“Gray shards lull you. Soft light, total quiet, nothing moving. Then the trees start clicking, and suddenly you’re wishing you had watched the introduction video.”

  — Rook “Three-Lives” Vantar, Diver Forum Post #138 (downvoted for negativity)

  I kept walking, watching the cave transform around me.

  The void was retreating. What had been endless black nothing was now just... distant darkness. Background. The kind you’d see at the far end of the Traninum High deep tunnel. The walls had fully solidified into proper stone, gray and weathered, complete with natural-looking cracks and mineral veins running through them.

  Glowing moss clung to the ceiling and upper walls, pale blue-green bioluminescence casting everything in a soft, eerie light. It looked organic. Real. Like it had been growing here for years instead of manifesting seconds ago.

  “This is so weird,” I muttered, running a hand along the cave wall.

  The stone was cool, slightly damp. Completely normal. If someone had dropped me here without context, I’d have assumed I was in some random cave system on Earth 2.0, not inside a reality-warping chaos shard floating in the void.

  But was I some kind of scientist? Someone who needed to understand the underlying mechanics of how chaos became order?

  Nah.

  I was a miner.

  And miners mined.

  I pulled out the small pick and approached another dark patch embedded in the wall. The black mineral glinted faintly under the moss-light, crystalline veins catching and refracting the glow.

  Fluxstone again, the same as before.

  I chipped it free with a few solid strikes, the rock yielding easily. The chunk tumbled into my palm, heavy and dense, and I dropped it into the bag without ceremony.

  [Weight and purity calculated price: ￠22]

  Twenty-two sols this time. Slightly bigger piece.

  I kept walking, following the tunnel as it curved deeper into the asteroid, and then I saw patches, dozens of them. Dark mineral deposits embedded in the walls, floor, ceiling, everywhere I looked. A goldmine of fluxstone, all clustered in this one section like the chaos had decided to be generous before stabilizing.

  I reached the end of the tunnel, where the cave wall ended in a dead end. Fluxstone covered nearly every surface, the black mineral bleeding into the gray stone like ink stains.

  I let out a long sigh and raised the pick.

  Time to get to work.

  But something moved behind me; the clicking sound echoed through the cave, multiplied. Not one set of legs. Several.

  I swirled, dropping the pick and yanking the rifle off my shoulder in one smooth motion. My hands found the grip, fingers sliding to the trigger as I brought it up.

  Three of them.

  The same dog-sized nightmares, with segmented bodies and too-many eyes, spreading out in a loose formation. Flanking me.

  “Damn.”

  I fired.

  The rifle kicked against my shoulder; the plasma discharge booming through the cave. The shot caught the leftmost creature center-mass, punching through carapace and blowing a fist-sized hole clean through its thorax.

  It shrieked and stumbled, legs buckling, blue ichor spraying across the stone.

  Actual damage. Finally.

  I swung the barrel toward the middle one and fired again. The plasma charge caught it in the shoulder joint, severing one of its too-long legs. The limb tumbled away, still twitching, and the creature listed sideways, off-balance.

  The third lunged.

  I backpedaled, firing wild. The shot went high, scorching the ceiling and sending chunks of glowing moss raining down. The creature closed the distance, claws extended, that nightmare mouth opening wide.

  I fired again. Point-blank. The plasma punched into its open mouth and out the back of its skull.

  It dropped mid-leap, dead before it hit the ground, where it vanished with another glowing pebble in its place.

  The other two were still coming.

  The wounded one on the left dragged itself forward, slower but still aggressive. The middle one had recovered its balance and was circling, trying to flank.

  I tracked the middle one and fired.

  Miss. The shot hit stone, vaporizing a chunk of wall.

  Fired again. This time I caught it on the side, carving a trench through its carapace. More ichor. More shrieking.

  The rifle’s heat indicator blinked yellow.

  Then red.

  “No, no, no—”

  I squeezed the trigger. Nothing. Just a warning beep and the smell of overheating metal… the rifle was done. Overheated. Dead until the coil cooled, and I didn’t have minutes to wait.

  I slung it back over my shoulder with a frustrated snarl and drew the sword.

  “Damn,” I hissed, settling into a combat stance. “And here I thought I wouldn’t have to rely on the sword again.”

  The two creatures circled, moving with disturbing coordination. Not pack tactics exactly, but something close. Like an instinct, or predatory intelligence.

  The one on the left lunged first.

  I sidestepped, swinging the sword in a wide arc. The blade caught it across the face, splitting carapace and sending one of its eye clusters tumbling away in a spray of blue.

  It reeled back, shrieking.

  The second one attacked from my right, claws snapping at my exposed side.

  I twisted, bringing the sword up in a desperate block. Metal met chitin with a grinding clang, the impact jarring my arms. I shoved hard, throwing the creature back, and immediately had to pivot as the first one lunged again.

  Stolen story; please report.

  My lessons from mining school flashed through my head. Vague, half-remembered instructions about fighting multiple enemies. Keep moving. Don’t let them pin you. Control the space.

  Back then I’d ignored most of it, because bugs were easy. Bugs died in one shot. Bugs didn’t coordinate.

  These things weren’t bugs.

  I backpedaled, keeping both creatures in my line of sight, sword raised. The wounded one on the left was slower, favoring its injured side. I focused on it, waiting for an opening.

  It lunged low, claws raking at my shins.

  I brought the sword down hard, two-handed, putting my full weight behind the strike. The blade punched through its spine with a sickening crunch, pinning it to the stone.

  It spasmed once. Twice.

  Then vanished.

  Another pebble.

  The second creature didn’t give me time to recover. It slammed into me from the side, claws hooking under my pauldron, yanking me off-balance.

  I hit the ground hard, sword skittering away across the stone.

  The thing was on top of me immediately, claws scraping at my chest plate, that nightmare mouth opening inches from my visor.

  I grabbed one of its legs with both hands and twisted, hard. The joint snapped with a wet crack, and the creature shrieked, reeling back. I scrambled for the sword, fingers closing around the grip just as it lunged again and rolled onto my back and brought the blade up.

  The creature impaled itself on the sword, momentum driving it down the length of the blade until the hilt pressed against its thorax.

  It twitched and convulsed. Those clustered eyes blinked rapidly, out of sync, fading one by one.

  Then it vanished.

  [You earned experience!]

  [ERROR: SYSTEM DISABLED]

  I lay there for a long moment, chest heaving, arms shaking. Sweat dripped down my face inside the helmet, stinging my eyes, and my entire body ached.

  Slowly, I pushed myself upright, checking the armor.

  It was full of scratches and dents with a long gouge across the chest plate where claws had scraped, but nothing critical and nothing breached.

  I retrieved the sword, wiped the blade clean, and sheathed it. Two glowing pebbles sat on the ground where the creatures had died. I picked them up one by one, dropping them into the bag after checking the price.

  [Weight and purity calculated price: ￠38]

  [Weight and purity calculated price: ￠41]

  I reached for the third pebble, but my fingers brushed against something different. Not a pebble, but something... smoother.

  Metallic.

  I picked it up and held it to the moss-light.

  A ring.

  Simple silver band, maybe thumb-width, with tiny glyphs etched into the surface. The symbols were precise, each line clean despite the ring looking ancient. They didn’t glow or pulse or do anything dramatic. Just sat there, inert, carved into a metal that had probably seen more action than my entire armor set… despite being created by the system on the spot.

  Or not? Damn my head hurt from this chaos nonsense.

  I blinked at it, turning it over in my palm and then focused on it, willing the system to do its thing.

  [Using the Palistra Free Gray Catalogue? to analyze…]

  The loading bar appeared. And crawled. And crawled some more.

  Thirty seconds passed.

  Then a minute.

  I stared at the frozen progress bar, watching it inch forward with all the enthusiasm of a student during the last hour at school.

  Finally, it finished.

  [Equipment not found in the Palistra Free Gray Catalogue?! Price could not be calculated]

  I snorted. “Yeah, at first Palistra invades my soul, now it’s useless.”

  The ring sat in my palm and could be worth everything. Could be worth nothing. Could be some random piece of junk that system threw at me just because.

  No way to know, but I shoved it into the bag anyway.

  I glanced back at the wall, at the dozens of fluxstone deposits still waiting to be mined. One hundred and fifty-six sols so far. Not even halfway to the two-fifty minimum.

  I let out a long sigh.

  “Let’s gather you and finish this nonsense.”

  I picked up the mining pick and got back to work.

  After I got my quota, I stood there, surrounded by normal cave walls. Just... stone. Regular, boring, completely mundane stone.

  The moss still glowed softly overhead. Water dripped somewhere in the distance. If I closed my eyes and listened, I could almost convince myself I was back in the school mines, hunting bugs for sols.

  Huh. Weird chaos, but better than the void. I grinned, shouldering my rifle and adjusting the bag full of fluxstone and mystery pebbles.

  Then I blinked.

  “How do I get back?”

  The question hit me like cold water.

  Getting in had been easy, just push the big red button. The system did the rest, but out? How the hell did I get out?

  Fear gripped my chest, and my breathing picked up. I spun around, looking for... what? A door? An exit sign? Another big red button conveniently mounted on the cave wall?

  Nothing. Just stone and moss and silence.

  What if I were stuck? What if the dive was one-way, and I’d just—

  No. Stop.

  I forced myself to breathe in a slow and steady rhytm. Panic wouldn’t help. Panic never helped.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the plugin, the same way I’d focused on the fluxstone to make the stupid Palistra catalogue activate.

  Mental pressure! Yeah, I have pressure, system! Or… uh… my intent?

  A window snapped open.

  [Activate Scavantis Gray Dive Tools?]

  [Yes/No]

  I stared at it.

  “Uh... by activating, you mean going back?” No answer. Of course not. The system didn’t do helpful clarifications. “Yeah,” I drawled. “I’d like to go back.”

  I mentally pressed [Yes].

  The world blinked.

  One second: cave. The next: reinforced lecture hall.

  No transition, or sensation, just a hard cut back to reality. “Welcome back,” the assistant said cheerfully, already moving toward me with her scanner.

  I blinked rapidly, trying to reorient myself. The fluorescent lights felt too bright after the cave’s soft moss-glow. The air smelled different, corporate filtered with a weird scent. Hadn’t noticed it because it was better than the smog outside, but now, after the clean air from the cave?

  She ran the scanner over me efficiently; the device beeping softly as it catalogued my gear. “Scan is okay.” She held out her hand. “Can I see the bag, please?”

  I handed it over absentmindedly, still looking around.

  The instructor was gone. Most of the chairs were empty. But in the front row, I spotted them; the two girls in Syntavelli jackets, sitting side by side, apparently waiting.

  I quickly glanced away, back to the assistant.

  She’d already sealed the bag with red tape covered in glowing runes, probably security that would explode if you tried to tamper with it. She handed it back along with a slip of paper.

  “Take this to Resource Appraisal,” she said with a warm smile. “If you gathered enough, you can finish getting your license there.”

  “Thanks,” I managed, taking both and as I turned toward the exit, already planning my escape route, one of the girls jolted up from her seat and walked toward me with confident steps.

  She caught me near the first row, blocking my path with a grin. “Hi! I’m Alice, and this is Cecilia!” She gestured back at her companion, who gave a small wave. “Nova to meet you!”

  I got my first proper look at them.

  Both were beautiful in that effortless, corpo-sponsored way that suggested expensive gene-mods and personal styling AIs. Long silver hair that caught the fluorescent light like spun metal, flowing down past their shoulders, but it was their eyes that made me stop.

  Heterochromia. Both of them. One blue eye, one red eye. And they looked exactly the same. Mirror images.

  Twins.

  “Uhhh, hi?” I said, brain still catching up. “I’m Dash.”

  Alice grinned wider, leaning casually against a chair like she owned the room. “Preem, Dash! So, my sis and I!” She gestured between herself and Cecilia. “You can tell us apart by our eyes!”

  I glanced between them, not following.

  “My red eye is left; she’s got red right. Easy-peasy!” Alice laughed, the sound bright and unapologetic. “So, wanna jet to get your license with us?”

  “You’re already done?” I couldn’t hide the surprise in my voice.

  They were the only ones out beside me. Everyone else was still diving, still hunting for their two-fifty per person minimum.

  “We’re totes preem!” Alice said, flipping her hair with a casual flick. “But you weren’t delta either.” Her eyes scanned my armor, lingering on the fresh dents and scratches. “Got into a scrape, eh?” She reached out and touched my shoulder pauldron. It cranked under her fingers, the dented metal protesting.

  I was already thinking of reasons not to go with them. They smelled trouble, like corpo trouble. The kind that smiled while cleaning your wallet.

  Ah! Perfect excuse.

  “Yeah, would love to go with you, but I need to clean—”

  She moved her hand.

  Small flames erupted around my body, dancing across my armor in a wave of heat and light. I froze, every instinct screaming at me to panic, to drop and roll, to—

  The flames stopped.

  I was... totally clean.

  Not a speck of blue ichor, or a smudge of cave dust. Even the scorch marks from plasma discharge had faded and the paper in my hand hadn’t even singed.

  “Eh?!” I flinched backward, staring at her.

  Alice nodded approvingly. “Almost not even a flinch. Tough guy?” She smirked, eyes glinting with amusement. “So, where you gotta jet?”

  I glanced down at the paper, still processing the fact that I’d just been set on fire and somehow survived.

  So did she.

  [FLOOR 22-A: RESOURCE APPRAISAL]

  “We as well!” Alice’s grin widened. “Let’s bounce, Dash!”

  Before I could protest, she’d already looped her arm through mine and started dragging me toward the door. Cecilia fell into step on my other side, quieter but with the same confident energy.

  I was trapped.

  Between two silver-haired corpo twins who could apparently conjure fire and had zero concept of personal space.

  “Great,” I muttered.

  Alice laughed. “Don’t worry, Dash! We’re totally aces. You’ll see!”

  That’s what I was afraid of.

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