Survival Drills

Cold stone pressed his cheek. A voice cut through the haze.

“Easy,” Alia murmured. Something firm touched his temple—cool against his skin, the same faint, sharp scent that later clung to her vials. The world stopped wobbling, clicking into place one notch at a time.

Stone arched low overhead, the chamber breathing faint light the way a sleeping thing breathes. Torches wedged in cracks burned steady. Sera’s women moved like planets—Bren tightening straps; Tamsin counting knives with a click-click-click; Nyx pacing in a tight loop, stylus tapping her bracer.

“Drink.” Alia pressed a tin cup to his mouth.

He gulped because she told him to. Mint burned down his throat and took the tremble with it.

“Did I… black out?” he croaked.

“Briefly,” Alia said, like he’d sneezed.

Nyx stopped pacing, eyes hawk-sharp. “You flared.” She didn’t sound surprised—more like she’d just confirmed a hypothesis.

“I… what?”

“You lit up,” she said, impatient. “Then it collapsed. Like a spark under wet cloth.” Her head tipped, narrowing. “Void doesn’t spark.”

“You keep saying that. What is void?”

A frown flickered across her face. Nyx’s nostrils twitched once, almost like she’d caught a scent, before she masked it, stylus tapping sharper against her bracer.

Nathan blinked. Weird. And the way her eyes cut over him again — quick, sharp — it was like she’d measured something and shelved it away.

Bren loomed, big as a doorway, voice flat as stone. “Rare. Some are born with no affinity. No heat, no light. Mana can’t bloom from nothing. Void.”

Nyx’s eyes narrowed to razors, then flicked over him once more, quick and cutting, before she said nothing.

The tomes at the manor. Dust and ink. Pages glaring static. I traced them until my wrist cramped. Sketched spirals just to feel like I was doing something. Nothing ever twitched. Nothing ever answered. And that whisper—thin and cold, curling through my marrow—what the hell was that?

Bren thumbed her shield rim, not unkind. “Enough. He’s upright. Sera wants us moving.”

Nathan pushed himself up, legs shaky but holding. The women were already in motion—packs swung high, straps cinched, weapons checked with ritual ease. He hitched his own pack higher, trying to mimic the rhythm. And then he fell into step.

They pressed deeper until stone walls gave way to what almost looked like outside. The tunnel spat them into a cavern wide enough to swallow the manor whole.

Nathan stumbled, lungs cinched. Sun without warmth. Air without breath.

Not true day. The “sky” stretched too perfectly blue, a dome painted with white clouds that never moved. Light spilled across grass bright enough to sting, but carried no heat. Moss gleamed as lawn in the false daylight, fronds shifting as though stirred by a breeze that wasn’t there.

The others didn’t hesitate. They stepped into the grassland like it was nothing new, boots ringing faint on the pale stone.

Tamsin’s grin cut sideways. “Better than swamp rot.”

Bren snorted. “Or sand pits.”

They spoke like travelers rating inns, not people stepping into a world that shouldn’t exist.

Sera’s gaze swept the false horizon once, sharp and certain, then cut forward. “Form up. We drill here.”

“Drill?” Nathan croaked. “As in… practice?”

“Better to fall on your face here than when the dungeon’s biting,” Bren said.

Sera drew a rectangle in the grit with her boot. “Stay in the box. Whatever you hold, you move first. Rhythm before reach.”

She lifted a small bone whistle and blew. A shrill note cut sharp, pulling them into order faster than any barked command.

Nathan flinched. Great. Full army boot camp now, huh?

Nyx slid in, heels kissing the rectangle’s edges. “Two forward—two back. Pivot. Reset.” Nothing—then everything. Her taps cut angles from her shadow.

Bren touched Nathan’s shoulder lightly. “You go slow or you go stupid.”

He went slow. His body did not understand slow. It understood big and top-heavy and this is not yours. After a couple tries he clipped the rectangle like it had offended him. He caught himself before he fell—a tiny private miracle.

He adjusted his stance, toes hunting the edge.

“Fucking box,” he muttered.

Tamsin chuckled. “There. That’s a toe. It wants to dance.”

“My toes don’t want to dance—they want a union,” he muttered.

“Again,” Sera said.

Again.

Better.

The line reset instantly on her signal.

When the whistle faded, the motes overhead jittered. For half a breath, Nathan swore they shifted wrong—skewing near him before steadying. Nyx’s stylus froze mid-tap, her eyes cutting toward him—razor-sharp, measuring. Then she looked away, mask sliding back into place.

The sword came next and turned it all back to chaos.

“Grip,” Bren said, tapping his knuckles. “Not a chokehold. A handshake.”

“I don’t—handshake with knives.”

“That,” Tamsin said cheerfully, “is why we’re here.”

They added sprints between scrub clumps—Tamsin’s from here to there without drawing a line. Alia poured water into him every time he tried to act like he didn’t need it. Sera watched like a ledger balancing itself.

By degrees, panic cooled from a hot stone in his throat to something he could swallow. He even forgot to hate the sword for a few breaths at a time.

Sera called a brief halt. The women tightened straps, shook out arms, took measured pulls from waterskins. Nathan bent over, hands on knees, breath ragged but steady. His old body would’ve been spent already; this one just kept going. Strength not his, carrying him past every instinct to stop.

He hesitated, then glanced at Sera’s sleeve. “Back there—your forearm marks. Yours and Ro—ah… G-Garrick’s. What was that?”

Ah, shit. I almost said Ronan.

Sera didn’t stop cinching a strap. “Guild protocol. Captains of linked parties carry the mark. Proof you’re sanctioned to enter dungeons of this rating.”

“Sanctioned as in… permission slips?”

“It means you’re not frauds,” she said, flat. “And the Guild can record which parties entered together. Cuts down on scams. Or corpses.”

“So—can it tell you if Garrick’s alive? Like… a ping?”

“No.” No softness in it. “It proves we entered as one. Not a tether.”

Damn. Not going to help Ronan.

Nyx leaned in, voice cool but cutting. “If you want reassurance, pray. The Guild’s not in the hand-holding business.”

“Wouldn’t matter,” Bren rumbled. “Dungeons don’t care about marks.”

Sera didn’t argue. She gave a sharp, two-note whistle. The sound cracked against the cavern walls, and the line fell back into rhythm.

Interlude – Kieran: East Ramparts

The wind off the walls was sharp enough to sting. Kieran stood at the parapet, cloak tugged close, watching the city sleep beneath a smear of stars. Behind him, the stairwell door creaked.

A hood crossed to the lee side where the torch couldn’t paint a face.

“You’re late,” Kieran said—quiet, but edged. Lateness meant exposure.

“Two sentries on the north stairs. Slipped them when they changed watch. Ronan’s adjutant made a pass, but he didn’t look twice.”

Competence, sharp as a blade. Young, but not sloppy.

Kieran didn’t move. He preferred silence—men revealed themselves in it. The hood only shifted weight once, then stilled. Discipline.

“What did you see?”

“The manor’s lighter,” the hood said at last. “Not pressing on the men the way it used to. They laugh now, dice again, even argue. Human. I felt it too—like shaking off a weight. Clear enough to notice after the ritual. That’s when the shift happened.”

The voice steady. Report, not rumor. Kieran filed it against the other fragments.

“And him?”

A pause. Not for fear—choosing words.

“He’s different. Slower. Says odd things sometimes—things the men don’t expect. Then he goes quiet, like he’d rather not be heard. The Boss never filled silences before, and he never backed out of them either.”

The hood glanced toward the stairs. “Even Ronan… covers for him. Stands closer, steadier than before. Shields the slips so no one dares call them out. Whatever bound the rest loosened, Ronan still holds the weight. He acts like it’s choice, but I don’t think it is.”

Kieran’s jaw tightened. Covers? That’s odd.

“You’re certain.”

“As certain as I dare be.” No stumble, no apology. Just fact.

Too clean for his age. Who trained you?

“You’ll report when told,” Kieran said, voice flat as the stones underfoot. “The rest of the time, you vanish. Understood?”

The hood dipped once. “Yes, Commander.”

Good. No excuses, no chatter.

The wind shifted, carrying forge-smoke from the lower wards. The hood added, low: “He’s like a different man.”

Kieran didn’t answer. His gaze had turned outward again, to the horizon paling at the edge of dawn.

When he looked back, the rampart was empty. Only damp footprints trailed toward the stairs.

He stood a long while after, fists braced on cold stone.

Mason. His blood rose at the thought of his name. That bastard still walked on honors he hadn’t earned, wearing a title bought with other men’s lives. Most called him a hero.

Kieran remembered the southern battlefield.

“What are you playing at?” he muttered to the empty wall, jaw tight.

He’d get his payback. Not with proclamations, not with politics—
but with truth, when the time came.

The sun broke at last, rooftops catching like embers. Kieran turned from the light. Work waited.

Back in the false daylight, only when Sera judged them steady again did she snap the whistle once more, short and clipped.

The women fell into column. Nathan hitched his pack higher, sliding into line.

The passage widened into night. The “sky” overhead was black, crowded with drifting stars that shifted when he didn’t look straight at them. Motes floated like dust caught in moonlight, glowing faint and slow. A breeze moved the luminous moss in long sighs. No crickets, no soil, just a scatter of glowing crystals for earth.

Nathan’s breath shallowed. Pretty—for a dungeon sky.

They’d barely crossed the threshold when Sera lifted a hand. The line froze.

Something warped at the grove’s edge, heat-haze over stone—then only stars again.

“Hunter,” Tamsin whispered. “Light-bender.”

Bren’s voice rumbled. “Shard hart.”

Sera’s tone didn’t change. “Form two. Bren front. Tamsin right. Nyx hook left. Alia glued to me. Corin—back line. If it chooses the softest point, that’s you. Don’t be there.”

Nathan’s throat scraped dry. “Yup.” Knees soft. Hinge, not hunch.

The breeze wasn’t random. Long draw in, pause, shorter release. The grove was breathing. Or something in it was.

The motes shivered, most scattering toward the clearing’s edge. But one drifted the wrong way—toward him. It faltered a finger’s breadth from his shoulder and guttered out. Nobody else seemed to notice. Except Nyx. Her stylus paused mid-tap, eyes sharp for a blink before she turned back to the grove.

“The wind,” he whispered. “Three beats in, two out. On the draw, the moss leans toward the clearing.”

Tamsin’s mouth flicked. “Count it for me.”

“One—two—three… one—two…”

On the second “two,” the moss at the clearing’s edge shivered as if a hoof had tested weight.

Nyx didn’t look away. “Hook left on the exhale.”

Sera’s fingers flicked once.

Nyx’s stylus scratched a small arc, tapped the moss. A spiral smoldered—hook, hold—its glow faint, not flashy. The grove breathed out on Nathan’s “two,” and the spiral tugged empty air like it had caught a thread.

The world warped. Antlers latticed like glass, galaxies snared in each tine; a soot-dark body drinking the light. A long head split by a silver seam of a mouth—then gone as the stars slid off.

Heartbeat. One—two—three. The moss sighed.

The hart reeled, antlers smashing stone.

“Fuhh-king thing—” Tamsin spat, sliding low under its legs.

“Fucking thing,” Nathan echoed before he could stop it.

Bren drove two steps and set her shield, low and sure. “Stack.” Sera stacked behind her, weight one machine.

The hart hit like a blur. Not invisible—just wrong, motes bending around its hide. Nathan saw constellations smear across its shoulders as it dropped for Bren.

Bren didn’t meet force with force. She tilted a hair, spending only what she had to. Glass-on-glass screamed as antlers glanced her shield. Motes spun white.

Another flicker caught Nathan’s eye. As Nyx’s spiral burned brighter, the motes near his shoulder wobbled too, tugged like they were caught in the same current. Nyx’s head tilted, gaze flicking toward him—sharp, assessing—before she snapped her attention back to the hart.

“Now!” Sera’s blade kissed low, bit nothing; the hart juked, light folding.

Tamsin slid for the back knee. “One—two—now.” Knife flashed, skipped. Skin like polished stone.

“Augment,” Sera snapped.

Nyx sketched faster. “Hold.” The spiral flared brighter—hooked—shuddered as if something inside it wanted out.

The hart’s head snapped toward Nyx. Its ribs bellowed. The long inhale dragged streamers of false light down, and Nathan finally saw the trick: it wasn’t just bending brightness. It was drinking it.

“Alia!” Sera warned.

Alia was already there, cool-smelling vial smeared over Nyx’s forearm where the spiral inked her skin. “Breathe.”

The chest swelled wider. The spiral stuttered.

Don’t be the soft point. Don’t be there.

Nathan wasn’t. But he saw what no one else was watching: the “sky” wasn’t fixed. A bright seam of motes ran like a milky river overhead.

Every inhale dipped that river like a vein feeding the hart.

He hurled a rock at the brightest seam. It struck with a hollow boom that rattled his teeth. Did I just throw a rock at the sky?

“Corin,” Sera snapped.

The seam quivered—then spilled light in a slosh that poured not on them but into the hart’s open mouth.

It choked.

I threw a rock at the sky—and it actually worked.

For one heartbeat the light-skin collapsed—no bend, no shimmer—leaving a stag-shaped thing of dark muscle and glassy antlers exposed.

“Now,” Tamsin breathed.

Bren hammered her shield into the shoulder, turning it. Sera’s blade slid clean along the inside foreleg—surgical, severing what would’ve been impossible a blink earlier.

The hart stumbled. Antlers crashed; a star-threaded tine splintered and fell, ringing like a dropped wineglass.

Nyx’s spiral brightened and she tore it with a flick. “Disperse.”

Held light snapped outward in a wash. The grove’s false stars blazed once before resettling, steady again. The hart reeled—thirsting—and Tamsin slid under and drove her knife up behind the jaw.

A clatter of brittle glass. Then quiet.

Bren rolled one shoulder. “Hinge worked,” she said, as if discussing a door.

Sera’s eyes cut to Nathan. Not smiling—she seldom did—but something eased at the corners. “Back line threw well.”

“I… saw the bright bit,” he managed. “Looked like it was feeding it.”

Nyx wiped her stylus, staring at the broken tine like it might insult her. “You threw a rock at a fake sky and it worked,” she said, flat—but her eyes slid toward him again, too sharp for casual. The grin that followed was thin, like she’d just added him to her notes.

Alia tilted the hart’s head, checking for residual charge. “Careful,” she murmured as Nathan drifted close. “Glass cuts like… glass.”

Sera nudged the fallen tine toward Bren. “Pack the proof. Guild likes souvenirs.”

Bren wrapped the tine in cloth, efficient. The others moved with the same unspoken rhythm—checking the body, sweeping the tree-line, tending a cut Nathan hadn’t even seen.

Nathan couldn’t stop staring at the hart’s carcass. Antlers latticed with dead light. Muscles slack, but still looking ready to lurch up and breathe again. A world inside a world, and this—just another errand item in Bren’s grip.

The team was already moving, falling back into rhythm like the hart had never been there. Nathan kept pace, breath shallow. He’d thrown one rock, seen one pattern, and they treated it like he belonged.

Belonging was a fragile thing, though. The hart’s memory still clung.

It drank the sky. If Nyx’s hook hadn’t caught, if Bren’s hinge had missed—the whole grove would’ve poured into that thing.

What do you do when the dungeon won’t stop feeding itself?

He hesitated. “And if you can’t contain it?”

“Collapse,” Sera said. No hesitation. “Seal the mouth, bury it. Better stone than bodies.”

His mouth went dry. “So… that’s how you stop a dungeon break?”

Nyx’s grin flashed sharp. “Dungeon… break.” Her eyes glittered—amused, assessing, like she was testing the phrase on him. “We don’t let it get that far.”

Nathan managed a nod. Sure. Don’t let it get that far. Easy. Except—why did she keep looking at him like that? Like he’d slipped up without knowing it.

Sera’s palm brushed her forearm mark once, a reflex, then stilled. “We keep moving. I don’t want to be under false sky when it decides it’s morning.”

Nathan glanced up. The constellations were steady again. The fake wind carried its long rhythm: one—two—three, one—two. Awe and unease tangled in his chest.

A whole sky, breathing under stone.

And it was still watching.

“On me,” Sera said, and the grove swallowed them back into its painted night.