Chapter 13

  Kelix woke to the sound of water that did not sound like water. It was too smooth. Too soft. Like the ocean had learned to whisper.

  For a moment he didn't move. He lay facedown and let his body catalog pain the way it always did after a hit. Soreness in his shoulder. A dull ache in his ribs. The sting in his knuckles. A heavy throbbing at the back of his head that made him want to close his eyes again and pretend the last ten minutes had been a fever dream.

  Then he opened his eyes and saw blue sand.

  Not the pale, dirty kind that clung to shoes and towels during a trip to the beach. This was cobalt, bright and fine-grained, glittering faintly as if each grain had its own dull light.

  It stuck to his palms and the side of his face in soft clumps. When he pushed himself up, it slid off in a clean sheet, leaving a faint blue shimmer on his skin.

  He lifted his head, slow and careful, and stared out at the ocean.

  The water was green.

  Not murky, not algae-choked. A clear, vivid green that reminded him of glass bottles held up to sunlight. Small waves rolled in and broke in foamy lines that looked almost white, almost mint, and then retreated with a sound like silk dragging over stone.

  He swallowed once. His ears rang faintly. The air smelled different too. Salt, but with something sharp under it, like crushed leaves or mineral dust.

  Kelix pushed to his knees. The sand shifted under him in a way that felt slightly wrong, like it was lighter than it should be. His body wanted to sink more than it did.

  He looked up.

  The sky was the color of bruised twilight, but it wasn't dusk. The light was steady, coming from no clear sun. Instead of clouds, bubbles floated across the sky.

  Huge, translucent spheres drifted lazily overhead. Some were the size of cars. Some were the size of buildings. They caught the strange light and warped it, scattering faint rainbows across the water. Smaller bubbles clustered around larger ones like moons around a planet. A few popped silently and vanished, leaving no mist, no sound, only absence.

  Kelix stared until his eyes began to water.

  He forced himself to breathe. He forced his heart to slow down. Panic was useless. Panic was expensive.

  He checked his hands first. Both were intact. No blood. No burns. The right one tingled faintly, like it remembered the magenta aura and was embarrassed about it.

  He looked down at himself. His clothes were dusted blue. No wound marked his chest, but a gash had torn through the front and back of his shirt.

  His backpack strap was still over one shoulder. That was something.

  His leash was gone.

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  Finn.

  The thought hit like a punch to the gut.

  Kelix twisted, scanning the shoreline.

  The beach curved away on both sides, blue sand meeting jagged rocks that rose like broken teeth. Farther inland, he could see shapes that might have been trees, except they leaned at strange angles and their leaves looked too dark, almost violet. There were no buildings. No rides. No signs. No dead amusement park.

  No Finn. No Celeste. No Sheryl. No Damian. No suit man. No rift.

  Kelix pressed a hand to his chest and felt his heartbeat, hard and real. He was alive. That was not enough to be reassuring.

  He tried to stand and nearly swayed. The world tilted, then steadied. His feet sank slightly into the sand and left crisp prints that glowed faintly at the edges for a second before fading.

  Kelix stared at the glow and felt his skin prickle.

  He wasn't imagining this. He wasn't unconscious, nor was he in the park.

  He was somewhere else.

  He turned, taking in the horizon again. The green ocean stretched out to a line that curved too sharply, as if the world had a smaller radius than it should. The bubbles drifted like lazy sentries. The air tasted clean in a way that made him suspicious.

  Kelix exhaled through his nose.

  Okay. Situation.

  He had been knocked down. Aria had been standing over him. Magenta eyes. Magenta aura on his fist. A demon-like monster. Endigo Zest. A dungeon corridor. A rift.

  Then nothing.

  Kelix rubbed his forehead and tried to stitch the memory together. It didn't want to cooperate. His mind kept sliding away from details, the same way it had slid away from Aria when he tried to count.

  He hated that sensation. He hated it enough that he forced himself to stay angry rather than scared.

  A soft crunch came from behind him.

  Kelix froze.

  His hand lifted half an inch, not reaching for a weapon he did not have, but ready to strike if he had to. He turned his head slowly and saw a small figure approaching across the blue sand.

  It was short. Toddler-sized, maybe smaller. It moved with quiet purpose, cloak pulled around its body so tightly that Kelix could not see what it was underneath. The cloak was dark, frayed at the edges, and it dragged along the sand without leaving much of a mark.

  Its head was a deer-like skull. Not large like Endigo Zest. Not towering.

  It was a pale skull with tiny horn nubs and deep hollow sockets where eyes should have been.

  Within those hollows, a dim red glow flickered like embers.

  Kelix took a step back in suprise.

  The silhouette was wrong in a different way than the monsters back home. It looked less like a beast and more like an idea. Like a story someone told to scare children, except now the story was walking toward him.

  It reminded him, absurdly, of a character from one of the video games he used to binge when he couldn't sleep. A little knight-shaped thing. A blank face. A cloak. A quiet insistence. Cute was not the right word.

  Kelix's brain offered it anyway, in a distant, hysterical corner.

  The creature stopped a few paces away and raised its skull head, studying him. Its posture was not threatening. It didn't raise a weapon, or channel an attack. It simply looked at him as if deciding whether he was broken.

  Kelix forced his voice out, rough from sand and shock. "Where am I?"

  The creature's voice was soft. Surprisingly clear. "Zeldritzon."

  Kelix furrowed his brows. The word did not connect to anything he knew. It did not sound like a city name. It did not sound like a region. It sounded like someone had taken a monster's designation and tried to make it fit in a human mouth.

  "Zeldritzon," Kelix repeated, slower. The syllables felt wrong on his tongue. "What is that?"

  The creature's head tilted the other way, as if the question itself was strange. "This shore. This world."

  Kelix stared at it. He tried to keep his expression mild. His face wanted to show too much. "This is not my world."

  The creature didn't argue. It simply stood there, cloak fluttering slightly though there was no wind.

  So Kelix continued. "Who are you?"

  The creature paused. The ember glow in its eye hollows brightened for a moment, then dimmed again, like it was remembering something painful and choosing to hold it anyway.

  "Endigo," it said.

  Kelix's blood went cold.

  He took an involuntary step back, sand shifting under his heel. His mind flashed with crimson lightning, a deer monster three meters tall, black armor, a shield and axe, and the name breathed in blasphemous surprise.

  "Endigo," Kelix said, and his voice came out thinner than he wanted. "As in Endigo Zest?"

  The small Endigo did not correct him. It did not confirm him either. It stood there on the blue sand, watching him as if Kelix had been the one who walked out of the sea.

  The dungeon must grow. The stolen power must be reclaimed. Everything else is of no consequence.

  Viktor had been called many names: the Impaler, the Tyrant, the Dark Emperor. And he couldn’t have cared less. Those who dared oppose him all met swift and brutal ends. Kingdoms fell as he carved out his own empire. With his unparalleled power, he brought the entire world to its knees. Yet, even the mightiest could fall. One day, he made a mistake, a mistake that cost him everything. His reign abruptly ended when he was slain by a group called the Six Heroes, who not only took his life but also stole his power and divided it among themselves.

  Three hundred years later, Viktor came back to life. He awoke in the body of a young boy named Quinn and found himself in a world changed beyond recognition. His castle had been left in ruins, his capital had been razed to the ground, and the once-prosperous Central Plains had become a wild land ruled by trees and beasts. Of all the treasures he once possessed, the only thing he had found was a Dungeon Core, small and underdeveloped, buried under rubble, forgotten by everyone.

  His power was now scattered among the Six Heroes’ descendants, who reigned as kings and queens of this new world. And he wanted it back. With a fledgling Dungeon Core as his only ally, he set out to exact vengeance on his enemies and reclaim what was rightfully his.

  What to expect:

  - A competent, ruthless MC who stops at nothing to achieve his goal

  - A long and epic story

  - Book 2 completed on Royal Road