Cole hurried forward toward the bound man.

  His boots scuffed across the etched stone, and the sound carried too far in the chamber. The room was listening. He kept his eyes on the ropes, on the knots, on the raw skin around the prisoner’s wrists.

  Maybe now he’d finally get answers. Maybe this guy knew what was going on. Maybe he’d seen this System thing before. Maybe he’d tell Cole how to get out.

  Cole took two steps.

  Then the prisoner’s eyes widened.

  The air thinned. Cole did not know how he knew, but the warning hit him. A pure, animal certainty.

  You are about to die.

  He felt a sensation. A pressure behind his eyes. A cold weight at the back of his skull where the halo sat. His stomach dropped. His skin prickled.

  Authority.

  That single number on his sheet reached out and grabbed him by the throat and gave him a fraction of a second of notice.

  Cole’s head snapped up.

  And the world tried to split him in half.

  “Ashen Aegis!” he roared.

  A massive sword slammed down from above.

  The impact shook the chamber. Stone dust puffed off the floor in a ring. The force drove through Cole’s arms and shoulders even though the blade did not touch him. It was like standing behind a riot shield when a truck hit it.

  His Aegis held. Barely.

  The sword still inched toward him, metal groaning against an invisible refusal. The blade pushed, slow and relentless, the air around it humming with violence. Cole’s teeth rattled. His knees buckled. He felt his boots sliding a fraction over stone.

  Then the force hit him sideways.

  He went flying.

  Cole tumbled across the floor, shoulder slamming stone, hip twisting, ankle barking with pain. The breath in his lungs exploded out. His vision flashed white at the edges.

  Pain tried to claim him. He shoved it away.

  Survive. Survive. Survive.

  Cole rolled onto his hands and knees, spat grit, and forced himself up. His shoulder screamed. His ankle screamed. Everything screamed.

  He did not care.

  He threw his hand up again, voice raw. “Ashen Aegis!”

  The air locked into place just as something else came down.

  The sword struck the invisible barrier again, and this time Cole braced. His feet skidded, stone grinding under his soles in a soft crunch. His muscles shook as he held the line.

  He got his first real look at what was trying to kill him.

  A knight.

  A thing wearing armor.

  It was huge, tall as a doorway, built like a linebacker. Its helmet had no face slit, no mouth, no human features. Only two ominous green orbs burned in the darkness inside.

  The armor was blacker than midnight. It swallowed light. Torches that should have shone on its breastplate simply failed, as if the metal drank brightness.

  Runes crawled across it. They shifted, subtly.

  Cole heard the armor move. Plates creaked together, slow and deliberate, like something ancient waking up and stretching its joints.

  The knight pulled the sword up. The blade was absurd. A slab of metal meant for chopping horses in half. Its edge shimmered with a thin green line, the same sick glow as the eyes.

  Cole swallowed hard.

  Tier two.

  Right. So the warm ups had ended.

  He forced air into his lungs and lifted his hand, palm forward. “Black Halo Lance!”

  Black light formed, thin and sharp, the humming. Cole pointed.

  The Lance snapped out and struck the knight in the chest.

  For an instant, Cole expected ash. Expected the same clean outcome as the corridor monsters.

  The knight staggered, but it did not fall.

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  The Lance left a scorched mark in the armor. A dent. A smoking smear of blackness that crawled a few inches and then stopped, as if the runes had decided they did not like it and forced it to behave.

  The knight straightened. Its head tilted.

  Assessing.

  Cole’s stomach tightened. It raised the sword again.

  Cole backed up fast, trying to create distance. His ankle screamed the moment he put weight on it. A hot spike of pain shot up his leg and made his vision wobble.

  He hissed between his teeth.

  He had twisted it in the tumble. Maybe worse. It did not matter. Pain was information, and right now the only important information was that he was still moving.

  He did not stop moving.

  “Disarm!” Cole shouted.

  The word hit the air. He felt it take hold. That same sensation as before.

  The knight shuddered.

  Cole watched the sword, waiting for it to clatter free like the frog spears had.

  It did not.

  The blade trembled. The knight’s gauntlet tightened. The sword stayed in its grip.

  Cole blinked. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  The thing fought the edict. It was resisting.

  Cole did not waste time complaining. He had learned one thing already in this place.

  When something does not work cleanly, you hit it differently.

  He pointed his hand not at the chest this time, but at the knight’s weapon arm. “Black Halo Lance!”

  The Lance struck the gauntlet and the forearm plating. The runes flared green. The armor smoked. The knight’s arm jerked.

  And the sword fell.

  It hit stone with a boom that shook dust from the torches.

  Cole sucked in a fast breath of relief he did not have time to enjoy. The glowing eyes locked onto him.

  Cole fired again, Lance after Lance, peppering the armor with black impacts. Dents appeared, smoking marks spread, and the runes flickered.

  The knight took one step. Then another. It reached down and picked the sword back up.

  Cole stared. “Right. Okay. Sure. You can do that.”

  A memory stabbed into his mind so sharply it almost made him laugh.

  Nathan at ten years old, sitting at the kitchen table with his character sheet and cheap plastic minis. Cole running an NPC who had knocked Nathan’s weapon away. Nathan arguing, indignant, that picking it up should be free.

  Cole insisting rules were rules.

  Nathan coming back later with the Player’s Handbook and a triumphant grin, pointing to the line about free object interaction.

  Cole’s throat tightened. The memory faded as quickly as it had come, leaving a bitter warmth behind it. Cole’s lips twitched despite himself.

  “Guess you used your free action, then,” he muttered.

  He might have been going insane, or maybe his brain was just desperate to find something familiar in a world that was no longer his.

  The knight launched itself at him.

  The stone floor seemed to press inward from the force of the takeoff. Air snapped. Torches bent their flames sideways for a breath.

  Cole’s heart kicked hard. “Ashen Aegis!”

  The air locked.

  The sword hit the invisible barrier and the whole room shuddered. The blade pressed. The Aegis held. Cole’s boots slid a few inches. His ankle flared with pain.

  He gritted his teeth and forced his weight down, shoulders shaking.

  Then he did something he should have done first.

  “Disarm!”

  The edict slammed into the knight again. The sword trembled. The knight’s grip fought back.

  Cole’s eyes flicked to the runes.

  They were the difference.

  He did not feel like a wizard. He did not feel clever. He felt like a delivery guy who had been dropped into a nightmare with three buttons and no instructions.

  But he had seen enough already to understand one rule.

  Magic had anchors.

  Those runes were anchors.

  Cole lifted his hand and aimed at a dense patch of shifting symbols across the forearm and shoulder.

  “Black Halo Lance!”

  The Lance hit the runes.

  The symbols blackened. The green glow flickered. The knight staggered, just a half step.

  Cole’s mind snapped into a pattern.

  Hit the runes. Break the anchor. Remove the tool.

  Cole forced himself to move, limping, circling, dragging his bad ankle across stone. His vision wobbled once from pain, but he kept going. He could not let the knight keep him pinned. He needed angles. He needed space.

  He fired Lance again, taking another patch of runes. Black burn spread. The knight jerked.

  Cole fired again. Another rune line snapped into black.

  The knight’s movements slowed. Not much. But enough.

  It raised the sword again, and Cole saw something change in its posture. This was not a simple overhead strike. The knight was coiling. Preparing. Putting everything into one decisive motion.

  It was going to throw the sword.

  “Ashen Aegis!” Cole shouted.

  The knight hurled the blade.

  The sword became a spear. It screamed through the air, green line along its edge blazing like a comet tail. The force behind it warped the air. Dust lifted off the ground as it passed.

  Cole’s Aegis flared.

  The sword hit the invisible barrier and slowed, but it did not stop. It pushed. It shoved through the refusal, forcing itself through.

  Cole’s eyes widened. His muscles locked. He threw everything he had into holding his ground.

  The sword crawled forward.

  Too far.

  The edge kissed his left shoulder.

  Fabric split. Skin opened. Pain detonated.

  Cole cried out, raw, involuntary, as blood sprayed hot down his arm and soaked his sleeve. The sword’s momentum died at last and clattered to the floor a foot behind him, ringing stone like a bell.

  Cole staggered, clutching his shoulder. His hand came away red.

  Too much red.

  His breath hitched. His stomach lurched.

  His Aegis had saved him. If the blade had not slowed, even that tiny amount, he would have been cut in half.

  The knight took a step toward him.

  It was slower now. Its movements had a faint stutter. The runes he had burned were doing something.

  But it was still coming.

  Cole’s head pounded. His heartbeat was a drum in his ears. His injured ankle throbbed. His shoulder screamed. His fingers went numb as he held pressure on the wound.

  This was the part where most people died. This was the part where panic did the killing for the monster.

  Cole sucked in a breath that tasted like iron.

  “Live, Cole,” he growled to himself, voice shaking. “Do something or die.”

  He lifted his head and bared his teeth at the knight like an animal. The green eyes burned back.

  Cole raised his hand.

  He could feel the halo behind his head, cold and heavy. The choir hum deepened, subtle but undeniable, and for a moment the torches seemed to dim as if the room had to make space for what he was about to do.

  He aimed at the last intact patch of runes across the knight’s chest, a cluster that still glowed strong, still shifting, still feeding the thing.

  Cole’s breath came out in a snarl. “Black,” he began, voice ragged.

  The knight stepped again.

  “Halo,” he forced out, shaking.

  His vision blurred. Blood dripped down his elbow and splashed onto the floor.

  “Lance!”

  The void light slammed into the runes.

  For an impossible moment, the world hung in balance. The knight froze mid step. The runes flared green, then black, then green again. The armor creaked, plates tightening as if something inside was trying to hold itself together by force of will.

  Cole’s knees buckled. Blackness crept in at the edges of his vision.

  He swayed, caught between falling and standing.

  His last thought was of Nathan.

  The last birthday Cole had been allowed to see. Nathan grinning as he opened the expensive dice set Cole had saved up for, holding it like it was treasure, like his dad showing up mattered more than any court order ever admitted.

  Cole’s throat tightened.

  He blinked, and the blackness swallowed half the room.