Thane's first breath back in the world came like a gasp after surfacing from too deep underwater—sharp, ragged, and laced with confusion. His eyes flew open, unfocused at first, catching only flickering shadows swirling across the jagged ceiling above. Every nerve in his body buzzed with static, like someone had plugged him into a wall socket and left him to cook on low.
Heat bubbled under his skin like magma simmering just beneath the surface. His heart pounded against his ribs—not with fear, but with the overcharged aftershock of something massive moving through him. It felt like his very bones had been re-molded, as if a demonic surgeon had plucked his skeleton out, dunked it in lava, and jammed it back in with all the care of someone forcing luggage into an overstuffed suitcase.
His breath hitched. Muscles he wasn't even sure were anatomically charted flared with a soreness so deep it felt spiritual. And yet, when he peeked at the corner of his HUD, his health and stamina bars sat full and pristine.
Go figure. Stat recalibration: great for staying alive, terrible for staying comfortable.
Something jabbed his chest.
He blinked in confusion.
Again—same spot. Right in the sternum.
He tilted his chin downward, and there it was: a stone goblin standing just barely upright, eyes glassy with exhaustion, rhythmically driving a chipped dagger into his chest like a broken record.
It looked… done. Not enraged. Not bloodthirsty. Just utterly spent—bone-deep fatigue written in every movement, like someone stuck on autopilot after hours of failed CPR.
Clink.
The blade bounced off his skin again, useless as a plastic fork on a manhole cover.
"Are you… are you serious right now?" Thane groused.
The goblin raised the knife once more, its arm trembling from the sheer effort of existing.
Thane moved to intercept—still foggy, still swimming in post-evolution static. He reached out, slow and groggy, but instinct guided the motion. And then…
He overcorrected.
His hand shot forward—too fast, too hard, with way too much weight behind it.
Crack.
There wasn't resistance.
Just a sickening snap as the goblin's arm disconnected at the elbow like a brittle twig. Blood arced high into the cavern air as the severed limb hit the ground with a wet slap, dagger still clenched tight like rigor mortis had RSVP'd weeks in advance.
The goblin screamed. A raw, shrill noise that was more disbelief than agony—like it was rethinking every life choice that led to this moment.
"Oh," he muttered, staring at his forearm. Even under the suit, he could see the way his muscles coiled beneath—ropes of sinew taut with barely-leashed force.
"Well. That's new."
The goblin staggered back, clutching its stump, eyes wide with a cocktail of horror and awe. Then it did the only logical thing left:
It ran.
Thane lay there a moment longer, breath shallow, thoughts lagging a few steps behind.
"Did I just karate chop a goblin's arm off?"
Yes… Yes he did.
The goblin didn't waste a second. As soon as the initial shock wore off—and its body remembered it was now suffering from a tragic limb shortage—it spun on its heel and bolted. Feet slapped against stone in a frantic, uneven rhythm—half-scramble, half-hop—as it vanished into the shadows with a screech that translated universally to "Nope."
Thane blinked after it, still holding his hand out like maybe—just maybe—he could will the moment to rewind and make it less… arm-choppy. But the goblin was getting away, and somewhere deep in his brain, a memo finally got through: Chase. Now.
He surged upright. Big mistake.
His newly evolved stats kicked in without warning, finesse, or the slightest hint of moderation. He didn't rise—he detonated. A human missile launched by poor judgment and unregulated physics.
"Wait—!" Too late.
He shot upward like someone had applied butter to the laws of motion—and belly flopped into the ceiling with a thunderous CRACK, stone splintering outward in a gritty halo of dust. Fractures spiderwebbed across the rock as he stuck there for one surreal moment, plastered like a sticky-hand toy. Then gravity remembered him.
He hit the ground hard, slamming into the stone with enough force to carve out a crater the size of a kiddie pool, and groaned loud enough to register in multiple languages. "Well. That sucked."
The goblin, meanwhile, was long gone. Probably halfway through filing for dungeon denizens disability.
Thane shook dust from his hair and pushed himself upright. "Okay. Evolved stats. New physics. Just gotta—"
He took a cautious step. His foot pressed into the stone, leaving a deep, dramatic imprint—like something out of a dinosaur documentary. Another step, same result. Like a guy trudging through wet sand.
He laughed—more nervous reflex than joy—and tried to walk normally. Which, in hindsight, was optimistic at best.
His foot launched forward with way too much enthusiasm. He tripped over his own momentum, corkscrewed to recover, and did a barrel roll before planting his face in the stone.
Mid-fall, he tried to lower his mass. Mistimed it. Left a dent. Bounced. This time, at least, he avoided leaving a Thane-shaped imprint.
Maxing his density, he rose slowly, feet sinking into the floor with the squelching resistance of someone who'd forgotten their snowshoes in a dungeon-sized drift. He could walk—technically—but every step felt like doing lunges through a non newtonian liquid.
He tried to find balance, and failed—again. He ricocheted off the opposite wall like a cursed racketball.
The next five minutes were aggressively ungraceful.
He somersaulted across the chamber. Skidded through stone, leaving long troughs in his wake. At one point, he accidentally moonwalked up a slope. Every attempt to adjust his mass or motion just resulted in a new brand of disaster.
It was like learning to walk again—if a wizard Higitus Figitused you into a three-legged dog.
At some point, he just lay there, wheezing, face resting on the lip of a crater.
"Okay," he panted, arms splayed wide. "Maybe… maybe we scale it back. Just a bit."
Eventually, with all the dignity of a malfunctioning Roomba, he managed to recalibrate. Each movement became more stable, more deliberate. His body finally stopped treating every step like a launch command.
He stood, dusted himself off, and glanced around. He could pick out individual dust motes halfway across the chamber.
"Neat," he muttered. "Let's try not to kill myself before the quest timer does."
Thane took a steadying breath, willing the world to stop tilting and his limbs to quit acting like drunken siege engines. His HUD flickered back into focus, and his gaze snapped to the upper corner.
T - 28:03
He blinked. Then again.
The numbers didn't change. They just stared back—clinical, uncaring, inevitable.
A cold weight settled in his gut like someone had swapped his stomach for a lead brick. Bone-deep dread crawled up his spine—less panic, more the slow, existential slap of realizing your deadline wasn't weeks away. It was now. Twenty-eight minutes to quest failure. He briefly wondered if the last message he'd ever see would read: "Reason for death: poor time management."
"Forget that stupid goblin," he muttered, voice tight.
He spun on his heel and sprinted—not launched, thank the stars—toward the far side of the room. There, opposite the looming menace of the boss door, a dark, untraveled tunnel gaped open.
He'd missed it earlier, tucked behind a crumbling pillar, unlit and uninviting. It looked like a bad idea carved into stone.
Perfect.
Thane dove in without hesitation. The tunnel sloped downward into a spiraling stairwell carved from rough, worn stone. Each step cracked beneath his feet, echoes whispering up around him like the dungeon was listening.
He didn't descend so much as fall with style, momentum-guided and adrenaline-fueled. Every landing was a miracle of balance, his stats still flirting with overkill.
The stairs spat him into a squat stone chamber: a guard room, by the look of it. Battered weapon racks lined the walls, long empty. Rusted chains hung from hooks like grim holiday decor.
No goblins. No movement. Just silence and stale air.
He didn't stop.
Another passage yawned ahead, lower and rougher, where the worked stone gave way to the jagged anatomy of the cavern proper. The architecture fell away to natural curves and pressure-warped walls. Moss pulsed along the ceiling in soft blue waves, casting fractured shadows across the gravel-strewn floor.
Thane slowed. Instinct took over. His breath evened out. Footfalls softened on the crunching gravel.
He was deeper now. Further from safety. Closer to whatever horror was buried at the bottom of this place.
T - 25:16
The tunnel stretched on—winding, claustrophobic, seemingly endless. Every step pulled him further from rudimentary civilization, deeper into nature's indifference. The walls twisted and cracked with age, clusters of bioluminescent moss clinging like constellations. The air turned colder. He could see his breath fog.
Small wins—he couldn't feel the cold through the suit.
Then the tunnel opened.
He stumbled onto a high ledge overlooking a cavern so vast it felt like the belly of a collapsed mountain, stretching for miles in every direction. The silence was louder than the cacophony of battle.
Everything glowed. Moss blanketed the rock in turquoise waves, like bioluminescent snowfall. The air pulsed with it, throwing strange shadows and ghostlight halos across the stone.
It was the brightest natural space he'd seen down here.
Which somehow made it worse.
His eyes scanned the expanse. Too wide. Too open. The far end was swallowed by shadow.
Then—on the far right—a lake.
It didn't shimmer. It didn't ripple. It just... existed. A flat, black sheet of water that devoured light and whispered danger.
Thane stared, stomach knotting.
"That," he said, "is absolutely where a nightmare lake monster lives."
As if summoned, something glimmered in the lake's center. Faint, unmistakable.
A glow.
There, on a jagged island no bigger than a trampoline, floated a massive key—suspended midair, slowly rotating like a magical screensaver with delusions of grandeur. It pulsed gold and silver, each shimmer more obnoxious than the last.
No system message needed. That was the key.
Because of course it was.
"Really?" he asked no one. "You couldn't put it in a chest? Maybe behind a puzzle? No, let's just hang it over Murder Lake and call it a day."
He floated gently to the cavern floor hundreds of feet below and advanced.
Each step toward the water made his skin crawl—not from fear exactly, but from something deeper. A gut-level awareness written in blood… screaming this was a bad decision.
The water remained still. Too still.
He crouched at the edge, careful not to let even a pebble fall in. Eyes locked on the key, he tracked its rotation. Measured the distance. Checked the floor's traction. And briefly considered whether "YOLO" counted as a valid strategy.
He didn't like his odds.
But the timer was ticking.
And the key wasn't going to swim to him.