to take sides between the man and the trap.

Pulling the dagger from his boot he cut the rope and quickly moved away from the door. Low level traps rarely had a secondary triggering mechanism but it wasn't unheard of. When nothing happened he opened the door.

Immediately on the other side of the door was a pile of rotting compost. It stood about a body's length away from where the rope had been before it was cut. If he had just walked through he would've tripped and fallen face first into the muck.

"Ingenious," he said sarcastically as if rating the Dungeon's clever ploy.

He left the cart behind but encouraged Vagrant to ride upon his shoulder as they explored the rest of the floor. He came across some additional ‘less than lethal’ hazards which he disabled before coming across the Dungeon’s first defender.

From a darkened room came the sound of gnashing teeth and skittering paws. The creature lunged at him from the shadows with its gaping maw wide open. It was intent on sinking row upon row of sharpened teeth into the flesh of the gray clad man. Such was his punishment for intruding upon the home of a beast with fur as dark as the unforgiving night that had claimed his world.

Aiden effortlessly kicked the small black haired rat away. Defeated, it ran back into the shadows from whence it came. A few more rats and simple traps later and he had found his way to the end of the level. A doorway made of marble stood at the far end of a long hallway, looking like a silver chalice in a muddy puddle of water compared to the surrounding gray walls. Inscribed into the door were two simple instructions.

"Pull to ascend. Push to leave."

After going back grabbing his cart Aiden pulled the door open and walked through.

In the Corpse Hunter's mind the next several floors weren't even worth recalling. Were he to write a book about his life he would omit those boring memories from it. Seriously though, what sort of reader would willingly sit through an entire chapter of him fighting off small rodents and disarming traps on par with a child's pranks. The notion was so boring he actually yawned just thinking about it.

It was fortuitous for anyone that might one day read about his journey in the future that the difficulty and danger of the Dungeon quickly ramped up. Small rats were replaced with rabid dogs, piles of rotting vegetation swapped out for spike pits. Aiden only had to ascend nine floors before he found his first corpse.

A boy on the cusp of reaching puberty was face down in a puddle of his own blood. He had managed to circumvent several holes with spikes jutting out the bottom and kill almost an entire pack of wild hounds with just his hand axe and conviction. Unfortunately the pack had overwhelmed the young Ascender. The few who survived his slaughter avenged the deaths of their pack members by tearing the boy's throat out.

When a fresh pack of hounds appeared they charged at the Corpse Hunter, jaws snapping in his direction. It didn’t take him much effort to put down the feral beasts with his short sword. When that was done he sheathed his blade and examined the body. Though he didn't know the child's name there was an unshakable feeling that their paths had crossed before.

The Corpse Hunter placed a hand on the boy's lifeless chest and focused. Moments later the corpse inhaled sharply and its chest began to rise.

"What is your name?" the man in gray asked the corpse.

"Cody," the body of the boy replied, its mouth moving in sync with the words that it uttered from beyond the grave.

The voice was a strained whisper that sounded like a boy on the verge of suffocation. Though he was already dead and such a thing was no longer possible.

Even with the change in voice it was enough to jumpstart Aiden's memory. "You were one of Constance's students, weren't you? Back at the Academy."

"Yes," the body replied.

"The one who couldn't seem to care less about what I had to say."

"Yes," the body repeated.

"Why didn't you listen to me?" This was a question he had asked so many times.

"I thought I knew better."

The wording might differ, but it was always the same response. Aiden stopped focusing on the body and it let out a long slow breath before returning to its original state, silent and unmoving. He pulled a white sheet out of the hatch near the front of the cart and carefully wrapped the body in it before binding it with rope. With that done he picked it up and placed it in the back of the cart.

A child's body was always much lighter than an adult's and easier on his back. If given the choice between the two, he'd choose the extra back pain.

On the seventeenth floor the Corpse Hunters picked up the presence of multiple bodies in one central location. It wasn't hard to find as this floor was a wide open valley with rows of dense trees on either side acting like a curtain. This was a perfect place for Vagrant to stretch his wings.

"You know what you look for," the man in gray said to the bird with a nod.

It took off and began sweeping the valley from the sky. A few minutes later and the vulture was maintaining a small holding pattern as it flew in circles a few hundred yards from the Corpse Hunter.

When the Corpse Hunter came to a small hill he pulled out a telescope and surveyed the area. Vagrant was circling above a large patch of grass that spanned much of the valley ahead. Aiden couldn't see the bodies but he could feel their presence.

"Don't go into the long grass," he said to himself before leaving his cart heading down the hill.

Instead of walking straight into the grass the gray clad man cut himself a path with his short sword. Whatever lurked within was far less likely to ambush him if he could see it coming and with a clear trail behind him it would be much harder to be surprised from the rear.

When he had come to within twenty feet of the place where the vulture was circling overhead he began to curve his path to match the flying bird. Every now and then he could hear something rustling within the long grass but nothing revealed itself to him. When he had made his way back to the other side of the circle he expanded the rounded path until it was twice as wide as the grass was high.

Once that was complete he pulled a firestarter from his pocket and struck it, showering the base of the long grass with sparks. It ignited like a rag drenched in lamp oil and crackled like popcorn on a stovetop. Aiden patiently waited for the flames to spread, not that he had to wait long. In a matter of minutes the entire valley had been transformed into a raging inferno that swept across the Dungeon floor like the wildfire it was.

Pained cries and death wails came from the burning grass as the creatures that had been lying in wait were cooked alive. The Corpse Hunter wasn’t at risk of course, he’d made himself a fire break by cutting a path through the grass. He slowly walked up the hill to collect his cart, the hard part was already over. Patience and thoughtful planning were almost always the best way to traverse the Dungeon.

The Corpse Hunter watched from his perch on top of the hill as the valley below him was reduced to ashes. All that remained were the distant trees and a small patch of grass in the center of where the field had once been. After the ashes had cooled and the wails of dying beasts came to an end the man in gray ventured into the small tuft of grass that had survived the fire.

One by one he pulled out the bodies, wrapping them in white cloth and binding them with rope before placing them into his cart. There were four in total ranging in age from mid to late teens.

They had all shared identical lacerations on their backs and calves, confirming that they had all been taken by surprise.

The man in gray pulled his cart in the direction of a white marble door that he could just barely make out in the distance. Not once did he bother to look through the ashes to see what had claimed the lives of the four corpses in the back of his wagon. The creatures were dead and posed no threat to him and that was all he cared for.

From time to time the Corpse Hunter would find the remains of monsters that had been put on display by the Ascenders who had slain them. Decapitated heads on spikes, bodies pinned to walls or trees, organs removed and strewn about like macabre party decorations.

He never cared for that sort of exhibition. The creatures within the Dungeon were only doing what they had been born to do, same as him. In the end it wasn’t even the beasts and traps that inhabited the floors above Plinth that claimed the lives of those who called the Column their home.

No, the Dungeon didn’t kill, not in the Corpse Hunter’s mind. It only showed those who entered it what they were and were not capable of. And sadly many who entered into its hallowed grounds found that they were not capable of enduring what it had to offer.

They were not ready to be tested, challenged, or measured despite claiming otherwise. The Dungeon didn’t reap the living anymore than the Corpse Hunter did. It merely separated the wheat from the chaff. And it just so happened to be the Corpse Hunter’s duty to clean up that chaff.