They’d moved out before first light. Assault team rolling quiet under a sky still clinging to stars.

  The ground fog curled low over the quarry like a shroud pulled tight, soft and dirty with the color of wet ash. Mist clung to the sloped gravel ridges, slipping around the rusted limbs of collapsed diggers and the skeletal frames of conveyor cranes that hadn’t moved since the Reboot. Some still stood at a slant, caught mid-gesture like giants who'd forgotten how to fall. Others lay face down in the mud, half-swallowed by sediment and creeping vines.

  Xander crouched behind the hull of an old excavator, one hand resting on his knee, the other near the haft of his spear. The metal was cool, the earth beneath it colder. Overhead, the limestone cliffs ringed the pit like jagged teeth. Some had cracked open from old demolition charges, while others were scarred by something more recent.

  The whole quarry reeked of damp stone and evil intent.

  Ahead, Octave’s scouts moved in silence. Pairs of them flowed over the rim on the other side of the quarry, staying low, eyes scanning the basin below. Quick hand signs and shifting shadows were the only signs. Darvos led the left flank with Hask shadowing the right. The rest dispersed across the quarry lip like shadows.

  Behind Xander, the rest of his team fanned out across the broken line of old machinery. Jo knelt beside a collapsed track system, her fingers tracing gouges in the metal that didn’t match any standard wear.

  Predator marks.

  Zoey was further right, perched on a twisted loading boom with her bow ready. Her eyes swept the flooded pit below, where stagnant water glimmered faintly and motes of something luminescent lit the surface like drowned stars.

  Kane and Ford stayed further back, covering the retreat route, their silhouettes nearly invisible in the low haze. They didn’t need orders. Everyone knew their place.

  The quarry stretched in ruin across the basin, a half-mile wide bowl of crumbling extraction. Several structures remained along the rim, including a pair of low prefab buildings choked with vines and warped scaffolding. Fort Octave’s intel claimed cultists had taken up positions in both, though no movement was visible yet.

  But the mine mouth at the bottom of the quarry was the real focus.

  It lay northward, tucked behind a ridge of crushed tailings like a wound at the center of old industry. A black void slashed through pale stone, ringed by broken lights and rusting safety railings. Something flickered deep inside. The light didn't appear to be torches, nor did it appear to be some type of magic. Instead, it mimicked breathing.

  Xander squinted toward it.

  An instant later, a notification pressed its way into his vision.

  [Crusader's Righteousness] You gain a general sense that a goal is in the northern direction.

  That wasn't at all helpful. Yes, it confirmed that something related to his crusader quest was in a northerly directly, but he had already deduced that. The text of the message was a little curious as well, a goal, not the goal.

  He exhaled through his nose, just once, then turned his head slightly as Jo moved closer.

  She kept her voice low. "You ever notice how these places always feel like the world’s already buried its secrets twice?"

  Xander didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes on the mine mouth. "That’s because it has."

  A few paces over, Zoey adjusted her stance atop the crane boom. "Good. Saves me the effort."

  Jo cracked half a smile. "Just don’t go sprinting off again."

  "I don’t sprint. I tactically reposition with flair."

  Before Jo could respond, boots crunched nearby. One of Octave’s officers, Lieutenant Orlen if Xander remembered right, approached at a crouch. He pointed toward the mine with a hand signal.

  "Movement confirmed inside. No patrols outside the buildings, but we’ve seen torchlight in both. Secondary intel says the cult’s using the east building to store something. We haven’t gotten close enough to see what."

  "What about the mine itself? Do we know if it's more than a hole in the ground?" Xander asked.

  The lieutenant hesitated, then glanced toward the mouth again. "Commander Rex asked the same thing. Wondered if it was a dungeon. We can’t confirm. No one’s been able to get close without triggering noise."

  "You’ve tried?"

  Orlen gave a curt nod. "Scout team lost a man last week. Stone gave way under his approach. Cult was on top of him in an instant."

  Xander watched the flicker again. That light wasn’t just fire. It had a rhythm.

  "Might be a dungeon," he said. "Might be worse."

  "You think it’s an active dungeon?"

  He didn’t answer right away. The Simulation didn’t traffic in maybes. If it had pinged his class quest, then something down there needed rooting out. What wasn’t clear was whether they were dealing with a dungeon, a lone boss, or just a pack of cultists overdue for a firsthand afterlife experience.

  He glanced at Jo. She nodded once.

  Then back to Orlen. "Let’s assume it is until we know otherwise."

  Zoey dropped lightly off the crane, bow in hand now. "Do we want to breach the buildings first or sweep around the mine?"

  "We have to take the buildings first," Xander said. "If there’s something in that mine, we don’t want cultists circling behind while we’re trapped underground."

  Xander dropped his gaze back toward the slope, scanning the loose gravel and rust-choked rails running toward the mine entrance. Nothing moved. Just flickering light from deep within and a series of sigils carved into scavenged steel panels flanking the black mouth. Bone charms dangled from rebar like wind chimes, clinking faintly in the shifting air.

  Something was active down there.

  He shifted his stance slightly, then looked to the right.

  Cabbot sat beside the twisted boom of a collapsed crane, tail curled like a question mark, ears forward.

  "I need a favor," Xander said.

  Her head tilted, slow and deliberate. Judgmental. Not disinterested, but skeptical as always.

  "Just eyes. Let me know if there’s anything inside the mine that we’re not seeing from here."

  She blinked once, then vanished.

  One moment spectral fur shimmering against the haze, the next, an empty patch of rusted steel.

  Jo glanced his way but said nothing. From the look she gave the space Cabbot had just occupied, she wasn’t surprised. She’d seen the cat pull stranger stunts.

  Xander scanned the mine opening, looking for any trace of movement. Seconds ticked by.

  Then she was there.

  Emerging without ceremony from a break in the slope maybe twenty meters from the mine mouth, as if she’d always been walking there. She stepped between two slabs of broken limestone, paws silent even on loose gravel, and stopped just short of the wards strung across the threshold.

  Her body lowered, tail flattened. Every muscle in her compact frame went taut, eyes locked on the darkness beyond the entrance.

  He couldn't see what she saw, but it was clear that she was seeing something that she didn't like. That alone was enough.

  Xander’s jaw tightened. "She sees something."

  "Something moving?" Jo asked.

  He shook his head. "Not sure. But she isn’t happy."

  Zoey shifted beside the rusted arm of the digger she’d taken cover behind. "That’s her alert posture, right? Like, ‘I could retreat, but I’m currently considering violence’?"

  "That’s the one," Xander said.

  He raised a hand, signaling toward Lieutenant Orlen, who was creeping between two bent structural struts to get a better angle.

  "We’re going to need to…"

  A sharp hiss cracked through the air.

  Then Orlen dropped.

  A clean strike. The bolt punched through the side of his helmet just beneath the brim and tore through the opposite cheek. He went down without even knowing what hit him. His legs gave out, and body folded hard into the gravel.

  Then, a rusted bell above the eastern building screeched to life, its cracked mouth wobbling on an I-beam hook. Another alarm followed from the mine entrance, sharper and shrill. Probably some kind of magic tripwire. Torchlight flared behind broken glass. Shapes moved.

  "Dammit! Everybody down!" Xander said as he looked over at the body of Lt. Orlen.

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  Xander had liked the man. He seemed competent. Now he was just another ghost in the gravel.

  "Well," Zoey muttered from behind her cover, "stealth’s over."

  A second bolt hissed past Xander’s left ear and buried itself in the excavator’s boom with a sharp metallic crack. He ducked low, eyes already scanning the mining crane where the shot had come from.

  "Sniper’s on elevation," he called. "Keep moving!"

  The Fort Octave troops scattered. Kane hauled Ford back behind a derailed ore cart while Jo sprinted left, using the old excavator for partial cover. One soldier tried to pivot and return fire with his rifle, but the enemy was faster.

  A crossbow bolt ripped straight through the gap where his shoulder plate met his armpit. He staggered, choked, and dropped. Blood soaked the rock beneath him in seconds.

  Xander swore and shifted position, flattening against a collapsed cab unit as Zoey popped out to return fire. Her first arrow slammed into a window frame just above a flickering silhouette. The second struck a shoulder. The third clipped the rim of a helmet and sent the figure tumbling from the crane housing, plummeting to the ground.

  Across the basin, the far ridge lit up. Darvos’s team launched smoke, and one of his mages hurled a searing bolt of magic into the rear of the second building. It struck with a crack of light and heat, blowing in part of the wall. Shouts followed, short and violent, then the muffled rhythm of close-quarters combat.

  Xander turned just in time to see one of Fort Octave’s mages step up from behind a chunk of rusted support rail. His hands glowed red, the air warping around his arms. He raised both palms, muttered something clipped and sharp, then hurled a fireball down into the mine approach.

  The spell hit the barricades and detonated, launching rusted steel and bone charms into the air. Fire licked along the entrance, and the cult’s front wards flickered. Whatever shielding they had in place was holding, but it had taken a beating.

  A heartbeat later, the cult responded as a blast of icy mist arced out from the mine and slammed into the ridge just behind the mage. Frost spread across the ground in a sudden bloom.

  Another cultist appeared in a side window of the second outbuilding, casting something fast and chaotic. A jagged line of kinetic force ripped through the gravel and nearly sent two soldiers tumbling down the slope.

  "Zoey," Xander called out, already moving. "Stay on the mine. Pin their mages. We'll take the building"

  "Gladly. They have the worst manners."

  She scrambled further up the crane arm she was perched on to gain a higher elevation. Arrows flew. One mage dropped out of sight. Another scrambled for cover, trailing blood.

  Xander saw his moment.

  "We move now!" Xander cried.

  Jo was already with Kane, pressing toward the structure. Ford followed tight, low to the ground. Xander broke from cover and closed the distance with them, sprinting past old scaffold racks and a tilted loader caught in mid-collapse.

  The prefab mine office loomed ahead, choked in vines, the doorway unguarded but dark.

  That didn’t mean it was empty. They already knew there was at least one enemy combatant in the building.

  Xander reached the side of the door first and planted his foot.

  Wood splintered. The door gave.

  It slammed inward, smashing off the far wall and leaving a dusty echo in its wake.

  Kane didn't break his stride as he went in first, shield high. Jo ghosted past his left side, sword already drawn and crackling with faint lightning.

  Xander stepped in behind them.

  The room stretched wide and rectangular, maybe once a storage depot, now gutted to serve as a holdout. Filing cabinets had been dragged into makeshift barricades. Furniture was overturned or stacked into narrow chokepoints. Broken windows filtered pale daylight across the uneven floor.

  Four figures stood inside.

  Three cultists stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front. Chainmail and scavenged armor, one with a shield, the others with axes or short swords. They moved in sync, forming a line with no gaps.

  Behind them, a robed figure knelt, one hand raised in quiet invocation.

  Runes shimmered at his feet, forming a golden circle.

  Xander clocked him and felt his pulse tighten. "Enemy healer on the field!"

  Jo didn’t wait.

  She blurred left, sliding toward the flank.

  Kane clashed first, shield colliding with the central cultist. Metal rang loudly in the confined space. Jo swept around the outside, blade flashing in an arc that drew sparks off the enemy’s mail.

  Xander lunged forward and thrust his spear low. The point caught a leg and punched through, but the injury began sealing before the man even cried out.

  Behind them, the cleric continued his casting.

  The word snapped through the room like a struck chord, and the glow beneath the enemy cleric’s hands flared. A golden sigil spun out across the floor, etched in a flickering script that looked ancient. It spread beneath the front line, rooting itself like a second skeleton beneath their feet.

  "AOE Healing!" Ford yelled as he recognized the spell.

  Kane grunted as the first cultist’s strike slammed into his shield hard enough to rattle dust from the ceiling. A second cultist followed with a hook-angle swing that nearly caught his side. Kane caught the edge of it but was forced a step back, boots scraping against broken tile.

  The enemy fighters pressed forward.

  Jo dashed past Kane’s shoulder in a blur of silver and speed, blade arcing. Her first strike was met mid-swing, steel ringing as one cultist caught it with a shield. He barely held the block, back foot dragging.

  Xander didn’t slow. He stepped in, angled his spear low, and drove it straight through the gap between a pauldron. The tip punched clean through muscle and pinned the cultist’s arm back, but the glow beneath the man’s feet pulsed again.

  The wound closed.

  The cultist snarled and shoved forward with renewed strength, slamming his shoulder into Xander’s spear and breaking the hold. A shimmer passed through his frame. The projection wasn’t just healing, it was empowering them with some kind of buff as well.

  This isn’t a fight. It’s a goddamn loop.

  "Ford," Xander called, never taking his eyes off the front line. "You seeing this?"

  "I'm working on it." Ford replied.

  Another flare lit the room as Ford stepped further through the rear door, staff already raised. A bolt of golden light snapped from its tip, whistling across the room and striking the enemy cleric square in the chest.

  The healing aura faltered. The glowing sigils stuttered, then dimmed.

  Jo slipped to the side, breaking contact. She circled wide, slashing at the air and loosed a sharp arc that lanced toward the cleric. It cracked against the man’s ward and made him flinch mid-chant. The lightning thrown by her blade wasn't enough to cause actual damage, but it was enough to distract him from recasting his AOE healing spell.

  "Focus the cleric!" Xander snapped. "We’re just punching water until he's gone."

  "Try your best, scum," the cleric responded while giving Xander the finger.

  Kane absorbed another overhead blow, but his shield cracked along the inner curve. The strap snapped loose. He shifted stances, absorbing the impact on raw strength now, breathing heavy.

  The cultists surged again.

  The cleric threw up a barrier, then unleashed a flash of divine light. It wasn’t fire or force, but searing brilliance. It caught them all in the face like a camera bulb going off inches away.

  Kane staggered. The enemy trio charged.

  Jo stepped in, blade intercepting a wild downswing. It glanced off her guard, but the second fighter drove in from the side, catching her across the arm with a heavy edge.

  She didn’t cry out. Instead, she rolled through the attack and came up flanking.

  Ford stepped in and pulsed healing light across her back. The cut closed, but his hands were trembling now. Too much magic in too little time. Beads of sweat streaked dirt across his temple.

  Xander found a narrow angle between the enemy's shield guards and stabbed forward again. This time, the spear drove clean into a gut before Judgemental Strike went off.

  The cultist bent over as the bolt of holy energy surged down the metal and fried the fighter from the inside out before jumping to the next nearest cultist.

  He dropped, twitching.

  The cleric panicked. His chanting went frantic, hands raised above his head as he slammed new sigils into the floor.

  Both remaining fighters glowed with a new light. Their forms blurred slightly at the edges, as if their speed had outpaced the surrounding air. One let out a wordless cry and rushed Ford.

  Xander moved.

  He got between them as the blade came down, catching it on his vambrace. Sparks flared. The edge scraped his armor hard enough to score the plate and tear his coat.

  Jo came up behind the second cultist and dropped him with a full charge of lightning from her sword through the spine. The body hit the ground smoking.

  One fighter left.

  Kane reengaged, shield gone, sword catching the last fighter in a locked parry. Xander flanked low and struck through the knee. The fighter crumpled, and Kane finished it with a hard, fast swing to the neck.

  That left only the cleric.

  He raised both hands in a clear motion and dropped to his knees. "I give up!"

  Xander didn't let his guard down but moved forward to secure the prisoner.

  The cleric met their eyes and began muttering something soft. It wasn't a spell, but it sounded like a soft pray meant only for him and whatever god he worshiped to hear.

  Then something small rolled from his sleeve.

  A sphere. Faintly glowing.

  "THE SIMULATION IS GOD!"

  "MOVE!" Jo shouted.

  Kane grabbed Ford and carried him out the open door.

  Jo ran. Xander followed. The orb pulsed once. Then again.

  Faster.

  Xander could feel it. It felt like pressure building in the room, just waiting to release with explosive force. He wasn't going to make it. He was halfway through the door when he cast radiant aegis on himself.

  The grenade detonated.

  The blast wasn’t fire or shrapnel. It was pure force. A concussive pulse of holy energy that flattened the room, blew apart the far wall, and tossed Xander forward like a rag doll.

  He hit the gravel outside and skidded to a stop, coat in tatters, armor scorched along the edges.

  Smoke curled off him in thin ribbons.

  Jo landed beside him in a low crouch before standing. Kane was already hauling Ford to his feet.

  "Jesus, are you guys okay!?" Zoey called.

  Zoey was still posted on the crane arm, loosing frost-tipped arrows at the mine entrance, each shot punctuated by a shimmer of cold light.

  Xander groaned.

  "...That could’ve gone worse. I'm going to feel that tomorrow."

  Ford dropped to one knee beside him, magic flickering as he channeled a burst of healing.

  "You’re lucky the AI likes you." Jo said.

  "That remains to be seen." Xander responded.

  The building behind them groaned once and then collapsed.

  Dust and powdered stone belched into the quarry air, swallowed quickly by the low mist curling along the ground. Charred timbers folded inward with a final groan, like the building had been holding its breath this whole time and only now let go.

  Jo stood over Xander, sword still humming faintly with the last of her charge. Kane paced three steps ahead, scanning for threats with twitchy momentum, his shield arm sagging from the damage. Ford knelt beside Xander, pulling the last strands of healing magic through shaking fingers.

  A flicker of movement pulled their attention to the far side of the quarry.

  The other mine building, still standing.

  A flash of blue-white light erupted behind its windows, brilliant enough to swallow the shadows and turn the glass into silhouettes. Xander shielded his eyes just in time to catch the shape of two Fort Octave soldiers bursting through the back door. One of them signaled with two sharp waves in the all-clear signal.

  A deeper rumble echoed beneath the ridge. Faint, like a long breath drawn through the bones of the earth. Xander’s eyes flicked toward the mine entrance. The excitement never stops, he thought.

  He rolled to a knee, grimacing. His coat was scorched halfway up the spine, and his ribs ached with every movement.

  "Everyone good?" he asked, voice ragged.

  Jo nodded. "Clear here. Building two is done."

  "Not dead yet." Ford added.

  Zoey’s voice crackled over the comm. "Entrance is quiet for now. I’ve got no movement, but I’m not sticking my head in the hole to double-check."

  Xander smirked faintly. "Wise."

  He rose fully and scanned the area again, looking for any sign of Cabbot. He couldn't see her or even get a faint pulse in the corner of his mind, the way her presence always hovered just out of sight, like a cat watching from a high shelf.

  "Zoey," he said slowly. "Do you see Cabbot?"

  "Negative," she replied after a pause. "She went in the entrance when everything popped off, and she never came back out. I figured she looped around behind me or was just doing ghost-cat stuff."

  Jo frowned. "She should’ve come back by now."

  Xander opened his character sheet and flicked to the Companion tab. Her status didn't show she was banished.

  [Warning] Companion entity under hostile influence. Link stability compromised. Immediate action is recommended.

  Xander’s chest tightened. Not just emotionally but physically. The tether in his mind that always felt like a warm thread through fog now pulled taut and frayed at the edges. Like something had wrapped its fingers around it and started to twist.

  "She’s in trouble," he said.

  "Where?" Jo said. "She’s still in there, isn’t she?"

  Xander didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

  [Warning] Companion entity under hostile influence. Bond stability compromised. Immediate action is recommended, or else you will lose your bonded companion, Cabbot, in ten minutes.

  For the first time since finding Jo, a cold pressure curled beneath Xander’s chest. It wasn’t fear of dying, or even of whatever waited deeper in the mine. This was more personal. The fear that settled behind the heart and stayed there.

  The fear of losing something that mattered.

  He clenched his jaw and saw red as his eyes flared with golden light. "Somebody is fucking with my cat!"

  Tides of Ruin).

  I wish you and yours the very best. Thank you for letting me share my world with you.