The minimap was confident.

  Otwin was not.

  He followed the pale route line out across the plains, boots sinking into dry grass and packed earth as the land rolled gently away from the town. The sky sat high and thin, clouds smeared like old paint, and the wind never quite settled. It tugged at his cloak, hissed through the grass, and carried nothing useful with it.

  At first, the path made sense.

  It tracked along shallow rises and skirted low ground where rainwater collected. It bent around old wagon scars and pointed him toward a break in the land he would have chosen himself. Otwin grumbled anyway, because grumbling came easier than trusting.

  “I would’ve gone left,” he muttered.

  The minimap did not respond.

  He walked for an hour like that, moving steadily, settling into the rhythm of travel. His back complained, but not sharply. Just enough to remind him that he was not young anymore and that yesterday had been worse than most days deserved.

  Then the route changed.

  The line ahead of him flickered once, subtle but unmistakable, and bent away from the direction he was already walking.

  Otwin stopped.

  He stared at the map, then at the land ahead. The ground there was open and firm. No obvious hazards. No reason to turn.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.

  Rerouting.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed through his nose. When he opened them, the line still angled away, patient and unyielding.

  “I just walked this way,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  Rerouting.

  Otwin turned slowly, scanning the new direction. The terrain dipped slightly, grass growing thicker where the soil held more moisture. It wasn’t dangerous. Just slower. Annoying.

  He took three steps in the original direction.

  The minimap adjusted again, pulling the route farther away.

  Otwin stopped dead.

  “Oh no,” he said. “Don’t do that. Don’t start doing that.”

  Rerouting.

  He swore under his breath and turned around.

  The detour cost him time. The ground softened, boots dragging as he crossed through a shallow depression where water had once pooled. When he climbed back up the far side, his calves burned and his patience was gone.

  Ten minutes later, the route snapped back toward where he had been going in the first place.

  Otwin stared at it.

  “You sent me around that for nothing,” he said.

  Path optimization complete.

  He laughed, sharp and humorless. “I’ve 'optimized' paths longer than you’ve existed.”

  The minimap did not disagree.

  The next reroute came in the woods.

  The plains gave way to a broad stand of trees, their trunks spaced irregularly, undergrowth thin but tangled. Otwin slowed by habit, stepping where roots showed through the soil and avoiding places where leaves lay too thick.

  The minimap led him in, then stopped.

  The line pulsed once, then redrew itself behind him.

  Otwin turned.

  “You want me to go back?”

  Rerouting.

  He looked ahead. The forest deepened slightly there, shadows thicker between trunks. Still nothing obviously wrong.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said.

  He took two steps forward.

  The map flashed.

  Rerouting.

  Otwin threw his hands up. “Fine. Fine.”

  He turned around and retraced his steps, muttering the whole way. Old habits surfaced as he walked, the complaints of a man who had spent his life hauling weight across bad ground.

  “Backtracking wastes daylight.”

  No response.

  “I could be eating by now.”

  Nothing.

  “This better not be because you don’t like mud.”

  Rerouting.

  He ground his teeth and kept moving.

  When he reached the edge of the woods again, he noticed the ground ahead had collapsed inward, hidden beneath leaves and rot. A shallow ravine cut through the forest floor, sides slick and unstable. One bad step would have sent him sliding down into a mess of broken roots and wet earth.

  Otwin stopped.

  He stared at it for a long moment.

  “…Huh,” he said.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The minimap held steady.

  He went around the ravine, following the new route, slower but safer. His grumbling softened, but it did not stop.

  The rest of the afternoon passed like that.

  Walk. Stop. Curse. Turn around. Walk again.

  Sometimes the reroutes spared him unstable ground. Sometimes they guided him across firmer stone hidden beneath grass. Once, they pulled him away from a low area that smelled faintly wrong, metallic and old.

  He did not thank the map.

  He did not apologize.

  He followed it anyway.

  By late afternoon, the rerouting slowed. The line ahead straightened, holding its shape for longer stretches at a time. Otwin’s shoulders sagged with fatigue, sweat cooling on his skin as the wind picked up again.

  “There,” he said, spotting a broken marker half-buried in the distance. “That’s old survey stone. I know this area.”

  The minimap did not contradict him.

  He trudged on, the land growing rougher, scarred in places by old impacts and half-buried metal that had no business being there. The sky darkened slightly as clouds thickened, the light turning dull and flat.

  ***

  The minimap changed without ceremony.

  The thin route line faded, replaced by a pale white circle that pulsed once and then held steady. Otwin slowed, eyes narrowing as he lifted his head and scanned the land in front of him.

  It did not look like anything.

  The ground was flat, the same broad stretch of open Wilds he had been walking through all day. Mud darkened the surface in wide patches, churned and dried and churned again by old weather. Rocks lay scattered everywhere, fist-sized to boulder-large, half sunk into the earth as if the land had tried and failed to swallow them.

  Otwin stopped at the edge of the circle and frowned.

  “This is it?” he muttered.

  Designated area reached.

  He shifted his weight and tested the ground with a careful step. It held. Soft, but not dangerous. The mud sucked at his boot, then let go with a quiet sound.

  “Looks like every other miserable stretch of ground out here,” he said.

  Warning. Ground integrity is compromised.

  Otwin rolled his shoulders and slid his pack off, letting it drop to the ground with a dull thump. He crouched and opened it, movements practiced and automatic. This was familiar territory. This was work.

  He laid his tools out on a flat rock nearby. A crowbar, its tip worn smooth from years of leverage. A screwdriver with a chipped handle. A battered multi-tool that had outlasted three coats and one bad fall. He checked each by touch, then straightened.

  “Unstable,” he said, glancing around again. “You say that about half the places I walk.”

  Risk assessment exceeds acceptable parameters.

  He snorted. “You’re a magical brain in my head, not my knees. I’ll manage.”

  Otwin stepped forward, boots squelching softly as he moved deeper into the circle. He prodded at the mud with the end of the crowbar, levering aside a rock and peering at the ground beneath. Nothing obvious. No hollow sound. No sudden give.

  The minimap pulsed faintly.

  Warning. Ground stability decreasing.

  Otwin straightened and jabbed the crowbar down again, harder this time. The earth resisted, then shifted slightly, mud oozing up around the metal.

  “See?” he said. “Still here.”

  Recommendation. Relocate to perimeter.

  He shook his head. “You’re being a wimp.”

  He took another step.

  The ground moved.

  Not a slow sink. Not a warning tremor. It dropped out from under him all at once, the surface collapsing with a wet, tearing sound. Otwin’s foot vanished, then his knee, then his other leg as the mud liquefied beneath him.

  “Whoa!!”

  He fell straight down.

  The world tilted violently as the sinkhole opened, sucking him into cold, clinging mud. His tools skittered away, crowbar clanging against stone before disappearing. Mud surged up around his waist, his chest, his arms, dragging him under with relentless weight.

  Otwin flailed, trying to grab anything solid, fingers slipping uselessly through wet earth. The sky vanished as the hole closed above him, replaced by darkness and pressure and the suffocating stink of old, stagnant mud.

  Critical hazard detected.

  He swallowed a mouthful of filth and choked, lungs burning as he was pulled deeper. The mud wrapped around him like hands, pinning his arms to his sides, dragging him down into the earth as if the ground itself had decided to finish the job.

  Otwin tried to scream.

  The mud took the sound and kept it.

  ***

  Otwin hit hard.

  Not straight down, but hard enough that the impact drove the breath out of him in a single, brutal rush. He landed flat on his back, the air leaving his lungs with a dull, helpless sound as soft mud gave way beneath him. It absorbed some of the force, just enough to keep bones from snapping, but not enough to make it painless.

  Pain flared anyway. Not sharp. Not focused. A wide, spreading ache that lit up his spine and shoulders and rattled through his skull.

  He lay there for a moment, stunned, staring into nothing.

  It was completely dark.

  No sky. No stars. No faint glow of daylight filtering through leaves. Just blackness and the thick, sour smell of wet earth. Mud clung to his clothes, heavy and cold, pulling at him when he tried to move.

  He sucked in a careful breath. His chest hurt, but it expanded. Air went in. Air came out. That was a good sign.

  Descent stopped.

  Otwin let his head fall back against the mud and groaned. “Thank you, Major Obvious.”

  There was a pause.

  I am DAC, a Diamond+ Power Core. I am not an officer in the military named Obvious.

  Otwin huffed despite himself, the sound turning into another groan as his ribs protested. He lay there, blinking uselessly into the dark, and wondered if that had been a joke.

  He decided not to ask.

  Everything hurt.

  Not in the screaming, catastrophic way he had expected, but in the slow, insistent way that told him he would feel this for days. He shifted one shoulder and winced. Shifted the other. Both moved.

  “Alright,” he muttered. “Let’s see what’s broken.”

  He started with his legs. He bent one knee carefully, then the other. Pain flared, but nothing caught or locked. He rolled his ankles, testing them, then pressed his heels into the mud and pushed. His legs responded.

  Still groaning, he brought a hand up to his chest and pressed gently along his ribs. Sore. Tender. No sharp spike of agony. He took another breath, deeper this time, and held it. It hurt, but it held.

  His shoulders came next. He rolled them one at a time, jaw clenched. They ached, but they moved. His arms followed, elbows bending, wrists turning. His fingers trembled slightly as he flexed them, mud squelching softly around his hands.

  Finally, he reached up and touched his head. He expected blood. Wet warmth. Something wrong.

  There was nothing.

  Otwin let out a long, shaky breath and lay still again, listening to the sound of it echo faintly around him. The space felt larger than it should have been. The darkness pressed in, thick and absolute.

  Then the ground above him shifted.

  It was subtle at first. A distant groan of stone. A slow, grinding movement that he felt more than heard. Otwin froze, heart hammering as mud trickled down onto his chest and neck.

  Light pierced the darkness.

  Thin shafts broke through above him, pale and dusty, cutting down through the black like spears. They widened slowly as more earth fell away, revealing the underside of a massive dome overhead. The surface was rough and uneven, packed with dirt and rock, but unmistakably curved.

  Otwin stared upward, breath caught in his throat.

  This wasn’t a simple sinkhole.

  The HUD flared.

  For a split second, his vision shattered into static and lines. Symbols flickered at the edges of his sight, rearranging themselves faster than he could track. Then the darkness peeled away.

  The space around him bloomed into view.

  Otwin gasped.

  The cavern lit up in shades of gray and green, details snapping into sharp relief. He could see the mud coating his clothes, the uneven stone beneath it, the walls rising around him in a broad, circular chamber. Rocks jutted from the ground at odd angles, some fractured, some smooth, as if shaped long ago by tools or forces he did not understand.

  The dome overhead loomed massive and ancient, its surface scored with faint lines and embedded debris. What he had taken for random collapse now looked deliberate. Constructed.

  His heart pounded as he pushed himself up onto one elbow, eyes darting across the chamber.

  Switched to low-light vision.

  Otwin swallowed hard, staring at a place that should not exist beneath open ground.

  “Of course you did,” he whispered.

  And for the first time since the sinkhole opened beneath his feet, fear settled in his chest, not because he might die here, but because he might have finally found what he's been looking for.