Keiz's eyes opened slowly.
The dungeon ceiling was the first thing he saw—stone bricks stacked unevenly, cracks running through them like veins. Drops of water fell from above, splashing against his cheek. For a long moment, he couldn't move.
His body was heavy. His chest felt tight. His thoughts were scattered.
"…I'm… still alive?" he whispered.
His own voice startled him. It was weak, hoarse, but real. He could hear it echo faintly against the dungeon walls.
Memories of the mimic came rushing back—the sharp fangs, the crushing bite, the tearing pain as his left arm was devoured. He remembered the blood, warm and endless, soaking the ground. He remembered raising his right hand out of desperation, muttering words he couldn't even recall, before the darkness swallowed him whole.
By all reason, he should have been dead.
But he wasn't.
Keiz blinked, forcing himself to look down. His right hand trembled as he moved it across his body, searching, until it reached the place where his left arm should have been.
He froze.
The arm was gone. Completely gone.
Yet the wound had sealed. Not naturally—there was no bandage, no scar tissue, no healing magic glow. The flesh at the stump was closed in a way that didn't look human. It was too smooth, too clean, almost burned shut.
Keiz touched it with shaking fingers, his nails scratching lightly against the skin.
"No… this… this isn't possible…" His voice cracked.
His mind scrambled for an explanation. Healing magic? But he never had a potion. And the Red Lion party was nowhere near him—they had abandoned him, stripped him bare.
If they had healed him, why leave him alive at all?
"Was it… the mimic?" he muttered. His lips trembled as he said it.
The idea made no sense, yet his thoughts kept circling back to it. He remembered nothing after raising his hand against the chest monster. Everything after that was blank.
He pressed his forehead against the cold stone floor. "Why… why am I still alive…?"
The silence swallowed his question.
Keiz forced himself to sit up. His body shook with the effort. He braced himself against the wall, breathing heavily. Every breath hurt, as though his lungs had forgotten how to work.
The blood on the ground was still there, dark and dried. A reminder that what happened wasn't a dream. His body remembered too—the phantom pain of losing his arm pulsed in his nerves, sharp, unbearable, like knives still digging into flesh that was no longer there.
He grit his teeth and held back a cry. The sound would only echo. Would only draw monsters.
"I can't stay here," Keiz told himself, though his voice was hardly more than a whisper.
He leaned against the wall and forced himself to stand. His legs wobbled, unsteady. The loss of balance from missing an arm was harsher than he thought. Every small movement felt wrong, incomplete. He stumbled forward, nearly falling face-first into the stone.
His right hand caught the wall in time.
"…Damn it…"
His body shook with weakness. His breathing turned ragged. But still, he took a step forward. One step. Then another. The sound of his boots scraped against the stone floor, echoing through the dungeon corridors.
Each step was a battle. Each movement reminded him of what was missing.
The dungeon itself pressed down on him. The air was thick, humid. The torches embedded into the walls flickered faintly, casting long shadows across the stone bricks. It smelled of mold, old iron, and something foul he couldn't name.
But there were no monsters. None that he could see, at least. Only silence.
Too much silence.
It made him feel like prey.
His mind churned. "Did the mimic… leave me alone? Or… did it disappear?"
The thought sounded ridiculous. Mimics didn't simply vanish. They killed, they devoured. That was all they were.
Then why?
Why was he alive?
Keiz pressed his remaining hand to his chest. His heartbeat was too loud, too fast. He couldn't calm it.
A new thought struck him. A darker one.
"What if it's still here… watching me… waiting for me to fall again?"
His breath hitched. His eyes darted to every corner of the room, every shadow. The longer he stared, the more the shapes of the stones seemed to twist into teeth, claws, and eyes.
He shook his head violently. "No. Stop it. Stop it, Keiz. You'll lose your mind if you keep thinking like that."
But he couldn't shake the feeling.
That weight. That pressure crawling on his back.
Unseen. Unfelt. But there.
What Keiz didn't realize was that he was right.
Behind him, just out of sight, the black substance stretched and writhed. It clung to his shadow as though it were part of it, liquid and alive. It moved when he moved. It stopped when he stopped.
The mimic had not left.
It had become something else.
Keiz stumbled forward again, unaware. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to keep moving despite the phantom pain biting into him. His vision blurred with each step, yet his determination refused to let him stop.
"I… I have to get out of here. If I can just reach the surface… just… survive… then maybe—"
His words cut short as his knees buckled. He collapsed to the ground, catching himself weakly on his right arm. His body trembled, drenched in sweat.
The dungeon's silence pressed heavier than ever.
Keiz dug his nails into the stone floor, biting his lip so hard it bled.
"I don't want to die…" he whispered. His voice cracked, breaking into a sob. "Not here… not like this…"
His vision blurred further. Not from blood loss—there was none—but from exhaustion, fear, and despair mixing together.
Behind him, the shadow thickened. The black substance rippled, like it was listening.
Keiz didn't turn. Couldn't turn. His mind was too lost in survival.
Unaware that the thing he feared most was already with him.
Closer than his own heartbeat.