The frost-chilled air trembled as the spider coiled its limbs. The creature lowered itself to the ground, tense as a jungle cat. Legs like steel tendons twitched with pent-up energy.

With a bone-rattling screech, it launched itself into the air.

“SPLIT!” Atlas screamed. He darted left, his heart hammering, cheeks flushed raw. He held his lunar dagger tightly to his chest. His breath hitched as he ran. Frost clung to his lashes.

Ela darted right. Her form blurred as she cast some type of illusion around herself. For half a second, she was no more than a shadow flitting through dappled moonlight.

Cain stayed, planting his feet deeper into the snow. He lifted his arms in a cross-guard position.

Atlas turned, wanting to warn Cain to get out of the way, but he couldn’t find the words in the moment it took for the spider to descend from the sky.

The creature crashed down on Cain. The force of the impact sent shockwaves through the tundra, reverberating across the ice. Snow and frozen debris erupted around them. The ground splintered. The spider shuddered as it landed, its massive legs outstretched, their tips digging into the fractured ground for balance.

Atlas held his breath until he saw Cain alive through the snow and debris. The boy was holding onto the spider’s mandibles, his arms straining as he fought to keep the creature from crushing him in its grasp. He dug his heels deeper into the ground, legs shaking, his grip so tight the pressure bleached his knuckles.

With a labored breath, he lunged forward, colliding with the spider’s jaws. The creature skittered backward a dozen feet, clawing at the ground for traction. It left a trail of ichor in its wake—a dark line of liquid that hissed on the floor. An acrid stench filled the air.

Atlas wasn’t sure if he should be in awe of Cain’s sheer strength—or in terror of the spider’s defensive capabilities. The pummeling blow barely made a dent in the creature’s carapace.

The spider swayed side to side, its legs scrabbling across the slick ground. Its mandibles snapped in agitation. It seemed like it was not yet comfortable maneuvering its larger size. Each of its legs jittered erratically, splattered with its own venom.

Atlas’s mind raced in the seconds between. Should he run forward, slashing wildly with his lunar dagger? One swipe of the spider’s legs and he’d be slaking his thirst on the creature’s venom. His Stamina was low, his Health was low. He remembered that his Lunar Dagger ability was strong against spectral spirits—should he chance his life for victory? Would there even be any safe battles in this world, or would every encounter make him play the odds with his life?

He glanced toward his left. Cain was catching his breath, his hands on his knees, his chest heaving with exertion. His breath came ragged and steamed in the air.

Ela looked calm, watching the spider with a focused intensity. Her hands hovered in front of her, fingers curled, as if she were getting ready to pull on a mesh of invisible threads.

With a shriek, the spider reared on its hind legs. Its eyes flashed an arctic white as it flung its legs forward in a sweeping motion and unleashed a torrent of silk from its gullet. Razor-sharp threads laced with frost and venom hurtled toward Atlas and Cain, spiraling in arcs.

Atlas’s instincts screamed at him to move, but his legs felt rooted to the ground. His arms stiffened. Time seemed to slow. He could make out the concave patterns in the webs rushing toward him. The sound of snow splitting in waves whistled in his ears.

A moment before the silk could slice into his flesh, a mist-wreathed tendril emerged from the ground in front of him. It absorbed the brunt of the impact from the webs, its surface boiling as it became doused in venom. The tendril wove itself around Atlas, deflecting each incoming thread from the spider.

Atlas saw a second tendril protecting Cain, and across the tundra, he noticed Ela concentrating fiercely while motioning her arms in a way that mimicked the movement of both tendrils.

When the last of the spider’s webs was gone, Ela drew her arms close to her chest, fingers curled, then flung them out toward the spider. Both tendrils surged from the snow like twisting pillars, then arched down toward the spider.

The arachnid spirit scuttled sideways, scraping the ground with its legs, and managed to dodge the first tendril. The second tendril hit it with a resounding thud, sending it bouncing off the ice. For a moment, the spider was cast into the air, limbs flailing, mouth spewing silk as it tried to catch the tendril between its mandibles. Venom ricocheted off the frost-laden ground in every direction.

Ela relaxed her arms for a second, and then jerked them toward Cain and Atlas.

Atlas felt a jolt of energy and warmth. His Health meter surged upward, but then started to trickle back down a moment later. He noticed the addition to his Health was a foggy shade of pink, rather than its usual red. His Stamina meter did the same thing a moment later with a hazy shade of orange.

“It’s my ability!” Ela shouted. “Temporary Health and Stamina!” She ran toward them while controlling her tendrils with one arm. She looked more and more exhausted every step. Twice, she almost slipped. Patches of ice cracked underneath her staggering footsteps. She slowed her pace as she came closer, reaching out her arms to balance herself.

The three of them met where Cain stood.

“I’m almost out of mana,” Ela panted. “I don’t think I can control my tendrils for much longer.”

The spider was in a daze, tilting left and right. The tendrils had lost their vigor, hitting the creature with barely enough force to shake it off the ground. It didn’t look like the spider had taken too much damage, though even from a distance, Atlas could now see tiny fissures forming around its plated joints. Inky blue mist escaped from its uneven seams, thinning under the moonlight.

“It’s stance broken,” Ela said. “We probably have a minute or two before it recovers. Can you both finish it off now?” She glanced at Cain, then Atlas, her expression tense and hopeful.

“I doubt my dagger will get through its carapace,” Atlas said, his mind racing for alternatives. He pictured the spider’s mandibles closing in on his throat, its legs bristling over his corpse. A shudder spread down from his limbs to his hands and knees. “Physical attacks won’t work either; its armor is too strong.”

“You don’t have any spells?” Ela looked from Atlas to Cain. Her hand was shaking now from the effort of controlling her tendrils.

“Yeah,” Cain said, nodding easily. He lifted a fist. “I got this spell right here.”

“We need magic!” Ela hissed in a barely intelligible whisper. She dug her shaking hands into her cloak—a side effect of her abilities, Atlas guessed. Her eyes darted between empty spaces around the tundra. Atlas followed her sidelong glances, but he couldn’t tell what she was looking at. It was obvious that she was hiding her unease over something. She shook her head, as if snapping out of a trance.

The three of them looked toward the spider in unison. The creature steadied itself and narrowed its many eyes with renewed focus. It lurched backward, belching mist and venom. It fought off Ela’s tendrils with more ease now, its erratic skittering giving way to smooth, controlled movements.

An idea was forming in Atlas’s mind. He turned to study Ela’s tendrils for a moment. Their color faded as the spider thrashed against their grips. The base of their bodies flickered in and out as if they were tethered to a different plane.

“How well can you control them?” Atlas asked. “Your tendrils.” He over-enunciated to keep the cold from slurring his words. Even through Ela’s temporary boost, he could feel the wind now more than ever.

“Well enough, but I probably can’t keep them up for much longer.” She gave Cain a piercing stare. “We don’t have any mana potions.”

“If I toss my lunar daggers to your tendrils, can you catch them?”

“Sure… but…”

“Ohh…” Cain said, nodding. “The daggers can slip in the space between the joints. Where there’s no armor?”

“Exactly,” Atlas said. “And my daggers are strong against spectral spirits.”

Ela considered for a moment, staring at the ground before glancing at her fading tendrils. She clenched her fists, rejuvenating them with threads of color, but they began flickering almost immediately.

“I guess it’s the best idea we have,” she finally relented. Her tendrils writhed sluggishly as the spider pinned one of them against the ice. Ela flinched, as if she could feel the armored grip of the creature. “Throw them slowly so I don’t miss the catch.”

“Can you hold the spider down?” Atlas asked, turning to Cain.

Cain reached into the folds of his cloak. He wriggled his arms as he searched through his inventory, brushing over what sounded like parchment and loose herbs. A few dried leaves drifted to the floor, their edges crumbling on the snow. He pulled out a glass vial.

“Yeah, I just need a pick-me-up,” he said. He tried to down the moonshine in one swig, but nearly a quarter of it spilled over the side of his mouth and trailed down his chin.

“Really?” Ela asked, looking at him with a resigned expression.

“When have I ever let us down?” Cain wiped the spilled moonshine from his chin.

“Only always…” Ela muttered.

Atlas took a deep breath to ready himself, but before he could exhale, Cain was already running down the tundra, the empty vial tossed over his shoulder.

“You get used to that,” Ela said. She added something else, but the wind snatched away her words.

The frigid air whipped Atlas’s face as he ran, each gust forcing him to push harder. If the Stamina Ela granted was temporary, he figured he may as well use as much of it as he could in one burst. His breath came in quick, visible puffs. The snow sprayed up to his waist, dampening the hem of his cloak. His adrenaline cut through the chill of the air.

He was halfway to the spider. The creature came into focus while the rest of the world blurred. The air around it had a sharpness that didn’t feel natural. Its body pulsed against the wind. A trail of venom tainted the ground beneath its mouth. It had recovered from its daze, and was now ignoring Ela’s tendrils. It focused on Cain as the boy sprinted toward it with reckless speed.

The Oracle had said this was the creature’s first evolved form. How many stages did it have in total and how big could it get? A house? A mountain? Atlas’s mind whirled with possibilities. Did his previous self know what he was getting into? A contest to survive in a world where nightmares roamed free and could evolve to ascend the limits of nature?

“Full of fear, full of fear,” he kept repeating Mirael’s words to himself. It brought him comfort—as if refusing the admission alone was progress enough.

Cain barrelled toward the creature head-on. The spider snapped its mandibles at him with a sound like metal grinding against stone. He side-stepped, angling closer, and latched onto the spider’s jaws while weaving between dribbling venom. His arms shook as he wrestled against the strength of the creature. His cloak fluttered in its breath.

The spider screeched, thrashing in his grip, but Cain held firm.

Panic seized Atlas as he came within a few feet of one of Ela’s tendrils. His lunar dagger was gone.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He frantically searched his inventory, then scanned the ground. Did he drop it somewhere? His fingers rummaged through the inside of his cloak again and again, as if the contents of his pockets might change or he might find a hidden slot somewhere. A wave of dread washed over him.

“Lunar daggers last for 20 minutes after they are summoned,” a window said, appearing in the bottom-right of his vision.

“You couldn’t tell me that before?!”

“Atlas!” Cain shouted. “I can solo this easily of course, but could you hurry so you and Ela get experience?” He gritted his teeth as he held on to the spider’s jaws, pushing it left and right to keep its venom from spilling on him. The spider wrenched its head to one side, then clacked its mandibles, missing Cain’s elbow by inches. Though he was hiding it well, he was turning pale from exhaustion. Dark circles formed underneath his eyes, and his legs looked ready to give out.

Atlas tried to use his Lunar Dagger ability, but nothing happened. His mana dropped from 25 to 20.

“What? Why isn’t it working?” His hands felt clammy with beads of sweat.

“Your skill level with this ability is not high enough to guarantee a draw every time.”

Atlas swore under his breath and then blamed himself for not practicing the ability earlier—but that had only been 20 minutes ago. Was he supposed to know he’d need it again so soon?

He wiped his palms on his pants. Even in the cold, they were slick with sweat. He gave the ability two more tries but failed. His mana dropped to 10. He thought he could feel something on his second try, like the sensation of fog between his fingertips, but no dagger appeared in his hand.

He closed his eyes to try to think back to the memory of Mirael—but he couldn’t focus with all the mayhem of the battle. Snarls and guttural roars filled the air, followed by the heavy crunch of cracking ice. Noxious plumes stung his eyes. Every screech from the spider was louder and more frenzied than the last. His anxiety tasted like metal in his mouth.

“ATLAS!” Cain shouted. “NOT THAT I NEED HELP, BUT YOU GOT ANYTHING? WHERE’S YOUR DAGGER?”

“I need to know the Secret of Alchemy!” Atlas wasn’t sure what else to say. He had convinced them of this plan and now couldn’t deliver. They were going to die because of him.

Was it buried in a memory he had? Mirael said he already knew it.

Cain swung at the armored head of the spider, then turned to Atlas. “Yeah, don’t worry, they have that at the bottom of every bottle in the tavern. I’ll show you when we get there.” The spider snapped at him again, throwing him on his back as he caught the underside of its jaws. The creature flailed madly, gaping its mouth to reveal teeth like barbed prongs.

“I’ve got it right where I want it,” Cain wheezed, as he struggled to keep the spider from slicing into his throat. Its mandibles were inches away from his face, clacking relentlessly.

Atlas felt himself slipping away. He was drifting. The word bottle stirred a memory he didn’t know he had.

He saw himself, a younger version, standing in a dimly lit chamber. Mirael handed him a bottle with a scroll inside of it. He could remember the feel of the parchment on his fingertips, like silk and soft cotton. The scroll kept unfolding for as long as he wanted to read, regaling him with tales about old gods, immortal spirits, and entities trapped in realms beyond his imagination. Beings who could bend the fabric of reality and slip between the threads of space and time. He sat on the floor as he read, sinking into infinity.

“Remember this moment,” Mirael said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “This is the world showing you how vast it truly is.”

“Atlas!” Ela called, bringing him back to the present. “Are you ready?” She was running closer to them.

Atlas breathed in the cold. Thinking of Mirael instilled a sadness in him that had no shape or form. He had no memories to anchor the feeling or give it closure—just the afterimages of a dream he couldn’t shake off.

He thrust his arms forward, using his Lunar Dagger ability simultaneously in both hands. His fingers wrapped around a pair of marble-smooth hilts, each one hued in the brindled colors of the night. The different shades captured the mottled look of the sky—lighter here, darker there, with streaks of moonlight as if the blades on the hilts were dripping off their color.

He threw one dagger after another at Ela’s tendrils, feeling the frost on his knuckles crackle as he snapped open his hands. He let out a sigh of relief when she caught the first dagger, but the second one dropped into the ground. She flung one of her arms down toward it, making her tendril sift through the snow.

Atlas expected her to start attacking right away to give Cain some reprieve, but her tendril froze in place. It held the dagger where it had caught it, and then remained in an invisible stasis.

Ela swung her arm left and right, exhaling sharply in frustration, but the tendril didn’t move. A moment later, the second tendril froze, seemingly successful in its search for the lunar dagger in the snow.

“Are you doing that?” Ela asked.

Atlas shook his head, opened his mouth to say something, but then stared incredulously in silence as Ela’s tendrils began to transform.

The tendrils grew slightly longer, just enough to be noticeable. Their surfaces refracted moonlight in hues of blue and silver. Their tips absorbed Atlas’s daggers and formed into crescent-shaped claws. Their bodies rippled, and a lattice of glowing threads pulsed along their lengths. Pitted craters formed at their bases.

“Fusion Skill Unlocked: Alchemical Illusions. Alchemy and illusion magic can be combined to craft illusions imbued with alchemical energy. Illusions will take on the properties of the alchemical abilities they are fused with. If fusing with an object, the illusion can absorb the mana from said object. If the skill levels of the individual abilities are high enough, alchemical illusions have a chance (scaling with the Insight, Arcane, and Luck of its individual casters) to manifest as alchemical phantasms.”

“Whoa…” Ela and Atlas both said in unison as they watched the tendrils twitch and regain their color.

Cain let go of the spider’s jaws and rolled over to dodge as the creature drove its head into the ground. Venom sprayed over his neck, smoking on his skin. He didn’t make a sound, but brushed the liquid off his body with his cloak. Both he and the spider looked exhausted, gasping for breath as they stared each other down. The spider rapped its mandibles together. Cain took out a dusty green bottle from his inventory. He poured some of the liquid where the spider’s venom had spilled over him, then took a few sips of it himself.

“I got them!” Ela shouted. She swung her arms at the spider. Her tendrils coiled, then lashed out, surging forward with predatory grace.

The first tendril struck the spider’s abdomen. The crescent tips of its fingers plunged between the armored plates of the spider, scraping the inside of its joints. A burst of sable blue mist hissed from the wound as the creature screeched in pain. Ela’s second tendril darted behind the spider with viper-like smoothness and coiled around its hind legs. It wrenched the spider to the side, sending the arachnid spirit skidding across the floor. The first tendril pulled it back to Ela.

The spider flailed wildly. One of its legs managed to get free and swipe through the air, grazing the second tendril and tearing a faint fissure along its glowing surface. Ela winced, as if she could feel the cut herself, then whirled her arms frantically, directing the tendrils to spiral around the spider’s body. Their crescent claws dug into the spider’s underbelly.

The spider seethed violently, spraying venom all over itself. It tried to twist its way out, contorting its legs in obtuse angles, but Ela’s tendrils held on tightly. A shrill screech tore from the creature’s mouth. The tendrils squeezed, tighter still. The spider gnawed frantically on its own legs to break free, coating its lips with gore. Fragments of chitinous plating splintered off its body. Two of its limbs broke off. Its head jerked left and right, searching for an escape.

Finally, in one sharp command, Ela clapped her hands together. Her tendrils collapsed into the spider, shattering its carapace completely. Shards of armor burst into the sky. The spider went limp in the air. Dense blue mist poured out of its body.

Ela, Atlas, and Cain all let out a deep breath and fell to the snow. They stared at the spider’s body until it dissipated in a puff of dark blue smoke. Several silver and golden orbs hovered where it had been. Venom streaked the surrounding area in erratic patterns.

“Level Up: You have reached level 3. Leveling will increase your base stats and allow you to unlock new abilities.”

The three of them sat in the snow for a long while, catching their breaths. The air had gone eerily quiet except for the groan of shifting ice. Atlas looked around for any more approaching spirits, but found only an endless stretch of tundra. Ela’s tendrils fell to the ground gently, disappearing into a snowdrift.

Cain was the first to stand up, limping over to the items the spider had dropped with slow, labored steps. His silhouette stooped against the biting wind. His eyes were glassy and he shuffled his feet as he walked. He looked frayed and exhausted. With the way he was swaying, Atlas thought it was a wonder the boy didn’t tip over into the snow before getting to the items.

Ela stood up next and followed behind Cain. Atlas pulled himself up last, noticing his Stamina was now at five and barely regenerating. Despite straining himself the least, he thought he looked the most tired out of the three of them. He imagined it had to be a level difference and made a mental note to put in extra time toward training over the next few days. He wanted to hold his own in fights, and be the difference maker when the people around him needed it.

“Are you all right?” Ela’s voice broke through the icy silence as she stepped in front of Cain to take a closer look at his neck.

“Yeah… I think so… vision’s a bit off but I can’t tell if that’s the venom or the moonshine.” Cain ran a hand through his hair, shaking snow off his head. “Either way, it feels good.”

Atlas darted toward them, fighting against his sluggishness. His muscles burned, and a deep ache radiated through his limbs. His vision dimmed from a pounding headache. With the adrenaline of the battle gone, the cold began to seep into his bones again. He realized if he could describe this world in one word—it would be pain.

“It’s nothing,” Cain said, though the branching veins on his neck, now a deep cobalt hue, suggested otherwise. The skin around the veins corroded into discolored patches.

“Is it a status effect?” Atlas asked, his voice edged with concern. “That doesn’t look like nothing.”

“Yeah.” Cain raised a shaky hand, pressed it against an invisible interface, then swiped toward Atlas and Ela.

“Status Effect: Subzero Suffusion. This frost status effect causes muscles to stiffen and slow over time. Your movement speed and Stamina will gradually decrease to zero. Take periodic frost damage over time, scaling with missing Stamina and Health. Once you reach zero Stamina, become indefinitely frozen. Subzero Suffusion can be cured with most common frost antidotes, certain food types like cooked aurora fish, or more slowly through warmth and rest.”

“We need to move,” Atlas said. “Is this tavern nearby? How fast is your Health dropping?”

“Slow enough. I’ll make it.”

Ela’s lips tightened. “You know… if you’d spent a little more coin on antidotes instead of moonshine…”

“Yeah, yeah…” Cain cut her off with a weak laugh, but his pallor was hard to ignore.

Ela shook her head, then gathered the last of the items the spider had left behind. She moved efficiently, her hands brushing over orbs and glimmering fragments, and sent the item descriptions to Atlas and Cain. Atlas was too tired to read any of them.

“Come on, the plateau ends just over there.” She gestured to the horizon. “Can you last, even climbing down the steps?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Cain grumbled, gesturing vaguely. “Moonshine slows the venom.”

Ela gave him a skeptical look, then read something in the air which seemed to satisfy her enough to not argue the point.

As they trudged forward, Atlas caught sight of an item description that stood out among the stream of loot data.

“We’re bringing the spider meat?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ela sighed. “Yeah. Don’t get too excited—it’s probably just as bad as bat meat.”

“I liked the bat meat,” Cain interjected. He was limping with an arm over Atlas for support. Whatever abilities or attributes his Brawler class granted him seemed to help him maintain his strength despite the spreading venom.

“Of course you did,” Ela muttered.

They pressed on, their conversations punctuated by stories from Ela and Cain’s first few days in this world. They had discovered a labyrinthine network of tunnels by the plateau’s base, fought off bats that could blend with the night, and escaped a spider’s nest with frost-glazed webs that stretched for miles. Cain said they had been here for eight days, though by Ela’s count, it had been nine. Atlas had already developed a sense of who was more reliable.

Just as the wind died down, the ground beneath their feet began to level, and the edge of the plateau came into view. The fog thinned, letting Atlas see out into the world.

He stopped in his tracks, slack-jawed. Now if there was one word he could use to describe the world—it would be: impossible.

It wasn’t one world that he was looking at, but rather, many, each with its own skyscape and biomes. Several areas were shrouded in the same cascading fog he had seen in his three-dimensional map when he first woke.

“How is it… how is it doing that?” Atlas asked.

Every time he blinked, the entire world changed in front of him.

On his first view, rivers of golden light snaked through sapphire forests, their glow mingling with swirls of mist. Vast mountains clawed at a sky painted in shifting hues of lavender and green. Violet oceans shimmered like amethysts in the distance, broken only by archipelagos that gleamed like scattered jewels. The horizon warped, its curvature defying logic, as if multiple worlds had been woven together into one sprawling, surreal tapestry. It was too vast, too vivid—and once again, Atlas found himself sinking into infinity.

He blinked and the world changed. Now it was filled with metallic deserts and rippling dunes. A milky white ocean littered with bones had whirlpools that churned like swirling graveyards. Dark crypts floated in the sky, carried by scarlet clouds. Even from a distance, Atlas could smell the salt and decay in the air, thick and suffocating.

If he focused on an area, his vision would zoom in. Every world had its own skies and constellations. Every landscape had its own biomes.

He blinked, and the whole world changed for a third time—replaced by crystal jungles, an electric swamp, and a marsh with amber spires dripping with black honey. A giant bee emerged from one of the spires, dwarfing the landscape around it.

“This is the world map,” Ela said. “It isn’t static. The paths that lead to the Emperor are ever-changing. This isn’t a universe with planets and stars; it’s a universe of planes and moons.” She pointed to a set of obsidian stairs that descended to the base of the plateaus. “Come on, Emberlain will explain it all to you.”

“What is that thing?” Atlas asked. He pointed to a dark tower in the distance that loomed over the entire world. It was the one thing that remained static as the rest of the world changed around it. It jutted out from a swirl of black clouds, with walls that seemed to absorb the light around it. Its peak disappeared into the curving horizon, making it look infinite.

“All roads lead to the Conqueror by the Sea,” Ela said simply.

Atlas blinked, tearing his gaze from the impossible landscape as a new notification filled his vision. It covered his entire field of view, glowing with the same otherworldly light as the scene below.

“Lunaria of the Endless Glades.”