It felt like so much time had passed since I left this damned place. And here I was again, back where it all started. I chuckled at the irony and shook my head while securing the straps of my backpack. It hugged against my back snug as a glove.

  Walking the familiar streets filled me with a sense of astonishment. When I’d first escaped the Chambers of Crushing, I had thought that the city of the Seventh Layer was a wonder of the world. Something absolutely magical, freeing, and fresh. Now though, that I’d come straight from Earth, I realized that was far from the truth. The air was stale and stuffy, the buildings eroding and patched together with what little materials the inhabitants had found lying around. A city desperately trying to fight the ravages of time.

  I dragged my hand against the coarse stone wall of the building I climbed everyday to leave on my patrol. Just a few streets from here I had beaten the Slitherstitch. One more street over, I had killed a horde of Stumblers, and then Cultists. Though the part of my life that I had spent in the Layered Empire was relatively short, it weighed heavily on my mind, and heavier still on my conscience. No more, I decided.

  I was who I was because of this place. I owed apology to no one. Survival deemed what I did necessary. And I would do it again if need be.

  Smiling to myself, I exhaled at the weight lifting from my shoulders. Some closure, maybe. I headed back to my old room and grabbed my old mirror. “Alright, what’s the plan?”

  Sera grinned, twirling a piece of ivory hair around her finger. “Now we hunt.”

  * * *

  Traveling through the city had never been so easy. My Acclaim was still Unsung, but the mastery I had over my body and overall magic reserves had improved by leaps and bounds in my short time away. I made my way to the Chambers of Crushing in record time and sped up the winding stairs.

  The layout of the building was still fresh in my mind. I headed through the corridor to the old torture chamber, and then out to the armory. As always, the painting of the red haired woman awed me. It was awfully empty inside this time around. Way back when, Samuel and the others helped me clean out the entire place. Shame I never saw half of those bullets. Sure could use them about now. But nostalgia wasn’t why I chose to return. I returned for the book on the pulpit.

  Gently, I flipped its pages open and inspected the contents. The paper was so frail that it would rip by just the slightest of tugs. I needed to understand the method if I wanted to fill my own bullets. I’d thought about just embroidering them with my threads, but that would take too long. Maybe a few special bullets could be made like that, but not all. I’d also thought of just stuffing them filled with red threads. But that also didn’t seem very safe. Not with the amount of hits I was getting increasingly used to taking.

  No, I needed this method. Hopefully nailing a person to an altar wasn’t a necessary step in the refinery process.

  Sadly, Sera didn’t know exactly how this whole thing worked and instead sent me on a mission to do some homework. It wasn’t exactly the first thing I expected to do after my return, but it wasn’t so bad. In fact it beat out a lot of the possible alternatives… Like wearing someone’s face, fighting an old monstrosity, or crawling through bones. Forgotten Lands stuff.

  I spent a few hours in the armory, trying to learn the ancient language of the Empire with Sera’s help. But it wasn’t something that could be done in just one day. Instead, she explained what each word meant as I copied it onto a separate, less fragile piece of paper that I’d brought from the amphitheatre.

  I couldn’t get it done before the day was over, but I wasn’t really in any sort of rush. Gabi wasn’t getting any better, but she wasn’t getting worse either. What mattered most was me getting the job done. No more mistakes. No more sacrifices.

  When I got tired, I left the paper in the armory and headed to the Officer’s office. On the way, I passed by paintings and broken decorations that I’d left in my wake. I slept in the chair just like I had the first day after escaping my cage. In a way, it was strangely nostalgic.

  A few more days passed before I managed to copy the entire book onto my papers. When I finally finished I felt like I had a decent grasp of the Empire’s language, but I also realized just how much longer I had to go before I would actually understand all the nuances and depth it had to offer. Not to mention how much more of it I needed to learn to understand the refining guide.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Sera kept drilling me with letters, painting their shape into the veil before me as we walked. I hadn’t thought she still held that much power, apparently there was a lot about her that I still didn’t know. Like that she could borrow my magic to paint if it was done under the guise of communication. Quite ingenious, really. She’d woven so many loopholes into our pledge that it may as well have been Swiss cheese.

  Thankfully none of them seemed to have been made with the intent of harming me. After all that would go against the first point of our pledge, rendering the rest of it moot and her life forfeit.

  In any case, no moment was wasted. She recited the process of refinery to me, trying to teach it to me as we went. It sounded like an awfully troublesome ordeal but I would be able to make it work. I just needed time for it to happen—time spent in one singular place. That I didn’t have at the moment. But I would soon.

  As I walked, I listened to the sound of my steps echoing inside the underground city. Sounds traveled unnaturally here, bouncing against houses and the stalactite riddled roof endlessly. I couldn’t even fathom how it must have sounded when the city was filled with people. It must have been a clamorous place. Yet now silence hung heavier over the streets than lead.

  There were no Stumblers, no Golems, no Cultists or Scourge-infected monsters. There was only me and Sera. All alone in the city of the Seventh layer. It seemed like Elana had wasted no time in moving her forces. Nor had I expected her to. Each of her decisions seemed deliberate and meticulously planned. With the Slitherstitch gone, she’d taken control of the forces here. I could feel it in my bones.

  I retraced my steps through the city to the burnt down library. If I’d been smarter back then, I would have saved some books. It was a real shame that it burned down. So much knowledge, gone overnight. And for what? Elana was likely the only one who truly knew.

  The library was located in a part of the city that wasn’t as well built as the residential district near the amphitheatre. From here I could see the cave walls surrounding the city. I could even make out the stony stairs jutting out from the walls and leading up dark archways. That’s where I needed to go. That was my way out of this layer. The way into the unknown.

  Taking my time, I strode through the city, enjoying the scenery of it all. Buildings of polished stone and sheet metals stretched everywhere I looked. The rusting bits of metal gave them colors of fall. And despite their decrepit state, they really were beautiful. A kind of beautiful that only something old and weathered could ever be.

  I reached the bottom of the wall and began my climb. From afar, the stairs hadn’t looked so long, but as I began my climb I learned just how wrong I’d been. Not even the stairs leading to the Chambers of Crushing could compare. These stretched hundreds of meters, leading me on criss crossing path up the wall. Neither I nor Sera knew which opening would lead me where, so there was only one way to find out.

  Into the darkness we went.

  Wax candles lined the walls and lit my path with its flickering flames. I kept my hand on the handle of Stoneflow as I walked. Ready at all times for whatever may lurk around the corner. My shadows danced on far walls, making me twitch on more than on occasion. I cursed under my breath at being so jumpy. But I couldn’t help it. The dark was unsettling. Even more so in the presence of light.

  I shook my head and bit my lip. I bet Sera was enjoying the show of her unsung champion getting scared of his own shadow. She didn’t say anything about it though. Instead, she crammed my head full of language and customs. She was more talkative now than ever before. Our time on Earth must have been painful for her. Not being able to talk for weeks and weeks.

  Instead of telling her to let me focus, I decided to indulge her. It was soothing in a way to hear her speak, in an annoying yappy way. If she didn’t feel nervous then there was little reason for me to as well.

  I must have walked for hours when I could finally see the light of stalactite crystals in the distance. Not able to keep the excitement from my steps, I picked up my pace and started jogging. Even Sera lost her voice as I exited the tunnels.

  Using my hand I shielded my eyes from the blinding lights. Towering walls of polished white stone stretched toward the roof of the underground system. Behind them, a massive castle with five towers jutted out from walls. It was carved straight out of the underground and polished into the same marble-white pale as the walls. A layer of pitch black covered the highest points of the building like a veil of shadows.

  I just gaped for a while. The castle was unlike anything I had ever seen. Like something taken straight out of fantasy.

  “Woah,” I muttered.

  The sixth layer, the Bailey.

  “The Bailey, huh…” I muttered.

  This felt more like a place where someone like Sera should have lived. Much more royal. There was only one problem with the beautiful view. The drawbridge had been raised, leaving my sole way of entry on the other side of a bottomless chasm.

  I cleared my throat. “So, uh. How do we get inside?”

  You will figure something out.

  I snorted. As if it was ever that easy. The chasm must have been a hundred meters wide, at least. And there was no way for me to see the bottom of it, the dark inside was just too thick. Like some dirty oil.

  I looked to my sides and began walking down the criss cross of stairs. The steps were slanted downward and forced me to hug the wall to not slip down. My fingers brushed against the coarse stone walls for support as I walked. I kept looking for some sort of clue as to how I could bridge the gap to the drawbridge, but from my height it seemed like an impossible task.

  One step at a time, I mused to myself, keeping myself from chuckling at the double meaning.

  My thighs screamed when I finally felt solid ground under my feet again. I must have walked up and down a couple thousand steps at that point. That seemed to be my limit.

  Seeing as I had nothing better to do than think, I figured I might as well grab a quick bite. I sat down by the chasm and let my feet hang over the edge as I rummaged through my backpack for a pack of crackers and jam.

  preorder! I've uploaded a new cover for it and also added it to volume one here. You can see it on the fiction page.

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