Dire Measures

“Let’s go, bitch.”

Nathan glanced over the spire’s jagged rim. From up here, the blood-red horizon stretched flat, the bone-white spires below less like ruins and more like ribs—a carcass the size of a country. And among those ribs, hundreds of monsters were converging on them.

The specter that had spoken tilted its head. Its smile didn’t move right; it bent in three places before it landed. “Bitch?” it echoed, curious. “We are Ra’Gek.”

Nathan almost laughed at the absurdity. He was talking to a monster. He still felt like he’d had way too many energy drinks—giddy, buzzing, a little sideways.

“I don’t care.”

“You shine with mana,” it said, pleased. “You smell delicious.”

“Yeah, I moisturize,” Nathan said. “And exfoliate. You want skincare tips or…?”

Dane shouted between attacks. “What did that thing just say?”

The air thundered with noise from the chaos below.

Nathan blinked. “You didn’t understand that?”

“You understood that?”

“Yeah… it introduced itself, I guess,” he said, throat dry.

“You do realize,” Dane said, tone clipped, “it’s speaking something else—and so are you. I can’t understand a word.”

“I did not.” He raised his sword and slashed an arc toward another monster stack that was getting too tall.

So now I’m getting dungeon-monster translation. Beautiful.

“They’re still coming—we are surrounded!” Dane yelled.

The specter’s spider mount—if that’s what it was, maybe some kind of hybrid—was bigger than the others, rising higher as monsters piled themselves for it to climb.

“I’m not blind!” Nathan snapped. “And you—what do you think you’re up to, huh?”

The blue-white crawl along Nathan’s knuckles brightened, mana coiled tight around him and his sword.

He swung, a crescent of mana carving the air—only for the energy to recoil and slide away, as if the world itself rejected the hit.

“What the…” He blinked. “Did I not hit it?”

“Interesting,” it murmured, almost affectionate. “We haven’t seen something like you in many centuries.”

“I’m not sure how to take that.”

Nathan tried again, slashing another arc of mana.

The same thing happened.

It wasn’t the aim. It was the layer. Whatever the specter was—whatever rules held it together—his mana slid off like oil on glass.

“How?” Nathan stammered. He turned and fired at another stack getting too high near Dane’s position. It toppled.

"Thank you." Dane grunted.

When he turned back, the specter had almost reached eye level—more solid than ghostlike now. Why isn't the mana working?

“You look confused,” it said, completely unbothered.

Nathan aimed at the spider it was on top of. It didn't budge. He tried the stack. It also didn't topple. Did he wrap those things in mana, too? That's annoying.

"You are starting to piss me off!" The air trembled around his sword with each swing.

"Human, our world," it said, waving an arm toward the writhing horizon, "has been different as of late. Not enough food. New creatures, weak creatures, have appeared in our land."

Its voice wasn’t one; it braided through itself, many throats trying to agree on a single sound. When it gestured, smaller shapes flinched back in reflex—like vermin afraid of light.

"That's fucking terrifying..." Nathan blinked sweat out of his eyes. “Okay, and?”

"We have been taking their mana, but not draining them entirely. They are now part of our army."

Nathan exhaled sharply. So that’s why there are so many kinds of monsters here—nearly drained, warped, then used on the frontlines.

"You’re quite talkative," he shot back louder. "You got a point?"

“We like you,” it said, voice almost warm. “You feel alive. Strong. So much mana.”

Nathan tightened his grip on the hilt. “I’m not sure I like where you’re going with this.”

"Boss!"

Nathan glanced around. Too many bodies piled high now; Dane had his stylus in one hand, sword in the other.

Fuck. He slashed at the closest towers of bodies that were about to overtake them.

"We want to drain every last drop of you."

It lunged.

Nathan leapt onto the rim’s lip and met it mid-air. Steel kissed a solid shape and sparked. He twisted, slashed for its torso. It caught the blade bare-handed. Its skin hissed. He pulled the blade back and it sliced. The sound was wet and wrong.

Not invincible!

"No, thanks. I'm happy with my current weight!"

Then it kneed him in the chest as he leaned toward it.

The world flipped. He skidded across the crow’s nest and hit hard enough to pop the air out of his lungs. Stone bit his shoulder. His vision stuttered black for a breath. Ow. He rolled up on an elbow, coughing.

It stood just outside the crow's nest.

It cocked its head, voice smoothing—too human, too calm for something that had no pulse. The silence stretched a heartbeat too long.
“Succumb to us,” it said.

“Hard pass." He stood up. "Dane!”

“Still here.” Dane's stylus was still firing sigils. They were still chanting hungry. “More climbing. Five—no, eight—hell, they’re all climbing.”

“Wonderful,” Nathan muttered, standing because lying down felt like an invitation. “Love a crowd. I don't think they can actually get onto the spire!

“Maybe your mana wrap! It won’t hold forever!” Dane yelled.
“I know that!” Nathan snapped back.
“We need a plan. Fast.”

Think, Nathan, think.

The crow’s nest trembled beneath his boots, a pulse that rose through the stone from far below.
From underneath came the answer—hundreds of throats, not chorus but hunger.
Claws on bone. Bodies on bodies, climbing each other.

“This is a real shit show!” He looked back at the specter. “I’m going to try something!”

He charged forward, keeping inside the crow’s nest, and thrust his sword at the specter. At the last second, he pulled the mana wrap off his blade.

It connected—clean, sharp—a pulse up the hilt that left his teeth buzzing. No recoil this time; the hit was real.

The specter staggered, confusion flickering across its face as the blade pierced straight through.

The sound wasn’t mana burn—it was meat. The wrap had been the problem all along. Rules. There were still rules.

“Didn’t like that, did you?”

“Foolish, Human. You think you can beat our legion?”

Nathan laughed, rewrapping his sword before diving back into the fray. “Yeah, I do!”

“How you doing, Dane?”

“Too many,” he growled.

“Agreed.” Nathan kept cutting, mana flashing in quick, vicious arcs. The specter stayed just out of reach of his sword.

Why is he just standing there? Nathan shook his head and kept thinning the masses.

The energy in his arms prickled, then dulled—pins and needles turning to ice. Adrenaline carried him through another wave. For a heartbeat, it almost felt winnable—then the world tilted, just slightly wrong, like gravity had forgotten which way down was.

He swayed on his feet. What is that?

“You finally feel something, Human? Your well certainly is deep.”

What now? Nathan edged closer to the rim, just enough to glance down. More human-shaped specters—copies of the talking one—circled the spire’s base, feeding on his mana through the stone.

“Boss!” Dane’s shout cut through, sharp and close. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re… drinking my mana.”

“What?” Dane yelled, still fighting.

Nathan looked back at the specter in front of him. “You bastard. A distraction, huh?”

“You have to retract your wrap,” Dane said, holding off the lesser monsters still climbing and vulnerable to mana.

“Then we’ll really be screwed!” He couldn’t help it, though; he needed to pull it back a bit.

The specter smiled wrong. “You feed us already… through the stone to those below.”

Nathan retracted the wrap a bit, breath catching as the tension in his chest eased. He leaned out over the rim again, checking the specters below—still following his mana wrap upward, trying to feed.

When he looked to where the specter had been, the space was empty.
“What?”
Something shifted to his left. A scrape. A whisper of motion.

The specter was there, pulling itself over the rim.

“Shit—”

It moved faster than thought. The impact drove him back against the white stone, knocking the air from his lungs. The fight turned ugly—elbow, knee, edge, guard. Every strike drained more color from the world; every breath felt stolen on its way out.

He twisted his blade and drove a boot into its chest, throwing it sideways into the stone. “Fuck off!”

The specter recovered mid-spin, claws scraping stone. “We drink,” it rasped again, dragging itself upright.

“Yeah? Choke on it,” Nathan muttered, stepping in as he swung. The unwrapped blade cut deep—real metal against real flesh. The thing jerked back, hissing as a thin wisp of smoke curled off the wound.

“Oh, shit,” he breathed. “Why didn’t I think of this before?”

He blinked. Smoke. Not mana discharge—heat. Real, physical heat. That’s it.

He looked at Dane. “Stand back.”

“What are you—”

“Physical fire should do something, right?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He focused—heat, combustion, the real kind—and the air obeyed.

A ring of flame roared to life around the rim, flaring up from nothing, devouring the air. The nearest specters shrieked. The one in front of him staggered, its edges catching alight like dry kindling. Nathan drove his sword through its chest, hurling it backward off the edge.

He kept the flames going. They needed a moment. The fire pulsed, alive and angry, licking at the white stone until the edges blackened.

Nathan stood there, chest heaving, sword still smoking faintly. “Okay,” he rasped. “That… worked.”

He tasted copper and ash. The heat tugged tears out of his eyes and turned them to steam. Below, the chant never stopped; it only stepped back from the light.

“Boss?” Dane’s voice was low, cautious.

“I said stand back, not panic.” Nathan tried to grin; it didn’t quite land. “You good?”

“Who's panicking? I'm still breathing.”

“Fantastic.” He leaned on the hilt.

The fire had died down, leaving the stone blackened and hot. Smoke drifted like low fog, and through it, Nathan could see shapes climbing again—maybe hundreds, hands and jaws and jointed limbs all hauling upward.

Dane was a few steps away, sweat cutting lines through the grime on his face. His stylus shook in his hand; his eyes looked blown.

“Eat something,” Nathan said.

Dane fished out a strip of dried herb, tore into it like he was chewing bark. “Better?” Nathan asked.

“Eh,” Dane said flatly.

“Great.” Nathan slashed another that had climbed too high—tight, precise, a line of light through a throat. “I can do this all day.”

“Idiot,” Dane said, rummaging in his pack for another handful of herbs. “You cannot.”

“Motivation is important.”

“If you narrow your wrap anymore…”

“I know,” Nathan cut in. “They’ll overtake us, and we die.”

“Correct.”

“I’m going to try to just circle it around us for now. Maybe a quarter down the spire.”

“Better than nothing.”

They needed a way out.

Float us? Like in the temple.
The thought rose on reflex, and he strangled it. Keeping two bodies suspended meant constant output. Constant output meant he’d run dry—and then death. Nope. No floating.

He looked out over the landscape. The next spire jutted maybe sixty feet away. Between them sprawled a graveyard of ruins and dust, crawling movement. The horde was still climbing over itself—bodies stacked, hands pulling, jaws opening, legs kicking higher with every second. They’d reach the top again soon.

Think. Think, damn it.
He couldn’t fly them. He couldn’t hold them up. But he could … build?
Not throw. Not blast. Build.

Build. Shape. Anchor. Move.

He pictured a narrow strip—just wide enough for two boots, nothing wasted. A thought, a push. His chest answered first, then his arms: mana drawn under his skin, not gesture. The wrap around him flared in sympathy but didn’t direct it.

A thin band of pale-blue light unfurled from the rim of the crow’s nest, bridging open air. It stretched out ten feet or so. The bridge pulsed once, steady, and held.

A construct.

The strip wasn’t a bridge so much as a decision—a tight weave that knew it was a floor because he told it so.

Nathan blinked. “...Okay,” he said under his breath. “We’re in the civil-engineering business now.”

Dane didn’t move.

“What are you waiting for?” Nathan said. “That’s a walkway. Get on.”

“That is a hallucination.”

“Even if it is, you can stand on it. Pretty sure you can. Go.”

“Boss, that is not reassuring.”

“Better than staying here. Go,” Nathan snapped. “Quickly. I’ll retract it behind us.”

Dane swallowed his answer. He stepped onto the strip like it might argue with him. It didn’t. His boot hit, sank a breath, then the light stiffened under him.

“See?” Nathan said. “Science.”

“Science?”

Dane set his heel, rolled weight, testing like a soldier tests a rope bridge he didn't choose. Trust was a verb with him. Step. Another.

“Whatever. Let’s move.”

Dane moved—controlled, fast. Nathan extended the strip a foot at a time, keeping it the same width. Tight. Minimal. Terrifying.

He retracted the parts they’d crossed, drawing the light back into himself like breath. Reuse. Recycle. Smart Nathan. It didn’t feel like he was losing much mana. This is awesome. Go me.

“Boss,” Dane called without looking back, voice level. “Where is this going?”

“That spire.” Nathan flicked his chin forward. “From there to that next spire.”

“And then?”

“Just... east, right?”

“What if we run out of ruins?”

Such a nag. "Let's worry about that later, shall we?"

One of the specters below started speaking.

“Builder,” it crooned. “We can’t wait to drain you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Boss, don’t lose focus.”

Nathan shoved more length onto the front. Short. Cheap. Hold.

The horde tried to latch onto their bridge, missed, and fell. Good.

“Boss.” Dane pointed out a specter getting too close.

Nathan saw it and didn’t think; he cut. A specter reaching for the line lost an arm and went pinwheel-falling.

“My mana is really low, and it is hard to balance.”

“Are you afraid of heights?”

“Not usually. This is... something else.”

Nathan nodded once.

He fed another few feet into the strip and felt his elbow tremble. They made it to the next spire. Dane stepped onto ancient stone, crouched, and drew multiple shapes. “Burn!” His sigils flared and ate a cluster of climbers that had almost reached them from below.

Nathan’s mana wrapped the spire.

“We can’t stay for long,” Dane huffed.

Nathan dropped to a knee, breath tearing in his chest, the crimson horizon pulsing with heat. The air shimmered; nothing moved except the twitching corpses below. For a moment, there was quiet—just the sound of their breathing and the faint hiss of decaying mana.

He looked down. The whole ground seemed to be crawling.
“They just keep coming,” he said hoarsely. “Isn’t there supposed to be a limit? A nest, a source—something?”

Dane didn’t glance back. “You fight what’s in front of you. You reach the Guardian chamber. That’s how it ends.”

“Yeah, I get that’s the exit,” Nathan said. “I mean before that. In these biomes. Is there something—like—the thing that’s making all this happen?”

Dane shook his head once, sword still raised. “Usually there aren’t this many. You kill what’s there, take what you can, move on. That’s how it works.”

“I’ve seen that. This is on another level though. It’s ridiculous.”

Dane snorted softly. “That’s why people stay out of the Nightmare Realm. It doesn’t end.”

Nathan stared at the horizon, pulse thrumming in his ears.

This wasn’t a game. No level-ups or status points. No screens.
They fought, looted, moved on—a cycle so old nobody even questioned it. It kept the world turning, kept balance.
But this wasn’t balance. This was noise—chaos that felt wrong down to the bone. It felt like something was missing.
Like the gears of the world were spinning, but nothing was catching.

Broken. A broken system.

He didn’t know why that thought hurt more than it should. He pushed it down.

Then the silence shattered again—distant roars, a ragged chant, hundreds of throats in mismatch, rolling through the red haze.

“Right,” Dane said. “Next bridge.”

“Working on it.”

Nathan extended a narrow strip of pale-blue light from the rim of their perch, feeding it forward. He kept it just wide enough for a boot, nothing wasted. Behind him, he pulled the tail of the last strip back into himself—reclaiming breath, not feeding the air.

They moved.

Nathan’s blade hand worked on instinct, knocking aside anything that got too curious about the narrow band. His off hand held the idea of the bridge—tight, solid, there. Wrong things climbed for them, slid, missed, fell. He didn’t watch them land.

“Boss.” Dane’s tone shifted—curious in spite of himself. “How did you think of this?”

“Honestly?” Nathan’s mouth was dry. “Watching them climb over each other. Made me think of leapfrog.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Dane said, stepping onto the strip to test it, his voice flattening again. “But to cast shape instead of force… I am impressed.”

“A compliment? I’m touched.”

Below, a specter drifted closer, amused. “Run,” it said, soft. “We love the chase.”

“Good luck with that,” Nathan said, and snapped a cut that pushed instead of tore. It hit the thing like a silent shove; it tumbled backward into two of its own.

“Boss,” Dane again, sharper. “Two specters on the spire ahead—”

“On it.”

Nathan flared wide. He popped out two ribbons of flame—fast, mean, not pretty. The impacts tossed the pair away from the landing like swatted hornets.

“I can’t keep throwing big,” he muttered.

“Then do not,” Dane called. “Hold it narrow. Conserve.”

“Trying!”

They reached the next spire; Dane hopped off onto splintered stone, stylus already flashing. Rapid-fire sigils.

The strip behind Nathan slid back into him like a breath. Not much loss. Good. Better. Nathan wrapped the spire in mana and a wall of flame.

Dane put his hands on his knees. "One moment."

"Yeah, just a moment."

Then they had to move out.

Another strip laid out. “On three,” Nathan said.

Dane nodded.

Slash, step, pull tail, push nose. The rhythm set: push, hold, pull. Sweat crawled down his back, then evaporated into nothing.

Dane's constant “Boss!” followed by commands. “Left—up—duck.”

We can't keep this up.

“How you doing?” he asked.

“Breathing,” Dane said.

“Good.”

“Boss.” Dane’s voice went diagnostic. “Your glow is fading.”

Nathan looked at his hands; he was definitely dimmer. "I'm running on empty." It looked like Bob when he was running low on mana. Okay. New problem. Problems are puzzles that kill you if you lose.

They kept moving forward anyway.

The strip held under Dane’s boots like a knife laid across open air. Nathan kept it narrow—two soles wide, just enough for a heel-toe—and fed it forward from twenty paces back, his off-hand locked at his side, his right keeping the blade up. Below, the world he refused to call a floor writhed with motion: spider-things scissoring over broken ribs of stone, long-armed horrors hauling themselves hand over hand, thick shapes shoving up through the red haze. Here and there, taller silhouettes strode through the press, not hurrying. The kind that didn’t need to.

“Boss,” Dane called over his shoulder, voice level. “How long can you keep this up?”

“Not much longer. Hold,” Nathan said. His throat was dry. His arm shook in pulses he could disguise as breath.

He paused and switched on his heat sense. More like sonar. Or radar. Whatever. He looked ahead and froze. The east, where they were headed, pulsed worse than before—massive mana shapes stacked in layers, heavy and wrong.

“Mana radar,” he muttered. On. Off. On. Off. Weird. Looks worse every time I check.

He’d tried not to think about it—east was the direction they’d chosen, the one the relic in his pack insisted Nyx was. But with the sense open as sight, the horizon crawled with hulking shapes stacked on deeper shadows, each layer breathing under the next. No matter how he looked, there was no path forward. It wasn’t a line of enemies. It was a wall.

“Mana what?” Dane asked, not looking away from the next spire.

“It’s like… heat sight,” he said. “Costs me to keep it on.” Even saying it made the back of his eyes throb.

“Then stop leaving it on if it is affecting your mana,” Dane said, bone-dry.

"Right." Nathan steadied his breath. He needed space to think—somewhere not hanging so close to all those monsters below.

"Hang on."

"To wha—"

Nathan pushed the construct upward, widening it into a platform. From this height, the world looked even more wrong—flat ruin giving way to a sprawl of canyons and broken ridges, shadows moving in the cracks.

"Could have explained better," Dane crouched beside him, one hand still tight on his stylus. “You plan to stop here?”

“For a minute,” Nathan said. “Need to get a read.”

Mana radar. Shit. Even worse from up here.

Dane watched his face. “You see something?”

“That direction.” He pointed east. “Bad news. Like we're definitely going to die if we go that way in our condition.”

“The relic has pointed us that way,” Dane said, flat.

Nathan barked a short laugh that wasn’t amused. “If you could see what I’m seeing… it’s packed. Huge monsters—things that make those specters look like dust mites. We wouldn’t last five minutes.”

Silence.

He turned slowly, scanning the landscape with the mana radar.

“Then we go around,” Dane said finally.

Nathan shook his head. “I'm telling you we don't have enough mana to face what is over there.”

Dane’s gaze tracked the horizon, calculating. “You are getting the hang of this shaping. Could we not just stay above it all? Keep the bridge in the air?”

“I could,” Nathan admitted. “For a while. But whatever’s over there—” he nodded east “—it would still reach us. They always do.”

Dane exhaled through his teeth. “Then what? Do you have an alternative?”

Nathan didn’t answer. He turned his scan again, full circle. Each pulse revealed more ruin, more motion—until something to the west caught his eye.

He froze.

“What do you see?” Dane asked, and there was no sarcasm in it.

There, beneath a jagged lip of a cliff, something shone—a line of light, steady and still.

A seam?

Nathan swallowed. “We head west.”

"What's west?”

“I think,” Nathan whispered, “I just found us a door.”

"Door? A seam?"

"I'm pretty sure." Nathan didn’t point. He didn’t need to. “There’s a seam to the west. Down in a cut.”

Dane angled his chin toward the east again like the act itself could keep the plan honest. “The relic pointed—”

“The relic isn’t bleeding out its nose,” Nathan said, and only realized his lip was wet when he tasted iron. He wiped with the back of his wrist and kept his focus on the strip. “Look, I can keep this in the air. I can even widen it if you need to sprint. But if we keep going into that—” he flicked his eyes toward the east again, letting the sense paint it for him “—we’ll meet those big ones fresh. We’ll get tired. They won’t.”

Dane’s jaw worked once. Twice. “Could we not stay aloft and arc around? Keep the bridge in the sky, avoid the ground entirely, and still approach from east, but laterally? Not commit where they are densest?”

Nathan exhaled. “I could keep us up. I'm not going to argue anymore. We are going west."

Saying it out loud snapped the map in his head into place: not the straight line to Nyx, but the line that didn’t end with them as drained husks.

Bob wriggled against Nathan’s hip, small and insistent in the pouch. Glorp.

“Yeah, buddy,” Nathan murmured without meaning to. “Not east. Going west.”

“You are certain it's there?”

I get it. You don't want detours.

“I’m tired, not blind,” Nathan said. “And you’re not wrong to ask, but I am right.” He let a corner of a grin show, mostly because he needed it. “Hate to say it.”

Dane didn’t bite. He glanced back just long enough to mark Nathan’s face, then returned his eyes forward. “How far to the seam if you angle us west?”

“Farther than I want, closer than I deserve,” Nathan said. He shifted the strip a fraction with his wrist and felt the whole length respond, a subtle slewing of the path as the nose re-aimed. He adjusted again—tiny corrections, like steering a car with two fingers at sixty while the road bucked. “It’s in a crevasse. We’ll have to drop in. The approach along the rim looks… less alive. Fewer monsters.”

Dane finally caved.

"We'll have to run flat out to keep ahead."

"Understood."

“You ready to run?” Nathan asked.

Dane’s mouth almost twitched. “Always.”

“Good,” Nathan said. “On my count. I’ll widen this for our strides. You do not argue, even if it looks like a terrible plan.”

“It feels like a terrible plan.”

“It'll be fine,” Nathan said. “That's your last argument.”

“Ready,” Dane said.

Nathan shook his hands, made sure Bob was secure, and tightened his pack straps.

“Three,” he said, and set the nose west.

A chorus below answered the motion—no song, just hunger conducted into sound. The crowd shifted as one body, turning under them. Nathan did not look down. He didn’t have to. He saw it in the press of lines and the way the strip’s pressure changed: hands reaching, legs stacking, taller silhouettes correcting to the new vector.

“Two.”

He pulled the tail closer, taking away the last ten steps he didn’t need so the length he kept would respond faster.

“One.”

“Go,” he said, and they ran.

The world fell away into cuts of shadow — canyons shouldering through the wasteland, crevasses veining the plain like old scars.

Nathan extended the bridge all the way to just above where the seam was.

Dane’s speed never looked fast, only inevitable. He ate distance like a decision. Nathan matched him from ten paces back, adjusting the path in small bites, nose forward, tail off. The ground below broke open into long cuts and the red light pooled where it could. The air had no taste and still managed to feel dry.

A spider-thing vaulted at the bridge from a jut of ruin and missed by a hair. Another followed, caught the very edge with a rear claw, and dangled. Nathan knifed the line where it clung and the creature fell, the cut reknitting in the same motion as if the strip had never been interrupted at all.

“They're gaining,” Dane said simply.

Below, the crevasse’s hue deepened to rust where the shadows touched. Ledges cut into the descent at irregular intervals, some the size of a table, some little more than shelf lips. Old bones of buildings—corners, lintels—jutted from the sides like bad dental work.

Shapes moved on the far wall. A specter flitted along the opposite lip like a pale thought, and changed direction.

“Almost there,” Nathan grunted.

“There,” Nathan said. “Crevasse ahead. Seam inside.”

Nathan barely had time. Chest heaving, he said, “Slide.”

Dane blinked. “A sli—?”

Nathan said, “Hold on.”

He threw his hand forward. The bridge beneath them melted, stretching smooth, the whole thing softening into one continuous incline of light. The slope angled down toward the canyon floor where the seam’s glow waited, steady and pale.

He wrapped both arms around Dane’s ribs and pushed them.

“Boss—”

“Too late!” Nathan shouted.

The slide took them. Their boots skidded, hissed, sparks of pale blue flashing under them as the mana construct carried them in a wild rush downward. Dane swore; Nathan barked something that might’ve been a laugh.

They hit bottom hard, rolled once, twice, came up on one knee each, alive by bad luck and spite.

The seam burned just ahead. It was definitely a seam. Monsters poured down the ridges.

Almost there.

Nathan reached with his free hand, testing the center as always. His hand usually slipped through like crossing a threshold. Today, the light was a wall—cool. Refusing.

He’d never had a seam say no before.

His stomach dropped. “No—no, no, come on.”

“Boss?” Dane’s breath sawed in and out. Blood striped his cheek like he’d forgotten to wash off a war paint line.

“I don’t understand! Why is it sealed?”

“We can’t hold here.” Dane fidgeted, glancing back over his shoulder.

“Just—one second.” Nathan pressed harder. Nothing. The blade in his other hand shook. Monsters boiled along the canyon rim, poured into the switchback cuts, clambered down broken stairs of ruin with a kind of awful purpose. Pounding steps. Claws on stone. Dust rising. All of it coming for them.

A tap at his wrist. Glorp. Tap. Tap.

“Bob—wait—” Nathan started, but the pouch bulged; a small shape launched from his hip and arrowed at the seam like a kid belly-flopping into a pool.

“Bob!” Nathan lunged—slimy little blob!—but Bob slipped through his fingertips.

The small body hit the light and vanished. No ripple. No sound. Just gone.

For a heartbeat, Nathan forgot how to breathe. The next heartbeat hurt.

“Boss!” Dane grabbed his shoulder. "We should move!”

“Walls,” Nathan rasped. “I need—walls.”

He slammed a thought sideways. Pale-blue light climbed the canyon face—first the left, then the right—two vertical planes bracketing the seam. He left them narrow and dense, the mana locked into a tight lattice so there was nothing pretty for a specter to drink. Slots opened at chest height, hand-span gaps every foot. A lip formed at the base for footing. Then, teeth gritted, he threw a roof—just enough of a cap from wall to wall to keep leaping bodies from landing on their heads.

The constructs settled with a thin, icy-blue brightness.

“We hold this position!” he snapped, dragging Dane with him. They backed into the three-sided box, seam at their spines. Nathan’s blade lifted by reflex. Dane’s stylus hissed; two quick sigils burned into the floor rock beyond the slots, crosshatching the approach with invisible tripwires.

The canyon shook. The first wave hit.

They came like a sampler platter of nightmares—spider-limbed things clattering over the rocks, hulks pounding the ground, thin horrors slithering through gaps. Specters threaded between them, tall and bright-eyed, their voices like static and knives.

Dane moved first. He crouched by the slots, carving sigils with one hand and flinging them through in sharp, practiced bursts. Each one detonated in flashes of blue-white, lighting the canyon like lightning trapped under glass.

Nathan barely saw any of it.

He was the wall now. His palms pressed to cold light, his breath coming short and shallow. The construct shook under him, the weave grinding like a cable under tension. Every pulse took more from him—heat, color, sound—until the world narrowed to the pulse of the wall and the ache behind his eyes.

“Builder,” a specter crooned, shouldering close to the right-hand wall. Its profile was human if you drew a person with shaking hands. “We drink.”

Nathan ignored its taunting.

He felt the drain immediately—like someone had leaned over a shoulder and sipped from his lungs. Specters pressed close to the constructs, palms and jaws kissing the blue. The light thinned.

Another blast went off somewhere near the roof. Stone shuddered. Dane shouted something he couldn’t quite make out. Maybe directions. Maybe curses. It didn’t matter.

The walls quivered. The roof groaned. He shoved more power through the lattice, forcing it to stay whole.

Specters leaned close, whispering against the light. Where they touched, the color drained thin. Nathan clenched his teeth, sweat streaking grit down his neck. “Not yet,” he muttered. “Not yet.”

A shockwave rolled through as Dane’s sigil detonated near the entrance. Heat brushed Nathan’s cheek. He flinched, almost losing the thread.

“Boss!” Dane barked.
“I’ve got it,” Nathan said, though his voice was barely sound. His knees hit rock. The light flickered. “I’ve got it.”

He didn’t.

The roof bowed. Cracks spidered out, hissing white. He threw everything he had into it—mana, breath, will—until his arms trembled and his heart stuttered in his chest.

“Come on, buddy,” he whispered through his teeth. “Please.”

Specters pressed to the blue, faces stretched in smiles that weren’t smiles. The walls dimmed under their touch, thin as tissue.

“Nathan.” Dane’s voice cut through the chaos, closer now, low. “Enough.”
“Just—just a little more.”
“Enough.”

There was no bite in it—only the steadiness he saved for when a blade needed pulling from a friend.

Nathan shook his head. “He’s coming. I know he is.”

Something massive struck the roof. The light cracked open. A wedge fell, dissolved before it hit the floor. The rest sagged, barely there.

“Dane,” he said, voice shredded. “If this is it—”

“It is not,” Dane said. Then softer—honest in a way that rattled him: “But if it is, I would have preferred a cleaner floor.”

Nathan huffed something that thought it was a laugh. “I didn’t want to die here. Didn’t want to die at all.”

“I still have business,” Dane said. No heat, no edge. Just fact.

“Yeah,” Nathan said, finding his resolve. “Me too. I’m not dying easy.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“I can’t—” The words tore out of him raw. “I can’t hold it anymore.”

The light flickered, guttered.

“I’m losing it now, Dane.”

Dane didn’t hesitate. He pulled both blades free, short and sharp in each hand. “Then we give them one hell of a fight.”

Nathan blinked sweat and grit from his eyes, let the construct go, and reached for his sword. The moment his palms left the wall, the blue light fractured and bled away into nothing.

“Yes,” he said, voice rough but alive. “Yes, we will.”

The shield fell.

The monsters poured in.

They came howling—claws, teeth, steel, shadow. Nathan roared right back, his sword cleaving through the first shapes that breached. Dane was beside him, fast and precise, his twin blades cutting arcs through bodies that didn’t bleed right.

There was no room for thought, only motion. Swing. Block. Shove. Shout. The sound of their voices met the storm.

Then, mid-battle cry—

Everything stopped.

Not a lull.

A frozen second. Claws poised. Jaws open. The entire gorge holding its breath with no air to hold.

Even the dust hung, each grain outlined in the strange light like notes held past the bar.

The monsters saw something and flinched.

Heat didn’t roll. Light didn’t roar. The only change was brightness. Tendrils snaked out like thorned whips. Not blinding—just present, glowstick bright in a dead club, all the color in a world of dust.

The monsters began to…turn. One after another. Not toward them. Away.

A gold tendril snapped, slicing a thin arc that erased everything it touched. A spider-thing came apart in neat pieces that thought about existing and then decided against it. A specter leaned to drink and lost the arm it offered. Another tendril took its head. The draining stopped wherever that light touched, like closing a fist around a leak.

Silence broke into motion—the wrong kind, ripples of retreat. Bodies backed away from the box as if the light were deeper cold.

Nathan’s vision blurred. The wall buckled beneath his hands. His whole body shook with it.

“What the hell—” Dane started.

Nathan was wondering the same. The world outside the broken walls detonated into light. Not fire. Not explosion. Things simply ceased. Bodies evaporated in mid-motion, shredded into fragments that scattered like dust before even falling.

Too fast to understand.

He pivoted, instinct dragging his eyes back over his shoulder.

Nathan’s legs decided to be soup. He kept them anyway. He lowered the blade because there was nowhere left to point it.

“Bob?” he said, hoarse, wrecked.

Relief hit so hard his knees almost gave. Of course it was him. Of course it was now.

The big shape angled toward him. For a second, Nathan swore the glow warmed. Then—bright, ridiculous, from something eight feet tall and terrifying—

A single chirp.

Nathan groaned. “Come on. You can’t look that terrifying and still sound like a chew toy.”

He glanced at Dane, who blinked up at the giant thing, dazed. “...Bob?” He stared like a man meeting a problem he might have to start calling a miracle—or a new god.

“Yeah,” Nathan muttered—half laughing, half horrified. “He’s definitely not going to fit in the pouch now.”

Bob moved closer, slow and unsure. Nathan didn’t fear him.

“You scared me,” Nathan said.

Bob chirped again. Smaller. Sorry.

Nathan blew out a breath. “I am glad you made it back. Thanks.”

The glow brightened. Bob leaned as if to climb onto him.

“No. You are too big.”

Bob paused, unsure what to do with all that new size.

Nathan’s knees gave. He let them.

“Minute,” he said to the dust and the light and the friend that had come back. “Just a minute.”