CHAPTER 19: "THE CAMPFIRE AT DAWN"

Not the darkness of a closed room or a clouded night. This was active darkness—a living, breathing void that had weight and presence and the kind of silence that made his eardrums ring. His body was floating. Or falling. Or both. The distinction had stopped mattering somewhere between sleep and whatever this was.

A hum filled the void. Low frequency. Like the sound of creation itself breathing.

Where am I?

Speed looked at his hands. They were translucent. Barely visible. Like he was fading away, dissolving into the nothing that surrounded him.

This is just a dream, he thought, and for a moment the idea brought comfort. Dreams ended. You woke up. You went back to your normal life, streamed some games, ate some food, lived another day. Yeah, I'll wake up soon. Then I can go back home. Finally.

The thought made him smile.

Then pain erupted in his chest.

Not physical pain. Something deeper. Like his soul was being torn open from the inside. Speed convulsed, his transparent hands flying to his chest, checking for wounds, finding nothing but the sensation of being unmade.

Voices.

They came from everywhere. Thousands of them. Overlapping, screaming, whispering, crying. A cacophony of sound that shouldn't have existed in a void, that shouldn't have had any medium to travel through, but did anyway because the rules of this place were different. The rules of this place were wrong.

"WHAT'S HAPPENING?" Speed screamed, but his voice was drowned out by the chorus of the dying.

Souls. The word appeared in his mind without being spoken. Those are souls crying out. People dying. People asking for help.

Speed grabbed his head, trying to make the voices stop, but they only got louder. Flashes of images burned across his vision—the burning village, bodies torn apart, a ghost boy asking for help, a Titan's foot descending. All of it overlapping, all of it happening at once, all of it real in a way that dreams shouldn't be.

"I DON'T UNDERSTAND!" Speed sobbed. "PLEASE STOP THIS!"

Then a voice cut through the chaos.

Clear. Commanding. Ancient.

RONALDO.

"Can you hear them? The voices?"

Speed looked up, his eyes wide, searching the void for a source.

"WHO ARE YOU?" Speed screamed. "WHAT IS THIS?"

"Those are souls. Souls crying out. People dying. People asking for help," the voice said, and there was sadness in it. Deep sadness. The kind that came from watching people suffer across generations.

"I DON'T UNDERSTAND! PLEASE STOP THIS!" Speed was crying now, completely lost, completely broken.

"Weak soul," Ronaldo said, and now there was disappointment in his tone. "I guess you're not ready yet. After all... more are going to die if you can't understand. If you can't listen."

Speed felt the weight of those words like a physical force pressing down on him. People were going to die. Because of him. Because he wasn't strong enough, wasn't ready, wasn't enough.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" he screamed.

A figure materialized in the void.

Ronaldo's face. Ethereal. Glowing like it was made of starlight. Ancient, but also familiar. Like looking at someone Speed had idolized his entire life without ever knowing why.

"You ain't ready yet, kid," Ronaldo said.

He raised his hand.

Speed reached out, trying to grab him, trying to hold onto something real—

Ronaldo pushed.

Speed JOLTED AWAKE.

His eyes snapped open. He gasped for air like he'd been drowning, his entire body convulsing. Sweat soaked through his clothes and dripped down his face. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely control them.

For a moment, he couldn't remember where he was.

Then it came back. The campfire. The crew. The morning after his first night in this world.

Speed pushed himself up on his elbows, his breathing still rapid, still panicked. His heart was doing that thing where it beat so fast it stopped feeling like a heartbeat and started feeling like his entire ribcage was vibrating.

Around the dying campfire, the crew was moving about with the ease of people who'd done this a thousand times before. Arlen sat polishing his bow, humming softly. Vex knelt by the fire, tracing glowing symbols in the dirt with one finger, the light leaving faint trails that faded slowly. Keal tested his axe edge with his thumb, checking the sharpness with the kind of casual competence that suggested he'd done this exact thing every morning of his adult life.

Rudo was checking his gear, organizing rope and supplies with methodical precision. And Will—Will leaned against a boulder, smoking a cigarette like he was on vacation instead of about to walk into a dungeon that had presumably killed hundreds of people.

Speed's nightmare was already fading, becoming dreamlike, becoming something he could almost convince himself wasn't real.

Almost.

He could still hear the voices. Could still feel the weight of Ronaldo's disappointment.

The sun was rising behind the forest, painting the sky orange and gold. The campfire was dying down to embers, the flames having long since given way to glowing coals that wouldn't last much longer.

"So... we're really doing this, huh?" Arlen said, his voice low, casual. "The Church request."

"Yeah," Vex responded, not looking up from his ward symbols. "Belmont City's been losing people for weeks. Guild labeled it High Priority."

Keal tested his axe thumb again, nodded to himself like the blade was exactly as sharp as he wanted it.

"High Priority or suicide job?" Keal asked, his massive frame making even that simple motion look powerful. "If the Church had real faith, they'd send their own cleanup crew."

Arlen shrugged, rolling his shoulder like it was bothering him.

"They didn't. This mission's been rotting on the board for months. No one wanted it," Arlen said.

Silence settled over the group. Just wind and dying fire and the sound of people preparing for something that might kill them.

"You think the Church is hiding something?" Vex asked quietly, his eyes finally moving up from his symbols. He glanced at Will—the only one who might actually have answers.

Will didn't respond immediately. He just smoked his cigarette and watched the sunrise like it held secrets only he could decipher.

"I don't think they're hiding anything," Will said finally, his voice flat, distant. "The Church doesn't move without reason. If they sent us... it means they already know what's down there."

Rudo looked up from his rope, a teasing smile crossing his face.

"Ohhh, so the great Williams Tempest trusts the Church now?" Rudo said. "Didn't know you were a holy man."

Small laughter rippled through the group. Even Keal's expression softened slightly.

But Will's face didn't change. He just flicked ash from his cigarette, his gaze locked on the horizon.

"Man's too serious to laugh," Vex said, shaking his head. "Even at dawn."

Will's expression shifted—just for a second. A faint smirk flickered across his face. Almost invisible. Gone in a heartbeat. But it was there. Just for a moment, he was almost human.

Speed watched the interaction and felt something in his chest loosen slightly. They knew each other. Actually knew each other, not just worked together. There was a rhythm to their banter that came from months or years of shared danger. They were a team.

And Speed was... what exactly?

The outsider. The kid who'd arrived yesterday and didn't know anything about this world or how to fight or what any of this meant. The one person here who would definitely die if things went wrong.

He looked down at his forearm.

There was a faint mark there. Red. Like someone had burned a symbol into his skin while he slept. Lightning-shaped. It was fading, becoming less visible in the morning light, but it was definitely there.

Speed didn't remember it being there yesterday.

He was still staring at it when Rudo walked over, carrying his gear on his back.

"Hey, kid," Rudo said, crouching down beside Speed. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Just... bad dream," Speed said, and his voice sounded hollow even to himself. "Something about the burning village. And a kid. And..."

He didn't finish. Couldn't. The nightmare was already fragmenting, but the feeling remained. The weight of failure. The certainty that people were going to die, and it would be his fault somehow.

Rudo sat down beside him, his massive frame taking up space but somehow making Speed feel less alone rather than more.

"Hey," Rudo said, his voice gentle. "Bad dreams are normal when you're in a new place. First night jitters. You'll be fine. We'll keep you safe."

Speed wanted to believe him. But he'd already seen people die in this world. Already watched demons tear people apart. Already understood that safety was an illusion that fell apart the moment you tried to hold onto it.

"Yeah," Speed said anyway, because sometimes a lie was the only thing that made the next moment survivable. "Thanks."

Rudo smiled and stood back up.

"Come on," he said. "Let me show you something."

Rudo pulled Speed up, and they walked a little away from the group.

Rudo's eyes landed on Speed's phone.

Speed had forgotten he even had it. The battery indicator had been flashing last time he checked—5% remaining. It seemed impossible that this device from Earth still had any charge at all, but here it was, still clutching to existence in a world where it absolutely shouldn't work.

Speed pulled it out.

"What is that?" Rudo asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.

"It's called a phone," Speed said. "You use it to communicate with people far away. Take pictures. Stream to thousands of people."

"Stream?" Arlen called over from his position by the fire. "What's that?"

Speed turned so everyone could hear.

"It's like... you broadcast your life to people watching," Speed explained, and for the first time since arriving, his voice had energy. Like talking about this part of his life actually made it feel real. "They comment, you talk back. It's how I made money back home."

"Wait..." Rudo said, his eyes wide. "You can talk to thousands of people at once?"

"Yeah, man. Sometimes 200K people watching me play games," Speed said, and there was pride in his voice. These people thought he was weak. Thought he needed protecting. But back home, he had influence. He had power.

"That sounds exhausting," Keal said, his deep voice rumbling across the campfire.

"It's actually pretty fun," Speed said.

Rudo extended his hand.

"Can I see?" he asked.

Speed handed him the phone. Rudo held it like it was made of glass that might shatter if he breathed on it wrong. He stared at the screen—the icons, the wallpaper, the mysterious foreign objects that meant nothing in this world.

"There's a camera function," Speed said. "Here, I'll show you."

Speed positioned himself next to Rudo and held the phone up, angling it so they could both see the screen.

The phone flashed.

Rudo jumped back, startled, his hand flying up.

Everyone laughed—real, genuine laughter. Not the kind that was performed or forced, but the kind that came from seeing something genuinely funny and unexpected.

"Did it... bite me?" Rudo asked, checking his hand.

"No, it just took a picture," Speed said, showing him the screen.

There they were. Speed and Rudo. Smiling. Real smiles. In this moment, they weren't adventurers walking into a dungeon. They were just two kids marveling at something simple.

Rudo stared at the image like it was magic.

"Your world sounds incredible," Rudo said quietly.

Speed looked at the image—at his own face looking happy, looking alive, looking present. When was the last time he'd felt that? Before the pills? Before the void?

"It was," Speed said, and his voice got quieter. "I don't know if I'll ever see it again."

The laughter faded.

Will stood up, finished with his cigarette.

"We move in ten minutes," he said flatly. "Get ready."

Everyone moved into motion. Checking weapons. Adjusting gear. Preparing for something that might kill them.

Speed pocketed his phone and stood.

Rudo put a hand on his shoulder.

"Stay close to me out there," Rudo said, and his voice was serious now. Professional. The voice of someone who'd kept people alive before and intended to do it again. "I'll keep you alive. You have my word."

Speed nodded.

He didn't know that Rudo was making a promise he wouldn't be able to keep.

Didn't know that in a few hours, Rudo would be screaming, venom turning his veins black, his life ending in a moment of merciful violence.

Didn't know that this would be the last conversation they'd ever have.

Speed just nodded and said:

"Okay. Let's do this."