Day 1
The first thing I noticed about the dungeon wasn't the danger or the impossible architecture or the way reality bent at the edges.
It was the silence.
Complete, absolute silence. No wind, no water, no distant sounds of life. Just... nothing.
The second thing I noticed was that I was standing in a forest that shouldn't exist.
Trees stretched upward into darkness so complete it felt solid. Their bark was purple-black, veined with lines that glowed faintly, not with light, but with the absence of light, like reverse bioluminescence. The ground beneath my feet was soft, spongy, covered in moss that felt wrong under my boots.
[WELCOME TO THE VEILWOOD EXPANSE]
[MACRO FLOOR 1: LIFE THAT DEVOURS LIGHT]
[OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE]
[SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: UNDERSTAND]
"Understand what?" I asked the empty air.
The air, predictably, didn't answer.
I took a step forward, and the moss beneath my feet let out a soft sigh. Not metaphorically, an actual exhalation, like I'd stepped on something's lung.
I looked down. The moss rippled away from my boot, creating a perfect circle of exposed earth.
"Okay," I said slowly. "So the ground breathes. That's... fine. Everything's fine."
Through the bond, stretched thin but still present, I felt Nyx's concern. The connection was weaker here, muffled by distance and whatever wrongness permeated this place, but it was there.
Status? she asked.
Weird. Everything's weird. The trees grow toward darkness rather than toward light.
That should not be possible.
Yeah, welcome to my life.
I moved forward carefully, every sense on high alert. My Survival Instinct was screaming warnings, but it couldn't decide which direction the danger was coming from. Everything. The danger was coming from everything.
The trees here didn't just grow toward darkness; they hungered for it. I watched one slowly bend away from my torch, its branches creaking as it repositioned itself to avoid the light.
When I extinguished the torch experimentally, the tree immediately straightened, its leaves unfurling toward me like a cat stretching in a sunbeam.
"So you like darkness," I mused. "And light... hurts you? Repels you?"
I reignited the torch. The tree recoiled.
[DISCOVERY: VEILWOOD FLORA PHOTOSYNTHESIZES SHADOW] [LIGHT SOURCES ARE WEAPONS HERE] [SURVIVAL INSTINCT +1]
"Well that's going to make navigation interesting."
I spent the next hour mapping the immediate area, learning the rules of this impossible place:
Shadows were warm. Light was cold. The "fireflies" I saw weren't producing light; they were consuming it, leaving trails of deeper darkness. My own shadow sometimes moved independently, as if considering whether to stay attached. The silence was absolute until you made noise, then everything echoed wrong, coming back twisted.
By the time I found a relatively defensible spot to make camp, a hollow between massive roots that reminded me painfully of home, I was exhausted more from sensory confusion than physical effort.
I pulled out my notebook (waterproofed leather, courtesy of Pip's paranoia) and made my first entry:
Day 1: The forest swallowed the sun today. I should be scared. I'm mostly annoyed. The trees duck when I light a torch. My shadow just waved at me. If this gets weirder, I'm filing a complaint with management.
Through the bond, distant but warm: You are adapting.
Or losing my mind. Could be either.
Both, probably. Sleep. I will keep watch.
You're not even here...
I am always with you. Now sleep.
I did, curled in the root-hollow with my spear across my lap, and dreamed of forests that made sense.
Day 3
I dreamed someone said my name. Woke up swinging.
The trees ducked.
I'm not even kidding, the branches literally moved out of the way of my spear, bending with a grace that trees should not possess.
"Sorry," I said reflexively, then felt stupid for apologizing to a tree.
The tree rustled its leaves in what might have been acceptance or might have been "this idiot is talking to us."
The Veilwood was teaching me that reality was optional here. Time felt... slippery. I'd sat down to eat breakfast, dried meat and the last of my fresh fruit, and when I looked up, hours had passed. Or maybe minutes. The sun didn't exist here, so tracking time was guesswork.
The System's clock read "DAY 3" but I felt like I'd been here for a week.
I encountered my first real monster today: what the System called a "Shade Stalker." Imagine a panther made of living darkness, with too many eyes that glowed with that reverse-light, and you're halfway there.
It stalked me for an hour before attacking, and I only survived because it made the mistake of stepping into the light from my torch. The moment the flames touched it, it screamed, a sound like reality tearing, and dissolved into wisps of shadow.
[SHADE STALKER DEFEATED] [+180 EXP] [DISCOVERY: LIGHT IS ANATHEMA TO VEILWOOD PREDATORS]
I made a mental note: carry multiple torches. Never be caught in the dark.
Which was ironic, considering darkness was everywhere, and the torches made everything worse by existing.
Through the bond: You are injured.
I looked down. Three parallel cuts across my ribs where the Stalker had gotten past my guard. Not deep, but bleeding.
Flesh wound. I'm fine.
You are never fine. You are stubborn and reckless, and fine later, after bleeding.
I love you too.
Her irritation was palpable even through the stretched bond, but underneath it: relief that I was alive.
Day 5
The illusions started today.
I was walking through a particularly dense section of the Veilwood when I saw her.
Emma.
Standing in a clearing, looking exactly as she had the last time I saw her alive, skinny, hollow-eyed, but smiling. That smile that had once lit up my world and eventually became a lie.
"Knox," she said, and her voice was perfect. "You came back."
Every rational part of my brain screamed that this was fake, an illusion, a trick of the dungeon. But grief doesn't listen to rationality.
"You're not real," I said, my voice rough.
"Does it matter?" She stepped closer. "You left me. You were supposed to save me, and you left."
"You died." The words came out broken. "I found you on the bathroom floor. I tried... I called 911, I did CPR, I..."
"It wasn't enough." Her eyes were accusing now. "I needed you, and you weren't enough."
The truth of it, the awful, crushing truth that I'd carried for over a year... hit like a physical blow.
"I know," I whispered.
She reached for me, and I knew if I let her touch me, something terrible would happen. The dungeon wanted this. Wanted me to break here, to give in to the grief I'd been running from.
"You're not Emma," I said, stepping back. "Emma died. And I... I couldn't save her. But I'm not going to die here because I couldn't let her go."
The illusion's face twisted, becoming something angry and wrong. "You let me die..."
"Yes," I said, and the admission hurt worse than any weapon. "I did. And I'll carry that forever. But you're not her. You're just this place trying to break me."
I raised my torch. The not-Emma hissed and dissolved into shadow.
[MENTAL RESISTANCE CHECK: PASSED]
[WISDOM +2]
[TITLE EARNED: GRIEF-TEMPERED]
I collapsed against a tree, shaking. Through the bond, Nyx sent waves of comfort, of support, of absolute faith that I was stronger than my demons.
I saw her, I sent.
I know. I felt it.
I thought I was past this.
Grief is not something you get past. It is something you carry differently. A pause. You are strong, Knox. Stronger than you believe.
That night's journal entry was short:
Day 5: I think I saw myself. Not the good parts. The parts I don't talk about. The dungeon knows where I'm broken. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
Day 7
One week in the Veilwood.
I'd learned its rhythms, its rules, its cruel sense of humor. The trees that grew toward darkness. The shadows that felt warm. The way sound echoed wrong, bringing back conversations I'd never had.
I'd fought Shade Stalkers, Shadow Wisps, and something the System called a "Reverse Wraith" that screamed in silence and hurt to look at directly.
I'd seen illusions of everyone I'd ever failed: Emma, my parents (dead before I left Earth), friends I'd abandoned during my year of grief.
Each one hurt. Each one left scars.
But I was still moving forward.
I found the first mini-boss at the end of the seventh day: a guardian made of twisted wood and shadow, with eyes that burned with reversed light. It stood at a bridge of living bark that spanned a chasm I couldn't see the bottom of.
[MINI-BOSS: ECLIPSED SENTINEL]
[LEVEL: 14]
[WARNING: LIGHT AND SHADOW ATTACKS]
"Of course you exist," I muttered, readying my spear. "Can't make anything easy, can you?"
The Sentinel didn't respond. It just raised one massive arm and pointed at me, and the entire forest seemed to hold its breath.
The fight was brutal. It moved like water, flowing between attacks, using the very shadows I relied on against me. Every time I hit it with my ember-shadow magic, it absorbed the darkness and reflected the light back.
I only won by realizing the trick: it couldn't absorb both at once. So I alternated, rapid-fire, ember then shadow then ember then shadow, until it couldn't keep up.
When it fell, it didn't dissolve. It just... stopped. Became a statue of wood and shadow, frozen in the moment of defeat.
[ECLIPSED SENTINEL DEFEATED]
[+600 EXP] [LEVEL UP! YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 13]
[ACCESS GRANTED: DEEPER VEILWOOD]
I crossed the bridge, leaving the Sentinel behind, and the forest opened up into something even more wrong.
Day 7: Made it through the first section. The bridge guardian is dead, and I'm still alive, which is more than I expected. The deeper forest ahead looks worse. Why does it always look worse?
Through the bond, faint but steady: You are surviving. Keep going.
I'm trying.
I know. That is why you will succeed.
The Veilwood stretched ahead, darker and stranger, and I walked into it alone.