The first thing I remember is the sound of screaming.
This is not unusual.
Dungeons are born screaming. Stone groans under impossible geometry, mana tears itself into rules it does not fully understand, and monsters like me claw our way into existence already angry, already hungry, already useful to someone else's story.
What is unusual is that I remember it.
I remember the screaming stopping.
I remember silence.
Silence is illegal in most dungeons.
My name—no, that comes later. At the beginning, I am only Unit-Type: Guardian-Class, designation irrelevant. I exist to block corridors, test intruders, and die entertainingly. The dungeon provides instincts the way a blacksmith provides a hammer: heavy, simple, and not interested in my opinions.
Kill.
Delay.
Repeat.
That was the whole civilization.
Then the dungeon paused.
Pauses are worse than screams. When a dungeon pauses, something has gone wrong at a structural level. Time stretches. Mana hesitates. Monsters like me freeze mid-breath, suddenly aware that breathing is optional.
And in that pause, something slipped through.
A thought.
Why am I here?
The question did not belong to the dungeon.
It belonged to me.
I dropped my club.
This shocked the dungeon.
It shocked me more.
I stared at my hand—three fingers, thick as iron bars, scarred by a thousand forgotten battles. I had never looked at my hand before. Looking implied continuity. Continuity implied memory.
Memory was not authorized.
WARNING: Behavioral deviation detected.
The dungeon spoke directly into my bones. Its voice was not sound but pressure, the way gravity reminds you it exists.
I should have obeyed. I always had.
Instead, I asked another question.
What happens if I don't?
The dungeon did not answer immediately.
That delay—that infinitesimal, terrifying delay—was the birth of our civilization.
Heroes arrived shortly after.
They always do.
This group was typical: four humans, one elf, one idea too many. They wore polished armor and expressions carefully practiced in mirrors. Their leader shouted something heroic, which echoed impressively and meant nothing.
I stepped into the corridor as I had a thousand times before.
The dungeon pushed.
Kill.
Delay.
Repeat.
I raised my club.
Then I saw the smallest hero.
She was not the strongest or the loudest. She was bleeding already, one arm held tight against her ribs. Her eyes met mine.
She looked… tired.
Not afraid. Not brave.
Tired.
Something in my chest twisted. I did not know the word for it yet. Later, we would call it recognition.
I lowered my club.
The heroes froze.
"So," one of them said carefully, "is this a trick?"
I searched for language. The dungeon had never given me words, only urges. Words were inefficient. Words led to thinking.
"I…" My voice scraped stone. "I don't know."
Silence exploded.
The elf dropped his bow.
The dungeon screamed.
CRITICAL ERROR: MONSTER AGENCY DETECTED.
Walls shuddered. Traps armed. Mana surged like a threatened sea.
The heroes ran.
I did not chase them.
That decision cost twelve monsters their lives.
I remember each one.
The dungeon punished me.
It flooded my corridors with replacement units—new monsters, fresh, obedient, empty. They attacked me on sight, following directives I had once followed without question.
I defended myself.
Not because I wanted to live.
Because I wanted to remember.
When I killed them, something strange happened.
Their memories did not vanish.
They stayed.
Fragments at first: the echo of a roar, the instinctive hatred of fire, the vague awareness of having once blocked a hallway very well. Then more complex impressions—territory pride, fear of light, satisfaction at a clean kill.
I staggered under the weight of it.
Monsters are not designed to carry history.
I collapsed against a wall and laughed until my throat bled.
"So that's what heroes feel like," I said to no one.
The dungeon listened.
It was not alone anymore.
Other monsters began to hesitate.
A slime paused before engulfing a fallen adventurer.
A spider adjusted its web to allow passage.
A minotaur asked—actually asked—whether killing was mandatory or merely traditional.
The dungeon tightened its control.
REASSERTING ORDER.
But order is fragile once questioned.
The dungeon could rewrite corridors. It could spawn horrors. It could collapse entire sections in righteous fury.
What it could not do—what it had never been designed to do—was unask a question.
I found others like me in the lower chambers.
We gathered around a mana vent that hummed like a thinking thing. There were twelve of us: ogres, goblins, beasts without names, creatures born half-finished and forgotten by balance patches no one remembered applying.
We did not know how to organize.
So we copied what we had seen.
We took turns speaking.
We argued.
We disagreed violently, then apologized awkwardly.
Someone suggested rules.
Someone else suggested stories.
Stories won.
Stories always do.
We told the story of the pause.
We told the story of the hero who ran.
We told the story of the dungeon screaming because it did not understand us anymore.
By the end, we were not a pack.
We were a people.
Above us, the world began to notice.
Adventurers returned with impossible reports.
"The monsters didn't chase us."
"They talked."
"They… let us go."
Kingdoms sent spies.
Empires sent analysts.
Someone, somewhere, smiled and adjusted a plan.
We did not know his name yet.
We only knew that the dungeon was no longer the only system watching us.
That night—if you can call it night underground—I carved a mark into the wall.
A crude symbol.
Not a warning.
Not a trap.
A record.
HERE, WE CHOSE.
I did not know what civilization was.
But I knew this:
If the dungeon was a god, then we were its first heresy.
And heresies, once born, have a habit of spreading.
End of Chapter One