The wind cut sharper here.
Adair leaned against a tree, one hand braced against the rough bark. His legs were weak. His breathing was shallow. He felt like he had run for miles, but he had not moved at all. Every sound rang too loud. Every shape stood out too clearly. It was like the world had been painted over, sharper than before, and he had been dropped into the center of it.
Something inside him was not the same.
He could not name it. He could only feel it.
Shapes moved through the fog. Figures. Human.
He stepped back. A branch cracked under his foot.
A woman stepped out first. Robes clung to her body like she was ready to run or fight at any moment. Behind her came two soldiers, their weapons close to their hands. The woman's eyes were cold. She stared straight at him.
"You," she said. "What is your name?"
Adair opened his mouth but no words came out. His tongue felt stuck. His mind had gone blank.
She stepped closer. The soldiers followed.
"You have no escort. No mark. You are standing in a restricted zone. Tell me what you are doing here."
Adair looked at the soldiers. One was young, maybe just a few years older than he was. The other was calm and silent, staring through him like he already knew how this would end.
Adair's muscles were heavy with pain. It hurt to stand. His skin felt raw. There was pressure behind his ribs, but he could not tell if it was fear or something else.
"I woke up here," he said. "I do not know how. I do not know why."
The woman narrowed her eyes.
"You do not look injured. You do not look sick. But you stink of old magic. You have no sigil. You are either a fool or a threat."
Her hand dropped to her sword.
The soldiers tensed.
Adair felt his heartbeat speed up. They were not asking questions to understand. They were measuring him. Deciding how dangerous he was. Planning what they would do next.
A strange smell reached his nose. Metal and warmth. Blood.
He did not know where it came from. Maybe one of the soldiers had a cut. Maybe it came from him. But the scent triggered something deep inside him. Something sharp and unfamiliar.
His mouth went dry. His body leaned forward for a second before he caught himself. A pull had started inside him, and he did not know what it meant.
He stepped back and stumbled over a crooked root. His hand landed on a broken fence post. The wood was sharp and jagged. Pain shot through his palm, he exhaled sharply at the worsening sensation.
Something moved in his chest. Something he couldn't describe.
An idea formed around a thought that emanated from within him, rather a feeling from within him, this stake would not kill him if it pierced him as it would've killed a person in his old world.
He could escape this perilous situation without fighting, albeit the method may be a bit cowardly, but he didn't care he had to get away from these people.
He stared at the stake.
A second ago, he had been afraid. But now there was only clarity. His skin felt strange. Like it was waiting. Like it already knew what would happen next.
He wrapped his hand around the stake.
The soldiers stepped forward. One of them yelling "Stop-"
But before they could intercept him Adair drove the wood into his own chest.
Pain lit up everything. His knees hit the ground. His breath vanished. He dropped forward and landed hard in the dirt.
He did not move.
Boots rushed toward him. Metal scraped from leather. A command cut through the noise.
"Stop."
Silence.
Then stillness.
Adair stayed down. His body burned. His chest was soaked. But deep beneath the pain, something new had opened.
Time passed.
Fog rolled in again. The sound of footsteps faded.
He opened one eye. The clearing was empty.
He reached for the stake and pulled it free.
Blood poured down his front, but the wound beneath it was already closing. The skin tugged itself back together, like it had been waiting for the damage to start healing.
Adair stared at it.
He was not dead.
He should have been.
He couldn't believe it, his head was reeling, was he still human?
He touched the hole where the stake had entered. His fingers were stained, but there was no fresh pain. No sharp edge. Just the strange warmth of something deep inside his body doing what it was supposed to do.
He leaned against the tree again and laughed once, quietly.
"I am not normal anymore," he whispered.
The trees around him swayed gently. The fog clung to the roots. Nothing moved.
He looked down at the dirt where his blood had soaked deepest.
Light began to rise from the soil.
It was soft at first. A silver glow pulsing in a small circle. It sort of looked like fire. But it came from where his blood had spilled. It responded to him.
He reached toward it.
The light pulsed brighter.
His vision blurred from something pushing its way into his mind.
A presence touched him. Cold and exact. It did not speak, but it pressed a pattern into his thoughts.
The ground beneath the light cracked open.
A shape rose from the soil. Stone, smooth and cut with unnatural edges. A crystal core lifted itself from the dirt. It shone faintly. It pulsed with the same rhythm as his heart.
He stared.
This felt familiar, like the only thing in this new world that made sense.
This didn't feel like some strange artifact it felt like an item he had lost and suddenly found.
This was part of him.
Adair stood slowly and stepped toward it.
His blood was still on his hand. When it touched the crystal, the light surged.
A wind passed through the clearing. Soft. Alive.
Images filled his mind. Rooms. Halls. Chambers built from shadow. A space growing inside something larger. Empty now, but waiting to be shaped.
Adair knew what it was somehow even though he'd never seen it before.
A dungeon.
One that was waiting to be created.
Through him.
His core had awakened.
He lowered his hand. The crystal stayed bright.
This was no tool. No random find. It had not been placed here by someone else.
His blood had made it.
It had chosen this place because he had bled here.
He stood still for a long time, watching the light. The wind calmed. The trees stopped swaying. Even the fog seemed to pause, like the forest itself was waiting.
Adair's chest rose and fell with quiet breaths. He looked down at the ground where the circle of light still glowed.
It was his now.
He did not know how he knew that.
He just did.
He could imagine the dungeon forming. It was small. Weak. Just a foundation.
But it was real.
And it was his.
There were no walls yet. No creatures. No traps or treasures. But he could sense where they would go. He could picture the shapes of the corridors. He could feel the outline of rooms not yet built.
It was like a map waiting for him to draw the lines.
His blood had started it.
Now he could grow it.
The warmth in his chest was no longer pain. It was energy. Alive. Focused.
He stepped back and looked up at the trees.
This place had nearly killed him.
Now it belonged to him.
He had no sigil. No guide. No rules.
But he had something else.
He had power.
And a place to begin.