Strom woke in the most comfortable bed he had ever slept in.
For several long moments, he didn’t move.
This wasn’t his first time in the Deep, nor his first night in a Deep “village.”
And while the civilized Deep Tribes were far from the unwashed savages that the clans liked to pretend they were, Strom was used to waking with a kink in his neck, a stone under his ribs, or one hand already reaching for a weapon because some Deep critter had decided he looked like a warm place to sleep.
Instead, he lay beneath a blanket soft enough to feel unreal, on a mattress that supported him without swallowing him, in a room so still that even his breathing sounded too loud.
Eventually, he pushed himself upright and swept his gaze across the apartment.
It was a single open room, though calling it simple felt almost insulting. Smooth white walls curved into the ceiling without visible seams, broken only by strips of soft light that glowed without flame, crystal, or any trace of spiritual energy he could sense. The floor looked like dark, polished stone at first glance, but it gave slightly beneath his bare feet when he stood. Worse, it was warm enough that he didn’t even flinch when he stepped onto it.
The air was cool but not cold, clean in a way that made him faintly aware of all the old smoke, damp straw, sweat, and boiled cabbage he’d once accepted as part of ordinary lodging.
A low table sat near one wall, surrounded by chairs shaped from single pieces of pale Deep Marble. Anywhere else, that marble would have been carved with elegant motifs and placed as the prized centerpiece of some wealthy merchant’s guest room. Here, it had been turned into a simple, if tasteful, dining table.
Against the far side of the room waited a narrow cooking area, all clean lines, black glass, and metal surfaces that reflected his blank stare back at him. Small cupboards sat above it, opening at a touch, while the range had no coals, no burner stones, and no array marks he could recognize. Just a flat surface that would heat when commanded and remain harmless otherwise.
He rose slowly and crossed the room to the large sliding window that took up nearly half of the outer wall, a perfectly clear sheet overlooking the cavern city below.
It wasn’t glass, from what he could tell. Or crystal, for that matter. It was thinner than any pane he’d ever seen. And while he doubted it could truly stand up to a Shackle Breaker’s attack, as the goblin he’d asked had claimed, Strom had tested it himself in a moment of curiosity and found it stronger than any such material had a right to be.
He still hadn’t decided whether that was comforting or horrifying.
Beyond it, the cavern stretched wide beneath the glow of morning mosslight.
Half-built towers rose from what had once been a small goblin village. Machines crawled along their sides in neat, coordinated lines. Ants moved through marked paths with unsettling purpose, hauling loads that would have made most mortal laborers collapse before reaching the next street. Goblins, humans, and other workers crossed broad transit lanes below, while platforms shifted between levels with quiet precision.
Even now, new structures were silently rising along the edges of the “village,” claiming space Strom knew for a fact had been little more than empty lots only a few days ago. He’d deliberately watched the construction over that time, and still the buildings rose in the distance faster than anything the clans or sects could have ever hoped to accomplish.
Strom stared for a moment, then looked away.
He knew he should have felt something. Wonder, fear, excitement, even the wary greed most adventurers felt when they discovered something so far beyond them. Instead, there was only a dull pressure behind his ribs and a strange distance between himself and everything he saw.
Some part of him was fairly certain he was in shock.
Strom wasn’t new to culture shock. The Skypiercer continent was massive, and its people were anything but uniform. He’d eaten fermented sea-grass with island clans who measured wealth by the number of storms a ship had survived. Shared tents with desert caravans whose elders could tell a person’s lineage by the knots in their belt. Even walked through sect compounds where outer disciples bowed to children half their age because those children had been born under the right star.
Then there was the Deep.
Down here, even neighboring caverns could develop in isolation for centuries. One settlement might build everything from bone and fungus, while another carved homes into living stone and treated silence as sacred law. Laws changed. Courtesy changed. The way people bowed, bargained, prayed, insulted one another, honored the dead, trained their children, or built their homes; Strom had seen enough of it to stop assuming anything was truly universal.
But this place…
Yes, the city outside his window had streets. Homes. Work crews. Storehouses. Transit paths. People moving with purpose from one place to another. At a glance, those were all things Strom understood.
But the longer he looked, the more a growing, nameless unease settled through him.
Every settlement Strom had ever known carried its history in its flaws. You could read a city by where it sagged. By where people lingered, where they avoided, where walls had been repaired after riots or monsters or bad winters. Even the strangest Deep communities had roots. Their customs might baffle outsiders, but they had grown from need, fear, faith, pride, or simple habit.
This place had roots, too. He could see the old goblin village buried beneath the new construction if he looked carefully enough.
But now, something else had grown around it.
Something Strom had no name for.
Something that terrified some primal part of him in a way he couldn’t quite define.
His instincts kept reaching for familiar answers and finding nothing to hold. Was this a fortress? A dungeon? Clan holding? Sect compound? Trade hub? A monster nest wearing the shape of a city?
Strom had seen powerful clans build. He’d seen sects throw money and cultivator labor at impossible projects until mountainsides became palaces and rivers changed course. Those places radiated wealth, pride, and force.
Not here.
Not this place.
Strom could handle the strange. He could handle danger. Both were things an adventurer learned to measure, endure, and, when necessary, run from.
This was different.
This place didn’t feel like something waiting to be explored or conquered. It felt like something already in motion. Like something that had decided what it needed to become, then begun correcting the world around it to match.
And Strom had the unpleasant sense that everyone who entered it would either find a place within that motion or… be swept away by it.
If he’d been here alone, he might have stood at that window, watching the city rise around him until it buried him.
But he hadn’t come alone.
For better or worse, he was the acting leader of their merry little band. That meant the others would be watching him, even when they pretended not to. If he looked overwhelmed, they would feel it. If he hesitated too long, they would start wondering whether they should be worried.
Strom let out a slow breath.
He didn’t have the luxury of being overwhelmed.
Not yet.
He turned and crossed the apartment toward the small washroom tucked past the kitchen area. The door slid aside before he touched it, then closed behind him with the same soft whisper.
That, too, was going to take some getting used to.
Inside, everything was as clean and strange as the main room. A marble sink sat beneath a polished mirror so clear it showed every line of exhaustion on his face. Strom leaned over it, found the small metal dial beside the basin, and turned it.
Warm, clear water flowed from the curved nozzle at once.
Despite himself, the corner of his mouth lifted.
Running water wasn’t unheard of in Halirosa. The city was too wealthy, too old, and too proud not to have such luxuries. But the arrays required were expensive to build and worse to maintain. A private wash area for every room would have been absurd for anyone short of the wealthiest clan elites.
Even the outer disciple quarters in the few sects Strom had visited relied on bathhouses or communal watering holes. Some had been elegant, certainly. But not the sort of casual excess that only people born into true power considered normal.
Strom stared at the water a beat longer than he meant to, then shook himself and began washing up.
Half an hour later, he stepped back into the main room with damp hair and fresh clothes. The numbness hadn’t gone away, but the routine had steadied him. He felt more awake, though not necessarily more prepared.
That, he suspected, would have to do.
“One step at a time.”
He crossed the kitchen to the box sitting on the counter near the range. It was about the size of a small icebox, with a smooth black surface on the front and no visible latch.
Just as he had learned over the last few days, Strom reached out and tapped the glassy surface with one finger.
Words and small pictures appeared, arranged in neat rows that scrolled slowly upward. Ingredients. Prepared meals. Hot drinks. Simple instructions marked with icons. Strom leaned closer, reading through the list.
Even after nearly a week, Strom still hadn’t gotten used to the strange interface on the even stranger artifact.
He stood before the black-fronted box with his arms folded, frowning at the little words and pictures sliding across its surface. Every time he thought he understood the layout, some new option tucked itself behind another symbol or shifted into a different list. After two mistaken selections, one canceled order, and a brief argument with a picture of a kettle, he finally managed to add breakfast to his “basket” and send the order through.
The display blinked away, and a three-minute timer appeared in its place.
Strom stared at it for a moment, then shook his head and turned toward the range.
Full, ready-to-eat meals could be purchased for only a handful of Clays, the lowest denomination tokens used in the cavern. Standard coinage was accepted as well, according to a neat line at the bottom of the display.
Strom had tried one the first morning out of curiosity. It had been good. Better than it had any right to be, honestly.
Still, he preferred cooking for himself when he could.
There was something grounding about it. Meat, heat, fat, salt. Simple things that didn’t ask him to understand glowing boxes, sliding doors, or a city that built itself faster than a man could adjust to seeing it.
By the time he finished preparing the range, the box gave a cheerful ding.
Strom opened the front panel and found a melon-sized wyvern egg resting beside the flank of some large boar, both sitting in a tray that hadn’t been there a moment before.
Just another oddity in an even odder city.
He carried the ingredients to the range and set to work.
A few moments later, the egg had been cracked into a wide pan, its rich yolk spreading thick and gold across the heated surface. The boar flank followed soon after, sliced into heavy strips that curled as the fat began to render. The scent rose quickly, savory and sharp enough to chase the last of the clean, unfamiliar air from the room.
Strom hummed under his breath as he cooked.
For a little while, the city outside the window faded. There was only the low sizzle of fat, the smell of browning meat, and the small, familiar rhythm of breakfast. His shoulders eased, his breathing slowed, and the strange pressure behind his ribs loosened by a fraction.
Then someone pounded on the door.
Strom froze.
The pounding came again, sharp and impatient.
He closed his eyes, exhaled once, and tapped the symbol that shut off the range. The heat vanished instantly, leaving the meat to settle with a fading sizzle.
“Of course,” he muttered.
He wiped his hands on a cloth and crossed the room.
When the door slid open, Cindy stood in the hallway, grinning up at him.
Short-cropped auburn hair framed a sun-kissed face dusted with freckles. Her usual fitted leather armor was gone, as was the massive siege bow she was known for. In their place, she wore a pure white shirt made from some material Strom couldn’t identify.
At first glance, he might have called it silk, from the way it followed her shape without clinging in the wrong places. But it looked too heavy for silk, too smooth for cotton, and far too refined to be jute.
Strom frowned.
“What are you wearing?”
Cindy’s grin widened.
“Like it?” she asked. “One of the women found a tailor near the eastern edge of the city.”
She took a step back and spun once in the hallway, clearly pleased with herself. The motion revealed matching trousers made from a stiff black material that held its shape without restricting her movement. He didn’t think they were leather, but like the shirt, he couldn’t place the fabric either.
Strom narrowed his eyes.
“Our funds are limited, Cindy. Even with the stipend, we need to be careful until we can start earning from the dungeon.” His gaze flicked over the outfit. “I don’t think wasting coin on clothes is wise right now.”
Cindy turned and faced him with a flat look. Then she folded her arms, shifted her weight onto one hip, and rolled her eyes.
“I’m not an idiot, Strom.”
She tugged lightly at the hem of the white shirt. “The shop claimed these are the same clothes the goblins wear under their fancy armor. Durable, comfortable, and designed to work just as well as under-armor or casual wear.”
Strom raised a brow but said nothing.
He gave the outfit another look. The material did sit close without bunching. Nor did it seem to pinch at the shoulders or pull at the joints, and Cindy moved in it with an easy confidence.
If the tailor’s claim was legitimate, he could see the appeal.
Strom was a good Heavy. He enjoyed his work. He took pride in being the one standing between his team and whatever wanted to eat them.
But no amount of body cultivation seemed to do anything about the… chafing.
Maybe he would look into this shop.
He shook the thought away. That could wait.
Instead, he leaned one shoulder against the doorframe and raised a brow.
“Is that all you wanted me to see? If so, you might as well come in. I was just making breakfast.”
Cindy’s expression collapsed into a mournful sigh as she glanced past him toward the kitchen.
“Breakfast will have to wait, I’m afraid.”
The shift in her tone made Strom straighten.
Cindy glanced down the hallway toward the stairs. For the first time since he’d opened the door, the grin faded from her face.
“There’s been an… incident.”
Strom blinked.
For one heartbeat, he stared at her in silence.
Then his shoulders sagged, and he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Lead the way,” he said with a tired sigh.
Cindy nodded and started down the hall.
Strom looked back once at the apartment, the silent range, and his breakfast cooling in the pan.
Then he stepped into the hallway after her and closed the door behind him.