Kagetsuchi's fingers hovered over the ancient, impossible door embedded in the hillside. It pulsed with something unnatural—not magic, not a curse, but something deeper. The kind of thing that feels like the world itself holding its breath.
She glanced at Zerathos. "Alright… opening it."
The moment the door creaked even slightly—
The air howled.
A deafening pull surged forward as if the very atmosphere had turned predatory. Raw wind pressure slammed into them—a force more primal than magic, older than language. It wasn't conjured. It wasn't cast. It was simply raw, like the earth itself was gasping and trying to inhale them.
Zerathos barely managed to shout her name before both he and Kagetsuchi were ripped off their feet, drawn into the black void beyond the door.
SLAM.
The door shut behind them on its own, hard enough to rattle the nearby trees.
And then—it vanished.
No sparks, no glow, no magical residue—just nothing.
Marek and Arashi stood frozen, the shock settling in like a deep winter.
"…That wasn't magic," Marek muttered. "That was raw wind pressure. The kind of thing you only read about in ancient spell-theory books—natural dimensional fractures."
Arashi stepped forward, dumbfounded. "But it grabbed Zerathos. He doesn't even have magic."
"That's why it grabbed him," Marek said, pale. "Magic has rules. This didn't care. If it had been cast with mana, his body might've resisted. But that…"
He stared at the space where the door had been.
"That wasn't magic. That was reality itself pulling them in."
They didn't fall through space.
They fell through nothing.
And then suddenly—
Boom.
The ground greeted them like a hammer.
Kagetsuchi gasped, pain jolting through her body. She'd braced for impact—but never hit the ground.
Zerathos had wrapped himself around her mid-air, curling to take the blow with his back. Dust billowed as they crashed onto an alien surface of smooth, dark stone. The force of the landing cracked the floor beneath them.
Kagetsuchi blinked through the shock and starlight.
Above them… was no ceiling.
Just an endless sky — night incarnate, a velvet expanse filled with billions of stars, swirling in constellations that didn't belong to their world. Some of them moved like they were alive. Some flickered like dying memories. The sky had no horizon, no bottom, no top.
The landscape stretched around them like a dream.
Massive crystalline structures hung upside-down from invisible ceilings. Floating islands orbited mountains that bent at impossible angles. Nothing made sense. Every direction was up and down, every step was a guess.
"What… the hell…?" Kagetsuchi whispered.
"Dungeon," Zerathos muttered, his voice gravelly but calm. "A real one."
"You okay? You—" Kagetsuchi started to move, but he was still holding her tightly.
He nodded. "Yeah. Took the brunt of it. Nothing new."
She blinked, touching his arm. "That fall could've broken half your bones…"
"I've had worse."
Zerathos, despite having no magic whatsoever, possesses a body that defies all logic of damage resistance. No known spell, armor, or enhancement coats him—and yet, his durability rivals the blessed champions of old.
A normal human would have died on impact.
Zerathos didn't even flinch.
He stood slowly, brushing off dirt and strange glowing spores from his coat. Kagetsuchi followed, still reeling from what they were seeing.
"Where are we?" she asked.
Zerathos took a long breath. "A dungeon. Not one of those fake ones nobles train in. A real one. The kind that—"
Before he could finish, a low, resonant hum vibrated through the air. The stars above flickered—like something had just blinked.
Kagetsuchi instinctively stepped closer to him.
"…This place isn't supposed to exist, is it?"
"No," Zerathos replied. "And we're not supposed to be here."
Outside the place where the door once stood, only dust and silence remained.
Marek stared at the empty space, heart racing. "No… no, no, no—"
His hands trembled as he pulled at the air, almost as if trying to reopen it with desperation alone.
"They're gone!" he choked. "That wasn't supposed to happen! Dungeons don't just— It wasn't in the guidebook, this isn't—"
His panic spiraled. Every possibility, every terrifying outcome played in his head.
But before he could continue unraveling—
Thwack.
A hand clamped firmly over his mouth.
"Mmpf?!"
It was Arashi.
Eyes narrow. Body frozen. Her hand pressed tightly over his lips.
"Don't speak," she whispered, her voice low… and deadly serious.
He stopped struggling. Something in her eyes made him go quiet immediately.
Then he felt it too.
Like pressure crushing his chest. Like every instinct in his body screaming at once.
A magical presence.
Overwhelming. Suffocating.
It wasn't just strong—it was hostile.
A force so dense and ancient it felt like the air itself bent around it. Every hair on Marek's body stood up. The very ground beneath them felt… afraid.
And it was close.
He slowly turned his head toward the treeline at the edge of the clearing. Just beyond the ridge where Zerathos and Kagetsuchi had vanished… something stirred.
It wasn't visible, not clearly, but even the birds had stopped singing. Even the wind refused to move.
Whatever it was… it knew they were there.
Marek swallowed hard behind Arashi's hand.
They hadn't just lost their friends to a dungeon.
They were being watched.
It didn't just watch them.
It screamed.
A gut-wrenching, ear-splitting roar tore through the forest. A shriek that wasn't meant to intimidate — it was pure hatred, the sound of something that wanted everything dead simply for existing.
The trees shook violently.
The sky dimmed.
And from the shadows of the ridgeline, it stepped into view.
A hulking, reptilian form — mismatched and malformed, as if its body was never meant to follow the rules of nature. Its body writhed with pulsing muscle, jagged bone, and armor-like flesh. Fangs jutted from its open mouth, too large for its jaw to contain. Its eyes were a burning sickly yellow, glaring with sentient malice.
"What the…" Marek gasped, voice cracking.
He didn't even finish his sentence.
Because every cell in his body screamed to run. To disappear.
To vanish.
The creature lowered its head, nostrils flaring. It had sensed them — truly sensed them — and it remembered.
Not them, specifically.
But everything.
Everything that dared breathe in its direction.
Arashi's hand trembled, still over Marek's mouth. She wasn't calm.
She was just holding it together.
"We need to leave," she whispered. "Now."
"But what about—?"
"I said. Now."
The creature's footfalls cracked the earth as it moved. It wasn't charging — no, it didn't need to. It knew they were prey. And it was in no hurry.
It was playing with its food.