From the brink of infinity, it awoke. Like the birth of a star, light washed away the darkness to reveal a small crystal. The twinkling shard floated in the void, rotating slowly. After the initial pop finished echoing around wherever this was, silence blanketed the void and the world stood still.

Each moment passed by unnoticed in the unchanging world the crystal had found itself born into. It reached out into the nothingness. It could sense every bit of the emptiness like the chill of a phantom limb.

What!?

Panic set in and the light from the shard pulsed rapidly as it looked out into the darkness looming in every direction.

Where—wait what the hell am I?

Looking back at itself, the small fragment of crystal, jagged and broken at odd angles, glowed warmly. It was the center of everything, the core. Small channels were carved along its surface.

The carvings, only etched into the smooth side of the fragment were like an unfinished maze of peculiar circular shapes that should have created a picture past where body ended, like a lone puzzle piece. Even now the carvings still burned like cooling embers.

Even now? What was before? Embers? Wait—

Fragmented images, merely flashes, broken and undecipherable scorched its way along the path of one of the lines carved into its body.

Stop it!

It cried out into the void, but no sound came forth. With no way to stop it, all the shard could do was try to steel itself against the pain.

Somethings wrong. What is all this?

It wasn’t sure how, but it knew there should be more. It could feel it, like islands on the horizon with no bridges connecting them. The flames avoided more than enough of the lines engraved on it that it was sure. There was definitely more.

Even so, too many images bombarded the shard, from too many directions to focus on any of them. Even through the barrage, a few of the memories stuck. A glowing pearl like orb flashed across its senses along with the name “Lumi” from many voices as the blazing line ran its course.

Lumi? Is that my name?

The void could only respond with silence. For longer than Lumi cared to count, she was the only thing in existence and the all encompassing nothingness was a part of its body now. Somehow she could sense everything in the void, which there wasn’t much of, save for a few wisps of dust.

Unwilling to accept it, Lumi reached out sensing everything a second time, then a third, fourth and fifth. Finally she had to admit, nothing was there besides itself.

Hello?

Lumi called out, projecting her thoughts out past the empty expanse, but no sound came forth. Even so, she waited, hoping against everything that her senses would tell her that something existed out there. The thought ate away at her dimly glowing shard, but she refused to believe.

Lumi couldn’t tell how much time passed, but nothing responded. Every passing moment, Lumi, glowing faintly, felt smaller and smaller. She could sense so far, maybe a thousand times her own size in any given direction. But no matter where she focused her attention, she found nothing. She was alone.

Anyone?

Slowly after even the small bits of dust left its sight, falling away into the void below. Then a mist like substance, vast and all consuming, floated in. Lumi recoiled, at the untamed power thrumming through the void tainted by the mist. She quickly drew back her senses only for the ethereal presence to follow. The void grew smaller and smaller as she gave ground.

With the ethereal mist creeping closer by the second, Lumi willed herself to move. A small vibration echoed into the void, but her shard stayed put. She struggled, her core flaring at the effort, but before long she was surrounded. There was nowhere to go.

Leave me alone.

She thought into the emptiness beyond her senses, hoping the mist would understand. It didn’t.

Bit by bit Lumi’s light dimmed as the mist pushed inward still. She kept retreating her senses until her entire world, all that she could sense and everything in existence was just her shard and a sliver of void around it. Like a layer of skin the slice of void was all that lay between her shard and the encroaching smog.

Little vibrations kept ringing out to no avail. Lumi could draw back her senses no further. Wisps of the encroaching mist brushed against her senses, tauntingly.

What do I do? Think. Think! What am I supposed to do?

As the mist pressed against it in earnest, Lumi shivered at its touch, throwing little squeaks of discharged energy at the ethereal cloud. The cloud rippled and flailed until she could no longer exert any force and finally let the mist cover her.

It tasted clear and ever so familiar. Suddenly Lumi’s senses burst outward as far as they could go and kept going. It was like when she’d opened its eyes for the first time and memories not her own flickered across the surface of her shard. For an instant the world stopped. Lumi was somewhere else and she heard a voice from deep in her core.

Live.

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The words echoed across existence, filling her with warmth. Two dozen silhouettes with blurred faces stood around a giant, magic filled orb, weapons at the ready. Several spaces in the lineup were left empty. The glowing pearl like being watched over them, taking in the ethereal mist like substance at its leisure.

“I wish we had more time.”

The voice was so familiar. The figures surrounding it looked fondly on the two of them.

“To you I give what is left of my friends, memories I hope will help you survive.”

Their final moments hit first. The sharp pain of blades pierced from all angles. Even so their smile never wavered, if only to piss the wielder off. The wrongness of mana being disrupted and erased, dissolved a body of magic as it laughed over the body of yet another “hero.” The sudden painless realization at being killed by such lowly creatures that somehow birthed a miniature star in its stomach. The memories kept coming and Lumi lived through each and every death.

From the top of the dungeon all the way to the final room they died, the wondrous magic filled halls stained with memories.

She floated through the final moment. The room was full of blood, a battle paused in time. An orb sat in the lap of a statue just out of reach of a lance too painful to look at.

It was her. The creator. The mother.

Avani.

“I don’t know where… or when, you’ll appear but know that you are my child, a dungeon core. It must be strange to be so different from before, but please listen.”

Memories of walking the grand halls of the Deepwood Labyrinth full of wonderfully dangerous creatures sparked across her shard’s surface.

“The Ven’sara called us shapers—and we are. The ability to form our bodies and the creatures that dwell within is the foundation of our power. We can create great and terrible things.”

The image of a small twinkling orb floating over a small creature being sculpted of mana impressed itself upon the her.

“Absorption, another foundational skill of ours, allows us to break down most things within your body to their component mana types so that you may use it on your other skills and magics.”

Lumi watched as countless years of Avani digging out her labyrinth from the earth around her, gorging on the mana, passed in an instant.

“Most relevant to you though, is bonding. We dungeons can create links, or oaths as I called them, with other creatures not of your making.“

A vague memory of kneeling before Avani’s core along with many others, itched in the back of her mind.

Who were we? We called her Your Luminance, the light in the dark. Am I the broken memories of her friends, or just Lumi?

“My hope is that you find beings you can trust to help you, like those in my memories. But be careful, many from the kingdoms above will try to bind you. Their idea of a bond is a set of chains only meant to make you their slave. The only other option for us, as many of them see it, is death.”

Suddenly panic seized her. The battle in the corridors she once called home, dyed with the hatred of the dead, now set in the final room. It seized her focus. It was a memory shared by too many. She could only watch as Avani shattered. She wanted to scream, and phantom tears from a time when she’d had a body threatened to flow. But before she could utter a sound, Avani turned her focus to her and said a simple word that resonated in her soul.

“Live.”

The word echoed along the surface of the orb, mana visibly reverberating. A smattering of voices shouted out for Avani in denial. Lumi clung to that word as she watched in horror as Avani dissapted, fading away to leave only a warm glow in an empty room.

Tears flowed down the face she no longer had. The light closed in around her. Her eyes dried in its warm embrace but after a while it too dissipated.

I’ll do my best.

The fragment of memory slowly faded as Lumi’s awareness returned. For a long moment all she could do was float in silence, focusing on nothing at all. Eventually she looked out and all around her, pockets of the ethereal substance slowly drew towards her core.

This is mana?

Lumi sent her attention through the mist—ambient mana without a natural element. The light had finally reached something. Her senses had grown immensely and the all consuming void was now surrounded by a solid barrier in every direction. But even so, Lumi could drive her senses into some closer parts of the barrier. The world still ended at the edge of her senses but Lumi wasn’t the only thing in existence anymore. Although she wasn’t entirely sure how happy to be about rocks and dirt existing.

I suppose it’s better than nothing but where am I?

Lumi found itself in a large cavern. She floated above the rough uneven ground in the midst of large pillars of stalactites and stalagmites that created a stone maw. The brilliant glow from her shard, sent shadows of the stone teeth running along the walls. Drops of water ran down from the ceiling every so often. The little plops were the only things to break the silence. The distant walls, made of mostly stone, marked the boundary of her territory.

It kept expanding until the last bits of mana were exhausted.

Am I bigger?

She looked herself over. Still little more than a pebble compared to the size of the cavern, but Lumi was in fact slightly bigger than before. After all that growing she felt a bit hollow, like a space had opened up within her. It was almost like she’d had a stomach again.

The air around the cavern had been cleared of the ethereal mist which Lumi remembered was called ambient mana. The world was full of the slowly replenishing source of magic.

What am I supposed to do?

With no more of it left Lumi could only wait for it to slowly return. She reached out her senses and tried to poke and press at the walls. Lumi felt the emptiness within herself getting tugged at but with nothing to draw upon, the walls were unaffected.

I guess I have to wait. Or maybe I can absorb it?

Alone, with memories of a world above, Lumi clawed at the walls. Little by little, she ate away at the wall absorbing the detritus into her core. Thankfully, there had been no discernible taste and her hollow center quickly filled with mana dyed with the earth attribute. Earth mana based creations, she remembered, were the most common types of creations in underground dungeons because of all the earth that the dungeons had been forced to dig out after they were born. Continuing to dig as she pondered over the memories, it didn’t take long for her hollow center to fill. When she tried to keep working, Lumi found she could no longer dig out the walls.

I can only absorb thing when I’m not full, huh? Well now what?

She had to make use of the mana filling her up. Thinking back to the grand chambers, that Avani had made to make her friends more comfortable, Lumi focused on the ground keeping that in mind. Slowly the floor smoothed out as mana poured out of her. Stone tiles formed under her shard until the earth mana had been depleted, leaving only the colorless mana that kept forming around her.

Feeling rather empty again, Lumi continued carving out the wall. Finally after a long while, not that there was any way for her to keep time, Lumi completed the start of a tunnel out of her cavern all the way up until the edge of her territory.

My territory…

It was hardly comfortable enough for anything to live in, being mostly a cavern and all.

Well I’m sure there are plenty of things that like caverns. Maybe I should try making it more comfy.

As she though on how to do that, Lumi found herself recalling how comfortable she’d felt when she’d been staying in Avani’s dungeon. It was the only place she remembered feeling safe.

I can make a home like Avani did for us…

Remembering the size of Avani’s dungeon, she wanted to sigh, but well, that was impossible at this point. Lumi could only pulse light from her shard in exasperation. It would take a while to get enough mana to expand again so all she could do was wait.