Stone can get very cold.

It was a simple little fact, and something I’ve always known, but you never remember how cold it feels till you feel it.

One moment I felt nothing, so terribly numb that everything was just a haze that might not have even existed. And then I felt the cold stone pressed against my back.

Opening my tired eyes, I saw nothing.

At first I thought I was dead, I barely remembered being rushed into the ER… and everything before that was a haze. I knew my name, Armin Fischer, I remembered being a doctor, I remembered most of my life… I think? But the last few days were a shaky haze that hurt my head to think.

Okay, assessing my situation… I felt lethargic, but not just sleep deprived. I’ve pulled too many all-nighters to not know how that feels, so it’s possibly Anaemia?

I was sitting on a cold stone floor, with my back against a cold stone wall, and I could barely make out the outlines of a room… It was dark, and damp. And there was a thick smell of the sea that seemed to overwhelm everything else.

Letting out a sigh, I reached a hand up to feel around my body. It was heavy, but I could feel, and I wasn’t in pain. I didn’t recognise the clothes I was wearing, they felt tough, like thick leather, but I didn’t own anything like it… and there was a sticky feeling around my side, a familiar feeling. Reaching my hand up and bringing my fingers to my nose, the smell of iron was a bit easier to make out. Blood, dried and sticky.

It was honestly a terrifying situation to find myself in, possibilities came rushing in. Was I kidnapped? Who would even do that and why? Maybe there was just a power cut in the hospital… but why would it be so quiet then? Why would I be on the floor and not a table or a bed or even a chair?

Dammit, none of this made sense!

But I had enough emergency training to work in this situation. First, identify the wound, treat it, then check if it’s safe to move.

And so I fumbled in the dark to remove my shirt… or rather, my armour? I wasn’t unfamiliar with wearing armour, as I served in the army, though it wasn’t for a very long time. However, this was some old-time leather armour, it wouldn’t really help much against a bullet…

After a bit of struggling with the unfamiliar ‘equipment’, I managed to take it off and inspect my body a bit better. I could even see a bit better, so I wasn’t completely blind and… there was no wound.

To be clear, there was no open wound, but I could still feel some dried blood, and instead of a cut (I expected it to be clothed and maybe infected with how dried the blood was), there was a scar. That was… impossible with how fresh the blood was, but it was the truth.

Now, I wouldn’t claim to be the best doctor out there. Hell, I was only 34, so I didn’t have a very long career yet, but even I knew there was something very weird about this.

While my body still felt heavy, I could stand up. There were some aches, but not much pain, at least nothing that led me to think “Oh no! I’ve been stabbed!”

I could feel other little splatters of blood on me, but no wounds… more anomalies on anomalies.

And picking up the leather armour, I must have unhooked something off it as I heard something like a marble clatter on the stone floor, before suddenly lighting up, assaulting my poor eyes with bright light that I wished I wasn’t being flashbanged with!

I took a step back because of that light, my boot stepping on some metal chunks that slid under me, making me stumble back into the stone wall, hitting my head on it, damn!

Recovering from being double teamed by a ball of light and a stone wall, I eventually readjusted to the light, glancing around the room I was in. It was indeed a stone room, a small square room, with a small door to one side that acted as an entrance, and not much else. On the floor… was a considerable amount of dried blood, a concerning amount. If that much came out of me, then I’m absolutely dead. And there are even some broken and bloody arrows on the ground in that blood puddle. I knew what that blood puddle could smell like and I was glad I couldn’t smell it.

So… I definitely wasn’t in a hospital anymore. There were no lights in the ceiling, so it wasn’t dark because of a power cut. I saw… basically nothing of note anywhere. No furniture, no toilet hole (assuming it was a prison or something), just nothing.

So, that begs the question, and pardon my french, but “What the fuck!?”

I don’t swear much, but I think I can be forgiven here. I mean… arrows!? Also, the light is coming from what looks like a small crystal ball and yes, I was wearing leather armour, and oddly, there’s a sheathed sword (probably) on the ground next to me… now, as a doctor I don’t really have a lot of free time, so I definitely didn’t play enough video games that I’d be fantasising something like this, right? Right!? I’m not the weird one, right!? It’s this situation that’s weird, right!?!?

“Okay, calm down Armin, think! Think! Use your head and work out what’s happening!” I had to berate myself, shaking my head and taking a deep breath… of this horrid sea smell, which I really regretted.

First, I reached down to pick up the bright crystal… I’ll just call it a flashlight, okay? But the moment I touched it, it just turned off, leaving me in the dark.

Understandably confused, I just froze for a few moments, before slowly taking my finger off the flashlight. It didn’t turn on.

I pulled my hand back a bit more, and it finally turned on again, and I had to question who would make such a stupid flashlight that it would only turn on when it was on the ground?

Deciding to leave that for now, I assessed my body and gear. Maybe I was in a dream, like a dungeon crawler game… hopefully not Darksouls, I know that started like this and I don’t want to be there!

Looking down at my bare torso, I was taken aback a bit. I liked to keep myself in shape, but I was in a much better state than I remembered. There were a few small scars I didn’t have before… and my most prominent scar, a large stitching near my gut, was nowhere to be seen. So I dreamt up a different set of wounds… interesting.

I had… leather armour that had taken quite a beating. There were a few holes and tears in it and plenty of blood. A tunic, which had matching holes and bloodstains, pants, a sword (it actually was a sword, yes), a flashlight, a small pouch with two shattered vials (So I died cause I was exploring a dungeon with potions in fragile glass vials? What a sadly realistic dream…), and there are a few coins! Some silver and bronze ones, that's a nice, but pretty useless, detail in a dungeon diving dream?

And… that was it.

No bag, no rope, no tools, no food, not even a map or a journal or anything… dream me just… What's the slang? ‘Rawdogged’ a dungeon.

Or they hopefully just lost all of that stuff? Surely? Else why would I dream myself into such a stupid character?

Letting out a sigh, I put on the tunic, looking around the room to see if there was anything else of note around… and other than the blood, I noticed a hole in the wall facing the door… probably an arrow trap, judging from everything.

And there’s that weird scrap of metal I slipped on earlier. Picking it up, it looked like the broken parts of a weird metal disk, like a very small compact mirror, made of some exotic metal with very detailed etching I haven’t seen before.

If this were a game, this screamed “Important lore item”, so I decided to pocket it, after dropping all the broken glass from my ‘potion pouch’ in a corner, that was no good to me.

So, a big problem was that I couldn’t hold the flashlight, but I also had no other source of light or any tools to work with…

I didn’t understand the situation, but this was either a dream, or it wasn’t. If it was a dream, maybe getting to the end would be how I ‘won’, or woke up. If it wasn’t a dream, then I didn’t want to get hurt or die and I wanted out. (And I really didn’t want to put any more thought on what this not being a dream could mean.)

And to get out, I needed to avoid ending up like the… ‘backstory me’, let’s say.

I kicked the flashlight, and sure enough it turned off when I got close. What a stupid item. Why would I even dream up something like this?

The leather armour… was probably pretty rubbish since it couldn’t even stop an arrow, so I didn’t want to rely on it. It was basically a leather cuirass with a bunch of straps holding it together… and looking closer at it, I didn’t even think it was all properly treated tough leather. The guy who bought this was probably scammed.

The sword was quite well made. It looked to be as good as any modern blade, which was surprising given the  fantasy-theme so far. Looking at it closer, I could see some fancy symbols etched into the blade that shone when the light bounced off it. It looked pretty expensive compared to the stuff I was wearing, and clearly well cared for.

I had no idea what the symbols said, and it didn’t have a special feeling or shine to it, so it was probably just a fancy sword and not some kind of special item. Honestly, I’d prefer a polearm, I’m actually trained in those… or a shovel, a modern shovel is incredibly versatile.

The leather armour, on the other hand… given the technology that’d be needed to make a sword like this, the armour was definitely subpar. I’d say it’d be worthy of a product recall if they paid anything more than a few euro for this.

So I felt no great loss when I started cutting apart the straps of the armour and tying them together in a rather makeshift leather rope. It was terrible, but I didn’t really care about how good my crafting was at the moment.

I picked up the flashlight, turning it off, and fumbled in the dark for a good few minutes as I fought to have it locked into the makeshift leather rope, using one of the buckles to hold it in place.

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The flashlight was still off, but when I let it hang it turned on for a brief moment. Moving the rope further away from me, the flashlight turned on!

I had no idea why, but it only turned off when it was within a certain distance from my body. It really was a horrible light, but goal 1 achieved, light!

Que rpg victory music, but at low volume. This doesn’t really feel like an accomplishment.

Sighing, I started moving, taking my sheathed sword to poke the ground I had bled on. I needed to know if the arrow trap was a pressure trap or something to do with the door.

Tap tap tap, there was nothing where the big puddle was. Tap tap tap, just a stone floor beyond that, and tap tap think. There was indeed a pressure trap… an entire fairly large panel right in front of the door… that was mean! Even if you knew it was there, it’d be pretty hard to avoid it!

A little press, and right on cue, an arrow shoots forth out of a hole I didn’t even see and hits the door. Looking closer, there are actually three holes in this room, so you can’t tell where you’ll be shot from… and the door, looking at the hinges, opens on the other side, so there’s no chance of even using it as some cover.

Taking a deep breath, I stood next to the pressure plate and leaned over and pushed at the door with my sheathed sword… and it didn’t budge. I didn’t see a handle or a latch, so how was it closed? Was it barred on the other side?

No, if there were people here, then the body of ‘backstory me’ would’ve been disposed of by now. So… magic? What a nasty trap… lure someone into a room, shoot them with arrows and lock the door, so they either bleed to death or starve to death…

But… there was nothing in the room, at all, so I don’t see why anyone would even enter this room in the first place? Normally they’d just peek in then leave, unless they were really thorough I suppose? I might be thinking too deeply into this if it’s just a dream, it could just be a ‘convenient setting’ for a start.

Figuring out that it would be a smart idea to feel around for a hidden button or something, I put the sword down and leaned over more, pressing my hand against the door.

To my surprise, and possible almost death, the door actually pushed open with no resistance, making me stumble forward, stepping onto a pressure plate.

Now, I immediately pulled back, and thanks to my odd positioning and some luck, another arrow that came flying out passed right past my stomach and hit the opening door harmlessly. Well, it was opening, but when I stepped back it slammed shut again!

“That was terrifying, who designed this place like this? To suddenly open when you least expect it!? No, why would it open in the first place?” I asked myself, and didn’t get an answer, because I didn’t know. I guess it might have been me, since it’s a dream, right? I didn’t know I was that scary.

There was something fishy going on… first off, the flashlight turned off when I touched it. Now, I thought it was just broken, and that makes sense… somewhat? Except it only turns off when it’s close to me. And then this door, which is clearly supposed to be locked and I can’t open it with my sword no matter how hard I push… it opens without the slightest resistance when I touch it.

The pressure plate… is a normal pressure plate, probably, and it works like you’d expect, so the dungeon isn’t just broken down.

Am I… do I have the ability to stop magic?

Huh… so I’m in a fantasy world, there’s magic, and I have the overpowered ability to stop magic. I didn’t know I wanted to be in an isekai so much that I’d dream something like this up. I wondered what was next, would I unlock some kind of status menu or little guy/girl in my head that could tell me things?

Maybe I’d meet a powerful and strange and oddly attractive ally who’d join my party and adventure with me throughout the world on a mission to save it? 

Honestly, I hoped not, I had a lot of work to get to in the morning, so I didn’t want this dream to drag on too much, especially if I were the one writing it. It’d probably just end abruptly because I do not have the time to write stories, I spend enough time writing reports, thank you very much.

Still, thinking about it being an isekai dream, and having nothing to lose, I held out my hand and took a pose (because why not?) and spoke out my command!

“Status” Nothing. “Menu” Nothing. “Open” Nothing. “Inventory” Nothing. “Help” Nothing.

… huh, so it wasn’t that kind of dream.

Oh well, those stories get weird anyway, so maybe it’s better this way? God, given what I’ve seen on the operating table, it’d probably end up something like that isekai where the MC had all those monster-like body morphing abilities. What was that one called? Flesh, Fury and Freedom?

Leaning over more carefully, I pushed the door open, and sure enough, it worked. When I pulled away, it didn’t close, so maybe closing it was a part of the pressure plate’s mechanic?

So it’s confirmed, probably. I make magic things stop working, that’s my power, that’s the rule of this dungeon diving dream/thing.

Oh, maybe I can do it from a distance? Like ‘feeling my energy and shooting it out’, or something?

…Nope. Can’t feel anything special, guess I just gotta touch things and hope for the best. That can only go well. God, I hope there aren’t any horrid diseases milling about here, or rusty metal. Tetanus is terrifying… I had my shots, but I’m still scared.

Carefully stepping out through the doorway, I found myself in a corridor, just as dark as the room I was in, but oddly, it was carpeted… with a disgusting squishy sound that made me cringe, I confirmed the carpets were waterlogged.

And the smell. It hit me as soon as my nose passed through the doorway, it smelt rancid in the corridor… to the point I had to pull back a bit and take another breath of the sea water air of the room to brace myself. It seemed that there was some magical barrier that kept the air different. That was very odd.

Muttering a brief prayer for my senses, I soldiered forth, enduring the smell that was so bad it made my head spin. It was so much more humid here, the smell just hit so hard I didn’t notice at first, and there were a lot of decorations all over. Paintings… that were cracked, covered with mould, and barely viewable. These definitely weren’t prepared for all the humidity they were in… maybe this place was abandoned and then it got flooded somewhere?

Ah, colours, I never described colours yet. That’s because the room I was in was just a boring grey stone. But here… It was oddly… blue. I could see lots of faded deep blue banners and the carpet was a light blue… once? It was a bit yellowy now with mould and god knows what else. And the walls were grey stone, what I could see of them, at least, but there wasn’t a single stone that didn’t have something carved on it, either runes or some text?

When I moved to read it, I could make out a few words, something about “And the deep lord blessed us with knowledge”, “The watchful protector offers us salvation”, and “Pay respects before the tall guardian.”

The text… wasn’t a language I knew. It wasn’t German or English, though the letters looked quite close, but oddly…  I could read it. I could read it and I knew that it was called Merydian. I was looking at characters I didn’t recognise, but I could read it as well as I could German, my mother tongue… Well, when a person dreams they don’t create proper text that they can read, so that makes sense.

Wait… people can’t read in dreams, at all, though? The Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas of the brain weren’t active, so there shouldn’t be any clear comprehension of language… While you may ‘see’ text, it’s unlikely to even be a language that exists, and ‘reading’ in a dream is just thinking to yourself.

But… this wasn’t that, I could see the letters clear as day, I could pronounce each one, even though I never saw them before in my life, and I knew how they could be rearranged to make other words. With a feeling of dread creeping in my gut, I turned and went back into the room avoiding the pressure plate, then grabbed an arrow, the only thing I could safely write with, and scraped it along the ground where the dried up blood was.

The sound of metal on stone was grating, but it certainly cut a line in the blood, and I wrote out the alphabet. It was very readable, clearly words that appeared exactly as I drew them.

I tried writing more. Actual words this time like ‘help’, my name, ‘Armin’, and the text I had read on the bricks, but in both German and the other language, Meridian.

I could read all of it. All of it was as clear as day. They were real words, real text that I could write, read, and clearly see. To be this lucid, it should be obvious that everything was a dream, but it wasn’t…

I stumbled out of the room, over the pressure plate and into the corridor again, fumbling for the damp and decaying banners, tugging at them and pulling them down. There were more featureless grey stone walls beneath them, with more and more text carved on them as if scribbles.

Words I couldn’t read, words that had faded, words in Merydian, and words that were just squiggles. Each line of text was slightly different, as if written by a different person, or from a different angle. Some were deeper, some weren’t, some had good handwriting, some were barely legible… but it was all text, text I could comprehend, text I could read, text that was actually there and not just mind-babble.

“Tread lightly on the path of the sea.” was another sentence I found that I could read.

That meant that… this was all real? This disgusting carpet under my boots, the horrific decayed paintings and mould covered banners, the drops of liquid I can only hope is water that fell from the ceiling… all of it?!

No, that can’t be… maybe I couldn’t read the text after all? Maybe I was just imagining what it said, because it’s a dream, right?

Jesus, if it isn’t a dream… What could this be? A joke? Some kind of prank show?

No, those arrows were real, they could’ve killed me. And this hallway here would be a nightmare of a set to get approved by any safety standard… Then was it one of those… those horrid streams I heard of, the ones on the dark web? Some kind of elaborate game where they have the light and some doors connected to wifi or something and someone’s watching all of this on a camera and triggering things!?

I wasn’t proud of it, but I started panicking. Dropping the flashlight I clutched my sword tight as my eyes darted around, taking in everything. There were some cracks in the wall, possible cameras to watch me? Speakers to insult or threaten me? Maybe guns, to end me if I got boring to watch? There was a creak that echoed up and down the corridor. Was that the crew watching, trying to be hidden? The horrid stench, was it to hide the smell of drugs?

Memories flashed before my eyes… I remembered that day in the field hospital, and clutched at my old wound near my gut. I swear I could feel it burn again.

No no no, why would they make something so elaborate!? And why kidnap some random doctor from the hospital? I forced myself to calm down, shaking my head to clear those kinds of thoughts.

My priority was finding my way out of this mess. I had to make sure I had all the tools I could possibly use, and figure out a way to survive.

Picking up the leather rope bound flashlight again, I trudged forward, muttering a quiet prayer to myself as I kept glancing around looking for any signs of other people being around, or traps.

That alertness was for naught, as I stepped onto a patch of carpet that, in hindsight, was a bit off colour, and my leg sank right through it.

Somehow, I managed to pull myself free, but it was too late. A glowing blue ball shot out of nowhere and crashed into me… and harmlessly evaporating into nothing?

There was still a decent amount of force that hit me, and I was knocked into a patch of bare stone wall as I recoiled from the impact, the flashlight falling onto the floor nearby.

… Stone can get very cold.

It was a simple little fact, and something I’ve always known, but you never remember how cold it feels till you feel it.

But, I was sure now, this wasn’t a dream. And this wasn’t any kind of show.

“Is this my punishment for failing so many people?”