Nine-year-old Ezekiel had learned to measure time not in days, but in cycles of sleep and the shedding of cave beetles. Two years had passed since he plunged into the abyss of the Dungeon. The boy had grown taller, turning even more thin and wiry. His movements mirrored those of a subterranean cat—silent, fluid, and low to the ground. His black eyes now never blinked like a normal human's; they constantly scanned the obsidian walls, searching for hidden threats through his [Mirror Sight].
On that day, Ezekiel wandered deep into an unexplored eastern tunnel, pursuing a wounded subterranean blind-mole. The tunnel grew narrower and narrower until it dead-ended into a collapse of heavy, specular boulders. The beast had slipped through a tiny crevice, but it was not this that caught Ezekiel's attention.
Deep within the rubble, wedged between two monoliths of black glass, a strange silhouette was visible.
The boy froze, activating his vision. In the wall's reflection, he saw that this silhouette emitted neither thermal nor mystical energy—it was an inanimate object. More precisely, a pile of bones.
The Dungeon had long since stripped Ezekiel of a child's fear of death. To him, a corpse was not a source of horror; a corpse was a source of resources. In Oakhaven, the dead were stripped clean before their blood even had time to cool. Here beneath the earth, any item from the surface could mean the difference between life and death.
Ezekiel began to cautiously, without making any unnecessary noise, dismantle the sharp shards of obsidian. If he made a single mistake, a heavy avalanche of glass would crush his fragile body. After two hours of grueling work, he managed to widen the gap enough to squeeze into the hidden niche.
There, leaning his back against a smooth wall, sat a skeleton.
Judging by the size of the bones, it was an adult male, a human. His clothes had almost completely rotted from the dampness, turning into grey dust, but the bony framework remained untouched—for some reason, the subterranean scavengers never entered this dead-end niche.
Ezekiel dropped to his knees before the dead man and cold-bloodedly began searching the remains.
His fingers were the first to find what the cave's dampness could not destroy. On the skeleton's chest, beneath a layer of rotten fabric, lay a flat leather case covered in a layer of dried wax. The wax had protected the contents from the moisture. Ezekiel tore open the seal with his obsidian knife and shook the contents out onto his knees.
Inside was a small book bound in the durable, rough skin of a lizard, along with several yellowed sheets of parchment. Lying next to the skeleton was a staff broken at the base, its pommel of clear crystal shattered—by all appearances, this man had been a mage.
The boy opened the book. The pages were covered in dense, even handwriting in the common human tongue, which Ezekiel still remembered slightly from his life in the town. In some places, the text was accompanied by neat sketches of crystals and geometric diagrams.
Ezekiel immersed himself in reading, tracing his dirty finger along the lines. It was a journal.
"Day 42. My staff is broken, my mana channels damaged by the Inquisition even before my fall into this cursed Dungeon. They called my research heresy. Fools. They fear what they cannot understand. They call God the source of light, but they forget that light without reflection is a blinding void..."
The boy flipped a few pages forward. His eyes caught a word that echoed inside his own mind.
"...The energy of this place is no ordinary mana. It is Amalgam. A liquid silver separating reality from the Abyss. The beasts of the Dungeon absorb it from the obsidian crystals to harden their carapaces. To control the Amalgam, a mage must stop looking at the world directly. One must allow their soul to become a mirror. To refract the flow within oneself..."
On one of the yellowed sheets, a detailed diagram was drawn. A map. It was a map of the Upper Tier of the Dundan Dungeon. Marked upon it were safe zones, sources of clean water, and—most importantly—a massive symbol right in the center, labeled as the "Gate of the Verge." The path to the surface.
As Ezekiel stared at the diagram, a clear system began to form within his hitherto wild and chaotic mind. He realized that the cold energy he felt in his veins every time he touched the cave walls was that very same Amalgam. He wasn't cursed. He was simply absorbing the power of the Dungeon itself.
Suddenly, the journal in his hands emitted a faint, barely noticeable silvery glow. The last spark of magic, sealed within the pages of the book by the dying mage, broke free and absorbed into Ezekiel's fingers in a soft wave.
A sharp, icy convulsion pierced his body. A quiet, crystalline chime rang in his ears, resembling a strike against a delicate crystal glass.
[Amalgam Development: Progress 89%] Conceptual knowledge of the Flip Side of the world has been obtained. Mana channels are adapting to the structure of the Amalgam.
Ezekiel closed the journal and carefully tucked it into his shirt, tying his rags securely with his rope. Then, he looked into the empty eye sockets of the skeleton. For the first time in two years, a semblance of emotion appeared on the boy's face—a slight, barely perceptible nod of respect. This dead man had given him a map, knowledge, and a purpose.
"Thank you," Ezekiel whispered hoarsely.
He turned and slipped out of the niche back into the dark tunnel. Now he knew where to go. He knew what he was doing. Only one single step remained before his transformation from a victim into a true Practitioner. One level.