After finding the crystals, Dylas was visited by yet another dream. In this vision, he saw himself leaving his home and embarking on an incredibly long journey, traveling deep into the mountain ranges that lay to the west of his village. As he ventured further into the wilderness, the dream shifted, showing him using the ancient knowledge taught to the children of his tribe to forge a gateway. He saw himself manifesting a Dungeon Entrance by utilizing those two mystical crystals he had discovered.
Dylas knew with a heavy heart that this dream, like all the others, was a mandate of fate. He could not resist it, nor could he prevent it from coming to pass; he had long ago learned to surrender to the inevitable. Yet, a part of him was riddled with confusion. What purpose would a Dungeon Entrance serve if there was no Dungeon linked to it? To open a gate into nothingness seemed like a fool's errand—one would surely just get stuck in the void.
To his practical mind, whoever was forcing these dreams upon him was wasting legendary treasures. A single Dungeon Crystal possessed a value beyond any amount of gold, a price no man could truly afford. But since he had simply found them, the loss didn't sting his pocket. Dylas tried to continue his life, even pushing the dream to the back of his mind. However, as time marched on and he came of age, his tribe began to entrust him with the duties of a warrior: guarding caravans, retrieving artifacts, and procuring rare goods.
Eventually, a mission arose that required him to travel far from the village, deep into the western mountains. The moment he realized his destination, Dylas felt the weight of the old prophecy. With a sigh of resignation, he left his home and began the trek into the peaks, the two small crystals resting heavy in his pocket.
Despite the days of grueling travel, Dylas's body remained surging with vitality. His coat was pristine, every hair groomed to perfection. Dylas was a Horse Kin, a race of centaur-like beings. At a glance, one might mistake him for a human who had used high-level transformation magic to fuse with a horse for speed, but for the Horse Kin, this was their natural, born form.
From the waist up, he possessed the chest, neck, and head of a human; if he were to stand behind a wall, you would never know he was different. But from the waist down, Dylas was all stallion. However, there was a key distinction that separated the Horse Kin from common horses or magically altered humans: Dylas had six legs—two in the front, two in the middle, and two in the rear. While a normal horse relies on four points of contact, the six legs of the Horse Kin granted them unparalleled stability and explosive speed.
His lower horse-body was covered in a coat of pure white, accented by delicate, honey-colored streaks. Dylas was a man of immense self-pride; he believed himself to be a creature of singular elegance. He would never allow a single speck of dust or grime to mar his immaculate fur. Because of this, he moved with a measured, aristocratic grace. If you were to close your eyes and simply listen to the rhythm of his six hooves against the mountain stone, you would swear it was a musical performance—a symphony of flutes and drums played in perfect time.
Dylas eventually paused. The landscape before him matched the one from his dream with haunting accuracy. He remembered every detail; his prophetic dreams were impossible to forget once they began to manifest. He checked his map, his small, keen eyes—which were a deep, earthy brown rather than black—scanning the horizon. It would have been difficult for a stranger to guess what he was searching for, but finally, Dylas approached the largest mountain in the range.
He reached into his pocket, withdrew the two crystals, and set them at the base of the peak. Stepping back, he produced ritual writing tools and began to meticulously draw a complex seal around the stones. He worked with agonizing precision until the circle was complete.
A brilliant blue light erupted from the crystals, illuminating the dark stone before abruptly vanishing. In its place stood a massive, towering gateway—a Dungeon Entrance carved into the very fabric of reality. Dylas let out a long, weary breath as he watched the portal solidify. Here, his dream ended. He had no vision of what came next.
He stood there for a long time, debating his next move. Should he simply turn around and go home, having fulfilled the "order" of the dream? Or should he venture inside to see if treasures or gold awaited him? Ultimately, his caution won out. He decided that these dreams rarely ended in "happily ever after." With a flick of his tail, he turned his six hooves back toward the path he came, determined to return to his parents without a speck of dust on his coat.
But then, the impossible happened.
After a full day of traveling back—at a pace that should have seen him clear the mountains—Dylas realized he was standing exactly where he had started. He blinked, confused but not yet panicked. He assumed he had simply taken a wrong turn among the labyrinthine peaks. He set out again on the second day, more focused this time. Yet, as the sun rose on the third day, he found himself back at the base of the mountain, staring at the blue-tinted gateway.
By the third attempt, the cold realization set in: he was trapped. The dream hadn't just told him to open the gate; it had anchored him to it. He thought of his kin, his parents, his friends, and the young Horse Kin mare he intended to marry. He refused to accept this "cursed" fate. He even thought of the mission his tribal leaders had given him—a mission he had now failed. He tried to break the cycle again and again...
He tried for so many days that he eventually lost count. Finally, Dylas concluded that if a path home existed, it had to be through the gate he had created. He hesitated, then approached the portal with his ritual seal in hand. He moved slowly, with none of the reckless haste one might expect from a trapped man. But as he looked back one last time at the world he knew, he saw no other choice. He gritted his teeth and stepped into the darkness of the Dungeon.
He had entered seeking a way out, but all he found inside the gate was an infinite, oppressive darkness. It led nowhere. It offered nothing. When he turned to retreat, he found the exit was gone. There was no gate, no light, no way back.
Dylas lashed out in a fury. He kicked at the void with his front hooves, but the gateway did not reappear. He let out a primal scream, bucking with his rear legs, but the darkness remained unbroken. He had entered through the front, but the "back" of the portal didn't exist. He did everything a living being could do to escape, but eventually, the truth settled in his soul: he was stuck in the "in-between"—trapped between the world of men and the world of the Dungeon.
One year passed. Two. Five. Fifty.
Ninety-five years. One hundred and fifty.
Time flowed like a sluggish river. Slowly, the man who prided himself on his immaculate coat began to lose his sense of self. Even his memories began to blur and fray at the edges, turning into hazy shadows. The years slipped through his fingers like water.
Eventually, Dylas realized he had been entombed in that gateway for eight hundred and fifty years. He thought surely this was enough—if this was a punishment or a trial, eight hundred and fifty years of solitude was surely the limit of agony. But the universe was not finished with him. Another one hundred and fifty years were added to his sentence.
He sat in total isolation. His thoughts, his calculations, his very mind began to erode. He no longer resembled a living being. The memory of his parents faded. The memory of his village vanished. Every ritual seal he had ever mastered was wiped from his consciousness. Even the concept of speech became a foreign thought.
By the time Dylas reached exactly one thousand years standing in that absolute void—without food, without water, without light, without movement—he had even stopped thinking.
The memory of Nadia, the mare he loved, was gone. His existence had become like a stone—a mountain crag that had stood for a millennium, unmoving and unfeeling. The natural lifespan of a Horse Kin was 180 to 200 years. Yet, miraculously, Dylas had lived for a thousand. He didn't know how. Was it the nature of the void, or the lingering magic of the dream that had sustained his heart?
He occasionally used the Meditation technique—the only thing that allowed him to keep a loose grip on the passage of time. Without it, he would have likely descended into total madness. His mind had become as cold and hard as a mountain, yet he could still perceive the ticking of the clock.
What hope is there for a man whose mind has become a mountain? In all that time, he forgot what the outside world looked like. He forgot how life moved, how a Horse Kin foal was born, or how to trim its hooves—things he had watched his father do a thousand lifetimes ago. Even the names of his ancestors became mere echoes in a storm.
Everything he had ever known was dead. His family was gone, his friends were dust, the mare he loved was a forgotten memory. Even the leaders who had sent him on his mission were ancient history. He was the sole survivor of a forgotten era, squeezed into the narrow space between two worlds.
It was a fate worse than death. Dylas swore a silent, stone-cold oath: if he ever escaped this purgatory, he would hunt down and destroy whoever—or whatever—had placed him in this cage.
And then, one day, as Dylas sat in the darkness that had become his only home, he heard it.
Click.
A tiny, sharp sound, like something brittle breaking and hitting the floor.
To a normal person, such a sound would be trivial. Life is full of noise. But for a man who had heard nothing but his own heartbeat for a thousand years, that tiny sound was an explosion. His heart, long dormant and cold, gave a sudden, violent throb.