I ACCIDENTALLY MARRIED A DUNGEON

Several minutes passed.

Felix circled the markings from different angles and each pass made less sense than the one before. He knew nothing about magic circles. Not the theory, not the practice, not even enough to know whether what he was looking at was dangerous or just old. His education on the subject started and ended at a few offhand sentences in books he’d half read.

Bron would be finishing up soon.

"What do I do? What should I do?"

He stood over the markings and stared at them. Nothing useful came. He closed his eyes and let his mind go quiet for a moment, and when he opened them the two floating cards had drifted down and settled across the circles while his concentration was elsewhere.

He looked at them sitting there. Then he pulled two more cards from his pocket. Ace of diamonds. Ace of hearts. He placed them on the surface beside the others, positioning them at the edges of the rectangle shape, and then pressed both palms flat against the centre of the markings.

He pushed his Numen in.

His reserves were low on a good day. He knew that. Every serious fighter he’d ever worked alongside had more to draw from than he did, deeper wells built through years of training he hadn’t had access to. But the fortune was sitting right in front of him and saving his Numen for the walk back wasn’t going to make him rich.

Three seconds passed.

The markings began to glow, a faint bluish light filling the carved lines from the centre outward. His hands shook against the surface. Sweat appeared at his temples.

"I’m putting in a week’s worth of savings." He muttered softly. "Don’t disappoint me."

The glow brightened. Felix’s face brightened with it.

Then the room shook.

Rocks dropped from the ceiling in small pieces, scattering across the floor. Cracks ran up the legs of the nearest statues, splitting the carved armour apart.

Felix didn’t pull back.

The fissure in the floor widened, spreading outward from its centre, and a gust of warm air pushed up through it hard enough to flatten the glow of his cards. The surface beneath his palms vibrated steadily, and then the cards began to move, sliding slowly across the surface toward the crack on their own, and before he could grab them they tipped over the edge and dropped in.

"No. No!"

He yanked his hands back and his eyes snapped open and the Numen cut off. He stared at the crack.

"What is wrong with me?"

He stood, turned, and went for the tunnel exit.

The shaking didn’t stop behind him. He crouched through the low passage and glanced back once.

He could see the crack had widened further. The warm air coming up through it had become a concentrated gust, pulling loose dirt and small stones inward in a slow spiral. The blue glow from the markings had risen off the floor and was turning inside the current, and at the centre of it something was forming. A shape in the light. A face.

"Why does this always happen to me?" He dragged himself out from the hole and picked his pack. "I just wanted extra money. That’s it. I would’ve told everyone after. Obviously."

The dungeon shook around him, the ceiling shedding dust in long pale curtains, and he kept moving toward the hall with his pack bouncing against his back and the image of that face burning behind his eyes.

Felix came out of the narrow tunnel at a jog and pulled up short when he saw Bron standing in the wider passage, arms crossed, looking at the ceiling.

Felix stopped in front of him before Bron could speak. "What’s wrong with the dungeon all of a sudden? I was just picking up ores and then it started shaking."

"Thinking the same." Bron turned toward the tunnel leading back to the hall. "Let’s find the others first."

Felix nodded and followed him, keeping his pace even.

I’m not telling them shit. It was a mistake. An accident. It didn’t happen.

They reached the hall chamber and Felix saw Garrett and Mira already coming out of their tunnel, Mira with her hand braced against the wall as another tremor moved through the floor. Silas and Deren came out last and crossed directly to Garrett, talking quickly, their voices low.

Mira reached Felix first, her forehead drenched in sweat. "Are you good?"

"Yeah." He kept his voice flat. "I’m fine."

"What happened? I saw the ores flickering and rocks coming off the ceiling."

"I saw that too." He glanced toward Garrett and found the man already looking at him. Felix turned back to Mira. "I think it’s the Numen. When we came in I checked the walls and got almost nothing. The ores too, the weight was completely gone. Maybe the dungeon finally ran out."

Garrett walked over. "You’re right. This place has been mined for over a century. It should’ve been expected."

Silas scoffed from behind Garrett’s shoulder, his eyes moving to Felix. "Or someone did something wrong. Because when Numen dries out the ores stop forming. It doesn’t make the whole place shake."

"What—" Felix tried to retort.

"Why do you always blame Felix for everything?" Mira stepped forward, her voice sharp.

"Because every time something goes wrong he’s standing nearby." Silas held up a finger. "The wolves last month. And before that—"

"Enough." Garrett said it once and the word landed flat and final between them.

The shaking worsened. A crack split the wall to Felix’s left, running from floor to ceiling in one clean line, and dust fell from the ceiling in a thin steady curtain.

"Outside. Now." Garrett was already moving.

Bron went first, then Deren and Silas followed behind him. Mira touched Felix’s arm. "Let’s go."

Felix walked beside her toward the entrance, matching her pace, his expression composed.

Those damn wolves. I remember them clearly. Stealing that puppy straight from their nest wasn’t a job, but I got fifteen silvers for that. So it was all worth it.

The ceiling started coming down before they reached the tunnel exit.

Chunks of rock dropped in irregular bursts, some small, some not, cracking apart on the floor behind them. Silas and Deren hit the exit first and didn’t slow down. Felix could hear their boots on the ground outside already.

Mira was beside him, her breath coming in shallow pulls, her hand gripping his. He could feel the tension running through her fingers.

"Can’t you use a support spell on yourself?"

She turned her head toward him, still trying to breathe. "Just... shut up..."

Felix looked ahead. The exit was right there, the outside light pale and grey at the end of the tunnel.

"Well I don’t want to die. So hurry up." He tightened his grip and broke into a full sprint.

"Wait—"

She didn’t get the chance to finish before he pulled her with him. She was a step behind, watching his back as they ran, and she thought, not for the first time, that Felix was not reliable or strong or particularly brave. He just said the most logical thing at the right moment and then did it before anyone could argue.

She still remembered their first raid together. She had introduced herself. Average healer, support spell user, nothing remarkable. Felix had looked at her and said, straight faced, then you don’t have to stay near me. I’m weaker than most beginners and I stay at the back. You can’t do much for me anyway. She hadn’t known what to do with that. She still wasn’t sure she did.

They came out into the daylight.

The sun was fully up now, higher than Felix expected, the light sharp after the dark of the tunnels. Behind them the dungeon entrance groaned and the hillside shuddered, long cracks splitting the rock face from top to bottom. The others were already moving away without being told, putting distance between themselves and the collapse, and Felix watched them go without following.

He didn’t know why his feet stopped.

The cracks widened and sections of the entrance gave way, the stone folding inward in slow heavy pieces. He stood and watched it and felt something settle in his chest that he hadn’t expected. This dungeon had been here his whole life. His grandfather had walked in and out of it more times than either of them had counted, coming home with ore and stories and that particular smell of old stone that Felix associated with being very young and sitting on a wooden floor listening. Felix had done the same. Different reasons, smaller earnings, but the same path in and the same path out.

He bit down on his lower lip until he tasted blood.

"Something wrong?" Mira tugged his sleeve lightly.

"No. It’s nothing." He glanced at the others, already far enough away that their voices didn’t carry. "I think..."

He felt her hand loosen around his and let it go.

"You should head over with them." He didn’t look away from the dungeon. "I’ll stay a little longer."

"Then I’ll stay too." Mira said. "We can catch up with the others later."

Felix didn’t reply.