Harald stumbled out into darkness. The air was damp and close and cold, the smell mineral and earthy.

No light. Nothing but pure black.

For a moment it was all Harald could do to not scream. He stood there, hand clenched tight around the pommel of his sword, staring wide-eyed out at nothingness.

Just the void.

It had eaten him.

“No,” he whispered. “Light, I need a light…” He dropped to one knee, his nausea and exhaustion forgotten, and swung his pack down off one shoulder to rest before him. Sam had packed it in another lifetime. Blindly he fumbled for the straps, unbuckled them, then thrust his hand inside to fumble around clothbound packages, small boxes, and there—his father’s metal lantern.

Staring out at nothing, he drew it forth, terrified that he’d drop and break it. Instead he found the base catch, triggered it, and caught the tiny shelf that popped out. Felt with his fingers. There, yes, the space for a scale, with one lying flush.

A Copper Moon.

They couldn’t afford anything fancier.

He pushed the tray in, clicked it shut, then found the dial and slowly twisted it. The lantern siphoned power from the scale, and the filament coiled within the thick glass bloomed to life.

Sweet, blessed light.

An enormous weight lifted from Harald’s shoulders. Raising his lantern, he twisted about, taking in the corridor.

Behind him loomed the Iron Portal. He could see clear through it, the dark energy gone. It’d wait for him here till he returned and fed a Copper Moon to activate it once more. No matter the depth, all it took to activate a portal home was a single, humble Copper Moon.

Thank the gods Derrick had seen fit to throw one down.

“All right,” whispered Harald, rising to his feet and slinging his pack back over his shoulders. “First floor. Very basic. As safe as it gets. You’re fine. You’re going to be fine.”

But his body didn’t seem to believe him. He couldn’t settle, but kept twisting about, darting glances behind him. His heart was pounding, his headache, which had momentarily abated, came roaring back.

He felt like absolute crap. If he’d been home he’d have crawled into bed and commanded Sam to not disturb him till he emerged several days later.

But now here he was.

Alone.

In the dungeon.

“Hope you’re proud, Dad.” He drew his blade, taking comfort in its beautiful, shimmering length. “Here I go.”

It wasn’t his father’s blade. That magnificent weapon had been lost when his dad had failed to return from a raid four years ago. But this was the best he could afford. For awhile there, after taking out the loans against the house, he’d been flush with scales, and spending a Horizon’s Whisper on a blade had felt smart. His life would depend on the quality of his weapon, wouldn’t it?

He’d cut leaves one afternoon in mid-air as they’d fallen from the orchard apple trees. That’s how sharp it was.

Rippling his fingers on the hilt, he clipped the lantern to his belt and glanced behind again.

Nothing.

But he wasn’t alone down here. The first level normally featured little more than dire rats, gremlins, and ghoul moths, but right now those felt like overwhelming foes.

And he’d find them soon.

Harald tried to steady his breathing and failed. He just couldn’t catch his breath. But he kept on shuffling forward. The 1st Level corridor was just as he’d heard described and seen painted countless times. Broad enough for four to walk down, the floor little more than packed dirt, the walls of moldering brick edged in gray blocks along the floor and where they met the ceiling.

A labyrinth without rhyme or reason. People simply wandered till they found something of note. Maps were useless, for the labyrinth shifted and changed.

Harald blinked away the sweat. How was his longsword already getting heavy? Should he cinch up his armor? No, he had to keep moving. He did so cautiously, pausing every few steps to listen, but the darkness endlessly retreated before him till he at last reached a T-junction.

Left or right?

The first floor was always level. No ramps up or down. No sunken chambers. No stairs and ladders. Just an endless lateral sprawl. What he was looking for was a chamber. Usually there were no doors. Just openings in the wall that led to rooms where monsters lurked, or if he was incredibly lucky, a cache which contained a small horde of the Fallen Angel’s scales.

Harald grimaced. This high up in the dungeon, he’d only find Copper Moons, perhaps a Silver Starburst if he was lucky.

But that’s how even the mightiest heroes began, right? Finding a cache of scales that countless other teams had overlooked across the centuries?

Harald paused and leaned against the wall. It was rough and crumbly against his shoulder. He felt so weak. His legs were rubbery, and he could taste the flat tang of panic— or perhaps just heart burn?— at the back of his throat. He felt dizzy, light headed. He should have gotten more water.

He twisted suddenly and stared behind him, heart bursting into a pounding rhythm. Had he—? No. Had he heard something? A scratching?

In the darkness everything could see him and his lantern.

“Fuck,” he whispered, and clawed his long hair out of his face. Should he go back and see if there was something there? Or keep going down one side of the junction, and leave a potential threat at his back? But if he was imagining things, would he just end up going back and forth like a caged animal?

Best to be careful. There was no rush down here.

So he wiped his sweaty palms over the leather armor and began walking back toward the Iron Portal.

Silence but for his panting.

His stomach was cramping.

His sword gleamed, its edge perfect. Some people claimed you should never take a virgin sword into the dungeon. That at the very least you should kill a goat or pig before going down, ensuring it was blooded.

The notion had seemed ridiculous to Harald from the comfort of his favorite booth in the Oak and Acorn.

Now he thought otherwise.

A door appeared on the right.

That couldn’t be. There’d been no door there before, and he hadn’t reached the Portal.

Harald froze, glanced behind him again, then stared at the door.

Had it appeared since he’d passed it? Possible, but…

Unnerved, alone, aware of the darkness pressing in on him from just beyond the range of his lantern, he took in a shuddery breath and approached.

A door meant a room, which meant violence. It was possible that he’d find slain monsters inside, evidence of the passage of another party, but unlikely. Probably giant rats. They were the most common. There’d be anywhere from four to ten of them. He’d hold the door, prevent them from flanking him.

Unless they were gremlins, in which case he needed to close quickly and cut them down. They’d throw their hand bolts at him otherwise, their iron tips wickedly barbed to tear flesh if you simply tried to pull them out. Gremlins. They were the stuff of nightmares. His father had kept a stuffed head on Harald’s bedroom mantlepiece, and its black glass eyes had always seemed to watch Harald while he lay there unable to sleep.

He paused just before the opening. Listened, but couldn’t hear anything over his pounding heart, his hoarse breathing. Damn it, couldn’t he be quiet for just a second? He held his breath and listened, but still heard nothing.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Wait.

Yes, a scratching sound.

Rats, then?

You can do this, he told himself. You’re Darius Darrowdelve’s son. He was clearing dire rat nests when he was thirteen. You’re a man full grown. Get your act together.

So thinking, he unclipped his lantern, stepped into the doorway, and set the lantern down and just inside against the wall.

The room was surprisingly large, which wasn’t good. Brick, shadows everywhere, the floor covered in rubble and broken statuary. The classic stuff of beautiful women and athletic men, shattered as if by a child’s tantrum.

His blade gleamed before him.

Movement.

Harald almost cried out.

Dark, slick fur. A rat slithered out of a cranny, seeming to balloon as it emerged, and with a shrill screech came coursing toward him.

Damn it was fast!

There were other squeaks, but Harald fought the urge to back out into the hallway, and instead raised his blade up high. Its tip banged against the ceiling, and just as the rat was upon him, he swung down, an oblique swing that caught the animal in the flank.

The rat was the size of a small dog, its tail loathsome and naked, its mouth opened wide to reveal sharp incisors. Lithe and supple, it squeaked in pain as his blade smacked into its side and cut it open—but failed to kill it.

Others were coming.

Panicked, Harald stomped on the wounded rat, but it slithered out from under his foot and bit the side of his boot.

“Get off!” Harald’s voice was almost a scream, and he swung the blade like a club at the rat again, missed, then stabbed it.

The blade sank into the furry body, punching through to hit the dirt below.

Harald felt a moment of triumph but then two more swarmed up his leg, terribly, wickedly fast, their claws finding easy purchase on his armor.

Horrified, he let go of his sword and swiped at the large bodies. They wriggled up, supple and wiry, and one latched its fangs into the side of his neck.

Harald screamed.

Grabbed it with both hands and tore it free. It twisted and flexed in his grip, greasy and strong, and he simply hurled it away, his neck aflame with agony.

Then the second bit his hand, the teeth sinking between his bones and crunching fingers.

Harald screamed again, stumbled back into the hallway, and twisted about to smack the body against the wall.

The rat didn’t seem to care.

Harald swung again and again, his cries desperate, horrified, and the rat simply bounced of the wall, its great tail lashing back and forth, its clenched teeth shredding his hand.

More came boiling out of the room to climb up his legs, their fangs working at his armor.

Pain in his ankle. Pain in his waist.

Harald didn’t know what to do, what to focus on. He took to swiping at the bodies that were climbing him, their fur gleaming in the shadowed hall. Tripped and crashed down onto his side.

“No! Help!” His cry was feeble, for he couldn’t catch his breath. “Help!”

But there was nobody there to help him.

He’d have to save himself.

Without any choice, Harald activated his Soul Ability, Moment of Resolve. He’d hoped to save it for a worthwhile foe, but this was overwhelmingly bad already.

Calm confidence flooded through him, washing away the fear and panic. His focus grew sharp. It wouldn’t last long, so he had to make the most of it. There were five rats on him. His sword was in the room. He had to keep them off his face, had to get off the ground.

Ignoring the biting, the gnawing, the screeching, Harald pushed up and rose to his knees.

Beyond his Ability he could feel his gibbering panic. His wretched, mewling horror. The second the Ability ran out, he was done for.

So he’d make this count. He grabbed the rat that had chewed his hand into a mess and slammed its head as hard as he could against the wall. It bucked and flailed, but he slammed it again and again with everything he had.

Strength 6 wasn’t much, but it was enough.

The rat let go, its jaw breaking, and Harald fought the urge to hurl it away again. Instead he smashed it one more time, then stood.

His sword.

He should never have dropped it.

The rats were gouging and tearing him up. Their incisors were shredding his armor. His neck was still throbbing with awful pain. He clamped a hand to the wound. Blood was pouring forth.

Not good.

The rats writhed and bit, but they didn’t actually weigh that much. Wearing them, he stumbled back into the doorway. His sword lay right there. Swaying, sweating, bleeding, Harald crouched to pick it up, then screamed as a rat ran up his back and bit right into his ear.

It was disgusting. Its whiskers, its teeth, its claws on his cheek, the belly fur.

Even his Moment of Resolve couldn’t control that instinct. He tore the rat away with both hands, and the entire side of his head burst into fiery pain.

Sobbing, miserable, terrified, he snatched up his sword and used it to saw at a rat that was working on his thigh armor.

Its hide parted and it screeched furiously, letting go.

One down, four more to go.

Then his Ability ran out.

The pain, the panic, the existential horror came roaring back. His movements became jerky, his hands suddenly feeling as if they were lost within oven mitts. He smacked the sword against the next rat, but couldn’t get the edge on it.

The rat shrieks and pain were starting to fade. The blood kept pouring from the side of his neck.

Harald overbalanced, tripped backwards, and crashed onto his ass in the hallway.

I’m going to die here, he realized, the words stark and clear against the roiling background of his panic. I’m going to die. Here, in the dark, alone, dead. A failure. Death. Going to die. I’m going to die!

New, panicked resolve filled him, and for a frenzied few seconds he sliced and batted at the rats, but they were too strong, too resilient. He cut them, but he couldn’t get the point through their bodies to spit them through and through.

Blood was washing down his front.

He fumbled the sword, and it fell to the dirt beside him.

“Fuck!” he screamed, and tore a rat away from his chest, hurling it even as it arched its back to bite his hand. “Fuck!”

The shadows were rising. Was the lantern growing weak? Was his vision failing? Darkness was oozing in from everywhere, like oil seeping through parchment.

The rats froze, lifting their heads, their bloodied muzzles.

Harald, unable to stop himself, smacked and batted at them with his ruined hands, but then as one they poured off him, and with tails undulating as they fled back into their chamber.

“What?” He blinked, tried to orient himself, to understand what was happening.

Had the dungeon itself taken mercy on him?

Magic? Another adventuring party?

He clamped his hand to his neck. There was a rough hole there. It didn’t even hurt that much anymore. But there was just too much blood. The rat had to have torn an artery.

Which meant he was done for.

Death.

Here.

Here it came.

The fear began to ebb.

His shoulders slumped.

He’d known he’d never match his father. Maybe that’s why he’d never really tried. Never really given it his all.

Maybe that’s why he’d come in here by himself, hung over and exhausted.

Because he’d known it wouldn’t have mattered.

Dad had been right.

He was weak. He was a failure.

Ah well.

That was… that was fine, really.

The darkness was congealing before him. Rising up into a column of glistening oil. Which was… weird, right?

Harald watched it, almost disinterested.

It rose, and now the hallway was filling with this strange purple radiance, like the kind given off by shadowstones. Purple light, soft and deep, gradating to black, but in the center a figure was forming, tall and terrifying.

Tall, terrifying, and really well dressed.

But Harald felt too weak, too light headed to really feel much at all.

So he just watched as the oily column became a person, complete with horns, burning eyes, and sartorial elegance.

The demon stood cloaked in a luxurious, ink-black coat, cut with dramatic tailoring that billowed with liquid grace. The lapels were adorned with intricate silver accents, while chains and medallions bestowed an air of gothic opulence.

A crisp black silk shirt, black trousers that conformed sleekly to his frame, an ornate belt centered with a large sapphire-like gem. Hands encased in gloves detailed with silver that echoed the coat’s decoration.

Why had a demon come all the way up to the 1st Level?

To steal a kill from the rats?

That made Harald chuckle, his chest barely rising at the thought.

The handsome demon studied him, his visage framed by wild, untamed locks, its purple-burning eyes lurid and casting trails of fire across the walls, as if its stare alone had the power of a fiery lash.

Most strange, it said, the voice echoing within Harald’s mind, piercing the fatigue and pain. The progeny of Darius Darrowdelve. You are not what I expected.

Hand still clamped to his neck, Harald closed his eyes and smirked. The pain was gone. That was good. “That’s… that’s what everyone says.”

Yet you have brought my finger back to me.

Harald felt the pendant rise from his chest and forced his eyes open. The black stone finger was drenched in his blood, and even as the demon took it the severed finger came to life, softening and flexing like a worm.

“Oh shit,” Harald whispered. It was the closest he could come to screaming. “Vorakhar.”

The very same. It tore the finger free of the cord, smoothly removed its glove, and placed the finger upon a stump on his left hand; the finger joined smoothly, and it flexed its hand, turning it to and fro as if admiring its restored nature. You have my thanks.

A deep inner pull was drawing Harald away from the dungeon, the arch-demon, his emotions, his life.

“You’re welcome,” he said, the courtesy reflexive. “At least… at least I accomplished something.”

Would you have had it otherwise?

The words gripped his mind, drew him back from the numbing depths. With immense effort he opened his eyes. Vorakhar was leaning forward, his commanding, roguishly handsome visage inches from Harald’s own.

I sense within you great potential. Squandered, uniquely wasted potential. But it is there. You could have been so much more than your father.

Harald stared the demon right in its burning purple eyes. A rational, detached part of him knew he should have been gibbering with fear. He’d been told and researched enough about this being to know just how powerful it was.

Yet he was… tired.

Something was keeping him from dying. Holding him an inch above annihilation. The demon’s will, probably.

“I died to a pack of rats on the 1st Level.” His voice was slurred. “I think you’re mistaken.”

Vorakhar smiled, revealing wicked fangs. I am not. You have brought me my finger. You are a Darrowdelve. There is room for merriment here. A continuance of the dance. You have a choice. I can gift you the missing keystone, and give you a second, greater chance at life. Or I can watch you die here before me. A small, pathetic, unremarkable death.

“What are you saying?” Harald’s thoughts were like leaves scattered by a storm wind. “You can heal me?”

Of course. Accept my gift, and I shall see you whole. I shall blast open the door of your soul so that nothing holds you back. Not others, not your body, not even the lies you’ve told yourself.

Harald stared blearily at the demon. He knew he should reject the offer. Better a clean death than to accept whatever a demon was trying to sell, right?

But he didn’t want to die. Fear arose within him and gripped him with clammy fingers about the throat. Death. To die here, alone in the dark with a demon. Only Sam would notice he’d not returned.

All his dreams, all his hopes.

“Fine,” he whispered.

Excellent. Let us see what comes of this second chance. Here, child of Darius. Receive my charity, and know that, when we one day meet again, I shall seek to learn what you have made of yourself.

Vorakhar reached out and pressed something sharp against Harald’s brow. There was resistance for but a second, and then a small object slipped through skin and bone as Harald abruptly spasmed as if he’d been blasted by a thunderbolt.

For a moment all was blazing light and power, and then it was gone, leaving Vorakhar before him as before, grinning and satisfied.

Know hunger, human child. Know endless, insatiable, ravenous hunger. Now go forth, and consume the world.