"Swim to Dock 4!"
The command bubbled out of my mouth, tasting of salt, oil, and raw sewage. The water of the Capital harbor wasn't just cold; it was thick.
I kicked my legs, fighting the heavy drag of my soaked coat. The impact of hitting the water had disoriented me, but the adrenaline was doing its job. I broke the surface, gasping for air.
"Ptui!" I spat out a mouthful of sludge. "Everyone sound off!"
"Here!" Kaelen's voice came from my left. He was treading water effortlessly, holding a flailing Tybalt up by the scruff of his baker's apron.
"I touched a fish!" Tybalt shrieked, splashing wildly. "It was slimy! It touched my leg!"
"Quiet!" Ria hissed, surfacing next to a piling. She looked like a drowned rat, her hair plastered to her face. "The Guards are right above us."
We drifted under the rotting wooden structure of the pier. Above us, heavy boots stomped on the planks we hadn't destroyed.
"Target lost," a mechanical voice droned from above. "Deploying hydro-scanners."
"Scanners," Cian whispered, clinging to a barnacle-covered post. His glasses were fogged up. "If they scan the density, they'll see six human-sized objects floating in the trash."
"We need to move," Lysandra said. She was struggling to stay afloat; even with the holy magic buff, plate armor in deep water is a death sentence. She was clinging to a floating barrel for dear life.
"Dock 4 is fifty meters north," I whispered. "Stay under the pier. Use the shadows."
We moved. It was a miserable swim. Kaelen towed Tybalt. I helped Lysandra, keeping her head above the muck. The water was filled with debris—crates, dead fish, and things I didn't want to identify.
Above us, blue beams of light sliced through the cracks in the wood, searching.
"Clear," the Guard's voice echoed. "Moving to Sector 2."
They were searching the wrong way. The tavern collapse had thrown them off.
"There," I pointed.
Dock 4 was a small, secluded slip at the end of the row. Bobbing in the water was... a thing.
Silas had called it a submersible. To me, it looked like a giant, copper tea kettle that had been beaten with hammers and left to rust for a decade. It had a single glass porthole that looked like a cloudy eye and a hatch on top that was sealed with duct tape.
"The Rusty Bucket," Ria deadpanned, wiping sludge from her eyes. "He wasn't kidding about the name."
"It floats," Cian said, eyeing it critically. "That's a good start. Though the buoyancy calculations look precarious."
"It's our ride," I said. "Get on top."
We scrambled onto the hull of the vessel. It bobbed violently under our weight. I jammed the rusty key Silas gave me into the hatch lock.
Click. Creeeeeak.
The hatch groaned open, releasing a smell that was somehow worse than the harbor. Stale air, grease, and old socks.
"In! Go, go!" I ushered them inside.
It was tight. The interior was a cramped sphere lined with brass pipes, gauges, and levers. There were no seats, just a metal bench circling the wall.
Kaelen dropped in last, pulling the hatch shut and spinning the locking wheel.
Clang.
Silence. Or at least, relative silence. The outside world was muffled, replaced by the dripping of water from our clothes.
"Okay," I said, looking at the control panel. It was a mess of unlabeled buttons and a steering wheel that looked like it belonged on a pirate ship. "Cian? You're up. How do we drive this potato?"
Cian squeezed past Lysandra (who was wringing out her cape) and examined the console.
"It's Gnomish," he muttered, tracing the runes. "Combustion engine with a mana-core starter. Crude, but effective. This lever controls the ballast tanks. This wheel is the rudder. And this big red button..."
"Don't press the red button," Tybalt warned from the floor, where he was curled up in a puddle.
"It's the ignition," Cian said. He pressed it.
KA-CHUNK. WHEEZE. BANG.
The entire sub shook. The engine roared to life, sounding like a dying dragon. The lights flickered on—dim, yellow bulbs in wire cages.
"We have power!" Cian shouted over the noise. "Flooding ballast tanks! We're going down!"
"Wait," Ria said, pointing at the periscope. "Ren, look."
I grabbed the handles and looked through the scope.
On the pier above, the Elite Guards had returned. They heard the engine start. Five of them were standing at the edge of the dock, aiming their hands at the water.
"They found us!" I yelled. "Dive! Dive now!"
BOOM.
A shockwave hit the sub. The Guards were firing Force magic into the water. The hull groaned, rivets popping.
"Shields!" Lysandra shouted instinctively, raising her hand. But she stopped. "I can't cast inside! I'll blow the hull!"
"Cian, get us under!"
Cian yanked the ballast lever.
Water rushed into the tanks with a roar. The sub lurched and dropped like a stone.
Through the porthole, I saw the water turn from murky brown to green, then to a dark, bruising blue. The explosions from the surface became dull thuds, then faded away entirely.
We were sinking. Fast.
"Leveling off at fifty feet," Cian called out, fighting the wheel. "Pressure is holding. Leaks are... manageable."
He pointed to a small stream of water squirting from a pipe joint. Tybalt immediately scrambled over and plugged it with his thumb.
"I am the seal," Tybalt whimpered. "I am one with the ship."
"Good job, Ty," I said, letting out a breath I'd been holding since the tavern. "Maintain seal integrity."
The sub rumbled along, moving deeper into the bay. The noise of the engine settled into a rhythmic chugging.
I sat on the bench next to Kaelen. He looked cramped, his long legs taking up most of the floor space. He was cleaning his sword again—a nervous habit.
"So," Kaelen said, his voice low. "The Sunken Temple. What are we walking into?"
"A water level," I said, rubbing my temples. "In games, water levels are notoriously annoying. Bad physics, limited oxygen, confusing layouts."
"Games?" Lysandra asked. She had taken off her wet cloak and was drying her hair with a rag Ria found.
"Stories," I corrected myself. "In stories."
I pulled out the map. The circle marked Sunken Temple was just off the coast, near a treacherous reef known as the jagged Teeth.
"Valen said he would drain the ocean," Ria said, sharpening her dagger. "Does he have a spell for that?"
"He has the Soul-Leech," I said. "Or he did, until we stole it. Without that battery, he can't brute-force the water. He'll have to find another way in."
"Which means we might beat him there," Cian said from the pilot seat. "If this bucket holds together."
We traveled in silence for an hour. The temperature in the sub dropped. Condensation formed on the brass walls.
I checked my Observer Vision.
[Current Depth: 200 Feet]
[Zone: The Outer Reef]
[Warning: Narrative Stability Decreasing.]
"Ren," Cian said, his voice tight. "Look at the window."
I moved to the porthole.
Outside, the darkness was absolute, broken only by the sub's headlights. We were passing through a forest of kelp. But the kelp wasn't moving with the current.
It was frozen.
Stiff, vertical lines of green vegetation. A school of fish hung suspended in the water, not swimming, just... existing.
"Lag," I whispered.
"The fish aren't moving," Lysandra noted, peering over my shoulder. "Are they dead?"
"No," I said. "The sector hasn't updated. The closer we get to the Temple, the worse the reality anchor becomes."
I tapped the glass.
"The Fourth Fragment is powerful. It's affecting the environment just by being there."
Suddenly, the sub lurched violently to the left.
CLANG.
"We hit something!" Tybalt yelled, his thumb slipping from the leak. Water sprayed everyone.
"No," Cian wrestled with the wheel. "Something hit us."
I looked out the porthole.
A massive shape glided past the light. It was serpentine, covered in scales that reflected the light like mirrors.
"Sea Serpent?" Kaelen asked, standing up in the cramped space.
"Too mechanical," I said, squinting. "That didn't move like an animal. It moved on rails."
The shape circled back. A giant, glowing eye opened in the darkness. It wasn't an eye. It was a searchlight.
[Target: Guardian Mechanism Leviathan]
[Level: 60]
[Status: Patrol Mode]
"Turn off the engine!" I shouted.
"What?" Cian asked.
"Kill the power! Now!"
Cian didn't argue. He slammed the red button.
The engine sputtered and died. The lights went out.
We were plunged into total darkness and silence, drifting in the cold deep.
"Ren?" Tybalt whispered, terrified.
"Shh," I hissed. "It tracks vibration."
Outside, the massive searchlight swept over us. The Leviathan—a giant metal eel built by the Ancients—glided past The Rusty Bucket. It was so close I could hear the hum of its mana-core through the hull.
The light illuminated the inside of our sub for a terrifying second, revealing our pale, wet faces.
It moved on.
We waited for a full minute.
"Okay," I whispered. "It's gone. Cian, restart. But keep it low power. Creep mode."
Cian nodded in the dark. He engaged the starter gently. Chug... chug... purr.
The lights came back on, dimmer this time.
"That was a Level 60 mob," I said, wiping sweat from my forehead. "If that thing aggros, we're canned tuna."
"We're close," Kaelen said, pointing at the sonar screen (which was just a green radar dish that beeped). "Look."
A massive structure was appearing on the radar. It wasn't a cave. It was a ziggurat. A step-pyramid sitting on the ocean floor.
[Objective Reach: The Sunken Temple.]
"There it is," I said.
Cian steered us toward the base of the pyramid. "I see an airlock. Or... a docking port. It looks compatible with Gnomish seals."
"Dock it," I said.
The sub approached the stone structure. The docking clamps engaged with a heavy thud.
Water drained from the antechamber outside. The "Air Safe" light on the console turned green.
"We're in," Cian breathed.
We popped the hatch.
The air that rushed in was dry and smelled of ozone—the same smell as the Bunker in the forest.
We climbed out of the sub onto a stone platform.
We were in a massive underwater atrium. The walls were made of glass (or force-fields), holding back the crushing weight of the ocean. Outside, we could see the frozen kelp forest and the patrolling Leviathan.
Inside, the temple was pristine. White marble floors, glowing blue lines running along the walls.
And in the center of the room stood a statue.
It wasn't a statue of a god.
It was a statue of a cat. A normal, house cat.
"A cat?" Ria asked, walking up to it. "The Ancients worshipped cats?"
"Maybe the Architect liked them," I muttered.
I walked up to the pedestal. There was an inscription.
Fragment 4 lies within. But to enter, you must answer the Riddle of the Deep.
"A riddle," Tybalt groaned. "I hate riddles. Is it 'a sponge'? The answer is always a sponge."
"Read it, Ren," Lysandra said, hand on her sword.
I looked at the text glowing on the base.
I have rivers without water, forests without trees, and cities without houses. What am I?
"A map," Cian said instantly. "It's a map."
The statue's eyes glowed blue.
Correct.
The floor rumbled. The statue slid aside, revealing a staircase going down.
"That was... easy," Kaelen said suspiciously.
"Too easy," I agreed. "Arthur wouldn't make the password a riddle from a cracker jack box."
I walked to the stairs.
[Zone Alert: The Sunken Temple]
[Status: Glitch Zone]
[Effect: Spatial Distortion]
"Watch your step," I warned. "Spatial distortion means the distance isn't real. Three steps might be three miles."
We descended.
As soon as my foot hit the first step, the world twisted.
I wasn't on the stairs anymore.
I was standing in a classroom. A modern classroom with fluorescent lights and a whiteboard.
"Ren?"
I turned.
Kaelen wasn't wearing his leather coat. He was wearing a varsity jacket.
Ria was wearing a cheerleader outfit.
Cian had a backpack and braces.
Lysandra was wearing a teacher's outfit.
And me?
I looked down. I was wearing a hoodie. The same hoodie the skeleton in the bunker wore.
"What is this?" Kaelen asked, looking at his hands. "Where is my sword?"
"It's a high school AU," I whispered, horror dawning on me. "The spatial distortion... it didn't change the location. It changed the genre."
A bell rang.
"Take your seats," Lysandra said. But her eyes were glazed over. She didn't recognize us. "Class is starting."
I looked at the board.
[Lesson 1: How to End a Story.]
"Oh no," I muttered. "We're in the Architect's drafts."
This wasn't just a trap. It was a rejected timeline. And if we didn't figure out how to break character, we were going to be stuck in high school forever.
"Ren!" Ria hissed. She was sitting at a desk next to me, popping gum. Her eyes were clear. "Why am I wearing a skirt? And why do I have pom-poms?"
"The Source Fragments," I realized. "We have three of them. They protect our minds. But Kaelen, Cian, and Tybalt... they're fully immersed."
I looked at Kaelen. He was tossing a football, laughing with Tybalt.
"We have to break the scene," I said to Ria. "We have to get expelled."
"Expelled from a hallucination?" Ria grinned, gripping a sharp pencil like a dagger. "Now you're speaking my language."