[Oliver’s PoV]

  [Initializing First Floor]

  The mechanical voice was followed by a heavy impact.

  The massive metal gate slammed shut behind them with a final, echoing clang. The shockwave of it rippled through the floor, making soldiers flinch.

  Oliver turned instinctively toward the entrance, but he never saw the gate.

  Instead, the world folded.

  It wasn’t motion. It was as if reality itself twisted inward. Space collapsed, light bent, and gravity lost meaning. For a heartbeat, everything around him went black.

  Then came the light.

  He blinked hard. When his vision cleared, the darkness of the tower was gone. The vast, metallic chamber had been replaced by something completely different.

  Everything was white.

  The floor, the walls, the ceiling, if there even was one, were all white, stretching infinitely in every direction. The air was cold and dry. It felt less like a room and more like a lab, or perhaps a hospital ward.

  Even the sound was strange. There was no echo, no hum of machines, no trace of the dozens of people who had been inside the tower seconds ago.

  Oliver took a cautious step forward, his boots making no sound against the floor. “Where am I?” he muttered, his voice sounding small against the silence.

  He reached out, expecting to touch the wall, but before his hand could make contact, something snapped.

  A sharp tug pulled both his arms backward. The metallic clink of chains broke the silence.

  Oliver froze, twisting his head just enough to look over his shoulder.

  Two thin silver chains, wrapped around his wrists. They weren’t heavy, not even tight, but they had a strange feeling to them. They looked fragile, delicate even, but when he tried to pull free, they didn’t budge.

  He followed the chains with his eyes, expecting to see them anchored to the wall.

  They weren’t.

  The chains didn’t connect to the room at all.

  They connected to someone else.

  Oliver turned, his breath catching in his throat.

  The figure beside him was still blinking, one hand pressed to his face as if trying to make sense of the blinding light.

  'Face?'

  Oliver’s eyes narrowed. It took him only a second to realize what was wrong. Neither of them was wearing their Ranger Armors. The suits hadn’t been deactivated, at least not by them, yet they were gone.

  Blond hair, disheveled from whatever had brought them here. Eyes, sharp, cold, and red as blood, stared back at him with barely contained irritation.

  There was no mistaking him.

  “Mordred? You?” Oliver’s voice broke the silence, tumbling into disbelief. “How did you end up here? What happened? Where are we—”

  “Seriously?” Mordred cut him off, his tone dripping with venom. “That’s what you’re leading with? Not how we got here, or why we’re unarmed, or what the hell this place is?”

  The bite in his voice matched the glare in his crimson eyes.

  Oliver clenched his jaw. Mordred looked even more furious than usual. Oliver couldn’t blame him. The two of them were chained together, stuck in a featureless white void.

  Mordred tugged at the chain between them, the motion sharp and impatient.

  He didn’t seem to take kindly to being trapped.

  Oliver could almost read the thoughts behind those red eyes. The indignation of a man who’d spent his life commanding fleets, now reduced to a prisoner tethered to his rival.

  Mordred exhaled sharply, frustration lacing every word. “Perfect. Of all the people in the galaxy to get stuck with, it had to be you.”

  Oliver said nothing. He didn’t need to. The tension between them was thick enough to choke on.

  Mordred had once tried to recruit him, tried to turn Atlas into one of his pawns. Instead, the encounter had cost him one of his commanders, several ships, and a great deal of pride. Since then, their relationship had been… barely civil.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  And now they were chained together.

  Oliver’s gaze dropped to the restraints. He tightened his grip on the chain, testing its strength.

  “Don’t even bother,” Mordred muttered, his tone edged with derision. “You’re not breaking those.”

  Oliver ignored him and pulled harder. The muscles in his arms tensed, the veins in his hands standing out as the chain groaned under the strain.

  The sound was sharp, metal stretching, but it didn’t give. Not even a millimeter.

  Mordred’s lips curled into something halfway between a sneer and a smirk. “Told you.”

  “Try it like this.”

  Mordred’s voice was casual, too casual for someone about to unleash an attack.

  He made a small gesture with his hand, and Oliver barely had time to register the movement before the shadows beneath them stirred.

  A spear of darkness erupted from the floor, snapping upward like a living thing. It struck the silver chain between them with a sharp clink, embedding itself into the metal.

  Oliver blinked, his eyes wide. “You could’ve warned me.”

  Mordred didn’t even look at him. “You would’ve dodged.”

  His tone was dry and dismissive, as if skewering his partner were a minor inconvenience. He crouched slightly, inspecting the chain where the shadow had struck. The black Energy flickered weakly, then dissipated into smoke. The chain didn’t even have a mark.

  “No damage,” Mordred muttered, straightening. “Figures.”

  Oliver exhaled slowly, still staring at the unbroken chain that connected them.

  “You want to try pulling from your side while I pull from mine?” Mordred asked, half out of frustration, half out of curiosity.

  Oliver didn’t answer immediately. He glanced down at his hands, flexing them once before attempting to summon his Ranger Armor. The familiar surge of Energy that usually answered his call… didn’t come.

  Nothing happened.

  The field around him felt dead, like trying to breathe in a vacuum. His connection to the armor was there, but muted. It felt suppressed by something.

  “No,” Oliver said, finally, his voice low, thoughtful. “Something’s forcing us into this. We need to figure out what it is before we start breaking things at random.”

  Mordred frowned but didn’t argue. He tugged at the chain once more, then let it fall slack with a metallic rattle.

  “I hate this.” He looked ahead, his crimson eyes narrowing. “This place… it looks like a maze.”

  Oliver followed his gaze.

  He hadn’t noticed it before, but now that the blinding light had softened, the space around them had shifted. The sterile white floor stretched out in every direction, but now there were walls.

  At the far end of their path, the hallway split into dozens of branching routes. Each one looked identical, white, empty, endless.

  Oliver sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “More games.”

  He started walking the corridor, before the chain went taut with a sharp clang, jerking Oliver backward mid-step.

  He cursed under his breath, the sudden resistance snapping him out of his focus. Mordred was still several paces behind, walking with deliberate slowness.

  “Come on,” Oliver snapped, the irritation in his voice sharper than he intended. He wasn’t sure why he was angry. Whether it was the chain, the sterile maze, or the suffocating sense of confinement pressing against his mind. The emotion burned hot and raw all the same.

  Mordred didn’t rise to the tone. His crimson eyes flicked toward Oliver, calm but cold. “We need to stay methodical. Keep one hand on the wall,” he said, placing his palm against the smooth white surface. “It’ll guarantee we find the exit eventually.”

  Oliver let out a short sigh. “That only works in simple mazes. Do you really think this—”

  He didn’t finish. A sound broke the silence. Soft at first, like the drip of water echoing through a tunnel. Then another. And another.

  He turned toward the end of the corridor.

  The perfectly sterile white hallway stretched into a distant fork. From that intersection came the unmistakable sound of something wet dragging itself across the floor.

  The dripping grew louder.

  Each drop landed with a fleshy, liquid slap.

  Oliver’s hand instinctively went to his hip, reaching for his weapon, only to remember that his armor and gear were gone. He clenched his fists instead, his pulse quickening.

  Then, from the far corner, a hand appeared.

  It gripped the wall first, long, sinewy fingers coated in a thick blue-black slime. The hand left a streak behind as it slid forward, followed by an arm, muscular, humanoid, but wrong. The skin was translucent and wet, like the surface of deep-sea flesh, veins pulsing faintly beneath it.

  The creature stepped fully into view.

  It was tall, broad-shouldered, its form vaguely human but twisted. Its skin shimmered in shifting shades of dark blue, its surface slick with the same tar-like ooze that Oliver and Mordred had fought outside. The substance dripped steadily from its limbs, pooling on the floor.

  Its face was almost human, almost. The shape was there, but where a mouth should have been, there was only smooth flesh. Its eyes were pale, milky white, without pupils or focus, yet somehow… aware.

  And from its back sprouted six tendrils, long and serpentine, each made entirely of the same black liquid that coursed through its skin.

  For a moment, the creature just stood there, its head tilted slightly, studying them.

  There was something disturbingly curious in its gaze, as if it was trying to understand what it was seeing.

  Neither Oliver nor Mordred moved.

  The two stood perfectly still, their instincts screaming that any sudden motion would draw its attention.

  The creature’s head began to twitch. Slowly. Then faster.

  Its sealed face rippled, the flesh shifting as if something beneath it wanted out. The movement was erratic, grotesque. Muscles straining, skin stretching, but never breaking. It wasn’t trying to breathe. It was trying to speak.

  Oliver’s stomach turned. The sight was wrong on every level.

  'Is the slime controlling the body… or is the body controlling the slime?'

  The thought barely formed before the creature stopped. Its head snapped toward them.

  Then, through the sealed flesh where a mouth should have been, a sound tore through the air.

  “FO—OD.”

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