The sun shimmered across the sky as Eryx Kael rolled his shoulders and shoved another crate onto the back of the supply wagon. His hands were already raw from rough splintered wood, his shirt clinging with sweat. The wagon's old axles groaned under the load—rations, alchemy packs, spare gear, and a few bundles wrapped in enchanted cloth that hummed softly when touched. Probably mana-reactive powder. "Not my problem." He thought a little bitterly. His job was to get it loaded, not to care if it exploded on a bump in the road.

  “Eryx! Twist it—yeah, like that,” called a familiar voice.

  Eryx turned and grunted as he heaved the crate into position. Bren was standing at the wagon’s edge, bald head glinting with sweat, sleeves rolled up over muscled arms. He tossed Eryx a waterskin.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, taking a long swig. The water was warm and slightly metallic, but it cut through the dryness in his throat.

  Bren leaned on the side of the wagon, watching the street. “You ever think about joining the ranks for real?”

  “I am in the ranks,” Eryx said, slamming the cart door closed. “Militia counts.”

  “You know what I mean. Proper contract. System attunement, Echo brand, the whole thing.”

  Eryx spat to the side, lips curling. “Not like they’d give it to me. I’ve tested twice. Nothing.”

  Bren didn't answer.

  ———

  Eryx remembered the testing all too well. When he went to the Attunement Plaza here in Varnstead, he was told to stand on the platform, arms out while the Resonance Chamber spun around him.

  The tech, a shirt middle aged balding man who looked obviously bored refused to look up from his papers as he spoke.

  "If you resonate with the Echo Engine in any meaningful way, you should feel a slight to moderate tingling sensation."

  "And if I'm not?" Eryx questioned.

  The technician evaluating him just stared for a moment before looking down at his control panel. "Commencing evaluation in 3...2...It's going to sti-"

  For Eryx the words disappeared behind a veil of excruciating pain, like waves of lightning jolting through every cell in his body. He was unsure how long it lasted, but it had to be hours. Days even.

  When he woke up, the tech was standing over him while two Resonant Healers worked on him.

  "Well I assume you can guess the bad news."

  "What happened? Where am I?" Eryx looked around wildly. The tech ignored him and continued, "what's more is even for a non-resonant, these are the lowest numbers I've ever seen and not by a small margin."

  Once the healers were done, the pain seemed only a distant memory. "There must be some kind of mistake. Test me again." Eryx pleaded.

  "I can't do that, at least not now. Your body couldn't handle the strain, but if you come back in say, a weeks time, you should be safe to re-test."

  ———

  Down the road, the market buzzed with midday noise. Steam hissed from food carts, voices tangled in argument, and blacksmiths’ hammers rang like drums of war in the distance. Old guild banners flapped above worn stone buildings, each marked with sigils only half the population could read—fragments of the Echo Script. Varnstead always felt like it was halfway between collapse celebration. Being on the edge of an Unknown Zone, that made sense.

  That’s when they came—the Resonants.

  Six of them, laughing loud, adorned in cloaks that shimmered like oil on water. Their armor gleamed unnaturally, not just from polish but from the subtle glow of bound mana. One carried a greatsword nearly his own height. Another had floating glyphs rotating lazily around her shoulders like metallic butterflies.

  They didn’t look at Eryx or Bren, didn’t even glance at the loaded wagons or the militia sweat-stained from the labor, but Eryx sure looked at them. He even caught a couple names: "Kellen" and "Tarn."

  “Must be nice,” Eryx muttered, hatred rising like a bitter taste. “Born lucky and rich. System chooses them, and they get to skip the hard part.”

  Bren snorted. “Skip the hard part, huh? You think that gear came free? Every gift has a price, you just haven’t seen the bill.”

  “Yeah?” Eryx leaned on his sword. “Well, I’ve been paying up front my whole damn life.”

  Before Bren could answer, the street shifted.

  Not physically, but... atmospherically. The noise dulled. Someone screamed, People turned, murmuring and Eryx followed their gaze.

  A horse tore down the road at full gallop, its eyes wide with panic, foam flecking its mouth. It was a black-stripe courser, one of the light combat breeds favored by frontline scouts for thier speed, nimbleness and thier stripes helped them blend well in most environments.

  The saddle was drenched in blood. Slumped across it was a Resonant—armor shattered, deep wounds crossed his body, front and back, blood trailing behind him like a ribbon.

  “Move!” someone shouted, attempting to clear the road.

  The horse barreled toward the town square and skidded to a halt. The Resonant tumbled off, landing in a heap of limbs and metal. People stood frozen, unsure whether to help or run.

  Eryx ran and knelt beside him, ignoring the blood that soaked through his trousers. The man’s eyes fluttered.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Dungeon… break…” he rasped. “It’s open. They’re… loose.”

  Then he was still.

  Dead.

  The alarms began a moment later.

  The bells rang in triple peals—sharp, metallic, and immediate.

  Dungeon break.

  The words hit harder than any sword.

  Panic swallowed the city. Shouts echoed through the stone corridors of the inner walls, Resonants bolting from guild halls and taverns, half-armored, weapons clutched in shaking hands. The seldom used Field-Switch Transit Pads glowed to life as Resonants from other city districts poured in. Civilians streamed toward the keep, children crying, carts overturned, doors slamming.

  The Echo Beacons, tall crystalline pylons that glowed depending on the messages meaning, now red, came online. Glyphs formed circles around them, spinning, issueing orders visually and verbally across roof tops.

  Civilians were to evacuate to the keep or out of the west gate of the city. Militia were to create a defensive formation at the eastern gate while City Guards assisted civilians. Contracted Resonants were to report outside of the east gate and prepare for potential attack and to seal the Dungeon.

  The cobbled streets, moments ago bustling with heat and sweat and noise, now echoed with the primal terror of something gone deeply wrong.

  Eryx ran, heart pounding, sword bouncing on his back. He didn’t need to be told twice. Orders snapped like whips across the militia lines as guards and city officials organized the defense.

  “Militia, form two groups here! Chevron formation! Resonants, form up outside the walls, prepare for an attack! Get that damn gate closed!"

  The gate was already beginning to shut before the order, but it wasn't closing fast enough.

  The air changed. He felt it before he saw

  anything—like the breath of something ancient brushing across his skin. Cold. Hungry.

  The first creature stepped through, almost casually, glancing around at its surroundings, as if it was a tourist viewing the city for the first time.

  It was tall. Humanoid—barely. Its arms hung past its knees, split at the ends like rotten cloth. Its head was a mass of jagged bone, no mouth, only a vertical eye that blinked sideways and hissed.

  Then it screamed, and more poured in behind it.

  They didn’t come in packs or waves. They came like entropy—chaos wearing bodies, moving without logic or grace. One slithered upside down along the wall, six legs stabbing into it like knives, yet it didn't leave scars in the stone. Another staggered forward, its legs a corkscrew of exposed tendon and rusted blades fused into muscle.

  They weren’t like anything from the bestiaries. They weren’t even wrong. They were impossible.

  “What the fu..Shields! Get the shield line up now!” shouted a city officer.

  A few Resonants surged forward. One—a heavily armored woman with twin axes—charged and brought one of the monsters down in a cascade of fire and steel.

  It got up a moment later, missing half its face.

  The fire peeled backward. The wound closed like paper folding.

  It dodged the next swing. Slipped under the third, rammed its elbow through her chest and left her body twitching on the cobbles.

  Another Resonant bearing a mace pointed it at the crawlers on the wall, chanting an incantation before a bolt of lightning stuck out. It hit its target square in the back, or at least whatever midsection it's legs attached to.

  It spasmed as it fell from the wall, but as it hit the ground, it tucked its legs and rolled forward, toward the man. At the last second it leapt high into the air, pouncing on him, driving all six of its razor sharp talons into his chest. Blood exploded onto the creature.

  Eryx barely had time to breathe before the fight was on him.

  He swung, blocked, parried—each strike barely slowing the tide. Bren was beside him, spear in hand, stabbing with brutal efficiency, eyes locked in fury. Blood sprayed. A claw raked Eryx’s arm, tearing cloth and skin alike. He shouted, twisted, drove his sword into a writhing pile of muscle and metal that shrieked as it died—if it died.

  Men and women screamed. Magic flashed. The air was thick with blood and mana, fire and frost, enchantments fraying under sheer pressure.

  Eryx took a second to assess the situation. Resonants dropped left and right, the occasional corpse of a monster littered the ground. The gate had long since been pushed wide open and the horrors poured over the walls. This wasn’t a battle—it was a slaughter.

  "were being erased" Eryx thought hopelessly

  The shield line broke. Militia scattered. The Resonants fought with wild abandon, some teleporting away and abandoning the fight, others screaming battle hymns as they summoned weapons larger than themselves, sprayed gouts of magic and artificially enhanced thier bodies.

  None of it mattered.

  Eryx saw Elin go down, another militia member—her jaw torn off by something with a mouth that unfolded like a flower. He saw Surn drown in a mist that ate through his lungs from the inside out.

  Another fell as a dozen spidery fingers reached from beneath the cobbles, cracking stone and spine alike, dragging him into a gap that hadn’t been there seconds before.

  Then—

  Jorrin.

  His oldest friend. His brother in all but blood. They’d eaten from the same stolen bread, survived the same frostbitten winters. Jorrin had joined the militia first, dragged Eryx in after. “We’ll die of old age with our swords rusted to the wall,” he used to say.

  Jorrin was standing at the flank, hammer raised, laughing as he crushed one of the smaller creatures into pulp. He spun and blocked a blow from another who had tried to flank him. Then a second one came from behind.

  Eryx screamed his name.

  Jorrin, holding back the scythe-like arm of the first attacker, turned just in time to see a creature’s clawed arms closed around his skull.

  ———

  Breakspire was a city of steep alleys and soot-stained towers, built along the shattered bones of something older. Steam hissed from grates beside uneven cobblestones. Mana flickered weakly in the streetlights overhead, always dim, always failing just when you needed it most.

  Eryx was digging through a large pile of trash behind a delapidated workshop, long abandoned to rot. Trash, trash and more trash. Nothing of value, not that he expected much. What could be left in this pile so long after the workshop had closed?

  But he dug anyway, hoping to find something, anything. After a while, he sat back on a bag of trash, sighing deeply. Just then, the glint of still shiny piece of metal caught his eye. A Mana Battery. It wasn’t much, but it could be bartered for food or warmth.

  Standing, Eryx made for the battery, placing his hand on it. At the same time, another boy, maybe a year or two older than Eryx grabbed the same battery.

  They both paused for a moment, silently staring at one another. “You take it,” the other man said, hand still on the coil. “You look hungrier.”

  Eryx had hesitated, surprised. “And what do you look like?”

  He grinned. It was too bright for this city. “Like someone who’s gonna be famous one day. Not starving.”

  They’d both laughed. "Im Jorrin." "Eryx" he replied. They took the battery to the recycling exchange and split the meagar profit from the battery and that night, they ate together.

  ———

  The weeks that followed blurred into routines. Days scouring junkyards for salvaged tech or forgotten mana scraps. Nights sleeping on rooftops or under cracked bridges, using cloth-wrapped heat crystals to fight the cold.

  Jorrin had a talent for finding the absurd in everything—mocking the rats like they were old drinking buddies or naming the broken drones that sometimes buzzed through the ruins. Eryx was quieter, sharper-eyed, better at spotting when something felt off. They balanced each other.

  One night, after narrowly avoiding a street gang who liked to corner and beat people, more for fun than for their stuff, they sat near a dying fire.

  “Ever think it’d be different?” Jorrin asked, tossing a pebble into the gutter where old sigils faintly glowed. Most cities put them in place to keep the gutters clean, but these were too weak to keep up with the slime.

  Eryx shrugged. “I thought maybe id resonate by now. Be someone.”

  Jorrin nodded. “Me too. I kept imagining the moment—screen flaring, crowd gasping, someone handing me a sword and saying, ‘You’re meant for great things.’ But…”

  He trailed off.

  “But we didn’t,” Eryx said.

  “Nope.” Jorrin gave a soft laugh. “Just another pair of nobodies, scraping by.”

  ———

  The last time they were together in Breakspire, the sky had turned amber with stormlight, reflecting off the giant bones the city perched beside. Jorrin stood beside Eryx at the edge of the train platform, holding a duffel and a rusted spear.

  “You sure about this?” Eryx asked, jaw clenched.

  Jorrin’s eyes were tired but lit with something stubborn. “Varnstead’s right on the edge of the Unknown Zone. The Militia there defends the city and escorts Resonants through the Unknown Zone to Dungeons. Real fights. Maybe I get lucky, get close to a system surge. Maybe something changes.”

  Eryx looked away. “Or you die.”

  “Yeah.” Jorrin smiled sadly. “But here? I’m already dying. Just slowly.”

  He stepped forward, pulled Eryx into a rough hug. “If I make it—if I resonate—I’ll send for you.”

  “You better.”

  Jorrin pulled back, eyes glassy. “And if not… then maybe remember me as someone who tried.”

  The train hissed. Doors closed. And Eryx stood there long after it disappeared, watching the empty tracks like they might bring Jorrin back.

  ———

  It squeezed.

  There was a sound like a melon splitting in two and the laughter stopped. Jorrin stood for a moment before collapsing to his knees, then fully into his own pool of blood.

  Eryx moved without thinking

  He charged toward the creature that murdered Jorrin, sword drawn, howling—rage eclipsing pain, thought, everything. He cut one beast in half, stabbed another in the eye. He fought like something unchained, covered in blood that wasn’t all his.

  Then he stumbled. A shadow passed over him.

  He turned just in time to see the claws. They rammed through his chest like iron stakes, lifting him off the ground. He gasped, vision blurring. His sword dropped with a clang. The creature stared at him through a split mouth that was all teeth and buzzing sound. Eryx looked at the creature that had killed Jorrin. It smiled.

  The monster holding Eryx let him slide off, limp. He collapsed onto the broken stone.It then walked away like this was a common occurrence in its day to day life, nothing to even take note of. He collapsed next to the body of his once friend. His brother. Head split, eyes glazed over, his bizarre laughter on his lips.

  The sky above was red and gray and falling. His blood pooled out in waves. He could hear Bren shouting. He tried to reach for his friend—tried to say something. Anything.

  But his body wouldn’t move. His vision dimmed. The world was muffled. He thought not about death. Not about the system that never chose him, not even the corpse of his brother next to him. But about being forgotten. About not being the hero he wanted to be. About never having meaning.

  His fingers curled weakly on the stone.

  If I could do it all again…

  I’d tear the world apart before I let it ignore me.

  Then, through the dark—

  A chime. Clear. Cold. Mechanical.

  A screen rose in his dark vision that read: "Initializing resonance...Searching...Confirmed. System access granted. Welcome Eryx Kael."

  Then the screen disappeared and a new one took its place.

  "You have died."