Light mirrored in Rein’s eyes like twin blue stars lost in the darkness.
The cabin’s cramped basement was gone, replaced by a stretching unknown.
It was a massive stone tunnel, its far end swallowed by endless night. The ceiling arched twenty feet high, a vault of rough masonry built to hold back the weight of the world. No torches or mana lamps lined the path, only the cold, jagged surfaces of rough-hewn rock. Yet, the stone held a strange, crystalline luster, catching the flicker of his magic and mirroring it back in fractured splinters.
He reached out and touched the wall. Solid. Cold.
His fingertips confirmed it with brutal certainty. This was no illusion. No glitch. The heavy humidity and the scent of stagnant earth clinging to the air told him the truth—he was no longer on the surface.
“…Ah,” Rein breathed, a tired smile tugging at nothing. He shook his head once. “Of course.”
He glanced toward the darkness ahead.
“So the book was a trap.”
And his voice lowered, almost amused—almost annoyed.
“Which means Killian… or whoever planned this… really likes B-grade horror.”
The boy with wind-tangled hair stamped his foot against the stone floor. The sound boomed outward, echoing again and again through the cavernous space.
“LIZ,” he said. “You awake? Confirm our coordinates. Are we still in Arcadia?”
[LIZ: I wasn’t napping. I was thinking.
Okay—good news and bad news.
Good news: you’re still in Arcadia.
Bad news… this isn’t the Arcadia we know.]
Rein frowned. “Meaning?”
[LIZ: Remember the strange runes on the book’s cover—the ones you had me scan?
Good timing, by the way. I finished the scan right before you got warped here.]
“Yeah. The moment I hesitated… and the rich girl ruined everything,” he said.
[LIZ: The inscription reads Ekhosar Def’vor.
Doesn’t it sound like the name of some ancient plague?]
[LIZ: In old Arathean, it comes out as something like ‘Devourer of Echoes.’ But the spelling is deliberately wrong—like someone trying too hard to sound ancient—and getting it wrong.]
“Ekhosar Def’vor…” Rein repeated. “Sounds like a trash-tier item name from Diablo.”
[LIZ: If it isn’t a native language, then it came from elsewhere. Which confirms my hypothesis—the black book originated from another world.]
[LIZ: Judging from the structure, it’s Arcadia in Arath… but an outdated version. One that hasn’t been patched in a very long time.]
Something clicked. Dopamine flooded his brain.
“Many-Worlds Interpretation!?”
“Hugh Everett…” Rein exhaled.
“You magnificent bastard. You were right. This isn’t a world—it’s a branch.”
Don't tell me… The universe is just a messy stack of unoptimized code?
[LIZ: But the "Branch" you're so excited about? In this specific version of reality, the basement beneath that cabin didn't just stay a dusty cellar.
It evolved. Or more accurately… it rotted into a full-scale dungeon.]
[LIZ: Congratulations, Rein. You’ve just proven the many-worlds theory—by landing in the multiverse’s trash bin.]
“Yeah. And unfortunately, they don’t hand out Nobel Prizes in a dump like this,” Rein muttered.
Rein crossed his arms, tapping his fingers in rhythm as he surveyed his surroundings.
“So this Ekhosar… whatever it’s called,” he muttered, dismissing the name with a sharp wave of his hand. “It’s a Quantum Bridge. It forced a phase-lock between two divergent wavefunctions of Arath.”
He paced a short, tight circle, his boots crunching against the floor.
“The fact that your signal is still reaching me confirms we’re in a state of quantum entanglement. Our local space hasn’t fully decohered from the original branch yet.”
Stopping abruptly, he reached out to catch a floating speck of dust, watching it vanish into a micro-fissure in the air. “But the energy density required to stabilize a bridge across such a high entropy gap… it’s unsustainable. This is a temporary glitch, not a permanent portal.”
[LIZ: Ten points for Gryffindor—or whatever world you think you’re in, Rein. This bridge is a thermodynamic nightmare. It’s hemorrhaging mana just to stay coherent.]
The HUD in his vision flickered.
[LIZ: Current ‘Stability Window’? You’ve got 32 minutes and 17 seconds before the Phase-lock breaks and you become permanent residents of this dumpster.]
Reality snapped back into place.
In the corner of his vision, red numerals pulsed: 32:15, 32:14, 32:13—counting down to oblivion.
“Damn it, LIZ. Since when did ‘permanent exile’ fall into your low-priority notifications?” Rein hissed, forcing the fog out of his thoughts.
[LIZ: You didn't ask, and the math literally just finished rendering. I’m an AI, not a psychic.]
Rein lifted his gaze, his eyes scanning the absolute darkness of the path unfolding ahead.
Judging by the way sound echoed through the stone corridors—If I was pulled here… the others must be scattered across the dungeon as well.
Before he could form the next plan, frantic footsteps echoed from ahead—mixed with hysterical cries for help.
That voice—
“Jalara.”
She was close.
Rein moved instantly.
He pushed off the ground and launched himself down the tunnel at full speed.
With Mana Vision active, the darkness posed no obstacle at all.
But as he ran, something felt wrong.
The mana here wasn’t pure. It was thick. Polluted. Heavy—like stagnant water left to rot.
It didn’t glow gently like fireflies, the way mana in Arath usually did.
This place felt… contaminated. Diseased. As if something malignant had corrupted the world’s energy source.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
If this was Arath, it was the Fallout version of it.
Ahead of him—a girl was running. Staggering. Fleeing for her life.
Then Rein’s eyes focused, and his blood ran cold.
She was decapitated.
Jalara’s severed body stumbled forward a few more steps before collapsing onto the cold stone floor. Blood poured from her neck in a steady, obscene stream.
From the shadows behind her, something stepped forward. Each footstep sent a dull tremor through the stone beneath Rein’s feet. A knight clad in jet-black armor emerged—towering nearly eight feet tall.
The space above its shoulders was a jagged, empty void.
One hand dragged a massive, bloodstained greatsword along the ground, the metal screaming against the stone with every scrape. The other hand held something aloft.
Jalara’s head.
Rein stopped.
“Oh, come on,” he muttered. “A cliché?”
Headless Knight Leontes… One of the seven DVM urban legends Mira used to babble about nonstop?
He remembered it clearly—a made-up legend older students used to scare freshmen. The original statue on campus had never had a head to begin with.
And yet, in this twisted dungeon, the knight was missing its crown.
The knight swung Jalara’s head back and forth like a treasured toy, blood spattering the stone walls in an obscene arc. Then, with grotesque care, it placed the head atop the empty, jagged collar of its armor.
From the seams of the cold steel, thin, rusted wires sprouted like parasitic vines. They burrowed into her pale skin, stitching flesh to metal in a frantic, crude stitching—a violent union that forced the dead girl’s neck to seat firmly onto the gorget.
The once-proud, beautiful face of House Luden’s heiress was now mangled, soaked in blood, and bound by rusted iron.
Her eyes rolled… and locked onto Rein. Her lips stretched into a warped grin.
“Aaah…”
A broken sound crawled out of the severed throat. Blood spilled from her mouth with every forced movement of the jaw.
The eyes turned a deep, murderous crimson.
“That head…”
The voice dragged itself out through Jalara’s bloodied lips, pointing its massive blade at Rein.
“…belongs to me.”
Rein rubbed his hair in pure irritation and let out a long sigh.
He looked at the thing before him the way one might look at trash.
“Okay. I get the idea.”
He raised his finger and aimed at the center of the blood-soaked forehead.
BANG.
A compressed mana round tore through the air, warping mass itself.
A small hole appeared between Jalara’s brows—
Then the back of her skull detonated, spraying bone and brain matter across the corridor.
That was Pit Viper, first shot.
And it was only the beginning.
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.
Rein unloaded without mercy. These mana rounds—modified from the Magic Missile—were accelerated to near-supersonic speed.
At near-supersonic speed, they punched through the steel as if it were cardboard—especially at this range.
To Rein, killing a slow, armored giant was no different from shooting a stationary target at a carnival.
Through Mana Vision, Rein didn’t see flesh. He saw magic circuits.
A complex of magical systems embedded inside the armor—substituting for eyes and ears it no longer possessed.
However, something had distorted the structure. Sloppily copied.
Like someone tried to recreate Corvus topology from memory—and forgot the rules.
Flaws everywhere.
The headless knight staggered backward under the impacts, slamming into the stone wall.
Its greatsword flailed wildly as something systematically erased its “senses.”
Finally—one last Pit Viper round punched straight into the core control circuit embedded in its chest.
The shriek of tearing metal echoed through the tunnel as the internal mechanisms shattered. The massive armored body—hundreds of kilograms of steel—heaved once, then succumbed to gravity. It collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, leaving only the smell of burnt mana and the heavy silence of the dungeon.
Rein walked past the fallen shell, glancing once at Jalara’s discarded head without expression.
“Figures,” he muttered.
“No brain of your own… so you go stealing someone else’s.”
His gaze flickered to the corner of his vision, where the countdown pulsed in a relentless red.
[28:32... 28:31...]
Three minutes and forty-five seconds.
Wasted on a glorified toaster that didn't even deserve a second glance. To anyone else, it was a feat of incredible combat; to him, it was a failure in time management.
“Still too slow,” he hissed.
He stepped over the armored carcass, not even bothering to look back as he vanished into the deepening darkness of the tunnel.
Behind him, the shattered remains of a campus legend lay silent—nothing more than a heap of scrap metal in a forgotten grave.
Far away—
Boris dragged Dana through stone tunnels that twisted like the intestines of some colossal beast.
Cold sweat ran in rivulets, darkening his collar and plastering silver strands of hair to his temples. He hurled counterattacks again and again—Fire Bolt, Magic Missile—but the flames and light vanished the instant they touched the white fog ahead.
It was absence.
As if he were pouring mana into a bottomless void.
That was the real problem.
Boris was a support mage—not a front-line combatant. His spell repertoire consisted mostly of basic utilities, nowhere near enough to damage whatever was pursuing them. Even Eye of the Beholder, the spell he prided himself on, couldn’t pierce the dense, freezing mass of white.
Dana ran behind him, gasping for breath. Her body was frail—true to form for a bookworm. Her attack spells mirrored Boris’s in theory, but their destructive power was noticeably weaker. At this point, knowledge was the only weapon she had left.
“I—I remember now!” she shouted through ragged breaths. “Boris… that thing—it’s a Veilshade!”
“What?!” Boris clenched his jaw as he yanked her into a darker side passage. Just a few body-lengths behind them, the mist flowed forward—not drifting, but advancing with the hunger of something alive.
“It’s a legendary monster from Northreach,” Dana gasped, fighting for breath. “We haven’t seen one for over a century. I thought it was just a story.”
The tunnel walls squeezed inward, drawing a curse from Boris's lips.
“Then how the hell is something like that here?!”
Dana could only shake her head weakly.
She had no answer—and that absence birthed an even more terrifying question in Boris’s mind.
If a creature that vanished centuries ago could appear here—
then where, exactly, were they now?
…
…
Mira and Kellen ran until the path ended.
They skidded to a stop against the ruins of a collapsed stone archway, surrounded by heaps of broken brick. The light from Flare illuminated a narrow gap between the fallen walls—a tunnel barely wide enough for a single body.
Mira didn’t hesitate. Panic shoved her forward as she squeezed through first, leaving Kellen behind—frozen in place, trembling.
Heavy iron chains scraped against stone behind them.
Footsteps followed—slow, crushing, each step shaking the ground.
Just from the shadow stretching across the wall, Mira knew. The horror stories she’d once told jokingly at club meetings were real.
A monster born from something DVM had buried and forgotten.
But according to legend, it was supposed to appear only on nights of the full moon.
Or maybe—just maybe—those old rules no longer applied inside this warped dungeon.
“Kellen! Hurry—crawl in here!” Mira shouted from inside the crevice. The orange glow of her flare revealed that the narrow tunnel opened into another chamber beyond. “It’s too big! It won’t be able to follow us!”
Kellen bit his lip until he tasted blood. The moment the chains rounded the corner, he dropped and squeezed in after her.
He crawled through the constricting stone. Mira slowed, waiting for him to catch up. She could see his face just an arm’s length away and was about to push forward when—
“H—Help! The chains! They’ve got my leg!”
Kellen’s scream echoed through the narrow tunnel.
He thrashed wildly as icy metal wrapped around his ankle, dragging him backward inch by inch. He looked up at Mira, eyes shaking behind his monocle—pure desperation.
Then came the sound of a yank.
Kellen’s body was ripped from the tunnel in an instant, his scream swallowed by the darkness beyond.
Mira’s eyes went wide. Her heart pounded so hard it felt like it might burst from her chest.
“Oh shit!”
It was the first curse she’d ever spoken in her life.
She threw everything into the crawl, squeezing through as the stone walls scraped her shoulders. Regret was extinguished, replaced by raw survival instinct. The exit was less than a foot away.
Just as her fingers brushed the outer stone, freezing iron bit around her ankle.
“No—no!”
A tremendous force yanked her backward. Mira clutched the tunnel’s edge with both hands, her nails tearing free one by one as she fought with everything she had. The limestone cracked under the strain.
The stone gave way.
Her hands grasped only empty air as she was dragged back toward the monster’s maw.
And then—
A firm hand snapped around her wrist.
Someone braced against the stone and wrenched her forward. The chains tore free from her ankle, ripping skin and drawing blood, but finally tearing free.
He pulled her clear—out of the chains’ reach.
Flare ignited again, bathing the space in light.
And there, clearly illuminated before her eyes, was the face of the one who had saved her at the last possible moment.
Mira broke down sobbing, whispering his name as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“…Marten?”
These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.
Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.
Artifact & Relic Codex
Type: Relic Book
Translation: “Devourer of Echoes” (Arathean, archaic/deliberately corrupted spelling)
Description: A phase-locked spatial bridge created by a quantum entanglement anomaly triggered by an artifact book. The term “Ekhosar Def’vor” appears to refer both to the book and the warped space it creates.
Function: It anchors two divergent wavefunctions of the world of Arath, effectively creating a pocket dimension or dungeon built from a corrupted or decaying version of reality.
Type: Manifested Urban Legend / Dungeon Entity
Origin: DVM urban myth, used to scare freshmen. The original statue never had a head.
Description: An eight-foot-tall knight clad in jet-black armor, who decapitates victims and forcibly attaches their heads to its armor using rusted wire.
Magical Structure: Rein notes that the magical circuits inside the armor are a flawed imitation of known Corvus topology, suggesting someone attempted to replicate an advanced magical construct—and failed.
Type: Legendary Monster
Origin: Northreach (last sighted over a century ago)
Description: A sentient, living fog that consumes all light, sound, and mana. Boris and Dana encounter it while escaping through the dungeon.
Behavior: Impervious to basic magic, absorbing mana-based spells without effect. Generates intense cold and dread.
Classification: Possibly a dungeon-class mythic entity, tied to the corrupted mana ecology of Ekhosar Def’vor.
Description: Monster associated with enormous iron chains. Appears to drag victims backward with impossible strength.
Behavior: Attacks Mira and Kellen. It is likely connected to the dungeon’s automated predator system.
Type: Custom-Enhanced Magic Missiles
Function: Highly accelerated, compressed mana bullets designed by Rein. Far faster and more destructive than standard Magic Missiles.
Traits: Capable of punching through armor and dismantling magical constructs at close range. Rein uses them systematically to destroy the core systems of enemies.
Rein describes this corrupted dungeon-version of Arath as a “Fallout” variant—heavily implying post-apocalyptic or decayed magic infrastructure. The mana is described as diseased, polluted, and dangerously unstable.
Key Difference: Magic in this world is dysfunctional—constructs are flawed, mana is rotting, and monsters defy standard ecology.
Conclusion: The Ekhosar Def’vor dungeon appears to be a decayed reflection of Arath—a world where magical systems collapsed or were corrupted beyond repair.
Pop Culture Codex
Developer: Interplay Entertainment (original), later Bethesda Game Studios
Genre: Post-apocalyptic RPG / Open World / Survival
First Release: Fallout (1997)
Core Themes:
– Nuclear war, societal collapse, and survival in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
– Retro-futurism meets dystopia—1950s aesthetics with ruined technology.
– Harsh moral choices, branching narratives, and consequences of unchecked ambition.
Signature Aesthetic:
A decaying world where pre-war technology and magic-like science (like radiation mutations, AI cities, and energy weapons) persist amid ruins and moral ambiguity. Often includes vaults, ruins of past civilizations, and corrupted remnants of old-world ideals.
Diablo (Video Game Series)
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Genre: Action RPG / Dark Fantasy / Dungeon Crawler
First Release: Diablo (1996)
Core Themes:
– Eternal struggle between Heaven, Hell, and Humanity.
– Dark gothic fantasy aesthetic, filled with corruption, demons, curses, and forgotten ruins.
– Descending deeper into increasingly dangerous layers of reality to fight evil itself.
Signature Aesthetic:
Claustrophobic catacombs, cursed altars, undead abominations, and hellish corruption spreading through crumbling worlds. Lore-heavy storytelling with mythological overtones and visual horror.
Physics Reference
Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI)
A real-world quantum physics theory first proposed by Hugh Everett. It suggests that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in some “world” or universe.
In the story, Rein connects the warped reality he enters to the MWI, recognizing the “branch” as a divergent outcome or timeline of Arcadia.
Quantum Bridge
A fictional construct referring to a tunnel or portal that links two separate quantum realities—effectively creating a phase-lock between divergent wavefunctions.
In the story, it’s a temporary connection between two “branches” of reality—specifically, two versions of the world of Arath. Not stable because of thermodynamic and magical entropy. This bridge required immense mana to remain coherent and is described by Rein as “a thermodynamic nightmare.”
Wavefunction / Phase-lock
In quantum mechanics, a wavefunction describes the quantum state of a system. “Phase-locking” in this context means synchronizing two different versions of reality so they temporarily behave as one.
Rein states that the bridge forces a phase-lock between two versions of Arath, allowing data (like LIZ’s voice) to still be transmitted.
Quantum Entanglement
A real quantum phenomenon where two particles become linked, such that the state of one instantaneously affects the state of the other—regardless of distance.
Rein deduces that their current location must still be entangled with their original timeline since LIZ’s signal remains active.
Entropy Gap
A fictional application referring to the energy cost of bridging two universes at different “entropic states.” Higher entropy generally means more disorder.
The “gap” mentioned implies that the corrupted dungeon version of Arath is a decayed, more disordered timeline—making the bridge between them difficult to sustain.
Decoherence
In real physics, quantum decoherence is the process by which quantum systems lose their quantum behavior and start behaving classically, typically through interaction with their environment.
Rein says the local space “hasn’t fully decohered,” meaning their current location is still partially tied to the original reality.
Thermodynamic Nightmare
A colorful but technically meaningful term used by LIZ. A bridge consuming massive energy to stay stable violates basic thermodynamic efficiency.
It implies instability and rapid energy loss—hence, the countdown timer.
Energy Density
Refers to the amount of energy stored in a given system or region of space. Stabilizing a bridge across realities with differing entropy would require absurd energy levels—hence Rein’s comment that it’s “unsustainable.”
