The transition from the adrenaline-soaked nightmare of the Darkling Woods to the mundane horror of the prison canteen was jarring. There was no shower, no medical bay to tend to their wounds only a decontamination mist that smelled of bleach and burning air as they exited the elevators.
The canteen was located on the central tier of the housing block. It was a cavernous, echoing chamber that could hold two thousand souls, though "souls" felt like a generous term for the hollowed-out husks that shuffled through the serving lines. The air hung thick, a palpable smog composed of unwashed bodies, the metallic tang of recycled air, and the overwhelming, sickly-sweet scent of the nutrient paste.
The noise was a dull roar the clatter of metal trays against metal tables, the scraping of spoons, and the low, buzzing murmur of desperate voices. It was the sound of a hive that had lost its queen.
Adam, Harry, Panchenko, and Jones secured a table near the back, away from the aggressive gangs that claimed the center territory. Their table was scarred with graffiti scratched into the steel by generations of dead men.
Adam looked down at his tray. A scoop of grey, gelatinous sludge sat there, quivering slightly.
"Bon appétit," Panchenko said, his voice dripping with mock enthusiasm. He poked the mound with his spoon. It retained the shape of the indentation. "I call this 'The Grey Despair.' It has notes of cardboard, old socks, and just a hint of industrial lubricant."
Jones grunted, shoveling a spoonful into his mouth without hesitation. He ate with the efficiency of a machine refueling. "It's protein. Eat it. Your muscles are tearing themselves apart after that fight. If you don't feed them, they'll eat you."
Adam forced a spoonful past his lips. It was flavorless and gritty, coating his tongue in a film of grease. He swallowed hard, suppressing the urge to gag. Despite the revulsion, his stomach roared in gratitude. The fight with the Nightmare Treant had burned thousands of calories.
"Honestly," Panchenko continued, watching Adam struggle, "I'd rather eat another Nightmare Treant. At least they put up a fight. This… this is a culinary abomination. It's an insult to the very concept of digestion."
Harry grimaced, pushing his glasses up his nose. His hands were still trembling slightly, a lingering aftershock of the terror he'd felt in the woods. "At least it's… sustenance. We'll need it for tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that."
"Exactly," Adam said, pushing the tray aside after forcing down half of it. The weariness was settling into his bones like lead, but his mind refused to shut down. He was replaying the battle, analyzing the angles of the sword swings, the speed of the monsters. "We need a plan. Today we survived on luck and adrenaline. That won't last."
Jones stopped chewing. "We didn't just survive. We killed a Boss. That's not luck."
"It was messy," Adam countered, his voice low but intense. "We wasted energy. The monsters aren't mindless, but they are programmed. They have patterns. They react to sound, to movement. They have weaknesses we haven't exploited yet."
"And those glowing nodes Panchenko pointed out," Harry added, his voice gaining a shred of confidence. "Biology doesn't change, even here. Glowing usually means high energy concentration. Or a weak point."
"Ah, yes! My keen eye for vulnerable glowing bits," Panchenko preened, tapping his temple. "A gift, really. I've always had an eye for the flashy things in life."
As they discussed tactics, the ambient noise of the canteen suddenly shifted. The roar dropped to a hush in the northern sector of the hall. It rippled outward like a wave, silence spreading as heads turned.
Adam followed their gaze.
Walking down the main aisle was a man who looked like he belonged in a royal court, not a dungeon. He was tall, lithe, and moved with a fluid, predatory grace that made the other prisoners look clumsy. His hair was a vibrant, shocking shade of crimson, a splash of fire in the grey world. Even from this distance, his eyes ruby red and glowing with a faint inner luminescence seemed to cut through the gloom.
He wore the standard prison fatigues, but he had modified them, tearing the sleeves to reveal arms corded with lean, powerful muscle. But what drew the most attention was what hung at his hip.
A sword.
Not a rusted piece of scrap from the armory, but a sleek, black blade in a proper scabbard.
"That's Julian," Harry whispered, his voice tinged with a mixture of awe and fear. He shrank down in his seat.
"Why does he have a weapon in the canteen?" Adam asked, narrowing his eyes. "The guards took ours the second we left the elevator."
"Status," Jones rumbled, his eyes tracking the redhead. "Julian is the King of Level One. He's been here for three years. He doesn't just survive the Woods; he hunts in them. They say he's killed more monsters than some of the demon guards. The Warden allows him privileges because he puts on a good show."
Julian paused near the center of the room. He scanned the crowd, his expression bored, almost disappointed. His gaze swept over Adam's table. For a split second, those ruby eyes locked onto Adam's brown ones.
Adam felt a jolt. It wasn't fear; it was recognition. It was one predator acknowledging another across the savannah. Julian didn't smile, but he inclined his head a fraction of an inch, a microscopic acknowledgment of the group that had killed the Treant before continuing his stride.
"He barely breaks a sweat," Harry murmured. "He goes in alone. Always alone."
Adam watched him go. That was the benchmark. If he wanted to get to Malakor, he didn't just need to be good; he needed to be better than Julian.
A moment later, the spell broke, and the noise returned. But before Adam could speak, a shadow fell over their table.
A young man stood there, holding a tray with shaking hands. He was skinny, scrawny even, with wire-rimmed glasses that were cracked down the center. His face was a constellation of freckles, and his jet-black hair was messy. He looked like a librarian who had been mugged.
"Mind if I join?" the newcomer asked. His voice was soft, barely audible over the din, but it possessed a strange clarity. "I overheard you talking about the biomechanics of the Treant. You four put up a good fight today. Statistically, new groups have a ninety percent casualty rate against a Root-Class adversary."
Panchenko looked the kid up and down, then kicked out a spare stool. "Pull up a chair, knowledge-seeker! We were just discussing the gourmet qualities of nutrient paste. Always good to have an expert at the table. You seem to know a lot about those overgrown twigs."
The young man sat down, organizing his meager food into neat piles. "I'm Tom. I've been here a while. And I make it my business to learn. Information is lighter to carry than armor."
"I'm Adam," he said. "This is Jones, Panchenko, and Harry."
Tom nodded to each of them. "I saw the kill. You, Adam you went for the core strike. But you hesitated because you couldn't find the entry vector between the armored plates."
Adam blinked. "You saw that?"
"I see everything," Tom said simply. "Every monster has its tells. Its patterns. The Treants, for instance, are vulnerable to piercing attacks at their root nodes, but only after they've just rooted themselves for a charge. That's when the bark expands to allow heat venting. And their glowing cores? That's where their life-force is concentrated, yes, but it's shielded by a magnetic repulsor field. You have to hit it with high velocity, or non-ferrous metal."
Adam leaned forward, forgetting his food. This was exactly what they needed. "Go on."
Tom adjusted his glasses. "Scuttle-Beasts, the crab-like things you'll see tomorrow they are blind. They possess photosensitive skin, so they hate light, but they hunt by echolocation. If you scream, you die. If you throw a rock to the left, they attack the left. Move silently, or create a diversion."
"What about the wolves?" Jones asked. "The ones with the exoskeletons."
"Gloom-Hounds," Tom corrected. "They hunt in packs of five. One alpha, four chasers. If you kill a chaser, the pack frenzy increases. If you kill the Alpha usually the one with the silver-tipped spines the pack disperses. Always aim for the Alpha."
They spent the next hour absorbing Tom's encyclopedic knowledge. He spoke of Shadow-Crawlers that mimicked the texture of the black trees, of Flying Harpies that dropped acidic saliva, and of the geography of the Woods. He was a walking survival guide.
Finally, the lights in the canteen flickered, the ten-minute warning before lockdown. The room began to empty as prisoners shuffled back toward their cells.
Tom didn't move. He looked left, then right, checking to see if the guards were close. He leaned in across the table, his voice dropping to a whisper so low Adam had to strain to hear it.
"There's another reason I came over," Tom said. His eyes, usually analytical and detached, were suddenly burning with intensity. "I heard about what you did before you got here, Adam. The mine. Killing a demon taskmaster."
The air at the table grew cold.
"News travels fast," Adam said, his hand instinctively moving to where a weapon would be.
"It does," Tom said. "That takes guts. Stupidity, maybe, but guts. And it tells me you might be the kind of person who understands… that survival isn't enough. That there might be a way out of here."
Adam's head snapped up. Harry gasped, covering his mouth. Even Jones, who had been carving a groove into the table with his spoon, stopped and leaned in.
"Escape?" Jones scoffed softly, though his eyes darted to the guards. "Tom, this is Kazakhar. No one escapes Kazakhar. It's inside a moon. In the middle of Yandhaq space."
"Not through the front gate, no," Tom admitted. "And not through the hangar bay. But there's another way. A risky way. A nigh-impossible way, without the right leverage. But the leverage exists."
"What leverage?" Panchenko whispered.
Tom took a deep breath. "Edward Bloodrose."
The name hung in the air for a moment.
Panchenko whistled low and long. "The Vampire Lord? Are you mad, Tom? That's a bedtime story for baby monsters. They say he's been dead for a thousand years."
"They say a lot of things to keep us hopeless," Tom replied, a flicker of defiance in his voice. "But I've done my research. I hacked the archives before I was caught. Edward Bloodrose was the most dangerous being ever imprisoned by the Empire. He wasn't just a vampire; he was a Sovereign. A Warmaster. He slaughtered legions of demons during the Great War."
"So where is he?" Adam asked, his heart beating a fast, heavy rhythm.
"Level Six," Tom whispered.
"There is no Level Six," Harry said. "It stops at Five. Eternal Darkness."
"That's what they want you to think," Tom said. "Beneath the Eternal Darkness, beneath the foundation of the prison, there is a secret containment facility. The Abyssal Oubliette. They couldn't kill him, he regenerates too fast, even for demon magic. So they crucified him. They starved him. They've kept him pinned there for centuries, using his blood to synthesize combat drugs for the Elite Guard."
Tom looked at Adam squarely.
"They say if he were freed… if he were given blood… he could kill every demon guard in this sector without breaking a sweat. He is the nuclear option."
Adam felt a cold tremor run through his spine. It wasn't fear. It was the sensation of a lock clicking open.
A demon-killer. The strongest monster expert on Level One sitting right here. And a Vampire Lord rumored to be a god of war buried in the basement.
"So," Adam said slowly, "you're saying we don't just walk out. We break him out."
"It's the only way," Tom said. "To escape this place, truly escape, we need a distraction. A massacre. He is the key. But getting to Level Six… we have to go through the Woods, swim the Crimson Lake, cross the Scorching Desert, survive the Blazing Hell, and navigate the Eternal Darkness."
"It's a suicide mission," Jones rumbled. But there was a gleam in his eye. The gleam of a warrior who finally saw a war worth fighting.
"It's impossible," Harry stammered. "We're… we're just slaves."
"We were slaves," Adam corrected. He looked at his hand, imagining the sword hilt. He thought of Malakor. He thought of the Empire that had taken everything.
If he wanted to burn it all down, he needed fire. Edward Bloodrose sounded like an inferno.
"Tell us everything, Tom," Adam said, his voice low and unwavering, hardening into steel. "About the levels. About the monsters. And about how we get to Level Six."
The lights flickered again, plunging the canteen into semi-darkness.
"Meet me in the library sector during free time tomorrow," Tom whispered, standing up as the guards began to shout for order. "And Adam? Be careful. Julian knows about Bloodrose too. Why do you think he's been staying on Level One so long? He's waiting for a team strong enough to help him get there."
Tom slipped away into the crowd, leaving the four of them sitting in the shadows.
Adam looked at his friends. The despair of the meal was gone, replaced by a terrifying, exhilarating purpose.
"Level Six," Panchenko muttered, shaking his head with a grin. "Well, if we're going to die, we might as well die freeing a vampire king. It'll make for a hell of a biography."
"Let's go," Adam said. "We have work to do."