Nar and Jul sprinted down the corridor, chasing after the others.

With each step forward, the lighter his steps flew off the corridor’s floor. His very brain seemed to relax inside his skull.

“Jul? Are you feeling this?”

“Yes!” she panted. “The Pressure is lifting!”

“Thank the Crystal!” Nar muttered.

In the distance, he could just about make Gad, Kur and Tuk. Beyond them, there was a tall, slender opening.

“I see the end!” she shouted.

The other three disappeared into the darkness beyond, and Nar and Jul sped up to try and catch up to them.

The closer they got to the exit, the more the Pressure lifted, and the more he felt like himself again. Stronger. Alive.

Tiredness seemed to melt off of him, and energy surged through his limbs, propelling him forward almost effortlessly.

Crystal… Was that all just the Pressure? he wondered, as the weight lifted, and the temperature dropped.

Was this at last, the end of the Pressure? He didn't allow himself to hope so. He had been tricked before.

“I hear fighting!” Jul said.

“We don’t know what’s happening, so just stay close to me!”

“Okay!”

They crossed into the exit.

For a moment, there was nothing but darkness and silence. The absence of everything was jarring, and Nar lost all control and track of direction, sense, time and of his very body. For a moment, he simply was. A disjointed being, an untethered soul lost in the void.

Then, his sight rushed back, growing from two small dots of light.

Sound roared into his ears.

“Watch out, they’re coming up from the sides!” Tuk shouted.

Nar stood on a bridge, which stretched across an absolute void.

It was about 10-feet wide and warm air blew from the depths below, ruffling his hair. And from everywhere, crawled a tide of small, mini versions of the guardians they had faced in the corridor.

“By the Crystal…” Nar whispered, taking in the moving mass of tiny guardians.

They were everywhere, blotting out the light of the yellow arrows at their feet. He searched for the normal sized guardian they had chased here, but it was nowhere to be found. Not that they didn’t have enough on their hands with the bridge fully covered in the black masses of the tiny guardians.

Nar stepped back, taking in the sight, and his back bumped against something hard.

The way was shut. They were trapped.

“The-The door!” he stammered to the others.

“Forget it! Keep an eye on our backs!” Kur shouted. “Jul get in here!”

Kur reached to her and pulled her into the middle of the party, where she promptly dropped to her knees, covering her eyes and antennae.

Nar didn’t blame her. This was so much worse than anything he had ever expected.

There had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of the baby guardians crawling up to and on that bridge already.

“Stay close!” Kur said, above the chattering, metallic noise of thousands of tiny limbs.

They had fallen into a slightly different formation. Gad stood at the head of the party as usual, and Mul covered the right while Viy guarded the left behind Gad. But with the swarming guardians crawling up the sides of the bridge, both Tuk and Cen had found themselves suddenly at the frontlines, leaving Kur and Jul in the middle, and Nar to close the gap behind them.

“We’re going to die!” Viy cried.

“No one is going to die!” Kur replied. “We’re going to get across!”

Nar hacked down at his feet, slashing and smashing through the things as they tried to climb up his legs.

The clicking sounds set his hairs on edge, and his mind recoiled at the dark promise of what would happen if the guardians managed to get a hold of him… If he went down into that living pile of blackness, he doubted he was getting back up.

“What do we do?” Tuk asked. “They’re everywhere!”

“We need to go!” Jul shouted from her curled up position.

“Yes, we do! And the only way is forward!” Kur said.

Nar spared a look towards forward. “That’s so far away!”

“Not like we have another choice! Gad, go!”

Without hesitation, Gad waded into the shifting, skittering piles that were rising before her. With a grunt, she blew them apart with her shield, dispersing the piles into dozens of black dots that went flying in all directions. With the way somewhat cleared, she marched forward, crunching guardians under her mighty feet.

“Move! After her!” Kur ordered.

The party lurched forward after the tank.

Nar twisted his face at the living blackness through which the yellow arrows shone through. Every step, every movement even, seemed to elicit a warning from his new strange sense, effectively rendering the thing useless. From all around him, the sensations screamed at him, and for a moment, he hesitated, unsure of what to do.

“Come on, Nar!”

Startled, he found that ahead of him Kur had hauled Jul to her feet and was dragging her after him. Between them, piles of guardians formed, threatening to separate him from the others.

“Shit!”

Nar swung his sword in wide arcs, dispersing the little guardians, and jumped over the half-formed piles.

“Stay close everyone!” Kur said again. “Don’t let them separate us, or get into the middle!”

The party bunched closer together, attempting to seal all the gaps into the center of the party, where Kur and Jul stood. That done, they proceeded towards the exit across the bridge.

It was maybe over 300-feet towards the other side. 300-feet of an undulating, deadly, chittering mass of guardians.

“Are they going to eat us?” Mul asked.

“They’re machines, you idiot!” Kur snapped back. “And if they do, it's all your fault!”

“Ouch!” Tuk shouted. “It bit me! Oh, my Crystal…”

“Fucks sake! They’re not going to eat you!” Kur shouted.

“It’s not that! My leg… It hurts! I-I think the pain it's spreading from where it bit me!”

“Crystal! It’s poison!” Gad shouted, just as knowledge filtered into Nar’s mind, bringing with it a whole new reality of horror.

“Damn it! Everyone, be careful!” Kur bellowed. “Tuk, can you walk?”

“For now!” he said. “Also, my rings aren’t great against these things!”

“Swap with me then! My scepter is more useful for this!”

“But you…”

“Now!” Kur shouted. “And keep Jul walking!”

Nar’s heart dropped when Kur joined the fray. For a moment, he considered telling him to swap back, that he was placing them all in danger. But he kept it inside. Kur was right, he would fare much better against those things than Tuk.

Nar stepped on a guardian clicking too close to his foot, and the thing crunched into a broken, brown smear. The things probably didn’t even have HP, or if they did, it was a negligent amount.

There’s a lot of them, but they’re weak. Hopefully, he’ll be alright, Nar though, worried about the party leader.

The altei alternated between smashing down with his scepter and simply just stomping around with his large feet. And for the moment, he looked like he would be alright.

“Ow!”

Nar looked down and found a guardian latched onto his angle.

With a yelp, he flung his leg about, and the guardian went flying out into the darkness.

“Are you alright?” Tuk asked him.

“It bit me!” Nar shouted.

The poison burned, spreading around the bite mark. Other than pain, it didn’t seem to do much else. However, if more of those things got to him it might just become a different story.

“Be careful, and keep going!” Kur shouted.

Their progress was slow, and Nar’s legs accumulated more and more bites.

They swelled and darkened with poison, a stain that slowly climbed up towards his knees, visible through his shredded pants. Rather than limbs, like its bigger brethren, the baby guardians had razor sharp legs instead. They pierced into his flesh in their attempts to climb him, though he barely noticed it anymore. Anything below his knees had gone pretty much numb.

Crystal! Where’s that damned exit?

Nar looked up, searching for it, stomping down to make sure nothing got onto him while he looked away.

We’re only halfway there? He thought in shocked panic.

“Ouch!”

A guardian had taken a chance with his distraction and had jumped up to bite him on the inside of his thigh, just above his right knee.

Nar yelled and ripped the thing from his skin, and threw it into the void.

“Don’t stop! We’re halfway there!” Kur said, trying to rally the demoralized party.

“I can’t even feel my legs anymore!” Mul cried.

Nar blinked at the lengos. Much shorter than he was, both Cen and Mul were at much higher risk than the rest of them.

Maybe Tuk should swap out with Mul? he thought.

They were in this mess because of him. Well, arguably because of him. They would’ve had to cross that bridge regardless. And as annoying as he was, Nar didn’t want to see him go down, covered in tiny, poisonous guardians. However, before he could voice his concerns, Jul let out a blood curdling scream.

“What now?” Kur shouted.

The scout pointed at the darkness to their right.

A vibration filled the air, setting Nar’s teeth rattling against one another.

The guardians halted their assault, and a loud skreeeeee filled the air.

Crystal… Is this not enough? What else have You got?

In the darkness, in the middle of the void, orange lights came into being.

Nar stopped counting when they passed ten, and still, more and more of them kept popping up. The orbs of light moved across the darkness in a massive circumference, drawing trails of orange in quick, jittery dashes.

BADUM!

A shockwave of sound hit them and the bridge quaked under their feet.

BADUM!

“Run! Run!” Jul screamed.

BADUM!

Nar’s mind blanked as he stared at the lights in the distance.

No. Those aren’t lights…

“Keep going!” Kur shouted. “If that thing catches us, we’re done for!”

“It’s eyes!” Mul shouted, in a tone devoid of sanity. “Those are eyes!”

“Shut up and keep going!” Gad threw at him.

Nar redoubled his efforts, but it seemed as though there were even more of the things now.

For every one he killed, two more took its place, and the deafening clicking and chittering coming up from the sides of the bridge promised that even more were on their way.

BADUM!

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

The same vibration hit them again, shaking him to his core. Nar didn’t have words to describe the sound. It was clearly metallic in nature, but there was a guttural undertone to it. It gave him the impression that whatever it was, it was more than just a machine.

BADUM!

Whatever it was, it was getting closer and closer to them, the orange orbs streaking across the darkness in endless orbits, popping in and out of sight.

Nar looked from the giant thing and searched for the exit. It was impossibly far, still a good 100-feet of guardian infested bridge away from them.

He yelped again, as two more guardians bit into him, above the knee on his right leg.

“Why the right one again?” he swore, crushing the guardians in his left hand.

“Mind your HP!” Kur warned them.

HP? Shit! I forgot! How much do I…

He gasped.

57?

The poison was much more damaging than he had realized. Either that, or he had taken a lot more damage from the previous fight than he had thought.

BADUM!

“They’re eating through my HP!” Gad shouted, in the same predicament. “I’m too slow!”

Cen suddenly screamed.

Nar watched in horror as a mass of black covered her. The caster must have tripped and she had fallen face first into them.

“Noooooo!” Mul shouted, his voice lost with despair.

He dropped his post and ran towards his sister.

“Get off her! Get off her!”

The brawler swatted the guardians away, disregarding his own safety.

“Watch out!” Tuk shouted.

The trugger stepped into the gap left by Mul, and kicked and cursed at a black spot of growing guardians. They had been about to fall onto Mul’s unprotected back.

“Help me!” the brawler cried, tears streaking down his face.

Jul stared at Cen.

Her eyes were so wide, Nar caught a glimpse of red at their edges. If not for the fact that they were surrounded with nowhere to go, Nar was sure that she would’ve bolted by now.

BADUM!

“Please!” Mul begged, sobbing.

“Jul! Help him!” Nar roared at her. “You said they needed us, so help him!”

She opened her mouth and stared at him. Nar swung his sword with renewed anger, barely even feeling his legs anymore.

“I-I… Yes!”

She kneeled next to Mul and started to pry off the guardians from Cen, using her bare hands.

“We can’t stay here!” Nar shouted at Kur. “We need to push through! There’s too many of them and that thing is still coming!”

“I know!” Kur yelled, not stopping his own bashing. “Once Cen is okay, we’ll make a run for it!”

“She’s barely breathing!” Mul shouted. “And she’s not moving!”

Nar glimpsed the rigid form of the caster.

Her dark gray skin was almost black, and her veins bulged full with the invasive liquid. Her mouth was wide open, foaming, and it didn’t look like there was any movement on her chest.

BADUM!

“Hold on, I’m going to use my boon!” Kur shouted.

Your what? Nar thought, thinking he had misheard it.

A sudden surge of warmth and energy filled him. He slowly regained feeling in his legs, and the poison was reduced to a distant tingling.

“What was that?” Tuk asked.

“My only skill, [Healing Boon]!”

“Why didn’t you tell us about it? Actually, why have you never used it? My HP is going up so fast!” Tuk shouted.

Nar glanced at his own bar and saw that the ring tosser was right. It was blazing past the 60s already, and despite the guardians at his feet and up his legs, it was still filling up fast.

“I can only use it every two days!” Kur replied. “I had to save it for an emergency!”

“And there was none before this?” Tuk asked.

“You know what I mean!” Kur retorted. “Jul, you’re carrying, Cen. Quickly now! And Mul, I need you back in your place. Everyone, we have to get out of here. Gad, can you just blow past them?”

“I can, but we will take damage!”

“My boon is going to last another 14 seconds, just smash through! Jul, you ready?”

Jul stood up, cradling Cen in her arms. “I-I got her!”

“Okay! Gad, go! Go! Everyone, just run for it!”

Nar ran after them.

BADUM!

The eyes were getting closer and bigger, but he had no sense of distance there at all.

Was the thing close to them, or still far, and just that gigantic?

Guardians jumped at them, latching onto their feet and legs as they sprinted towards the exit.

Nar did his best to swat them aside, but for the most part, he just ran for it, trusting that Kur’s boon and his HP together would soak up all that damage. He felt every bite though.

Up ahead, Kur tripped and waved his arms, tip toeing towards the abyss.

Nar jumped forward and pulled him back by his buckler.

“Thank you!”

“Keep running!” Nar shouted, pushing him forward.

That moment's distraction broke the formation and split them into two.

The others speed forward, in the wake of Gad’s unstoppable charge. But Kur didn’t have her destructiveness.

“Let me go first!” Nar shouted.

“Okay!”

Nar dashed forward, using his sword like a club, badgering and smashing his way through, and Kur followed close on his heels.

Guardian. Guardian. Guardian.

All he saw were guardians, blocking out the shine from the yellow arrows underneath them.

His sword blurred in his hands but it was still not enough.

Two walls of guardians grew on either side of the bridge, and black dots began falling on top of them. Ahead, Nar could just about hear Viy and Jul’s screams amidst the deafening chittering.

“Watch out!” Kur cried, uselessly.

There were too many of them now, and there was nothing more that Nar could do. Guardians latched onto his arms. His torso. At best, he focused on keeping his neck, head and chest as clear as possible. Even with Kur’s boon, he doubted he would last long with poison pumped directly into his critical areas.

Despite his efforts, one of them briefly managed to get to his neck. Nar ripped it away from him before it could deliver its poison, but the guardian’s claw-like limbs left streaks of burning red on his skin.

BADUM!

That was so close! Is it here? Nar thought, through the terror that filled him.

The vibration sounded again, harder, shaking the bridge under their feet. Hundreds of guardians came loose from the living walls, coating them.

Crystal, please! Nar begged, searching across the falling guardians for the end of that bridge. Please!

It lay just ahead. Barely a few feet away.

“Keep going!” Kur shouted. “We’re almost there!”

BADUM!

The vibration rose to a crescendo, and Nar felt something like fingers caressing the side of his neck, inching towards his ear, closing around the back of his head.

Whatever it was, it filled him with a mindless, brainless horror, and he ran the last few steps with a [Speed] he didn’t know he possessed.

Then the darkness, and the sound of a wall closing behind him, plunging them into relative silence.

Cries sounded in the dark, but thankfully, yellow arrows came to life at their feet.

“Kill them!” he heard Gad shout. “Kill them!”

Nar quickly realized he wasn’t safe just yet. They had carried dozens of guardians in with them.

They spent the next few seconds frantically clearing the spiders off of each other and stomping on them, with the occasional yelp of pain coming up here and there in the dim yellow light.

“Stop! Stop!” Kur shouted. “It’s over! They’re all dead!”

Nar stopped stomping down on the crushed guardians under his feet, and leaned back against the closed wall, struggling to catch his breath.

“We did it!” Tuk shouted. “By the Crystal we’re…”

Kur’s snarl interrupted him.

The big altei leaned down and lifted Mul up with both hands, slamming him against the wall.

“Are you happy now?” he shouted in his face. “All your moaning, and complaining and your little tantrums! Are you happy now that you almost got your sister killed? We could have all died because of you!”

Gad swiftly approached them and lay a hand over Kur’s.

“Let him go. Come on,” she said.

Kur dropped the brawler with a grunt.

“Look at her! LOOK. AT. HER!” he shouted.

In the low light, Nar could see the tears running down Mul’s face. The brawler beheld the prone figure of his sister, in Jul’s arms, and Nar feared the worst.

“I-I didn’t… I didn’t mean for any of this to happen! I just wanted to get her out!” Mul shouted. “She’s Climbing because of me! Me!”

What? Nar thought.

Kur paced the small enclosed space, his feet crunching on broken guardians.

As far as Nar could see, they were trapped where they were.

“Ugh!” the party leader groaned, passing his hands through his hair.

His scepter and buckler lay forgotten on the floor, amongst the bits and pieces that littered the floor.

“From day one. From day one! You’ve done nothing but destabilize this party,” Kur shouted. “You have been rude. You have been cruel. You have complained, and now? Now you disobeyed me! I’m your party leader! I told you to stop! Not to run headfirst into the obvious trap!”

“I’m sorry… I just-I just…”

“It doesn’t matter what you wanted! It matters what you did! And I’ve had it with you! If you don’t want to Climb properly like the rest of us, then we don’t have to put up with you either!”

Mul stared at Kur, eyes wide with fear. “Wait! Please, don’t!”

“You leave me no choice, Mul! You’re ex…”

“Wait…” said a weak, husk of a voice.

“Cen!” Mul cried, and rushed to her side.

Jul kicked guardians away to make some room, and gently lowered the caster to the floor. Mul took his sister’s hand in his, and bawled.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“I’m fine,” she said, with a weak smile. “Kur’s boon saved me.”

“You heard that?” Kur asked.

“I did… And Kur, you can’t kick my brother out. He’ll die in the dark.”

Kur deflated and dropped against the wall, covering his eyes.

“Crystal knows I don’t want to kick him out. But he almost got us killed! Enough has to be enough!”

“He did… And it has to be,” Cen said. “I know this is a lot to ask of you, of all you, but please forgive him. He’s just angry, and scared for me. Our family… They were never good to him, and they are the reason for him to Climb. He just wants to escape, to go somewhere where he can be treated like an actual person.”

Kur sighed but didn’t say anything.

“But you’re wrong, Mul. Our family is not the only reason we’re Climbing.”

“What do you mean?” Mul asked, sniffing hard.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve told you,” Cen said. “Truth is, I was stagnating as an operator…”

“What?” Mul cried in shock. “But you were the pride and joy of the family! The one who was going to lift us all into the management tracks! I thought you just came to help me Climb.”

Cen shook her head. “I was reaching my limit. I couldn’t push any more aura than what I already did. It… I was not good enough. And rather than let our family down, I decided to Climb with you. I thought, I’m smart and hardworking, maybe I’ll have better luck with magic. Above. On the surface… In fact, I became obsessed with it… If I can’t succeed with aura, then I will with aether.”

Nar looked up to the dim yellow ceiling above their heads, as he listened to their story.

Aether. Magic.

Was the need, the desire, the same for all of them? Nar had expected all of them to just lay down their weapons and paths as soon as they reached the surface. Now, it seemed he was not the only one obsessed with aether. Or with building his path.

“I-I wanted to be strong. To wield electricity, or fire, or ice. To find a new place for us. And a new goal for me to strive towards… And magic, and-and the Labyrinth, and all the opportunities of the O-Nex. I just wanted it all so much! I’m sorry, I should’ve told you. I didn’t Climb just for you Mul. I’m much more selfish than that. Much, much more. You have no idea…”

Tears streamed down the sides of her face and Mul kissed her hand.

“It’s fine, Cen. It’s all fine. We’ll find your magic, okay? You’ll be the best caster in the whole Nexus!”

Cen chuckled. “Too much, Mul. That’s too much. I just want to prove to myself that I can be good at something. And to bring you somewhere where you can finally be happy.”

“Oh, Cen…” Mul whispered, closing his eyes against her hand.

The caster turned her head and looked at Kur.

“Please, let him stay,” she begged him. “He has a good heart. Our family just trampled all over it. And he was worried about me. He wanted to get me out. I wasn’t doing so well under the Pressure...”

Kur rubbed his forehead. “It’s not just my decision, Cen. What he did, it impacted the whole…”

“He stays!” Gad cut in.

“He’s like aetherium dust in your eyes, but… He should stay,” Tuk said, grinning at the brawler.

Jul nodded, giving her silent but firm consent.

“I-I’m sorry,” Viy said. “I also… I panicked and…”

Kur waved at her and sighed. “It’s fine. It’s just… It’s all fine. Nar?”

Nar stared down at the lengos.

He was just as Tuk described him. He complained, and moaned, and was rude and he had almost gotten them all killed by rushing headfirst into the trap and dragging the rest of them, unprepared, into the worst fight of their Climb so far. There was no telling if the lengos would panic and do it again.

Mul must have read something of Nar’s thoughts on his dark expression, and lowered his face, defeated.

Nar sighed.

Despite all that, Mul had never really let them down, other than the current situation of course.

Surprisingly, Nar did find the brawler to be quite reliable. The same as everyone else in the party. The brawler had always pulled his own weight, and helped where he could. He muttered and complained about it, sure, but he always lent a hand without being prodded and without having to be asked for it.

We all have our reasons to Climb. We’re all here to escape something and for the hope of a much better life, Nar thought. It’s a second chance for all of us.

And thus, who was he to deny Mul of his?

“Stay,” he finally said. “Of course he stays.”

“Yes!” Tuk shouted, bumping his fists into the air.

“But please, less complaining. Okay?” Nar told the lengos.

“And no more being rude!” Tuk added, waving a finger at him.

Mul nodded vigorously. “I-I will… I’ll do better! I promise!”

“Then fine, you stay,” Kur said.

Mul looked at Jul, who stood above him, still half holding onto Cen.

“I-I’m sorry. I was the biggest asshat to you. It won’t happen again, I promise,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, and thank you for guiding us this far.”

Jul looked away, flushing a darker green. “It’s okay! I-I didn’t do anything! It was just straight…”

“Of course you did! You made sure none of those guardians managed to surprise us!” Gad said. “We all did our part. Together. And that is how we made it. See, no more Pressure?”

Nar grinned and closed his eyes.

Yes, that feels good, he thought. The silence was punctured by a heavy tinnitus, but it was better than anything, after the weeks under that mind raking Pressure.

Bitten more times than he could count, his body wrecked and ravaged and now swollen, his soul nearly crushed and his mind almost shattered, there, and then, at last he felt calm. More. He felt like he belonged.

Somewhat, at least…

“What now?” Mul asked, hesitantly.

“Yeah… Where are we?” Tuk said, looking around them. “Please don’t tell me it’s just another corridor again.”

For all intents and purposes, that seemed to be exactly the case. Other than the fact that there was nowhere to go, the small section of corridor they now found themselves in looked exactly the same as the previous one.

Almost two months. Almost 116 shifts… Two thirds of a whole season.

Nar wondered what his dad was doing at that exact moment. Probably working, and even harder than before, to make up for Nar’s departure.

“I don’t think so,” Kur said. “I feel like that bridge was the end of it. It has to be.”

The words had barely left his mouth when the sound of an opening forming made them all turn.

Ahead of them, a mouth of darkness opened.

“Well, there it is,” Tuk whispered. “But why does it look so…”

“Terrifying?” Kur ventured.

“Yeah. That.”

Nar squinted at the opening, which lay directly across from him, at the end of the short 30-feet corridor. Try as he might, he couldn’t discern anything within it. It was as though the yellow light simply stopped at the entrance, blocked from going further.

A window popped up, startling him.

Congratulations, Climber!

You have cleared the Tutorial!

Your Climb may now begin in earnest.

You are safe now.

Step through and claim your rewards.

A quick flood of information seeped into his brain.

“A tutorial?” Mul said. “You’ve got to…”

He shut his mouth, closing it with both hands, and looked about him.

Nar almost laughed out loud. The ridiculousness of Mul’s sudden attempt at being well behaved, coupled with learning that the past two months had been nothing but a learning experience for the real thing, was almost too much.

Kur burst out in a maniac laughing.

“Are you serious? That wasn’t even the proper Climb?” Tuk asked, incredulous.

“This is insane,” Gad said, staring at her own window. “What was all of that for, then?”

“To prepare us for the real Climb, it seems,” Tuk said, sarcasm dripping from his every syllable.

“I can’t believe it…” Cen whispered. “This can’t be real…”

Me neither, Nar thought.

Somehow, it all felt quite bitter in his mouth.

They had almost died. They had suffered and endured all of that, and for what? Just to get their feet under them for the real Climb? If that was the case, what in the pile was out there, waiting for them?

“Do we go in?” Viy asked. “What if it closes?”

Kur wiped his eyes. “Yeah, yeah… We go in. Of course we do! Look at the arrows! What else can we do but follow them?”

Nar looked down.

“Always forward…” he muttered.

“Always forward,” Kur said, nodding. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Me first?” Gad asked.

“It’s fine. I don’t think the System would lie to us.”

“Alright.”

Kur sighed. “Okay, one at a time, let’s just get this over with.”

Regardless if it was safe or not, Gad stood ahead of them and so she went first.

Then Viy, after her, and then Tuk. Jul glanced back at Nar before she too, was swallowed by the darkness.

“I can take you, Cen, if you want?” Kur asked, kneeling next to her.

“Yes, please. I don’t think I can walk just yet,” she said. “And thank you. For letting Mul stay.”

Kur stared at Mul and snorted. “No one was going to let me kick you out. Crystal. I wasn’t going to let me kick you out. I was going to say the words, and then regret them. You were never going to be left behind.”

“I deserved it,” Mul said, looking down. “I-I really did. I… Thank you. I won’t let you down again.”

Kur sighed. “I know, man. I know.”

“Also, thanks for healing me,” Cen said. “You were right in not using your boon. I felt myself drifting away back there. If you hadn’t saved it…”

A shiver ran down Nar’s back.

“Some tutorial, eh?” he muttered.

“Crystal have mercy on us,” Kur said, shaking his head. “And no worries. It’s my duty. Now come on, let’s get you through.”

Kur lifted her up, gently, and stared at the two of them. “You guys come in after us, alright?”

Nar and Mul both nodded, and Kur took Cen through.

“You first,” Mul said.

Nar smiled at him. “Nah, you first. My place is at the back of the party.”

Mul nodded and walked towards the darkness.

“You know,” he suddenly said. “I had my doubts, but… Well done. I don’t think we would’ve made it without your hybrid class.”

And with that, he stepped through, leaving Nar alone.

“Wow,” Nar whispered to himself. “Coming from him, that actually means a lot.”

In the end, he hadn’t been so bad, had he?

He had struggled to find his footing, failing and flailing as he went. But there and at that moment, things didn't seem so bad. Especially not with that new warning ability that he seemed to have unlocked.

Maybe his path was not doomed to end in death after all…

With a last glance at the corridor that had held them captive for so long, Nar too, hurried after the others.

As he stepped through the opening, darkness and silence engulfed him.

In the void, another window appeared before him.

You have entered a safe room.

You have done well, Climber.

Your gains are being calculated.

Rest now