The slope began gently enough to lie.
Edrin noticed it the moment the air changed—less damp, more dense, as if every breath carried weight. The corridor tipped downward at a shallow angle, stone smoothing into a darker sheen that caught the light differently. The glow ahead wasn't bright; it was constant. A low, dull orange threaded through fissures in the rock, like embers buried under ash.
"Of course," he muttered. "Of course it's hot."
The heat didn't rush him. It settled. A steady presence that soaked through cloth and skin alike, turning every movement into a negotiation. Sweat broke along his spine within minutes, his breathing growing shallow by instinct before he forced it deeper.
"No," he told himself. "Slow. You go slow here."
The slope continued.
He felt the pressure change again—not the ambient squeeze of the living corridors, but something heavier and simpler. The dungeon here didn't flex. It endured.
=== === ===
The walls grew darker as he descended, rock vitrified in places, surfaces glossy as if melted once and cooled wrong. Veins of light pulsed beneath the stone, brightening and dimming with no rhythm he could track. Heat bled from them in waves that made his head throb if he lingered too close.
Edrin adjusted his path, favoring shadowed edges, testing each step before committing weight. The ground held, but only barely—some sections softening under pressure, others cracking with a brittle sound that made him freeze.
"Okay," he said under his breath. "New rule. Don't stand where the floor looks angry."
The air carried a metallic tang, sharper than before. Not fresh blood—something older, cooked and reworked by heat. His throat felt dry. He rationed water without counting, trusting the habit more than his sense of time.
He stopped once to rest in the lee of a jutting column, shoulders against stone that burned if he leaned too long. His heartbeat was louder here, pounding in his ears. The heat narrowed his focus, trimmed thoughts down to essentials.
Move. Breathe. Don't linger.
He realized, with a twist of unease, that the dungeon wasn't trying to overwhelm him.
It was letting him pass.
=== === ===
The first creature he encountered in the heat did not rush.
It emerged from a crack near the floor, compact and dense, its body built close to the ground. Thick, overlapping plates of dark tissue covered its back, edges fused into a single mass that looked more forged than grown. Its head was blunt, jaw short and powerful, eyes set deep and small.
Heat-adapted pressure fauna.
"Right," Edrin whispered. "You look like you belong here."
The creature shifted, testing the air. It didn't charge. It waited.
Edrin felt his stance settle before he chose it. Feet planted wider. Weight forward. Blade angled inward, closer to his centerline than his school would have preferred.
"Not fancy," he told himself. "Just enough."
The lunge came fast and low.
Edrin met it with a short step and a hard deflection, steel screeching against layered tissue. The blade didn't sink deep, but it bit. He pivoted immediately, letting the creature's momentum carry it past him, then drove the knife into the exposed seam behind its jaw.
The thing shuddered once and went still.
Edrin stood there, breathing through the heat, waiting for the tremor.
It came, faint and late.
"That's… new," he said. "I miss the part where my hands shake first."
Residual Adaptation Reinforced.
He didn't look for the words this time. He didn't need to.
=== === ===
He went on, the slope easing into a broader passage that opened into a chamber shaped like a bowl. The floor dipped toward a central depression where the glow intensified, heat rolling upward in steady waves. Stone around the edges had cracked and fused repeatedly, layers visible like growth rings.
He skirted the perimeter, keeping to cooler shadows.
That's when he felt for the communicator.
The habit hit him out of nowhere—a reflex as old as his training. His hand went to the place on his harness where it should have been clipped.
Empty.
Edrin frowned, then huffed a quiet laugh. "Right. Yeah. Of course."
He tried to remember when he'd last checked it. Before the collapse? During? The memory refused to settle.
"I had one job," he muttered. "Don't lose the thing that tells people you're alive."
The thought stung more than he expected. Not because he wanted rescue—he wasn't stupid—but because the absence made the isolation feel official.
He shook his head and moved on.
=== === ===
The body lay near the edge of the bowl, half-sheltered by a slab of stone that had slumped and cooled at an angle. Heat had preserved parts of it in a grim way, flesh darkened and stiff, equipment fused where metal met rock.
Edrin slowed.
"Hey," he said quietly, unsure why. "I see you."
The insignia was old, scorched almost beyond recognition, but the cut of the gear marked it as part of the expedition. Not someone he knew well. Maybe not at all. Still, the sight anchored him.
He crouched, careful where he placed his knees.
The communicator sat where it should have been, casing intact, surface dulled by heat. No light. No response.
"That's a surprise," Edrin murmured. "You look… usable."
He hesitated, then touched it.
Cold. Or cold compared to everything else.
"Sorry," he said under his breath. "Borrowing."
He unclipped the device and turned it in his hands, checking for obvious damage. The casing was scorched, but the seams held. He thumbed the activation groove out of habit.
Nothing happened.
"Yeah," he sighed. "Fair."
He tried again, slower, pressing and holding.
A faint pulse answered. Not a tone. Just a subtle vibration, like something waking reluctantly.
Edrin's breath caught despite himself.
"Oh," he said. "Okay. That's—okay."
He waited for a voice.
None came.
The screen flickered, then settled into a simple line of text:
Signal UnboundPresence Detected
Edrin stared at it, heat and silence pressing in.
"So you don't know who I am," he said softly. "That makes two of us."
The device warmed slightly in his hand, stabilizing.
External Interface Reestablished (Partial).
He frowned. "Partial is doing a lot of work there."
=== === ===
He clipped the communicator to his harness, feeling the unfamiliar weight settle against his side. It didn't make him feel safer. If anything, it sharpened the edges of the moment.
"Alright," he said, straightening. "Now we're officially doing things the hard way."
He glanced once more at the body, then looked away.
"I'll remember," he said. "That's all I've got."
The heat intensified as he moved past the bowl, the passage narrowing again, the glow deepening into a steady red-orange that painted the stone in harsh lines. The air grew heavier, each breath an effort that demanded attention.
He adjusted his pace, shortening steps, timing inhales with the cooler eddies near the floor.
"Okay," he murmured, voice tight but steady. "Zone two. That's what this is. You don't get to pretend otherwise."
The thought surprised him with its clarity.
Maybe he was done pretending.
=== === ===
Far above, instruments around the Sink registered a change.
Not dramatic. Not clean. A small, irregular spike where none should have been—an anomaly that refused to resolve into noise.
An analyst frowned and flagged the reading.
"Signal interference," she said. "Localized."
"Source?" her supervisor asked.
She shook her head. "Unbound."
The chart flattened again, the expansion curve holding just shy of expectation.
They marked it down as environmental variance and moved on.
Inside the dungeon, Edrin Hale continued downward, the heat closing in around him, the communicator warm at his side, unaware that the world had just noticed something—and already begun to misunderstand it.
He tightened his grip on the blade and kept moving.
Because stopping, here, felt like the one choice he couldn't afford.