CHAPTER 12 — “Echoes Below” #2
“I’m going to modify their memories. Make them think they found nothing here. An empty lead, a dead end.”
Can you do that?
“I could. Before.” I focus, drawing on knowledge that’s flooding back, a library of spells I thought I’d lost forever. “Mind magic was never my specialty, but I studied it. For situations exactly like this.”
The ethics—
“Are complicated. I know. But the alternative is killing them, and I don’t want to do that unless I have to.”
Fifteen seconds.
I approach the frozen scouts, examining each one. The leader is sharp—her mind will resist. The others are soldiers, trained but not exceptional.
I start with the weakest link.
“[Memory Revision].”
The spell sinks into the first scout’s mind, delicate as a surgeon’s scalpel.
I find the memories of tonight—the detection, the travel, the arrival—and I adjust them.
Change the location coordinates. Remove the details about the class evolution.
Replace the mana signature with something generic, untraceable.
Eight seconds.
I move to the second scout. The third. Working fast, faster than I should be able to, years of experience compressed into heartbeats.
Five seconds.
The leader. Her mind is armored, protected by training and enchantments. I don’t have time to be subtle.
I am not subtle.
Two seconds.
The revision completes just as the thirty seconds expire.
The backlash hits like a physical blow.
All my mana—gone. My real mana, not the borrowed power. I drop to my knees, gasping, vision swimming. The world goes grey at the edges, and for a moment I think I’m going to pass out.
Velthar! Johnson is there, pressing against my leg, his small body warm and solid. Breathe. You need to breathe.
I breathe. In. Out. Force my heart to slow, my mind to clear.
The [Stasis Field] drops. The scouts unfreeze.
“—hell was that?” the leader is saying, completing her sentence from before. She blinks, confused, looking around like she’s lost something. “I… what were we…?”
“Ma’am?” One of her subordinates, equally disoriented. “I thought… weren’t we heading somewhere?”
“The detection signature.” She’s frowning now, rubbing her temple. “It was… wait. It was nothing. A false positive. The equipment must have malfunctioned.”
“Should we investigate the village anyway?”
“No point. There’s nothing here.” She sheathes her sword, still looking troubled but accepting the false memories I planted. “False alarm. Let’s report back. The capital’s going to be annoyed about the wasted resources, but better safe than sorry.”
They turn to leave.
I stay on my knees, fighting to remain conscious, watching them go.
“Healer.” The leader pauses, looking back at me. “You should be more careful, wandering around at night. Dangerous things out here.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She nods, and they disappear into the darkness.
I wait until I can’t sense their mana signatures anymore. Then I collapse fully, face-first into the dirt of the bridge, body refusing to support even its own weight.
That was close, Johnson says. Too close.
“It worked.”
Barely. And now you’re completely drained. If anyone else attacks—
“They won’t. Not tonight.” I hope. I pray. I’m not actually sure, but I’m also not able to do anything about it if I’m wrong. “Help me get back to the cottage.”
You want me to drag you? I’m a rabbit.
“You’re a creature of cosmic significance. Figure it out.”
I make it back to the cottage through a combination of willpower, Johnson’s guidance, and what might be a minor miracle.
Mariella is waiting on the porch, tension written in every line of her body. When she sees me—stumbling, drained, barely vertical—she rushes down to help.
“What happened? Are you hurt? I heard—”
“I’m fine.” Not true. “They’re gone.” True. “Memory modification. They think the signature was a false positive.”
“Memory modification?” She’s helping me into the cottage, practically carrying my weight. “You can do that?”
“For thirty seconds, I can do anything.” I collapse into a chair, too exhausted to make it to the bed. “Then I pay for it.”
“Pay how much?”
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ POST-ABILITY STATUS ││ \[What Was Lost\] --- Aftermath │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ Current MP: 0/200 ││ Current HP: 182/310 (stress damage) ││ Status Effects: ││ --- \[Mana Exhaustion\] (severe) ││ Recovery: 12+ hours minimum ││ --- \[Mental Fatigue\] (moderate) ││ Recovery: 8+ hours ││ --- \[Backlash Tremors\] ││ Random muscle spasms for 4-6 hours ││ ││ Note: Using \[What Was Lost\] is not free.
││ The power is borrowed from what you were.
││ Your current body wasn't built for it.
││ Every use takes a toll. ││ ││ "Congratulations on surviving.
Now suffer ││ the consequences like a responsible adult.
" │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
“This much,” I manage, gesturing vaguely at the status display I’m sharing with her. “Completely empty. Zero mana. Takes half a day to recover.”
Mariella reads the display, her expression growing more concerned with each line.
“You can’t do this again. Not anytime soon.”
“No.” I lean back, closing my eyes. “Once per day limitation, but the recovery… I need at least twenty-four hours before I’m functional again. Longer to be combat-ready.”
“And if they send more scouts?”
“Then I improvise. Or we run.” I crack one eye open. “I bought us time. That’s what matters. They’ll report a false positive, investigation closed. The capital has bigger concerns than chasing ghosts.”
“For now.”
“For now,” I agree. “We need to move faster. The deeper I go into the dungeon, the stronger I get. By the time they realize something’s actually happening here—”
“You’ll be strong enough to face them.”
“That’s the plan.”
She’s quiet for a moment, processing everything. Then she moves to the hearth, starts building up the fire.
“Sleep,” she says. “I’ll keep watch. If anything else happens tonight, I’ll wake you.”
“Mariella—”
“Sleep.” Her voice is firm. Final. “You just burned yourself out protecting this village. The least I can do is make sure you actually recover.”
I want to argue. I should argue. But my body has already made the decision for me—my eyes are closing, my muscles are going slack, and the darkness is rising up to claim me.
“Johnson…”
I’ll watch too. Between the three of us, nothing’s getting through. A pause. Rest, Velthar. You’ve earned it.
I drift off to the sound of the fire crackling, Mariella’s footsteps moving quietly through the cottage, and Johnson’s presence warm at my feet.
I dream of the dungeon.
Not the floors I’ve cleared—something deeper. Something waiting. Floor 10, maybe, though I’ve never seen it. The mana vault that past me built, filled with the power that was stolen from me.
In the dream, I’m standing before a massive door. Crystal and stone, carved with symbols I recognize as my own work. The seal pulses with light, responding to my presence.
You’re close now, a voice says. My voice, but not. The [Soul Echo] speaking from somewhere deep inside me. Five floors cleared. Five more to go. But the next ones are different.
“Different how?”
The seal on Floor 4 was mine. The challenges on Floors 1-5 were mine. But Floors 6-10… A pause. Other people added to them. After you were gone. The mages who tried to contain the dungeon when it started changing.
“Garrett mentioned them. They all died within a year.”
They died because they touched something they didn’t understand. The dungeon is alive, Velthar. Not alive like a person—alive like a forest, or an ocean. A complex system that responds to stimuli, that grows, that evolves.
“And they tried to cage it.”
They tried to cage a piece of YOU. The mana you invested here, the intelligence you embedded in its design—it’s been growing for two hundred years. Adapting. Becoming something new.
I stare at the door. At the power I can feel waiting behind it.
“Is it dangerous?”
Everything powerful is dangerous. But it’s also yours. Your creation. Your inheritance. The voice fades slightly. When you reach Floor 10, when you finally claim what’s waiting there—you won’t just be recovering your power. You’ll be meeting the thing you made. The thing you became.
“What does that mean?”
But the dream is fading, the door receding, and I’m waking up to morning light and the smell of something burning again.
“I really need to teach you how to cook,” I say, sitting up slowly. Every muscle protests. The backlash tremors haven’t fully subsided, making my hands shake when I try to grip things.
Mariella glances back from the stove, looking simultaneously guilty and defiant. “It’s not that bad this time.”
“The smoke says otherwise.”
“The smoke is dramatic. The food is fine.” She brings me a plate of what might be eggs, might be an art project, might be evidence in a future trial. “Eat. You need protein.”
I eat. It’s actually not terrible—slightly burnt around the edges but edible. Progress.
Johnson hops onto the table, examining my plate with obvious judgment.
She’s learning, he observes. Slowly. At a rate comparable to continental drift. But learning.
“I heard that,” Mariella says. “Don’t think I can’t tell when he’s being insulting.”
“You can understand him?”
“No, but I can read your expressions. And that was definitely an insulting expression.”
She’s observant, Johnson says approvingly. I like her more every day.
I finish the eggs and check my status. Still at zero mana, but the exhaustion debuffs are starting to fade. By this afternoon, I should be functional. By tomorrow, I might even be combat-ready.
“We need to talk about next steps,” Mariella says, sitting across from me. “Last night was close. Too close. If you hadn’t been able to modify their memories…”
“I know.”
“So what do we do?”
I consider the question. Really consider it, turning over options, weighing risks and rewards.
“I keep clearing floors,” I say finally. “That’s the core plan, and it doesn’t change. The stronger I get, the more options we have.”
“And in the meantime?”