The dungeon around me throbbed with Axiom. Every step I took, every shallow breath I drew, seemed amplified in this wound of reality. Light was scarce, but not absent—crystalline veins ran through the walls and floors, pulsing with raw energy, casting long, warped shadows. The air tasted metallic, dense with unspent magic.
I leaned against the stone, muscles trembling, still catching my breath from the fall, when a deafening explosion tore the silence apart. Dust and fragments of stone rained around me. My heart stuttered.
From the chaos, it emerged. A mass of twitching limbs, sinew, and half-formed armor plates. No eyes, just a gaping maw that pulsed with a faint blue light—some sort of sensory adaptation to the dungeon's darkness.
Its roar wasn't sound; it was a command, a recursive assertion of predation. Somehow, it had heard me. Somehow, it knew I was here.
I barely had time to react. The stone I leaned on shattered, shards flying like knives. Instinct propelled me forward; I rolled to my feet just in time, narrowly avoiding the impact.
Pain stabbed my ribs, but I forced myself upright. My lungs burned, my mind screamed.
The memories came unbidden—my father's hand on my shoulder, my mother's smile, the Hall of Succession, Lyra's promise.
Rage and despair surged, mingling with the cold, analytical part of me that always searched for solutions. I screamed—not in fear, but in frustration, the sound echoing uselessly in the dungeon's warped halls.
The creature followed. It was faster than I expected, its limbs bending in impossible ways. I ducked into a narrow fissure in the stone wall, barely squeezing inside.
Its massive, clawed head snapped toward me, and I felt the pressure of its Axiom resonance probing, testing for weaknesses.
I had seconds to act, and panic was a luxury I could not afford. I studied the creature.
No eyes. It hunted by vibration, by the Axiom it sensed in the air. The dungeon amplified its senses. It was strong, but predictable.
Every strike it made, every step it took, reshaped the space around it slightly—the dungeon's own logic feeding it, guiding it. If I could turn its reliance on the dungeon's Axiom against it, I could create an opening.
I scanned the fissure. The walls were crystalline, saturated with Axiom. One idea formed—a trap using the very magic it depended on.
I whispered a sequence, barely audible:
ᚲᛋᚱᛏᚨᛗᛖᛉ (Crucis Reflecta – Amplio Exitus)
(Reflective Prism – Amplify Output: amplifies an Axiom Conductor such as the crystal and overload its output.)
I traced the rune along the edges of the fissure, carving it into the crystalline veins. The spell didn't strike immediately. Its function wasn't to hit—it was to wait.
The creature lunged. Its head slammed into the fissure, searching for me. The walls hummed in response. The Axiom flowing through the dungeon, the energy feeding the creature, hit the rune network I had just drawn. Energy output of the crystal amplified, compressed, and overloaded.
There was a blinding flash. A pulse of pure force. The creature screamed as the crystal plunges into its mouth—not in pain, but in correction. Its own Axiom, twisted against it, tore through the recursive definitions it relied on.
Limbs convulsed, its maw twisted in impossible angles, and then… it was gone. Nothing remained but a smoking residue and the faint echo of its resonance.
I stumbled out of the fissure, knees weak, adrenaline thrumming in every vein. The dungeon was silent again, save for the faint pulse of crystal light. I had survived.
I crouched, panting, wiping the sweat and grime from my eyes. My mind raced faster than my heart: I had just turned the dungeon's logic against a living predator, forcing it to break itself. Knowledge was my blade. Knowledge was my shield. And in this place, that was all that mattered.
I crouched behind the jagged stone, chest heaving, lungs still burning from my last escape. The dungeon was silent for a heartbeat, the kind of silence that didn't just exist—it watched. My eyes fell on the creature's remnant: the red crystal, half-buried in twisted stone.
Axiom Core.
Every dungeon beast carried one. Each gem was a fragment of the monster's life-force, a conduit to the dungeon itself. I remembered my lessons, remembered every text I had pored over back in Sunspire. The dungeon was suffused with Axiom, dense beyond comprehension, a storm of raw reality that could crush any unprepared mind. But the Axiom here… the Axiom in these cores was tempered. Condensed. Portable. Human-ready—if you survived the transfer.
I swallowed hard. I knew the risk. My body wasn't trained. I was too young, too weak, and yet… I had nothing left. No family. No name. No world outside this stone grave. Only rage, only fury, only the desperate need to survive.
I grasped the gem, feeling its pulse against my palm. It throbbed like a heart of fire, heavy and hot. The dungeon seemed to hum in response. I muttered to myself, bitter, furious:
"They think I'm weak. They think I'll die here. Fine. Then let the dungeon feed me. Let it make me something they will never forgive."
I placed the gem against my chest and began the sequence in my mind—definitions, limits, costs. I tried to coax the Axiom into me slowly.
It didn't listen.
The world tore away. Darkness swallowed me. My muscles seized. My nerves screamed. My nose bled. My eyes bled. My lungs convulsed. I puked blood into the black waters around me. My body shook violently, every cell screaming rebellion, but I did not let go.
"GAAAAAAHHHHH!" I roared. My voice echoed, carried on the Axiom currents, angry and defiant.
The gem shattered in my grasp. Light exploded behind my eyelids. Reality buckled for a heartbeat as the Axiom core's energy poured into me. I felt it clawing, twisting, reshaping, burning, forcing every ounce of potential into something I didn't yet understand. Pain became thought, thought became fire, fire became me.
And then… nothing.
Black. Silence. Weightless emptiness.
My body collapsed into the water. My consciousness slipped, teetering between the world and oblivion. And yet, beneath it all, the surge had not stopped. I was altered. I didn't know how, or to what degree—but I had survived.
When I finally opened my eyes again, the dungeon seemed different. Every pulse of Axiom around me throbbed in recognition—or perhaps in fear. I was weaker than the dungeon, but I was no longer nothing. I had taken from it. And if it wanted to consume me, I would meet it, teeth bared.
Rage and potential mingled in my chest like molten metal. Pain and fury and the first taste of real power. I had gambled with death, and I had won. For now.