The world was still ending when Greg hit the floor.

  One instant there was only light and screaming and the sense of being flung in eight directions at once. The next, he bounced off something hard, rolled, and slammed into a wall that hadn’t been there half a second earlier.

  He lay there for a second, face pressed to cold stone, waiting for his spine to finish rebooting.

  GLOBAL EVENT!

  VAULT CASCADE – ACTIVE

  Containment: 0%

  Stability: 23% and falling

  Time to Collapse: < 600 seconds

  Another update waited behind, one Greg had been to busy to even glance at

  Reputation Update!

  Elowen: disapproves -12

  Violet: disapproves -6

  Nars: disapproves –3

  Doran: no change

  Summary: Nobody likes you.

  Yeah, that tracks.

  The air tasted like blood and dust. The steady hum of the Heart was gone. In its place, the Vault groaned like a wounded animal.

  “Move,” Doran grunted somewhere nearby. “If you can move, move.”

  Greg forced himself onto hands and knees.

  They were back in the Primary Focus chamber. Or what was left of it.

  The crystal Heart was gone. In its place hung a ragged hole in reality, a smeared wound of gold and silver and thick, oil-dark shadow that dribbled upward as much as down. The three great rings that had once circled it now hung at crooked angles, cracked and shedding fragments that drifted off into the pit. Every surface vibrated in slow, nauseating waves.

  The sigils carved into the floor and walls blazed, overcharged. Blood-red threads of corruption crawled through them like worms.

  “Up,” Violet rasped.

  Greg turned. She was already standing, one hand braced on a chunk of broken stone, goggles cracked but still in place. Doran was up as well, bleeding from a cut at his temple. Nars had a limp but seemed mobile. Elowen…

  Elowen was on her feet.

  She stood a little apart from the others, one hand pressed to her ribs, lips moving soundlessly. Her pupils were blown wide, golden tracery under her skin pulsing hard enough that Greg could see it through the grime.

  She did not look at him.

  Greg swallowed. “Is everyone—”

  “Don’t,” Violet said. “Don’t talk. Survive 3 rounds, Greg. That’s all we had to do. Not… whatever the fuck you just did. I told you to we just needed to tire it out! I told you to be smart. Not—”

  “—whatever the fuck I just did, yes. I was—”

  “Thinking with your dick instead of your head again, like a giant walking dickhead,” Violet interrupted. “Which you are.”

  Trying to protect Elowen, Greg finished, in his mind. But yeah.

  A section of the far wall gave up and slid into the abyss with a slow, grinding roar. A storm of dust billowed after it. The Vault shuddered again.

  Greg’s HUD blinked.

  NEW OBJECTIVE ADDED: RUN!

  Helpful, as always.

  Nars squinted up at the non-existent ceiling. “I don’t want to alarm anyone,” he said. “But I think we might be screwed.”

  “The cascade is feeding out into the world,” Elowen said quietly. “Every second we stay, it spreads. We have to go. Now.”

  Her voice was steady. Too steady. Greg could hear the space where she wasn’t letting anything else leak into it.

  “What’s the fastest way out?” Doran asked. “We fell down two floors. More?”

  Violet sucked a breath through her teeth, eyes raking the collapsing chamber. “There was a maintenance route,” she said. “Up through the calibration gallery. We can’t reach that now. So, we climb back the stupid way.”

  “You mean…” Nars gestured vaguely. “You’ll have to narrow it down. All of our options look stupid.”

  “Yes.” She pointed to a cracked access tunnel on the far side of the chamber, half-choked with rubble. “Through there. Then the balance-beam walk over the drop, the girders, the stupid ladder, the stupid catwalk, the stupid everything. Then up the main ramp and out. Assuming the exit hasn’t collapsed, sealing us inside forever.”

  The floor trembled again, hard enough to make them all sway.

  “Move,” Doran said. “Bitch later.”

  The access tunnel had shrunk.

  Chokepoints Greg remembered squeezing through now shed stone in steady trickles. Cracks raced overhead in frantic zigzags. The air was hotter, thicker, full of the sour reek of Moon corruption and something like hot metal.

  Elowen went first, one hand touching the wall, feeling for vibrations. Doran followed, then Violet, then Nars. Greg brought up the rear, partly because that was his job and partly because nobody argued when he fell into that position.

  The system kept providing unsolicited morale boosts at key intervals.

  VAULT STABILITY: 19%

  A chunk of ceiling punched loose and bounced off Greg’s shoulder. He grunted, shoved it aside, and kept moving.

  “Nice work, by the way,” Violet said suddenly, without looking back.

  Greg blinked. “What?”

  “The part where you ruined literally everything,” she snapped. “I’m a really big fan. Really inspiring stuff.”

  He flinched harder than he had at the falling rock. “I tried to stop it,” he said. “I was trying to protect—”

  “I know exactly what you were trying to do,” Violet said. “That’s the problem. You see something pointed at Elowen and your brain goes, ‘Gee, maybe I should fist-fuck a hole in reality and jam my sword up it’ instead of following the goddamn plan. All we had to do was last 3 rounds, and we were home free! Corrupto-reverso! Thanks a lot, you… you… ugh!” She couldn’t find a word harsh enough in any of the languages she knew.

  Nars made a low sound that might have been agreement or might just have been air leaving his lungs as he squeezed through a narrow gap. “To be fair,” he said, “the giant murder crystal was doing a pretty good job of grinding us into dust. We might not have made it two more… what do you mean, rounds?”

  //※?? // ※ //UNVERI?FIED?

  Violet stopped, at a loss for words. Greg had never seen that before. How did Violet know that, anyway? He started trying to think of a way to explain. Any topic that steered the discussion away from how this was all his fault.

  “It would have been worth it,” Elowen said. “You should not have… I don’t even understand what you did, Greg. But I know in my soul, you should not have.”

  Greg shut his mouth.

  “My fate is not yours to decide. If we could have… rebooted it, even if I were gone, my life would have been a small price to pay for sparing the world from what’s coming. From what’s already starting up there…”

  They spilled back out onto the calibration ledge: the narrow shelf of stone that overlooked the Heart chamber. Now it overlooked a wound instead. The hole where the Heart had been boiled with light and shadow. Strands of that same wrong black radiance licked the underside of the ledge like tongues.

  Nars edged past it, shoulders hunched. “Remember the murder cube? I miss the murder cube,” he muttered.

  “Bridge,” Doran barked.

  The “bridge” was a line of support struts and half-broken pipes that had seemed only moderately suicidal when they’d crossed it the first time. Now the gap between the ledge and the far side was wider. The struts had sagged. Bits of them crumbled away in little avalanches into the brightness below.

  Violet flicked her fingers. A thin mesh of glowing purple lines snapped into existence over the worst of the gaps, anchoring themselves to whatever metal they could find.

  “Temporary,” she warned. “Like my patience.”

  Doran went first. He put his weight on each bar carefully, testing its answer before trusting it. Nars went next, moving more lightly than his limp implied he should be capable of. Violet followed, muttering at every creak.

  Greg waited. Elowen stepped up beside him.

  She still didn’t look at him.

  “Go first,” she said quietly. “I need time to think.”

  He nodded, throat tight. “Right.”

  He stepped out.

  The struts vibrated under his boots, alive with the Vault’s unsteady pulse. Light from the wound below made the metal seem translucent, as if he were walking on veins.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Don’t look down, he told himself, so of course he did.

  The entire shaft was a storm. Light and darkness churned, threads of corrupted magic spiraling up and out through invisible cracks. Greg could feel it on his skin, the way you feel a subwoofer through your ribs. Somewhere far above, something snapped with the clean, terrible sound of a steel cable breaking.

  Greg focused on his feet and the next handhold. One bar, then the next. He crouched under a dangling chunk of broken ring and did his best to ignore the way it swayed over the void like a pendulum counting down.

  He made it across. Doran caught his arm and yanked him the last step onto solid stone.

  Elowen came after.

  For a heartbeat, the whole network of struts sagged under her weight as if the Vault itself were deciding whether to let her pass. Her hand brushed one bar; it flared bright gold under her fingers.

  The metal held.

  She stepped onto the ledge. The mesh flickered and vanished behind her.

  VAULT STABILITY: 15%

  Time to Collapse: 300 seconds

  “That ladder,” Violet exhaled, pointing. “Up and out. We’re almost halfway… I think.”

  The “ladder” was a maintenance brace bolted into the wall, more of a vertical suggestion than safety equipment. Going up it was slower than surfing down it had been; the rungs were slick with dust and sweat and his arms burned violently by the third segment.

  Elowen’s breath rasped above Greg, just out of sight.

  He tried not to listen to it. Tried not to think about her hand on his shoulder in the boss arena, the fragile thread of hope that he’d decapitated, along with Herman.

  He missed a rung.

  His boot slipped. His weight swung out. For one sick second his fingers were the only thing between him and the shaft.

  A hand clamped around his wrist.

  Doran’s grip was iron. The dwarf braced his feet and heaved, dragging Greg’s weight back toward the wall.

  “Watch it,” Doran snarled.

  “Got it,” Greg croaked. “Sorry.”

  They climbed on in silence for a few breaths.

  “The man you killed,” Doran said eventually, not looking down. “I’ve killed men who needed it. I’ve killed men who didn’t. Difference sits with you afterward, whether you admit it or not.”

  Greg swallowed hard. “I know.”

  “Do you?” Doran’s shoulders shifted with the next pull. “Because right before you swung, you looked pretty sure of yourself.”

  He had no defense for that. It had felt simple, for that one instant. The worst part was that he’d wanted it to.

  “Rage makes you strong,” Doran said. “I get that. It also makes you stupid. Impulsive. Rage should be just one tool in your belt: a great big fucking hammer of a tool, yeah, but not the only one. If all you’ve got is a hammer—"

  Greg could feel the words slotting into place like stones. “—then all your problems start to look like nails. You’re right. I know. I’m trying.”

  “Try harder,” Doran replied.

  They hauled themselves up onto the next landing.

  The catwalk was a joke now.

  The thin, circular walkway that had once wrapped tidily around the shaft and led toward the Depth Two galleries now existed in discontinuous chunks. Some sections hung at crooked angles. Others had fallen entirely, leaving stretches of empty air.

  Violet stared at it, hands on hips. “Okay,” she said. “New plan. We sprint and we pray.”

  “Which god?” Nars asked.

  “Dealer’s choice,” she shot back.

  They ran.

  A chunk of catwalk peeled away under Violet’s boots. She leapt sideways, grabbed a jut of masonry, and hauled herself up with a curse. Nars used a fallen support beam as an impromptu balance bar over a gap. Doran simply jumped the space and pulled the next section into place with a roar and a shoulder-check.

  Greg didn’t trust his Rage enough to tap it. He did the jumps the hard way. His thighs screamed. Every time his foot hit metal, he expected it to give.

  VAULT STABILITY: 10%

  Time to Collapse: 180 seconds

  Fun Fact: That’s three minutes!

  “Remind me,” Nars shouted over the grinding noise that had become a constant background feature, “why did you come down here? To save the world?”

  Greg huffed, landing hard after a jump. “To protect Elowen.”

  “Right,” Nars said. “So, when ten thousand putrid corruption beasts come pouring out into the world because we failed here, I want you to remember that you traded feeling like a big strong hero man for however many villages those things chew through before somebody stops them. You might want to get better at math if you plan on keeping track.”

  “Enough,” Elowen said. Her voice carried even over the noise. “We’ll have plenty to discuss once we make it out of here.”

  “If we make it out of here,” Nars muttered.

  Greg risked a glance at her, but she would not meet his eyes.

  It felt worse than if she’d screamed at him.

  They burst back into the Depth Two mural chamber like a wave breaking.

  The great prophetic wall that had once shown the Stranger’s story now looked as ruined as Taco Bell bathroom. Huge slabs had torn free. Gold and silver inlay hung out of the stone like exposed wiring. The giant figure had been split through the chest by a crack wide enough for Greg to walk into.

  The floor buckled under their feet as another tremor rolled through.

  VAULT STABILITY: 7%

  Greg’s gaze snagged on the section where the Stranger had stood between sun and moon, chains running through his hands.

  Most of that panel was gone. Just a sliver remained: the edge of the cracked bridge, one broken chain, half a carved hand reaching for something that wasn’t there anymore.

  He almost stopped.

  Elowen brushed past him without looking up.

  They crossed the chamber. A chunk of ceiling punched down where they had just been, smashing the remnant of the “good outcome” carving into rubble.

  Violet hissed through her teeth. “Prophecy’s not subtle today.”

  The corridor beyond was worse. The neat lines of relief-carved priests and chains now wore fractures like scars. Sockets where glowstones had once been steady points of light now spat erratic sparks. Corruption seeped from the cracks in lazy, smoky tendrils that drifted down the ramp.

  It smelled like a burned-out computer and old meat.

  “Don’t breathe too deep,” Violet warned. “The moonstink is already choking this place to death.”

  “Any more helpful tips?” Nars asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Run faster.”

  They took the ramp at a controlled skid. Dust avalanched around their ankles. Greg’s lungs burned. His sword felt twice as heavy. Above them, something structural gave way with a long, drawn-out groan that became a crash and then a series of smaller crashes.

  VAULT STABILITY: 4%

  Time to Collapse: 60 seconds

  They hit Depth One’s level like drowning men hitting the surface.

  The upper halls were barely recognizable. The neat, symmetrical entry chamber where Greg had first seen the Vault UI now slumped in on itself. One of the doorways had simply melted, stone drooling into a glassy curtain that still steamed. The other gaped open, the way back to the entrance ramp a tunnel of cracks and falling dust.

  “Exit!” Doran barked.

  They sprinted down the final corridor. Greg remembered walking this path in, heart hammering with awe and fear and the giddy conviction that he had finally taken fate into his own hands, that he was doing something heroic.

  Now the walls looked like they’d been through a war. Sun glyphs flickered and died as they passed. Moon sigils swelled, pulsed, then burst, sending droplets of black light spattering across the stone.

  The Rage pressed against his ribs again, matching pace with them.

  Let me carry you, it whispered. You’re tired. I can get you out.

  He fidgeted with his glasses and kept his eyes on Elowen’s back.

  The entry hall was a mess.

  Stone columns lay smashed across the floor in jagged lines. The once-smooth ramp to the surface had fractured into ugly steps, corruption seeping up through the cracks like fog.

  Rattlings swarmed the lower half of the hall in a chittering carpet, lit from below by the crawling glow. Their pale eyes gleamed in the half-light. Some clung to the walls like spiders, little clawed hands digging into the stone.

  Greg’s sword came up on reflex.

  Elowen flinched.

  “Put it down,” Violet said sharply, “or I’ll put you down. I don’t know how you could possibly make things any worse, but I am not willing to find out.”

  VAULT STABILITY: 2%

  Time to Collapse: 30 seconds

  The Rattlings hissed at them, teeth bared. For some reason they didn’t rush the party. Not yet. It was as if the Vault’s dying energies confused them as much as it did everything else.

  “We can’t fight and run,” Nars said. “Not up that.” He jerked his chin at the ramp.

  Greg followed his gaze.

  The path out was a jagged wound, more cliff than walkway now. Even if they made it up through the falling debris and the Rattlings, the ramp might simply… stop.

  System text pinged the corner of his vision.

  EXIT??PROTOCOLS – AVAILABLE

  Require??s:[Δ PERMISSIONS]

  “There,” Elowen said quietly.

  She pointed toward one side of the hall.

  Greg squinted through the dust.

  A relief carving he’d barely noticed on the way in now burned with fresh light. A disc of sun over a crescent moon, lines radiating outward. The floor in front of it glowed in a ring, glyphs crawling along the edge in tight, frantic spirals.

  “An ancient portal gate,” Violet breathed. “Like Petar’l was using. But we don’t know how to activate them. No one does, except him apparently. Do we?”

  “No,” Elowen replied, defeated.

  The Rattlings surged with needful hunger, sensing the growing desperation of their prey.

  “Maybe…” she started, but trailed off. Greg watched her slip her mask of determination back on. “I need time. Maybe if I pray, I can—”

  VAULT STABILITY: 1%

  Time to Collapse: 12 seconds

  Doran hefted his axe. “Greg,” he said, without looking at him, “guard the flank. Just stand there and… don’t do anything stupid. Don’t do anything at all, if you can help it.”

  You could only pray so much in twelve seconds. His weird bullshit had gotten them into this mess, maybe it could get them out. The strange carvings had a trigger only he could see…

  ?? [Δ PERMISSIONS]

  Engaged

  [Transit Circle]

  Offline

  Divine energy required

  [SUN] or [MOON]? ??

  Elowen stepped into the circle. Golden light climbed up her legs, recognized her, and flared.

  “Totth,” she whispered. “Your humble servant begs you. Show us that the sun has not yet set on this world.”

  The sun disc in the carving brightened. Lines of light shot out along the ring at her feet.

  [Transit Circle] PRIMED

  Destination: [BLUCLIFFE]

  Stability: 61%

  “Everyone in,” Violet snapped. “We are officially out of time.”

  Nars joined Elowen, bow still in hand, eyes scanning the swarm. Doran stepped in, setting himself as a last wall. Violet jumped in and yanked a potion bottle from her belt, hurling it at the closest pack; it burst into a spray of noxious gas that made them reel back.

  Greg didn’t move.

  “Greg,” Doran said. “Now.”

  He hesitated, just a fraction of a second, looking back down the hallway toward the depths.

  He had done this. Broken the Heart. Triggered the cascade. Whatever came out of the Vault next, whatever crawled, spilled, or flew, would be because of the choices he had made here today.

  For a heartbeat he wanted to stay. To just close his eyes and wait until the ceiling finished the job he’d started. It would be clean. Simple. Easier than facing all the problems that waited for them outside. Maybe the solution to them.

  Elowen still wouldn’t look at him.

  Her jaw was clenched around whatever she wasn’t saying.

  He stepped into the circle.

  Light slammed up around them, a pillar that swallowed sight and sound. The Vault’s roar cut off.

  For one dizzy instant, they were nowhere.

  They came out on their knees.

  The transit circle spat them onto uneven ground with all the grace of a screaming vomit session. Greg’s hands hit dirt, not stone. Cold air slapped his face. The taste of it was wrong.

  He pushed himself upright.

  They stood on a low rise overlooking Blucliffe.

  Once, the town had been a collection of shabby stone buildings clinging to a river bend. Smoke from cookfires. Lanterns. Fields.

  Now it was a silhouette behind a curtain of shadow.

  A slow-moving veil of darkness hung over the town like spilled ink, shot through with dull silver veins. Buildings within it twisted in and out of view, outlines warping as if someone were erasing and redrawing them over and over. Where the corruption touched the river, the water glowed faintly and ran thicker.

  Shapes moved in the haze. Some small and fast. Some large.

  WORLD STATE UPDATED:

  [SHATTERED VAULT] – FAILED

  Local Corruption: High

  Nearest Safezone: None detected

  No one said anything.

  The wind carried a faint sound up the hill. Screams, maybe. Not all of them sounded human.

  Violet sank down onto the grass, knees giving out. She laughed once, a short, wild sound with no humor in it.

  “Congratulations,” she said hoarsely. “We made it out.”

  Nars didn’t look at Greg. Doran rested the head of his axe against the ground, staring at the town. The lines around his mouth were deep.

  “This is on me,” Greg said. The words felt small and stupid in his own ears. “I… I did this.”

  “No shit,” Nars said simply.

  Violet didn’t argue.

  Elowen stood a little apart, her silhouette rigid against the boiling dark. Her hands were tight balls at her sides. Greg could see her shoulders rise and fall with each breath.

  He opened his mouth. “El—”

  She flinched. Not much. Just enough that he saw it. Like the sound of his voice hurt. She did not turn around.

  The Rage was very quiet now.

  It didn’t need to say anything. The proof of what it could do was smeared across the horizon.

  Greg’s HUD flickered.

  THE QUEST OF LEGEND updated!

  New Objective: Defend Blucliffe

  from annihilation (time-sensitive).

  Greg didn’t say anything else. He didn’t want to waste his breath, or his friends’ patience, if they were still his friends.

  He had thought choosing to act, finally, had made him a hero, but it had only led to destruction and disaster.

  Now he had to choose again: to fix what he himself had broken.