The cold came in through his side first.
Dominic had read about wraith venom once, in a third-year dungeon biology text he'd borrowed and never returned.
From what he read, he knew it spreads from the point of contact outward. Mimicking hypothermia.
The subject remains conscious longer than is medically reasonable. He didn't understand this phrase but that's exactly what the medical book said.
This strange phrase was still fresh in his memory...
"Longer than is medically reasonable? What the fuck does this even mean..."
He had thought that before but as he laid down dying, it clicked.
"I understand it now."
He thought to himself as he was on his back on the third floor of the Caldmore dungeon, and he was going to be conscious for all of it. But this was poison, he thought it was going to be more complicated than this, that's why he was overthinking this whole thing.
Anyways having being conscious for a while now, the sound of boots he was hearing had stopped maybe two minutes ago.
Four sets. Moving fast, moving up, moving away from him with the kind of coordinated efficiency that told him it wasn't panic.
If the people moving were in a state of panic, their movements should feel more rushed and loud... What he'd heard was a decision, quick, and clean, already made before they'd even looked at him on the ground.
Reyes hadn't even hesitated.
''That's the part that should surprise me." Dominic sighed.
But it didn't. He didn't know why his heart felt so serene despite his current situation.
Sighing, he stared at the dungeon ceiling. The stone was dark and wet and very far away.
Somewhere to his left the wraith had dissolved back into the air the way they did after a kill, patient things, never wasteful. His torch had rolled three meters away and was still burning, which felt almost insulting. The light was fine. Everything was fine except him.
He laughed.
It came out wrong, too quiet, and too flat, but it was a laugh. Because of course it was Reyes. Of course it was the third floor. Of course it was a wraith, which was the one dungeon creature that Summoners had historically been able to handle before Summoners stopped meaning anything.
His father would have dismissed this thing in seconds. Edmund Kane, SS-rank, the man whose crest stone had lit up three colors the day of his ceremony, the man whose name still made senior Royal officials speak carefully even now, four years dead in a cell. His father would have laughed at a third-floor wraith.
And yet, his son was dying from one.
[F-rank] the stone had said. Three years ago. When he was sixteen.
He could remember clearly how the ceremony hall had gone very quiet and he'd stood there holding the crest card with both hands like that would change what was printed on it.
[Summoner.]
A dead profession his father had dragged back into relevance and made it legendary. Like the world had reached into his chest and pulled out the most precise possible humiliation.
He'd survived that.
He'd survived Greyfen's lower city before that. Five years of it, after House Harwick and the Royal officials had finished with his family name and his father had disappeared into a Bureau detention cell and the money had run out in the same week.
He'd learned which streets to avoid and which ones to use and how to look like someone not worth the effort of robbing. He'd gotten the Caldmore scholarship on scores alone because there was nothing else to get it on.
He'd spent three years being the quiet one. The reliable one. The one who pulled weight without announcing it and covered gaps without asking for credit.
He'd thought that meant something.
Reyes had met his eyes once. Just once, just long enough, and then he was gone. Dominic had spent three years making himself useful to that man. Turns out useful and worth saving were two very different things.
The cold had reached his chest now. His eyes closed.
"I should have done more," he thought. Not panicked. Just observational. He was good at observational. ''Father's name is still in the ground. Victor is probably laughing at dinner right now. Pathetic I never—"
He didn't finish it. He was cut short by a sound that made him open his eyes.
Not from the dungeon. Not from the walls or the dark or the dissolving air where the wraith had been. From somewhere that didn't have a direction.
The cold in his chest paused.
Then text appeared in the air above him, crisp and white and utterly unbothered by the fact that he was dying.
[INFINITE GACHA SYSTEM: INITIALIZING...]
Dominic stared at it.
[HOST IDENTIFIED: DOMINIC KANE]
[STATUS: CRITICAL]
[THIS IS INCONVENIENT.]
A beat. Then.
[CORRECTING.]
The cold didn't fade. It reversed. Like a hand reaching into his chest and pulling the damage out by the root. It was nothing like slowly knitting tissue back together the way a recovery skill worked, but more like an undoing. The venom left his bloodstream in under a second. The puncture in his side sealed like it was never there to begin with. He gasped, and the breath that came in was clean and full.
He sat up on the floor of a dungeon he had been dying on thirty seconds ago and looked at the floating text still hanging in the air in front of him, patient and luminous and waiting, confused at what was going on.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION: COMPLETE]
[VOID REGISTRY: ACTIVE]
[GT TOKENS: 0]
[FIRST PULL: PENDING]
[WELCOME, DOMINIC KANE.]
[THE INFINITY GACHA SYSTEM HAS SELECTED YOU AS ITS HOST.]
He looked at it for a long moment.
Then he looked at his hands. No venom. No wound. No cold.
He looked back at the text.
"Selected?" he asked, out loud, to no one.
[CORRECT.]
It continued.
[THROUGH THIS SYSTEM YOU WILL PULL FROM THE VOID.]
[THE VOID CONTAINS WOMEN OF EXTRAORDINARY ABILITY.]
[EACH ONE THE GREATEST OF A CIVILIZATION THAT NO LONGER EXISTS.]
A pause.
[THEY WILL BE BOUND TO YOUR LIFE.
YOUR SURVIVAL IS THEREFORE NON-NEGOTIABLE.]
[THE SYSTEM WILL ENSURE IT.]
Dominic didn't fully understand what it was. Didn't need to. It had saved his life, it was offering him power, he had nothing to lose and he had a list of people who were still breathing comfortably.
That was enough.
[ONE FREE PULL IS AVAILABLE.]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO PROCEED?]
The dungeon was quiet. His torch was still burning. Somewhere above him, four people were climbing toward the exit with clean hands and a story they'd already decided on.
Dominic Kane stood up.
"Yes," he said.
The system accepted his input.
The space in front of him and the dungeon began to fill up: light gathering from nothing, pulling itself together like it had always been there. It built slowly, then all at once, and then she was there.
Floating. Still.
Eyes closed.
He didn't move. Didn't speak. Just watched as whatever force was holding her slowly, deliberately released her, and she descended the last few inches to the dungeon floor.
The light faded.
The dungeon went quiet again.
Then her eyes opened.