The air shifted the moment I stepped onto the second floor.
I felt it before I saw it—like a low hum beneath my skin, vibrating through my bones. It wasn't pain. It wasn't warmth. It was change. My limbs suddenly felt lighter, my chest broader. Every breath came easier. The weight of fear was still there, but my body didn't buckle beneath it like before.
I stood straighter.
Stronger.
Faster.
My fingers flexed, and for a moment I swore I could hear the strength in my tendons, like cables drawn taut. The sword I'd dragged like dead weight just an hour ago now felt manageable. Natural.
"What the hell…?" I whispered to no one. My voice was steadier too, less raspy, more… firm.
Something was happening to me.
But I didn't know why.
The cave around me had changed. Gone were the cramped stone corridors and blood-soaked walls of the first floor. The second floor opened up like a cathedral buried in the earth. Massive stone columns jutted out of the ground like the ribs of a sleeping god. The air was thick, but breathable—tinged with the faint scent of metal and old water.
Bioluminescent fungi pulsed on the walls in scattered patches, casting a sickly blue-green hue across the floor. It was still dim, still drenched in shadow, but now I could see. The silence was deafening, so clean and pure it made my ears ring. Not a single creature. Not a breeze. Not even the sound of dripping water.
Just silence.
And me.
And far across the vast chamber, clearly visible: stairs.
Leading up.
My heart sank.
"There's no exit," I muttered bitterly. "It just keeps going up."
The sight of it—those ancient stone steps climbing into more unknown darkness—twisted my stomach into a knot. I wanted to scream. I wanted to curse. I wanted to collapse and cry like a child.
Instead, I sat.
On cold stone, sword laid across my lap, staring at the path ahead like it might blink and disappear.
It didn't.
Why? Why was this happening to me?
Just days ago, I was a nobody. Chris—the invisible, the unwanted. A background character barely written into the world. Now I was crawling through hell with a sword in my hand and blood on my stolen clothes.
I closed my eyes, breathing through my nose.
This is just like the stories.
The thought came unbidden.
Those novels I used to lose myself in—the ones where pathetic, powerless nobodies were thrown into fantasy worlds filled with monsters and gods. The heroes always started broken, beaten. Misfortune always came first.
But then… something changed.
They rose.
Am I… becoming one of them?
I looked down at my hands. They were no longer trembling. The burn scars from the fire had faded. My cuts were healing.
I didn't feel human anymore.
But this wasn't how it was supposed to feel. In those stories, the protagonists were given companions. Cheat skills. Plot armor. A system that explained everything.
I had none of that.
Just fear. And instinct.
And instinct was screaming now.
A deep, primal sense of wrongness hung in the air like invisible smoke. I couldn't hear anything—but something was watching me. I was sure of it.
I stood slowly, gaze sweeping the floor.
Nothing.
Stillness.
I hated this place.
The second floor looked like freedom from a distance—open, vast, clear line of sight—but it was worse than the claustrophobic horror below. At least in tight spaces, you could predict where the enemy came from. Here?
Anything could be watching.
Anything could be waiting.
And I had to cross this whole damn space to reach the next floor.
"Why does it go up?" I whispered, voice tight with frustration. "Why not out? Why not anywhere else?"
There was no answer.
Only the echo of my own question bouncing mockingly off the stone.
I picked up my sword and held it close. The silence was so total that the scrape of steel against stone as I shifted echoed for what felt like minutes. My breath puffed visibly in the air. The cold had intensified again—subtle, but enough to feel like the cave was sucking the warmth from me on purpose.
I didn't want to move.
But staying still felt just as dangerous.
My legs tensed, ready. Every step forward felt like it might be my last. I kept my back to one of the rib-like pillars, checking every corner, every crack. Nothing moved—but it felt like something was moving just out of sight.
I stopped again halfway across, behind another pillar.
What would those protagonists have done?
I thought about the heroes I'd spent years admiring—how they faced worse things than this and kept going. How they trusted that misfortune would flip. That despair would become power.
Maybe I'm wrong, I thought. Maybe this isn't the part where I rise.
Maybe this is just the part where I break.
I was beginning to understand something ugly—something terrifying that those stories always skipped over: the space between the pain and the power. The void where you didn't know which way your life would go. That dark middle chapter where you're no longer who you were, but not yet anything new.
A strange sound made me freeze.
A heartbeat.
Not mine.
A single, loud thud—then silence again.
My eyes darted across the floor, looking for movement. Nothing.
But the sense of dread intensified. The instinct. Like the cave itself was waiting for me to make the next move.
Something was ahead of me.
Something wrong.
And the path forward—the stairs to the third floor—stood there like a judge waiting to pass sentence.
I felt stronger.
But was it enough?