I cracked my knuckles slowly while hovering above the shattered clearing.
The ogre was still moving.
Its enormous body tore through frozen earth and splintered trees at the far end of the forest, carrying the remains of my last strike with it. Sheets of ice buckled beneath its weight as it skidded across the clearing, uprooting frost-covered trunks and throwing broken branches into the air before finally grinding to a halt against a ridge of frozen stone. Debris continued falling long after the creature stopped, glittering in the cold blue light that filtered through the canopy.
I watched it from above and let the pressure of my ability hold my trajectory for another moment.
"I hope you live long enough," I called across the clearing, "for me to level up again."
The ogre answered by moving.
One massive hand planted against the ice, fingers digging deep enough to split the frozen surface as it forced itself upright. The movement was slow and ugly now. Its right shoulder hung lower than the left, sections of frozen armor had been pulverized away, and dark blood seeped through the cracks running across its chest. Each attempt to straighten seemed to force its own weight against injuries that wanted it on the ground.
That last attack had hurt.
Good.
Gravity finally reclaimed me.
I landed hard enough to send thin cracks racing away from my boots, but I never allowed the impact to become stillness. My weight shifted forward immediately, one step bleeding into the next while the pressure inside my ability stretched along the path I had already chosen.
The ogre was still several dozen meters away.
That distance disappeared quickly.
My first few steps were ordinary enough, boots biting into frost while the cold air dragged across my face. Then commitment settled in. The familiar pressure gathered beneath me, subtle for only an instant before the environment seemed to lose its ability to resist what came next.
I accelerated.
Trees crossed my path.
I stopped caring.
The first trunk met my shoulder and burst apart in a spray of frozen wood without changing my course. Another passed beneath my forearm. Ice exploded from its bark as I went through it, leaving fragments tumbling through the wake behind me.
By the time the ogre managed to straighten, I was already there.
Its remaining good arm began to rise.
Too late.
My fist drove into its chest.
The collision behaved differently from a normal strike. There was no broad eruption of force, no dramatic shockwave sending the creature flying backward. The resistance gathered directly beneath my knuckles and folded inward as my movement continued through it. Frozen armor bowed beneath the pressure before the dense material finally surrendered, stone and ice deforming around my fist while the ogre's torso jerked backward from something its mass could not properly absorb.
It held.
Barely.
I felt the resistance persist for a fraction longer than anything else I had fought inside the dungeon, and that alone told me how absurdly durable the creature was.
I smiled and closed the remaining distance before it could recover, slipping inside the reach of its wounded arm.
My elbow found the damaged ribs before the ogre could recover. The remaining armor there crumpled beneath the strike, and this time something softer failed behind it. A wet crack traveled through its side. The creature's roar broke halfway through as one enormous arm swung down toward me with enough force to flatten the clearing.
I didn't dodge. I invaded the space beneath the swing, forcing the collision to happen before the ogre expected it
Its forearm met my raised shoulder while I was already moving forward, and for a heartbeat the two motions tried to occupy the same outcome. The ogre possessed the greater mass. It had the longer reach. Every ordinary law governing collisions should have favored it.
My ability didn't care.
The limb compressed at the point of contact.
Bone cracked somewhere beneath the frozen skin, first once and then repeatedly as the force driving the arm downward lost its original direction. The stored momentum recoiled through the limb instead, snapping it backward hard enough to wrench the ogre's upper body sideways.
Its footing opened.
I attacked.
The next several seconds stopped resembling individual exchanges. A punch buried itself beneath the edge of its chest armor. A step carried me outside the reach of a desperate backhand. My heel drove into the side of its knee, and the moment it tried to compensate, I was already moving through the space its adjustment had created. Every action became fuel for the one after it, and the longer I remained in motion, the less the creature seemed capable of forcing me out of the rhythm.
A translucent notification appeared near the edge of my vision.
Successful Hit Registered
312 / 600
Not enough.
The ogre tried to pivot toward me, and I began circling just quickly enough to make its size work against it. Every turn required hundreds of pounds of damaged muscle and frozen armor to shift together. Every correction was slower than the one before it. I stopped trying to overpower the monster and started making it chase me instead.
Its weight became another weapon.
Mine.
I slipped beneath another swing and drove my knee into its abdomen. The remaining armor there folded inward around the impact, finally losing the integrity that had kept it intact. I felt dense material give way beneath my knee, followed immediately by something wet and much less durable.
The ogre dropped to one knee.
That gave me height.
I used it.
The pressure intensified as I circled its lowered frame, each change in angle carrying me into another opening before it could turn. My strikes were landing before the previous ones had time to settle. A fist snapped into its jaw and turned its head. My palm struck the side of its neck on the next step. Another short punch drove against the weakened chest, each contact intentionally shallower than before.
The counter appeared again.
Successful Hit Registered
367 / 600
Still short.
That changed the objective.
Killing it had become easy enough.
Keeping it alive was the difficult part.
I adjusted my strikes accordingly.
Less penetration. Less commitment. More contact.
The next blows snapped against the ogre instead of driving through it. My fists landed in rapid succession across armor, ribs, shoulder, and jaw, each strike triggering the same strange sequence of contact, compression, and release without allowing enough force through to finish what I had started.
The creature's body jerked under the barrage. Its attempts to fight back became increasingly frantic as the rhythm of the hits denied it enough time to plant its weight properly. It no longer looked like something fighting to win.
It looked like something trying to survive the process.
Successful Hit Registered
389 / 600
Closer.
The ogre roared and forced itself upright through sheer stubbornness. Blood ran freely from its mouth now, streaking down its chin before freezing against the damaged armor covering its chest. Its last usable arm drew backward, muscles bunching beneath the skin as it prepared one final swing.
The fist came at me like a falling boulder. I committed to the same line and sent my own hand forward to meet it.
The difference in size should have been ridiculous. Its hand was nearly large enough to wrap around my torso, while mine disappeared against the surface of its knuckles.
Contact made size irrelevant.
The ogre's fist stopped.
Everything behind it continued.
Bones gave inside the hand first, followed by the wrist as the limb folded backward under the momentum it had generated itself. The failure traveled through the forearm and elbow, twisting the creature off balance until it stumbled several heavy steps backward, feet carving trenches through the ice.
The notification appeared.
Successful Hit Registered
401 / 600
That was enough.
I changed my stance.
The restraint disappeared with it.
My next step drove downward, and I forced the accumulated motion upward instead. The ice beneath me exploded as I launched into the air, cold wind tearing across my face while the forest became a blur around me. Pressure wrapped itself around the direction I had chosen until there was only one point in the clearing that mattered.
The ogre's chest.
It saw me coming.
There was nothing it could do about it.
My fist struck where its heart should have been.
The remaining armor disappeared beneath the contact. Bone and flesh followed without producing enough resistance to meaningfully slow me, the massive body opening around my path as I drove through its chest and emerged from the other side in a burst of blood, pulverized ice, and heat vented from my suit.
For several meters I continued through open air before forcing my trajectory downward.
I landed and turned.
The ogre was still standing.
A hole nearly the width of my body passed clean through its chest, revealing the frost-covered forest behind it. Steam curled from the wound where blood met the heated edges of my suit's passage. The creature stared ahead without moving, as if its body had not yet received permission to understand what had happened.
Then its knees failed.
The massive body pitched forward and struck the frozen clearing with enough weight to send cracks racing through the ice beneath it. Snow lifted around the impact and drifted outward in a pale cloud before slowly settling across something that would never rise again.
I stood there breathing heavily while the forest returned to silence.
Something warm slid down my cheek.
I wiped it away automatically.
Blood.
Not mine.
That prompted me to finally look down.
The front of my suit was coated in what remained of the ogre's interior. Dark blood ran across the armor in thick streaks while tissue clung to sections of my chest and arms. The suit continued venting excess heat through narrow seams, turning some of the blood into thin curls of red-tinted vapor.
The smell arrived next.
Hot metal, blood, ruptured organs, and something unpleasantly similar to cooked meat.
I swallowed.
"Yeah…"
Passing through the next enemy suddenly ranked much lower on my list of preferred finishing moves.
The thought barely settled before a soft chime sounded inside my head.
Light gathered near the center of the ruined clearing.
I turned toward it.
The dungeon was changing.
Energy streamed inward from between the trees in thin strands, bending toward the place where the ogre had fallen. The currents gathered above the shattered ice and condensed around an invisible center until a semi-translucent sphere emerged, its interior filled with pale movement that resembled a blizzard trapped beneath glass.
The core hovered there quietly.
Then the system appeared.
Dungeon Clear Condition Met
Select Outcome:
[Destroy Core]
[Become Boss]
I had already made enough poor financial decisions for one day.
"Boss."
The sphere pulsed.
Its interior storm accelerated as the entire core compressed inward, layers of translucent energy folding over themselves until the object became smaller, denser, and brighter. The transformation continued in front of me, its shape elongating briefly before contracting again as though several possible forms were competing for the right to exist.
A second notification appeared.
Item Acquired: Frostfall Colossus
Rank: S-Class
I stopped breathing for a moment.
The description unfolded beneath it.
A weapon born from condensed dungeon authority. Frostfall Colossus amplifies kinetic motion into crushing mass while converting repeated impacts against the same target into internal freezing. Sustained attacks progressively increase frost accumulation. Once critical accumulation is reached, the target is frozen solid.
Power scales with continuous movement. Loss of motion reduces effectiveness.
Target switching disrupts accumulation.
I reread the rank.
S-Class.
Then once more, just to make sure the system hadn't reconsidered.
It hadn't.
"This dungeon wasn't even close to S-Class."
The core offered no explanation.
Then again, the dungeon had contained three bosses, levels that didn't match what a beginner gate should have supported, and enough irregularities to make the entire experience questionable from the moment I entered.
Maybe the reward was simply following the same trend.
Which meant telling the Guild about it would be an exceptionally bad idea.
The item compressed again before drifting toward my hand. Cold brushed across my fingers as the energy wrapped itself around one of them and solidified into a simple ring. There was no dramatic flare once the process finished, no obvious indication that something classified as S-Class was now sitting against my skin.
It just rested there.
Quiet.
Unremarkable.
Perfect.
I flexed my fingers and felt the ring respond with a faint pressure that vanished almost immediately.
"You're staying off the paperwork."
With the core secured, I turned back toward the clearing and began harvesting what remained useful.
The final ogre alone would fetch a decent price, but the dungeon had offered something even stranger than valuable materials.
Three bosses.
I collected each boss core before leaving. All three resembled spheres of dense ice with miniature storms raging beneath their translucent surfaces, but their weight differed considerably. The first sat heavily enough in my palm to feel valuable. The second required a firmer grip.
The final core nearly pulled my arm down when I lifted it.
That tracked.
The bastard had certainly earned the extra weight.
The transition out of the dungeon struck harder than I expected.
Cold vanished from my skin as I stepped through the gate, replaced by warm afternoon air and the distant noise of civilization. The scent of frost, moss, and blood disappeared beneath concrete, vehicle exhaust, and whatever someone nearby had ordered for lunch.
I hadn't realized how oppressive the dungeon had felt until it was gone.
The two guards posted outside turned toward me.
Their attention stopped at my face.
Then traveled downward.
Blood covered most of the front of my suit. More had dried along my cheek and hair, while the backpack hanging from one shoulder bulged under the weight of everything I'd collected.
Neither man said anything.
One looked toward the still-open gate behind me.
Then back at me.
The other repeated the motion.
They had clearly expected one of two things: either I would come back unsuccessful, or the gate would disappear after I destroyed its core.
Apparently walking out covered in monster guts while leaving the dungeon intact had not been included in the betting pool.
I gave them a small nod.
They returned it.
No questions.
Good men.
…
The Guild lobby had changed exactly as much as I had.
Which was to say, not at all.
Adventurers moved between counters, weapons changed hands, and information screens continued cycling through assignments as though I hadn't just discovered an S-Class item inside a beginner dungeon. The familiar efficiency almost felt comforting after several hours of being attacked by things that wanted to separate my organs from my body.
I approached an open processing station and placed my Guild credentials on the counter.
Then I set down one of the cores.
The clerk looked from the frozen sphere to me.
His eyes remained on the blood covering my face for perhaps half a second longer than professionalism technically allowed.
"Gate clearance?"
"More or less."
He scanned my credentials and pulled up my account.
"Marcus Vale. Second registered gate."
"That's me."
He placed the core onto a recessed scanning plate built into the counter. Pale light passed through the sphere several times before the terminal beside him chimed.
"Clear condition verified," he said. "I'll close the gate record and mark the dungeon as completed."
"Actually…"
His fingers stopped above the screen.
"The gate's still open."
The clerk looked toward me.
"I took ownership."
For several seconds, the sounds of the lobby seemed substantially louder.
"You became the dungeon boss?"
"Technically."
His attention shifted toward my account again.
"Most adventurers destroy lower-rank cores. Keeping one open prevents that gate location from recycling into another dungeon."
"I found that out afterward."
He studied me.
"This was your second gate?"
"Yes."
Something in his expression sharpened.
"Where is the rest of your party?"
There it was.
I had been wondering when that question would appear.
I rested one forearm against the counter and considered how much truth I wanted to introduce into this conversation at once.
"I cleared it alone."
The clerk stopped moving.
Not dramatically. Just completely.
His gaze shifted toward the core sitting on the scanner and then returned to me.
"You solo-cleared it?"
"That appears to be what happened."
His expression suggested he didn't appreciate the wording.
I decided to make things worse.
"Actually, I had a question. How common is it for one dungeon to have multiple bosses?"
The clerk's professional composure developed a visible crack.
"Multiple?"
"Three."
He stared at me.
I reached into my bag.
The second core landed beside the first.
Then the third.
The final one struck the counter with enough weight to produce a dull crack beneath it.
The clerk looked down.
A thin line had appeared across the marble.
I followed his gaze.
"Sorry."
He didn't answer.
Instead, he reached for the desk phone.
The conversation that followed lasted less than a minute. He gave the person on the other end my name, Guild identification number, gate designation, and the phrase three confirmed boss cores. Whatever response he received changed his posture almost immediately.
"Yes, sir."
A pause.
"Understood."
Another pause followed, longer this time.
His eyes moved toward me.
"He's here now."
That was interesting.
The call ended.
The clerk set the receiver down carefully before turning back toward me.
Something fundamental had changed.
Not fear exactly.
Recognition.
"Mr. Vale, the Guild will process every core and material recovered from the dungeon. There will be no processing fee for this clear."
Mr. Vale?
Five minutes ago I had been "second registered gate."
Apparently whoever had answered that phone possessed excellent customer-service training.
"Okay…"
The clerk retrieved a broader scanning plate.
"May I process the remaining cores?"
I nodded.
The first sphere settled onto the device.
Data appeared on the terminal.
Frost Ogre
Rank: D-Class
Level: 10
I leaned slightly closer.
That explained the spear.
The first hit from that thing had nearly rearranged my internal organs.
The clerk moved to the second core.
Frost Ogre
Rank: D-Class
Level: 13
His fingers paused above the controls.
Then came the last.
The plate hummed harder beneath its weight.
Frost Ogre
Rank: D-Class
Level: 16
This time the clerk didn't manage to hide the movement in his hand.
A faint tremor passed through his fingers before he curled them against the edge of the counter.
Interesting.
I started filling out the ownership documentation while he processed the remaining materials. The Guild required a description of the dungeon, known monster population, boss configuration, and reward obtained from assuming control.
That final box received considerably more thought than the others.
Reward: C-Class Weapon.
Technically a lie.
A very useful one.
When I finished, the clerk reviewed the form, approved the registration, and explained that the Guild would lease access to the gate at the established market rate for its classification. A daily percentage would be deposited directly into my account while the gate remained active.
Passive income from attempted homicide.
Maybe being an adventurer wasn't so bad.
He rotated the monitor toward me after processing the materials.
The number displayed there removed several financial concerns from my immediate future.
I approved the transfer.
The clerk didn't dismiss me.
Instead, he retrieved a slim black tablet from beneath the counter and placed it between us.
"Something else came through while your materials were processing."
That got my attention.
He touched the screen.
A mission file opened.
IRREGULAR GATE RESPONSE
CLASSIFICATION: S-RANK
STATUS: INTERNATIONAL PRIORITY
DEPLOYMENT: MULTILEVEL S-CLASS TEAM
I looked at him.
"You people work fast."
"This wasn't generated because you completed this dungeon."
Interesting choice of words.
The clerk folded his hands behind the counter.
"Your ability classification already placed you under S-Class review. Today's clear changed the urgency of that review considerably."
There it was.
I glanced back down at the tablet.
"So this is an evaluation."
"Officially, it's an emergency deployment."
"And unofficially?"
His expression returned to professional neutrality.
"I'm a processing clerk, Mr. Vale."
Coward.
I scrolled farther.
Four names appeared beneath mine.
Dorian Voss — S-Class — Level 10
Kael Ardent — S-Class
Felicity Wynn — S-Class
Elias Rook — S-Class
I stopped at the first name.
"Level ten?"
The clerk followed my gaze.
"Team lead."
That explained enough.
"These four have already accepted?"
"They were assigned before your inclusion was approved. You'll be joining their unit for this deployment."
That was a much more reasonable explanation than the Guild spontaneously collecting five S-Class adventurers in the same parking lot.
"What's irregular about the gate?"
"Unknown."
"That's comforting."
"The reconnaissance team reported inconsistencies between the estimated rank and environmental readings. Further information will be uploaded before deployment."
I studied the four names again.
"Do they know they're getting someone who's cleared exactly two gates?"
The clerk paused.
"Yes."
Wonderful.
"And they're still coming?"
Another pause.
"Yes."
That was somehow worse.
I selected ACCEPT.
The tablet confirmed the assignment.
When I pushed it back across the counter, the clerk stopped it with one hand.
"Keep it. It's now registered to you."
I looked down at it.
"Permanent issue?"
"All priority requests, Guild notices, financial records, mission updates, and gate information will be delivered through it. Keep it on or near your person."
The clerk inclined his head slightly.
"Your staging location and departure time are already loaded. Thank you for your continued cooperation, Mr. Vale."
There it was again.
I picked up the tablet.
"Did the person on the phone tell you to start calling me that?"
His silence lasted just long enough to become an answer.
I smiled.
"Thought so."
…
The staging site occupied a secured section of Guild property well away from civilian traffic.
Floodlights surrounded a broad circular platform marked with containment equipment, sensor arrays, and the heavy machinery used to stabilize newly formed gates. Technicians moved between consoles while armed guards maintained a perimeter around an empty section of reinforced ground where, according to the tablet, reality was expected to become considerably less cooperative in roughly four minutes.
The four names from my mission file were already there.
Seeing them as text hadn't prepared me for the difference between knowing someone was S-Class and standing close enough to feel it.
Kael was the easiest to identify.
He leaned against a railing near the outer platform with both arms resting loosely across his chest, apparently unconcerned by the small army of technicians preparing around us. Heat distorted the air near his shoulders in faint ripples despite the temperature being perfectly comfortable.
His helmet was open.
The moment I approached, his eyes moved over me once from head to toe.
"So you're Marcus."
I stopped nearby.
"Depends who's asking."
"Kael."
He pushed away from the railing and offered his hand.
I looked at it.
Then at the heat shimmer around him.
"Is that safe?"
He laughed.
"I like him already."
I shook his hand.
It was warm.
Thankfully, only warm.
"Try not to die in there," he said.
"That usually the welcome speech?"
"No. Usually it's longer."
A woman standing several feet away turned her head toward him.
"Unfortunately."
Felicity matched the image attached to the mission file, though the photograph hadn't captured how controlled everything about her seemed in person. She stood with her weight distributed evenly, hands relaxed at her sides while thin traces of light moved beneath sections of her suit.
She offered me a small nod.
"Felicity."
"Marcus."
"We know."
"Apparently everyone does today."
Kael chuckled somewhere behind her.
Felicity ignored him.
"We'll review formation and response protocols inside once we know what environment we're dealing with. Don't improvise around abilities you haven't seen yet."
That sounded directed at me.
Fair.
The third person approached before I could answer.
Dorian Voss was impossible to mistake for anyone else.
He wasn't merely tall. There was a heaviness to him that made physical size feel almost irrelevant. His armor was broader than the others', built around a frame that seemed perfectly still despite the activity surrounding us. Nothing visibly radiated from him, but standing within several meters of the man produced the uncomfortable impression that my own body weighed slightly more than it had a moment earlier.
His helmet remained open.
His eyes settled on me.
"Marcus Vale."
Not a question.
"Dorian."
He offered his fist instead of his hand.
I bumped it.
The pressure around him seemed to shift for the briefest instant.
Then disappear.
"Stay inside formation until you understand how we fight," he said. "If I tell you to move, move. If I tell you to stop, stop."
Straightforward.
"I can work with that."
His gaze lingered on me for another second.
Something told me that had been the first test.
"Good."
That left Elias.
He stood farther from the others beside one of the containment pylons, examining the empty space where the gate would appear.
Nothing about him immediately suggested S-Class.
That was precisely what made him uncomfortable to look at.
Kael distorted the air around himself. Dorian seemed to change the weight of the space he occupied. Even Felicity carried a subtle tension around her, as though nearby objects were only temporarily allowed to remain where they were.
Elias just stood there.
No pressure.
No obvious effect.
No indication that he was anything other than a man in plain dark armor watching technicians work.
He noticed me looking.
Then somehow he was closer.
I hadn't seen him walk.
There was no blur, no sudden burst of speed. One moment several meters separated us, and the next there wasn't.
My attention sharpened immediately.
Elias smiled.
"Elias."
I looked toward the place he'd been standing.
Then back at him.
"Okay."
His smile widened slightly.
"That's usually the reaction."
"What exactly do you do?"
"We'll get there."
Of course we would.
I had officially met the entire team and understood perhaps twenty percent of what any of them were capable of.
Encouraging.
A Guild technician called from the perimeter.
"Gate formation in two minutes."
The mood shifted immediately.
Kael stopped leaning.
Felicity turned toward the platform.
Elias's casual posture disappeared so subtly I almost missed it.
Dorian looked at all four of us.
"Seal on entry. No assumptions based on briefing. Irregular means the information is already wrong somewhere. We find out where before it kills us."
Nobody joked after that.
That told me almost as much about Dorian as the Guild file had.
The technicians retreated behind the marked safety line while sensors around the platform began accelerating through their readings. A low vibration passed through the ground. The air directly above the center of the platform distorted, faintly at first, then hard enough that the floodlights behind it bent into crooked lines.
"Thirty seconds."
I watched closely.
I'd entered gates before.
I'd never watched one being born.
The distortion tightened around a point in empty space until the air seemed stretched beyond what reality could tolerate. Then the center split.
There was no explosion.
The violence was stranger than that.
Space opened without moving aside.
A vertical seam appeared in nothing and widened slowly, its edges rippling as the opening grew upward and outward until a ten-foot distortion stood in the middle of the platform. Darkness moved behind it in ways that made depth impossible to judge.
Technicians rushed forward the instant the expansion stopped.
Heavy stabilizing arms locked around the forming perimeter. Reinforced sections extended upward and connected over the gate, building an arch around something that seemed distinctly offended by being contained. Sensors flashed green one by one as stabilization completed.
The lead technician raised a hand.
"Gate stable."
Dorian's helmet sealed first.
Armor shifted upward around his face and locked into place with a muted hiss.
Kael followed.
Then Felicity.
Elias's seal was so seamless that I almost missed the transition.
I looked down at my own suit.
Neck down.
No environmental seal.
No helmet.
Apparently I was bringing optimism.
Kael noticed.
"Still waiting on the custom suit?"
"Apparently destroying two gates wasn't enough paperwork."
"Give it time."
Dorian stepped toward the distortion.
"We move."
He crossed first.
Felicity followed, then Elias. Kael paused long enough to glance back at me.
"Welcome to your first real mission, rookie."
Then he disappeared through the gate.
I stared at the distortion for half a second.
Two completed gates.
Four S-Class adventurers.
One irregular S-Rank dungeon that the Guild apparently knew enough about to be worried and not enough about to explain why.
Reasonable progression.
"Here goes nothing."
I stepped through.
The transition stripped the staging area away instantly.
Warm air vanished. The noise of machinery and technicians disappeared. My boots touched dark basalt beneath an alien sky while a thin, dry atmosphere entered my lungs.
I inhaled again.
Less came back than I expected.
Around me, the others were already reacting.
Their suits sealed completely as environmental systems activated. Dorian had moved several steps ahead. Felicity was scanning the terrain. Kael's head turned slowly across the horizon while Elias stood perfectly still, attention fixed on something I couldn't yet identify.
The dungeon stretched outward beneath us in broken fields of black basalt, dim heat glowing through seams between enormous plates of stone. Nothing moved nearby, yet the air itself seemed uneven, pressure shifting subtly from one breath to the next as though the world had been assembled without anyone bothering to make sure all its rules agreed.
I looked back.
The gate shimmered behind us.
Then I faced forward again.
The briefing had already been wrong about the atmosphere.
We had been inside for less than ten seconds.
Dorian's voice came through my earpiece from the group channel.
"Nobody moves ahead alone."
The basalt beneath my boots gave a faint tremor.
I looked down.
Something far beneath us moved.
And whatever confidence I'd carried through the gate suddenly felt premature.