The gate stood in the shallow dip of a field that should have been like any other.
From a distance, it could have passed for a strange bit of broken ruin: two rough stone pillars jutting from the earth at an angle, leaning together at the top but never quite touching.
Only when Jacob got close enough to see the air between them did it stop looking like anything people had made.
The space shimmered.
Not like heat above a fire or a mirage on a road. This shimmer felt thicker, as if there were a skin stretched between the stones and light was being forced through it.
His armor hummed faintly against his skin.
Carlos waited beside the gate with his party. The dwarf had his shield strapped on and an axe at his hip. The elf had traded the wide-brimmed hat for a tighter hood, wand visible in a loop at her belt. Tamsin had fewer knives on display, which only made Jacob more certain he had more of them hidden.
Carlos watched Jacob approach, eyes checking his gear with a professional sort of approval.
"Good," he said. "You did not decide to show up in just a shirt and smile."
"I like breathing," Jacob said.
The dwarf snorted.
Carlos jerked his chin at the stones.
"This is what an F rank looks like from the outside," he said. "Unimpressive . . . which is the dangerous part. People think that because it looks small, nothing inside can be worse than a hungry boar."
"And is it worse?" Jacob asked.
Carlos smiled without humor.
"Sometimes," he said. "Today we treat it like it is."
He gathered them with a look. The dwarf, the elf, Tamsin, and Jacob. They formed a rough half circle with the gate at their backs.
"All right," Carlos said. "This is the last time we talk like this before we are in it. So listen."
He pointed at Jacob.
"You are in the back. That is not an insult. That is your role. You watch our patterns, you listen to orders, you do not go charging off because you see something shiny. If something gets through to you, you use that sword and those legs to stay alive, not to play hero."
Jacob nodded.
"If you fall," Carlos went on, "you curl up. Make yourself small. Let your armor be a shell. Shout if you can. We clear whatever is on you. You do not try to stand up into a blade."
"Make myself baggage," Jacob said, remembering Tamsin's words.
"Smart baggage," Tamsin said. "There is a difference."
The elf spoke for the first time that morning, voice cool.
"If something happens to Carlos, you listen to me or to Tamsin," she said. "No arguing. No asking why. Just move."
"Understood," Jacob said.
Carlos studied his face for a moment, then nodded slowly.
He stepped back and rolled his shoulders.
"All right. The order is the same as last time. Me in front, shield wall behind, glass and tricks in the middle, scout and new baggage in the rear. We go in slowly. No showing off on the first floor. Move."
The dwarf and elf went ahead of him, boots crunching the frost as they lined up. Tamsin fell in beside Jacob.
"First time?" the gnome asked quietly.
"Through a gate?" Jacob said. "Yes."
"Remember to breathe," Tamsin said. "People forget and then blame the air."
Jacob almost laughed.
They walked together toward the pillars.
Every step closer made the pressure he had felt the night before grow sharper. The world felt thicker here, like the air had been compressed. His skin itched under the coat. The links to his armor and sword pulsed in the back of his mind, steady and bright.
Carlos passed between the stones without slowing. The shimmer swallowed him like water swallowing a thrown rock. The dwarf followed, then the elf.
Tamsin glanced at Jacob.
"Do not stop," he said. "Stopping in the middle is worse."
Jacob nodded, throat dry.
He took one more breath of cold morning air and stepped forward.
The world squeezed.
For a moment, there was only weight, pushing from every direction. Not suffocating, exactly, but total. Light smeared into a color he could not name. His stomach lurched, then settled. His boots found ground again.
Sound snapped back, sharper than before. Grass hissed under a faint breeze. Somewhere distant, something chittered.
Jacob stumbled one more step and caught himself.
He was standing in a field of waist-high grass that was not quite like any grass he had seen near home. The blades were broader, edges a little too sharp, green with a hint of blue. The sky above was a flat, perfect gray, like cloud and stone had mixed.
Behind him, where the gate should have opened out onto familiar fields, there was only more of the same grass, stretching until it faded into haze.
He turned in a slow circle.
Carlos, the dwarf, the elf, and Tamsin all stood where they had walked in, barely a pace from him. The stone pillars were still there, but they were not. He could see them and also see the way they were just part of the dungeon now, swallowed.
Jacob's armor hummed stronger than before. The pressure he had felt outside was here as well, but focused, like being inside a lung full of held breath.
Then something else arrived.
Text that was not text flared at the edge of awareness. Not in Jacob's mind. In the air around the others.
Geas Exception Logged
Entity:Unregistered human juvenile.
Status:Non-bound.
Location:Within active gate.
Restriction Updated: Discussion of System, Dungeon structure, Skills, and Related Functions permitted in presence of entity while inside this instance.
Carlos blinked, face going still for a second. The dwarf shifted his grip on the shield. The elf grimaced faintly. Tamsin muttered something rude under his breath.
Jacob saw nothing, but he saw their reactions.
"What just happened?" he asked.
Carlos looked at him, then looked away and laughed once, short and disbelieving.
"Of course," he said quietly. "Of course it does this for you."
He ran a hand over his face, then dropped it.
"All right," Carlos said. "Change of rules. In here, we are allowed to tell you the truth."
Jacob frowned.
"The truth about what?"
"The thing behind all this," Carlos said. He gestured at the grass, the sky, the air. "The thing that decides where gates appear, who gets stronger, and who does not. The thing that just told us we can talk freely around you as long as we stay inside."
Jacob's heart kicked.
"You mean there is something that decides that?" he asked.
"Yes," the elf said quietly. "We call it the System."
The word slid into his mind and clicked against a shape that had not quite been there before. Not a memory, not yet, but the outline of one, like an empty frame waiting for a picture.
"System," Jacob repeated.
The geas did not choke them. No cough, no flinch, no twisted half word. The word simply sat in the air between them, clean and permitted.
"There," Carlos said. "First secret broken. Dungeons, skills, all of it, they are part of that. Outside the gate, we would nearly bite our tongues trying to say it in front of you."
"Why me?" Jacob asked.
Tamsin gave him a sideways look.
"Good question," he said. "One that I am not keen on answering while we are standing in tall grass where anything could be hiding."
Carlos nodded.
"Explanations will come in pieces," he said. "First lesson is simple: The System made this place. It tracks what happens in it. It is watching us now, it likes rules, and one of those rules was that children do not get told about it. Inside this gate, for you, that rule has been relaxed."
Jacob swallowed.
"Because I am with you?"
"Because you are something it wants to keep an eye on," the elf said. "Or because it thinks letting you see this will make its story more interesting."
Carlos shot her a look but did not argue.
"Eyes up," he said instead. "Questions as we walk. The first floor will be the easiest place you'll get to learn about any of this . . . no reason to waste it."
He turned and started forward through the grass, shield dwarf at his side, elf behind. Tamsin jerked his head for Jacob to follow and fell into place beside him again.
Quest Updated
Objective: Escort anomaly to dungeon.
Status: Complete.
NewObjective:Clear first floor without losing anomaly.
Reward: Upgrade of grade to one skill.
Jacob moved, every sense straining, not knowing of the quest the adventurers were on.
The world felt wrong and right at the same time. Wrong because none of this should exist just outside his village. Right, because some piece inside him had always suspected there was a pattern behind the strange things adults refused to explain.
"The System," he said again under his breath, tasting the word like iron on his tongue.
The grass parted ahead as the party advanced.
For the first time in his life, Jacob walked toward danger knowing that something unseen was counting every step. But a forming memory was starting to hint at his previous knowledge of this so-called System.
And unbeknownst to anyone in the dungeon, another system notification popped up where Jacob was still unable to see it.
Hidden Quest Unlocked
Rarity:Unique
Objective:Survive enhanced gate.
Reward: Class Upgrade