Chương 17: “The Door”

He opened it on a Friday night because the Seekers were getting closer and he needed more floors and he couldn't get past the third floor without dealing with the door and readiness, he decided, was something you have after the fact. The room on the other side was not one he built. He knew every room he built. He was the dungeon. The dungeon was him. He had made each room from nothing with intention, and this room he did not make. It was small. The walls were smooth, which his walls were not.

The floor was level, which his floors never were. And in the center of the room was a single thing. A cradle. Old wood. Empty. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Vorrath stood in the doorway for a long time. He understood what this was. It wasn't a threat. Certainly not something the enemy put here.

Something his dungeon had made on its own, something that grew from the bond, from proximity to June and Lauren and the texture of the life being lived above him. A dungeon, given enough time and the right conditions, grows toward what it protects. He did not know this. He had never protected anything before. He closed the door very carefully. He went back upstairs. He didn't tell June. He didn't tell anyone.

He sat on the windowsill and the night was quiet and somewhere in the third floor behind him, below him, there was a room that his dungeon had decided to make, and it was warm, and he didn't build it, and he was going to need a while before he knew what to do with that. System: Bond Strength: 48%. New room generated: Hearth Chamber. We didn't do that. That was you. Not the you that makes decisions. The other one. The one that's been on that windowsill every night. Don't panic. It's a good room.