The foreman counted the bills onto the scarred plastic table, his fingers thick and stained with grease, peeling off five ten-dollar notes that looked like they had been through a washing machine before slapping them down on the ledger.
"Good work today," the man said, not looking up from his paperwork, waving a hand toward the door. "Trucks are coming in heavy tomorrow, so be here at six if you want the shift."
"I'll be here."
Tangeni took the cash, shoving it deep into his front pocket, keeping his hand over the bulge as he walked out of the depot into the cooling evening air, the relief hitting him harder than the fatigue of a ten-hour shift.
Fifty dollars meant they had finally hit the target for the deposit, meaning they could walk into the boarding house office tomorrow morning and put money on the counter like real people instead of begging for scraps.
Walking fast, keeping his head down, he navigated the industrial district, dodging forklifts and tired workers heading for the taxi ranks, the sunset painting the sky in violent shades of orange and purple that cast long, stretching shadows across the concrete.
He barely noticed the view because his mind was already at the textile factory, playing out the conversation with Lola, imagining the look on her face when he showed her the cash, imagining the chicken they were going to buy to celebrate.
It was a small thing, just a meal and a room with a lock, but after five months of sleeping on cardboard and eating stale bread, it felt like winning a lottery, a validation that they could actually survive this city if they just kept grinding.
Taking the shortcut behind the old cannery, a narrow slice of darkness between two brick walls that cut twenty minutes off the trip, he stepped over puddles of stagnant water and piles of discarded packaging, moving with the efficient speed of someone who knew every crack in the pavement.
It was a route he'd walked a hundred times, quiet and usually empty, a safe zone between the bustling depot and the chaotic streets of Katutura, but tonight the air felt wrong, heavy and metallic, tasting like the back of a battery against his tongue.
Stopping, listening, Tangeni felt the hair on his arms standing up, a static charge building in the atmosphere that made his skin itch, a pressure building behind his ears like he was deep underwater.
A rat sprinted past his boot, chattering in panic, scrambling up a drainpipe as if the ground had suddenly become hot, followed seconds later by a mangy stray cat that usually hissed at him but now bolted in the same direction, fur puffed out, vanishing into a hole in the fence without a sound.
Tangeni took a step back, his instincts signaling that something had shifted, the silence in the alley becoming absolute, drowning out the distant roar of the highway, leaving him standing in a vacuum of sound that felt unnatural.
The air ten meters in front of him rippled.
It wasn't a visual trick or a trick of the fading light; the space itself warped, bricks bending like wet clay, the light twisting into a spiral that hurt to look at, the fabric of the world stretching until it couldn't hold the tension anymore.
There was no siren, no warning, no Guild perimeter established to contain the threat, just a sound like tearing fabric amplified a thousand times, a concussive pop that slammed against his eardrums and knocked the wind out of him, sending him stumbling backward.
A vertical slit of neon green light tore open the reality of the alley, widening instantly into a ragged, pulsing oval that hovered inches above the asphalt, the edges flickering with unstable mana that arced against the brick walls like lightning.
Tangeni stared, his brain freezing, trying to process the impossibility of an unmapped gate opening directly in his path, realizing with a cold rush of horror that this wasn't a stable gate but an instability break.
The term from the news reports flashed in his mind, the worst-case scenario where a dungeon ruptured without forming a stable gate first, spilling its contents immediately into the world without warning.
The green light pulsed, illuminating the trash-strewn alley with a sick, underwater glow, and then the first leg punched through the surface of the portal.
Black, hairy, tipping with a jagged spike that chipped the concrete as it found purchase, the limb hauled a body behind it, a spider the size of a wolf pulling itself out of the rift, mandibles clicking wetly, multiple eyes reflecting the green light as it scanned the new world.
It wasn't like the goblins from the training raid he'd watched; this thing was built for speed, sleek and armored, moving with a twitchy, terrifying grace that suggested it was an apex predator in its own environment.
Two more followed instantly, tumbling out of the portal, landing in a crouch, hissing as they tasted the air, their senses locking onto the only living thing in the alley.
Tangeni turned, his boots slipping on the slick pavement, the flight response hitting him so hard he almost threw up, sprinting back the way he came with his legs pumping and lungs burning, knowing with cold certainty that he wasn't fast enough.
A wet, whistling sound cut through the air behind him.
Something hit his back with massive force, knocking him off his feet, slamming his chest into the asphalt, the breath exploding from his lungs in a wheezing gasp as he skidded across the rough ground.
Trying to push himself up, he found his arms pinned, glued to his sides by a thick, white substance that tightened as he struggled, the webbing wrapping his torso and legs in a cocoon that immobilized him instantly.
Stronger than steel, sticky as tar, the silk held him fast while the clicking got louder, the sound of hard chitin on concrete approaching fast, the predators closing in on their catch.
Tangeni kicked, thrashed, screamed for help that wouldn't come because the industrial district was empty and the roar of the distant machinery masked everything, his voice lost in the canyon of brick and steel.
Something grabbed his ankle.
He was jerked backward, sliding across the rough ground, his face scraping the pavement, gravel tearing his skin as he was hauled toward the green light, the friction burning through his jeans.
Twisting his neck, seeing the spider dragging him, its mandibles working, pulling the line of webbing hand-over-hand like a fisherman reeling in a catch, Tangeni dug his chin into the ground, trying to find any purchase, trying to hook a shoulder on a drainpipe, anything to stop the slide.
"No," he gasped, the word scraping out of his throat.
The spider didn't care, yanking him hard, lifting him off the ground, tossing him through the portal like a bundle of laundry, the momentum carrying him across the threshold between worlds.
The transition was instant and violent, a sensation of falling coupled with a twisting nausea that turned his stomach inside out, the cool evening air of Windhoek vanishing to be replaced by a humid, suffocating heat.
He slammed onto a surface that wasn't concrete but something softer, spongier, bouncing once before rolling to a stop, the impact jarring his teeth.
Tangeni lay there, gasping, staring up not at the sky but at a ceiling of vaulted stone covered in thick, pulsating layers of white silk, bioluminescent fungi clustering in the corners to cast everything in dim, ghostly shades of blue and green.
He was inside.
The realization hit him harder than the ground had, the knowledge that he was inside a dungeon, bound, weaponless, and Rank 0, a situation that had a survival rate of exactly zero percent.
The clicking of the spiders surrounded him, a chorus of hunger echoing off the walls, and he struggled against the webbing, straining his muscles until they cramped, but the silk didn't give a millimeter.
More shapes moved in the shadows, dozens of them, eyes gleaming in the dark, watching the fresh meat that had just been delivered to their nest.
He thought of the fifty dollars in his pocket, the deposit for the room they would never rent, the chicken they would never eat, the life they had almost started.
A large shape detached itself from the ceiling, dropping down on a line of silk to hover directly above him, its mandibles dripping a clear, viscous fluid that smelled of acid.
It was larger than the others, its carapace marked with red patterns, its eyes intelligent and cruel, studying him with a cold curiosity before descending.
Tangeni squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to give it the satisfaction of seeing his fear, holding onto the image of Lola waiting on the roof, hoping she wouldn't wait too long, hoping she would survive without him.
But the bite didn't come.
Instead, the spider spun him around, wrapping more silk around his legs, hoisting him into the air, carrying him deeper into the tunnel complex, past piles of bones and discarded gear, toward the center of the hive where the heartbeat of the dungeon pulsed in the dark.
They weren't eating him yet.
They were saving him.
Tangeni hung in the darkness, swinging gently with the movement of the monster carrying him, and realized that his death wasn't going to be quick, which was somehow worse than the alternative.
The dungeon breathed around him, a living, hungry thing, and he was just a foreign object caught in its throat, waiting to be swallowed or spat out.
He opened his eyes, staring into the gloom, and somewhere beneath the terror, a small, cold part of his brain started working, analyzing the webbing, checking the knots, looking for a way out because as long as he was breathing, he wasn't dead.
And if he wasn't dead, he still had a chance to get back to the roof.