Morning in Hollow Kingdom had a vibe to it.

  Not a good vibe. More like the whole city needed another hour of sleep. Everything looked kind of wet and pissed off. The street vendors were setting up their carts like they'd rather be literally anywhere else. Someone was yelling up on the third floor of some building—couldn't even see which one. Had no idea what they were saying. A bird was making noise. Could've been singing, could've been screaming. Your guess is as good as mine.

  I was awake.

  The problem was pretty straightforward: I had no clue what was on Floor 3.

  I knew the name. Iron Ravine. Which told me jack shit except maybe there's iron and possibly a ravine. Neither of those facts helped me. I'd tried looking stuff up, but all I got was vague crap like "a place of great challenge" and "not for the faint of heart." That kind of description usually means the person writing it had no idea either.

  What I needed was someone who'd actually been down there.

  Or someone who talked to someone who'd been down there.

  Or hell, someone who heard about someone who talked to someone.

  I wasn't picky.

  "We need information," I said.

  "From who?" Mira asked.

  I thought about it.

  The guild. Isolde's people. Sael and the rest. They were ahead of me. Some of them had hit Floor 4 already. Sael mentioned it. Which meant they'd gotten through Floor 3.

  "The base," I said. "Let's go ask around."

  Mira tilted her head. "They might not tell you anything."

  "Yeah," I said. "That's why I said ask, not demand."

  The hare made a noise that clearly meant it hated this plan.

  I woke up Kitten Cowboy by tapping his head. He jumped and went for his gun. When he realized it was me, he slowly put it back, pretending he totally wasn't just scared shitless.

  "Morning," I said.

  The main room at the base was quieter in the morning. Different crowd. Some people I'd seen before were gone. Others I hadn't noticed were suddenly here. A couple glanced up when we walked in. Most didn't.

  I looked around.

  No Sael. Fine.

  No Isolde. Also fine.

  I scanned faces, trying to figure out who might've been to Floor 3 and wouldn't tell me to fuck off. There was a woman by the wall who looked like she knew her stuff, but she was deep in conversation. Didn't feel like interrupting. A few other people were eating or reading. Nobody paid attention to me.

  Then I spotted Edmund.

  Sitting at a table in the back.

  By himself.

  Eating meat.

  Not like casually eating. Seriously eating. Like a man with strong opinions about meat. He had a plate with this huge piece of roasted meat and he was cutting through it with the kind of focus most people save for doing their taxes.

  "Edmund?" Mira said quietly.

  "Edmund," I said.

  "He hates you," she said.

  "I know. He's also the most experienced guy in the room that i know."

  Edmund knew we were coming. Didn't look up right away though. Took a bite. Chewed it. Put his fork and knife down real careful, like he was gonna finish this meal no matter what bullshit walked up to him.

  Then he looked up.

  "Keres," he said.

  "Morning," I said.

  Nothing.

  "Nice morning," I tried.

  "I'm eating," he said.

  "Yeah, I can see that."

  "Then you can see I'm busy."

  "Quick question," I said.

  "No."

  "It's about Iron Ravine."

  "No."

  He picked up his fork and knife and went back to cutting.

  Kitten Cowboy jumped onto the bench next to him. Just did it. Didn't ask. Sat there with his little legs hanging off, watching Edmund eat. Looked curious. Polite, even. Edmund looked at the cat. Cat looked back.

  Edmund moved his plate six inches away.

  Kitten Cowboy watched it move.

  I sat down across from him.

  Edmund looked at me.

  "I'm not answering your questions," he said.

  "Maybe not all of them," I said. "But one?"

  "Zero," he said. "I'm not your guide, not your partner. Not someone you bother during breakfast."

  I waited.

  Edmund ate.

  The meat looked good. Smelled good too. Man… I want to eat steak.

  "Look," I said. "I just need to know what to expect. That's it. I'm going to Iron Ravine and I've got nothing. I'm not asking you to come with me. Not asking for constant help. Just one thing. Anything useful."

  Edmund put his fork down.

  Didn't look at me.

  Looked at the wall.

  "Go bother someone else," he said.

  "I looked around," I said. "You're the most experienced guy here."

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  "Your problem. Not mine."

  "Come on, man..."

  I looked at his plate. Then at him. Leaned forward a bit. "I've got a seal in my arm that Isolde needs. So I'm not going anywhere. Which means eventually I get myself killed on some lower floor and it becomes everyone's problem. Help me now, it takes five minutes. Don't help me, it costs way more time later."

  He turned. Looked at me.

  Slow.

  "That," he said, "was the most annoying technically-correct thing I've heard all of my life."

  "Been working on it," I said.

  Long pause.

  He cut another piece of meat. Ate it. Put his fork down. Made a little click sound. Somehow that sound meant he was about to help me and really didn't want to be thanked for it.

  "Floor 3," he said. "Iron Ravine."

  "Yeah."

  "What do you want to know?"

  So Edmund explained something. The lower floors didn't work how I thought.

  I figured it was like a dungeon. Same for everyone. You go down, you see the same places, same enemies, same bosses. Predictable.

  Nope.

  "The floors are assigned," Edmund said. Still eating while he talked. He'd decided this conversation was okay but wasn't gonna pause his meal for it. "When you step onto a new floor, the system creates different versions. Like Dungeon A, Dungeon B, Dungeon C. Could be a million versions, could be more. Nobody knows how many exist or who gets which one. But if you've got a party, they all get the same dungeon you do. You might get Dungeon A. Another solo decender might also get Dungeon A."

  I thought about that.

  "So nobody can just tell me what's down there."

  "They can tell you what they found," Edmund said. "That's different."

  "But it won't match."

  "Can be similar," he said. "System picks from options. Some things show up more than others. But ask ten people what they found on Floor 3, you'll get nine different answers. All true."

  The hare made a sound. The sound it makes when reality's worse than it thought. Had a special sound just for that.

  "So the information people share is basically—"

  "Stories," Edmund said. "At best."

  "That's why everything I read about it said nothing useful."

  "Most guides are written by idiots," he said. Sounded personal. "They write about what they saw and act like it's the same for everyone. It's not."

  "Okay," I said. "So you can't tell me what I'll find."

  "No."

  "But you could tell me something useful."

  He looked at me sideways.

  "There's a rumor," he said. "Lot of groups reported it. Means the system might be placing it more often. Don't know why. Don't have enough info."

  "What is it?"

  Edmund picked up his cup. Took a drink.

  Set it down.

  "Heavy armor," he said. "Really heavy. Everyone who mentions it says the same thing—there's something down there that looks like a person, moves like a person, but it's wearing armor nobody can cut through. Normal weapons don't work. Magic doesn't work."

  "Nothing works?" I said.

  "That's what everyone agrees on," he said. "No weapon anyone's tried has done anything. Every report's the same—you hit it, it doesn't care. Just keeps moving."

  "What do you do against that?" Mira asked.

  Edmund glanced at her, then back at his plate.

  "That's what people are trying to figure out," he said.

  "It's just a rumor," I said. "Edmund said so. Common enough to mention but not proven enough to plan for."

  "Proven enough that he brought it up," Mira said.

  Fair point.

  Edmund had finished his meat. Sat there looking satisfied. Looked at me.

  "That's all I'm telling you," he said.

  "Fair," I said. "Thanks."

  "Did it so I could finish breakfast in peace."

  Went back to his cup.

  I stood up. Kitten Cowboy jumped down and walked next to me with his usual dignity. Hare got up. Mira floated up.

  Edmund was already looking away.

  We left.

  I opened the System interface.

  "Teleportation," I said.

  The menu shifted.

  TELEPORTATION MENU Available Destinations: [Floor 1 - The Red Margin] - Cost: 10 gold [Floor 2 - Hollow Kingdom] - Current Location [Floor 3 - Iron Ravine] - Cost: 20 gold

  "Iron Ravine," I said.

  A confirmation box appeared:

  TELEPORT TO FLOOR 3 - IRON RAVINE? Cost: 20 gold

  [CONFIRM] [CANCEL]

  "Everyone ready?" I asked.

  "NO," the hare said immediately.

  "Perfect," I said, and selected [CONFIRM].

  The gold deducted from my inventory.

  Then the world started to blur.

  The sensation was immediate and deeply unpleasant.

  It wasn't painful. It was more like — like someone had grabbed reality by the edges and started folding it. The walls of the underground base stretched away from me, getting longer and thinner, like they were being pulled through a funnel. The lamps overhead turned into streaks of orange light. The floor beneath my feet stopped feeling solid and started feeling more like a suggestion.

  My stomach did something creative with gravity.

  The hare made a noise that started as a scream and ended as a question mark.

  Kitten Cowboy's ears went flat against his tiny head.

  Mira's talons dug into my shoulder — not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to communicate that she was also not enjoying this.

  Everything went white.

  Then sound came back first.

  A deep, resonant hum. Low and metallic, like standing inside a bell that someone had rung five minutes ago and the vibration was still going.

  Then sensation — the feeling of standing on something solid again, which was a relief.

  Then vision.

  I blinked.

  We were standing on a platform.

  It was about ten feet across, circular, made of dark metal that looked like it had been welded together from a thousand different pieces. The surface was uneven — rivets and seams everywhere, like someone had built it in a hurry and decided aesthetics weren't important.

  Beyond the platform was nothing.

  No, not nothing.

  A canyon.

  I took a step forward and looked out.

  Iron Ravine wasn't just a name.

  It was a statement.

  The canyon stretched out in front of me, impossibly wide, going left and right as far as I could see until it curved out of view. The walls on either side were made entirely of metal. Just metal, all the way down.

  And it went down.

  I couldn't see the bottom. The ravine dropped away into shadow and mist and what might have been more metal or might have been nothing. Hundreds of feet, maybe. Maybe more. It was the kind of depth that made you take an instinctive step back from the edge even though you were nowhere near it.

  The sky above wasn't a sky.

  It was a ceiling. A massive, distant ceiling of dark metal plates held together by rivets the size of buildings. And from the gaps between the plates, sparks fell. Constantly. A steady rain of bright orange sparks that drifted down like snow, leaving trails of light as they descended into the ravine. They made a sound. A soft, continuous crackling, like static on a radio turned way down.

  When the wind blew, and it did blow, hot and dry and carrying the smell of rust and ozone, the metal walls of the canyon made a sound.

  A ringing sound. A chiming sound.

  Like someone had taken a thousand wind chimes and replaced them with knives.

  “So… Yeah.” I said.

  "Kind of a cool-looking place," Mira said.

  The hare was pressed against my leg, ears flat, staring out at the ravine with an expression that was hard to explain. Looked like he was having a seizure.

  Kitten Cowboy stood at the edge of the platform, looking out. His tail swished once. Then he looked up at me and said ‘Pew’ that I interpreted as either "this is fine" or "we're all going to die here."

  Hard to tell with cats.

  I looked around the platform.

  There was a path leading away from it, a narrow bridge made of the same dark, riveted metal. It extended out over the ravine, connecting to what looked like a ledge on the far wall. Just a flat strip of metal about three feet wide stretching across empty space.

  Beyond that, I could see more structures.

  Chains. Massive chains, each link the size of a car, hanging from the ceiling and disappearing down into the mist below. Some of them swayed slightly in the wind, creaking with a sound that was both musical and deeply unsettling.

  Collapsed frameworks. Things that might have been cranes or scaffolding once, now just skeletal ruins of rust covered metal clinging to the canyon walls at impossible angles.

  Train rails ran along the walls in places, curving up and around, sometimes just ending in midair like someone had forgotten to finish building them. No trains, though. Just the rails, going nowhere.

  And towers.

  Scattered throughout the ravine, rising from ledges or jutting out from the walls, were these massive cylindrical structures made of black metal. They hummed. I could hear it even from here: a low, pulsing hum that made my teeth ache slightly. The air around them shimmered, and small pieces of metal debris floated near them, spinning slowly in circles.

  Magnets. Giant magnets.

  "Edmund wasn't kidding," I said.

  "About what?" Mira asked.

  "About it being weird."

  I took another look at the metal walls. At first, they'd just looked like walls. Rusty canyon walls made of iron ore. But now that I was looking closer, I could see something else.

  They were moving.

  Not obviously. But they were definitely moving.

  The surface of the metal breathed. It expanded slightly, then contracted, like lungs. Slow and steady, in a rhythm that didn't match anything else: not the wind, not the falling sparks, not my heartbeat. Just its own rhythm.

  In some places, the metal bent. Sheets of rusted steel curved outward, folding over themselves like origami, then slowly straightening again. Other sections rippled, waves of motion passing through solid iron like it was water.

  It wasn't just metal.

  It was alive.

  "That's not normal," the hare said, in the voice of someone stating an obvious fact because all the other options were too terrifying to consider.

  "No," I agreed. "It's not."

  A spark drifted past me, close enough that I could feel the heat. It landed on the platform with a soft tink sound, glowed for a second, then went out, leaving a tiny scorch mark on the metal.

  I looked at the bridge leading away from the platform.

  "Alright," I said. "Let's go."

  "Where?" the hare asked.

  "Forward," I said, because I didn't have a better answer.

  I stepped onto the bridge.

  The metal was solid under my feet, which was good.

  The wind picked up.

  The chains swayed.

  The metal walls breathed.

  And somewhere far below, in the depths of the ravine, something made a sound.

  A deep, grinding sound. Like metal scraping against metal. Like something very large shifting its weight.

  I kept walking.

  [Welcome to Floor 3, Daniel Keres]

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