Chương 46: “Eight Floors”

He went down every night that week. Twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, faster now, the dungeon opening fully to him, no resistance, not even the weight of dormancy. It was like moving through himself at full depth for the first time in three thousand years and finding that himself was larger than he remembered and warmer than he expected and shaped, in places, by things he didn't consciously put there. The twenty-seventh floor had a room with Gerald's soft angles. He didn't build it. Gerald didn't build it.

It was there, in the dormant stone, waiting. The twenty-eighth had the same warmth as the kitchen at 14 Arren Lane when the temperature was exactly right. The twenty-ninth was full of light. He did not know where the light was coming from. Dungeons did not have light. He stood in it for a while and didn't ask. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. On the thirtieth floor he found the guardian.

It wasn't the one he had woken on the ninth floor, but another one, older, one he had made first, at the very beginning, before he became what he became. He'd forgotten it existed. It was not designed to destroy. He could see this immediately. It was simply not the architecture of something made to kill. It was the architecture of something made to stand between. To hold a line and take the hit so something behind it didn't have to.

He had made this first, before the decision on the second floor, and even before the young man by the fire chose what to become. He had made this when he was still the before-before, when he still built things to protect rather than consume. He stood in front of it and it woke up and looked at him and he looked at it. He thought it recognized him. Not the him of the last three thousand years. The him underneath that. He told it to come up to the surface. It followed him through thirty floors without question.

System: Bond Strength: 93%. Floors Reclaimed: 30 of 31. One floor left. We think you know which one. We think you've always known which one. Take your time. You've earned the time.