The dark took them.
Stone forgot up and down; breath forgot what lungs were for. Fingers clawed at vanishing edges—Leonidas' grip bright on Hikaru's forearm, Aisha hooked to his pack, Miho's hands at his sleeve, Kade snagging rope because pride hated being left behind.
The lantern died like a wink.
Hikaru's stomach inverted. The world slid sideways. Cold air rushed their faces like riverwater in a pipe.
[Notice]
— Vector frame disrupted
— Advice: Hold.
He held.
The fall did not end so much as become… less. As if the dungeon changed its mind and decided to pour rather than drop them.
A memory rose with the helplessness: morning light, dust dancing in a sunbeam, the slam of a wooden door.
Earlier.
—
The Adventurers' Guild of Solmaris looked like a tavern that had read a book on ambition. Oak beams. Scarred tables. A posted board brimming with jobs that sounded like jokes until you read the body count. A dangling banner with a sunburst stitched by someone's patient aunt.
Novices crammed shoulder to shoulder, shiny with nerves.
"Unawakened to the side," a guildwoman snapped. "Yes, the side. No, the other side. If you're confused, congratulations: you're in the right place."
Hikaru gripped a practice spear the way civilians grip bad news. He hated how his palms were still raw from rope.
"Stop apologizing to the weapon," said the instructor assigned to the unawakened—Captain Scar-Nose from the yard, moonlighting as a sermon about disappointment. "It can't hear you. Stance."
Hikaru set his feet.
The spear felt like an argument he was losing. Each thrust slid left; each correction overcorrected. His body knew what good looked like but couldn't print it.
Miho hovered with a basket of linen strips and salve, healer's apron hastily tied over novice blue. "Elbows in," she murmured, soft enough that only he heard. "You're painting long lines. Make them short."
He drew the spear small and neat. The point stopped wobbling.
"Better," Scar-Nose grunted, which in instructor language meant: not a complete tragedy.
Hikaru tried again. He still wasn't fast. He could be accurate, though, in the way careful people are—assembling competence brick by brick when other kids leapt roofs. He would build himself if he had to.
On the far mat, a black-haired boy worked through sword drills with the pleased violence of a cat dismantling a bird. Nobles clustered around him like iron filings to a lodestone.
"Kade Valian," someone whispered. "They're calling him the Drakescourge."
Hikaru blinked. The nickname tasted like counterfeit coin.
"He killed a wyvern," breathed another novice, reverent.
"During training?" Miho asked, doubtful, like a merchant hearing of a miracle sale. "How?"
"Escaped from the menagerie after a noble's hunt demonstration," a girl said, eyes wide. "Kade cornered it with flame and took the head while it thrashed. The knights credited the final blow to him. The court loves a story."
Miho and Hikaru shared a look: mm.
Kade's eyes found Hikaru across the mats with the accuracy of a thrown knife. He smiled without warmth and raised two fingers in a blessing that wasn't one. The starburst tattoo at Canon Veres' throat had looked like that last night.
"He's in with the Church," someone muttered. "Or something like it."
"Eyes on your own trouble," Scar-Nose barked. "Spear boy—run it again. Support work after."
Hikaru ran it again.
By the time fists thudded on the practice dummies and the smell of oil thickened the air, he felt almost comfortable stepping, thrusting, breathing. He wasn't a hero. He was a bolt in a hinge. He could be a very good bolt.
Water break.
Miho slid him a canteen and a bun. "Eat, or I'll feed you like a hostile patient."
"You have those?"
"All patients are hostile if you touch a wound." She studied his face. "You're thinking yourself into a small box."
"Boxes are safe."
"Boxes become coffins."
He huffed, then took a real bite to prove responsiveness to medical advice. The bread was sweet, the kind baked by people who believe sugar can bribe fate.
"Hey," said a voice like bright brass.
Leonidas eased beside them, tension of drills melted to boy again. "How're the elbows, Sato?"
"They bend," Hikaru said.
Leonidas grinned. "Excellent. Most useful property." He bumped shoulders like a teammate. He had the attention of half the room and used it as if it were on loan. "We're heading to the dungeon later," he said, softer now. "You with us?"
"Support," Hikaru said. "Lanterns."
"Good," Leonidas said simply. "I can't read maps."
Hikaru laughed under his breath. The knot in his chest loosened a notch.
Across the hall, Kade parried a thrust and let his opponent's blade slide into a trap. The wooden sword snapped with a pop.
"Pathetic," Kade said, flicking splinters as if they'd offended him. "If the court had any sense they'd cull half this flock. Waste of rice."
A few nobles tittered because laughter can be a kind of leash.
Kade's gaze slid over Hikaru again, down to the unremarkable spear, up to the face that palace rumor had already stamped unawakened. Contempt pooled.
"Some of us are here to be heroes," he said to no one, which is how you say it to everyone. "Some of us are here to carry lanterns."
Miho took half a step forward.
Hikaru touched her wrist. "Don't," he whispered.
Not because he agreed with Kade.
Because punching a noble in the guild hall only makes the day longer.
A hush rippled over the room like a cloth pulled taut. A priest had entered—the one whose attention made Hikaru's skin remember every pore.
Canon Veres cut a line through the novices with that engraved smile. People parted the way people do for sharp objects.
"Good morning, chosen," Veres murmured, like honey over ice. "Today, by His Majesty's decree, you will walk the Moonfall Dungeon in supervised file and return with glowcaps and ironwort like sensible children. The Church is… very interested… in what the Moonfall will show us."
His eyes lit on Hikaru as if on a specimen pinned.
"Be diligent, boy," he said, and made the not-quite-sun gesture at his breast.
Hikaru's mouth dried. He nodded.
He could feel it then—a subtle tug in the earth, the way a river tugs when you stand ankle-deep and the current would like to introduce you to downstream. He breathed through it.
Miho's shoulder brushed his. "You're white."
"I'm always white," he said, which was true of many things, including fear.
She huffed that tiny laugh that meant don't lie to me and stood a hair closer.
They spent the next hour in support drills. Knots. Rope signals. Slate-marks for counting turns in a labyrinth. Lantern service—wick trim, oil measure, how to keep flame without kissing your eyebrows goodbye. Hikaru liked this. It was a language no one bragged in. It rewarded caution and notice. His hands learned the wick cut; his eyes learned to count distance by the way shadows walked.
"Good bolt," Miho said absently, approving.
He had to look away so he wouldn't smile too big at a compliment shaped like hardware.
When they broke to eat, Kade passed near, trailed by lesser moons. His voice carried because it was designed to. "I hope the dungeon puts you where you belong," he said, as if to the room. "A place without doors."
Aisha, tying hair out of her face, muttered without looking up, "Man loves doors. Hates thresholds that won't worship him."
Leonidas raised a bun at Kade like a toast and didn't bother rising to the bait.
Hikaru finished his food; food finished him. He breathed. He adjusted his lantern. He tucked a spare flint where his hand would find it blind.
Training bled into march. The guild doors opened onto Solmaris' noon—bakers shouting, gulls daring, tinctures in shop windows like bottled rainbows. Bells overlapped in a debate somewhere. The column of novices snaked through streets scrubbed for show where rich houses pretended dust didn't exist.
Hikaru walked close to the middle, lantern in one hand, rope coiled neat at his hip. He could feel Canon Veres behind them like a cool draft that somehow smelled of incense and wetted iron.
At the plaza, the Moonfall's arch opened into dark like a mouth waiting to be fed. Shrines crowded the edges: candles guttering, ribbons tied in knots of hope. A vendor hawked talismans that looked like paper lies with ink smiles.
Captain Scar-Nose ran through the rules: two lefts and the right that smells like old rain; sit if you lose light; if you find a shiny object, congratulation, you found bait. The words stacked like bricks. Safety is a structure you stand in.
Hikaru thought: I can do this.
He would carry the rope and keep the light. He would draw clean marks and remember the way back. He would be useful and boring, and no one would look at him like a puzzle you solve with a knife.
Veres' shadow fell across his boots.
"So diligent," the canon murmured. "You remind me of an acolyte I once knew. He too learned every rule perfectly. It did not save him when it was time to break them."
Hikaru kept his face mild. "I like rules."
"Mm," Veres said. "I prefer truths."
Kade drifted near, flame coalescing over his palm because he liked the way fire made eyes.
"Canon," Kade said, the syllables buttered, "you will be accompanying our vanguard?"
"I will observe," Veres said, eyes sliding past him to Hikaru with the slow care of a blade checking its reflection. "The Moonfall observes, too."
They went in.
—
The present slammed back like a wave reclaiming a shell.
They were pouring, not falling. The stone around them had the slick assurance of something that had practiced moving for a thousand years.
Hikaru clung to what he could.
Leonidas' fingers—sure. Aisha's grip—hard. Miho's breath—countable. Kade's curse—elegant, which is to say unhelpful.
[Notice]
— Locus: MOONFALL
— Substrate Handshake: 31% → 38%
— Vessel Integrity: low
— Advice: Land soft.
"I would love to," Hikaru said to no one, because gravity magic making jokes in your head will make you strange.
The stone flared open.
They spat into a chamber the size of a swallowed cathedral. They hit a slope and slid rather than shattered. Lantern glass clinked as it rebounded in Hikaru's pack; the wick stub flickered, then died again in a damp gust.
Hikaru rolled to a stop against a pillar of calcified moonlight. Pain rattled through him like coins in a cup.
"Count," Miho said automatically, voice small in the echo. "One—two—three—four—"
"Five," Kade finished, voice tight.
Leonidas groaned and laughed at the same time, which felt like his brand. "We're good," he said, and meant we are alive.
Aisha coughed, then spat. "Hate sliding. Love not dying."
Hikaru hissed as he sat up. Nothing broken. Pride scuffed. Soul… in negotiations.
"Lantern," he said.
He found it by feel. Flint. Steel. Click. Sparks. The flame took like a shy animal deciding hunger outruns fear.
Light pushed. It discovered a floor made of almost-black stone latticed with veins that caught the lantern and reflected it sideways, as if light here preferred to turn instead of go.
Depth yawned—but not the cliff you fear. The wrong kind of depth. A depth that wanted to include you.
A sound drifted: a drip that had nothing to do with water. A chime made of bone. The breath of something that never needed lungs.
"Okay," Leonidas said softly. "New plan: we stay close. Sato, you call our path. Aisha, you mark. Miho, you… do whatever miracle you do. Kade, you keep your flame in its lane."
"I don't take orders from—" Kade started, then Veres' voice uncoiled from the dark like ribbon:
"You will."
The canon stepped out from between two pillars as if stitched from shadow. Not winded. Not dusted. Smiling like a rule elegantly broken.
"The Moonfall has chosen to introduce you," he said, eyes on Hikaru like a collector finding a matching piece. "How gracious."
Hikaru's skin tried to make him a new, larger body to put more distance between them.
"Canon," Leonidas said, keeping his tone polite to a fault, which is what politeness is for. "With respect, our orders were to map the first two chambers, gather glowcaps, and return by fifth bell."
"And you will," Veres said, bright. "You will map what is in front of you. You will gather what you can carry. And you will return… different."
His gaze lingered on Hikaru like a palm on a throat.
Miho angled herself so she stood a little ahead of Hikaru without quite blocking him. It was protective without being obvious. She had a gift for that.
"Why us?" Aisha asked, chin up. "Why him?"
Veres' eyes sparkled with the pleasure of being asked questions he would not answer. "Eclipses leave tides," he said. "Tides leave shells. Some shells hum. I pick them up."
"I'm not a shell," Hikaru said before his sense of self-preservation could gag him.
"No," Veres agreed. "You are something hollowed out and waiting to be filled."
The lantern trembled in Hikaru's hand. Not with fear.
With interest.
[Notice]
— Handshake: 44% → 51%
— Constraint: Church wards present
— Advice: Conceal.
Hikaru breathed in, breathed out.
He held the light steady.
Leonidas squared his shoulders and grinned in a way that made a choice look like a party. "Then we make a map," he said. "And we come back."
"Together," Miho said.
Aisha bumped Hikaru's arm with her knuckles. "Keep the light honest, Lantern."
Kade lifted his chin and made his flame tall, as if flame height argued point.
They moved—careful, quiet, the way you do around a sleeping thing that may only be pretending.
Hikaru chalked a mark on the stone. The chalk line looked embarrassed to exist in this place. He set the lantern on a rhythmic swing to see how the shadows talked. He listened, not with ears.
In the corner of his vision, he saw the system as not-text painted on not-air. It wanted to flower into full UI. It stayed seeds because something in Veres' sleeve smelled of prayer and prison.
He would have laughed, another day, at the thought that he had a settings conflict with a churchman.
Not today.
The depth hummed.
The door behind them exhaled shut.
Hikaru felt the world pull a little. A small, precise pull. Like a thread tightening on a stitch you didn't know was in your skin.
He looked back. He looked forward.
He carried the light.
And the Moonfall watched.
— End of Chapter 3 —