Our World Is Now A Dungeon World

What We Are Becoming

Arianna was the first to break.

 

She paced the length of her kitchen and back, hands knotted in her hair, words tumbling out in a stream that wasn't directed at anyone. "This isn't real. That thing had teeth, it had—Amber, your leg, let me see your leg. No, wait. The sky. Did anyone else see the sky? It cracked. Skies don't crack. Skies don't—"

 

"Ari." Amber caught her wrist gently. "Breathe."

 

"I am breathing. I'm breathing and talking and there's a timer on my phone counting down and I don't understand what any of it means."

 

Miko sat on the counter, the glass shard resting on her thigh. She'd cleaned the creature's fluid off it with a tea towel and hadn't spoken since they'd come inside. Her blue eyes tracked between her phone screen and the window where moonlight pooled across the linoleum like spilled milk.

 

Riley stood by the kitchen table. His phone read forty-nine minutes. He could feel the panic in the room, threatening to fill every corner. He felt it in himself too—a cold static behind his ribs, the animal part of his brain screaming that none of this was survivable.

 

He let it scream. Then he put it somewhere small and dark and closed the door on it.

 

"Stop," he said.

 

Arianna kept pacing.

 

"Arianna. Stop."

 

She stopped. All three of them looked at him.

 

"We can panic later. We can ask why later, how later, what the hell is happening later. Right now what I know is this: a tree tried to take my head off, a thing with lamprey teeth tried to drag Amber into a canal, and Miko killed part of it with a piece of broken glass." He held up his phone. "This is real. Whatever it is, it's real. And in forty-nine minutes we lose the chance to choose what we become. So we sit down, we read our lists, and we make decisions. Everything else can wait."

 

Silence. Then Miko tilted her head.

 

"That might be the least annoying thing you've ever said."

 

"I'm under pressure. It won't last."

 

The ghost of a smile crossed her face. She hopped off the counter. "Fine. Let's do this."

 

They gathered around the kitchen table with their phones propped in front of them, moonlight doing the work the dead bulbs couldn't. Riley scrolled through his Lunamancer tree methodically, forcing himself to read every description instead of skimming. Three choices. One from each tier. No information on whether he could change them later, so he had to assume he couldn't.

 

Basic tier first. He dismissed Moonlit Sight—useful, but passive. Lunar Spark was offensive, a small burst of concentrated light. Then he found it. Minor Lunar Mending: Channel ambient moonlight to accelerate natural healing of minor wounds. Requires moonlight exposure. Passive-active hybrid. Not glamorous. Not a weapon. But Amber was bleeding through a makeshift bandage right now, and they didn't have a first aid kit, and the hospitals were probably gone.

 

He selected it.

 

Mid tier. Lunar Construct leapt off the screen at him. Shape condensed moonlight into physical objects—tools, barriers, simple weapons. Duration scales with moonlight intensity and user proficiency. He could build things. Weapons, shields, whatever they needed, pulled from nothing but light. That was versatility. That was survival.

 

Selected.

 

High tier made his stomach tighten. The options here were devastating—Moonfall, an orbital strike; Eclipse Veil, a field of absolute darkness. But devastation meant nothing if he was dead before he could use it. He chose Lunar Aegis: Full-body armour manifested from hardened moonlight. Absorbs kinetic and elemental damage. Drains lunar reserves while active. If something grabbed him the way it grabbed Amber, he wanted to be wearing something it couldn't bite through.

 

"Done," he said.

 

Miko looked up. "Already?"

 

"I know what I need."

 

"Shocking. Riley making decisions without consulting anyone." But there was no real edge in it. She turned her phone toward him. "Tell me if I'm being stupid. Blade Instinct for basic—it says it sharpens reaction time and gives me spatial awareness of anything within sword range."

 

"Sounds like it would have helped ten minutes ago."

 

"Exactly. Mid tier, Flowing Edge. Chains sword techniques together, each consecutive strike faster and harder than the last. And for high..." She scrolled down and tapped the screen. "Soul Blade. It generates a weapon. An actual sword, bonded to me, reforms if broken."

 

Riley read the description. A weapon that couldn't be taken, couldn't be permanently destroyed. He thought of her crouching over Amber with nothing but broken glass and resolve.

 

"Take it," he said.

 

She held his gaze for a moment, then confirmed all three.

 

Across the table, Amber and Arianna had been murmuring together, scrolling through their own trees. Amber sat back first, her face pale but composed. "Sanctified Touch for basic. Healing through contact. Devotion Ward for mid—a protective barrier I can project onto others." She paused. "Radiant Plate for high. Holy armour. It says it scales with conviction."

 

"Scales with conviction," Arianna repeated. "What does that even mean?"

 

"It means I need to mean it," Amber said quietly. She pressed confirm.

 

Arianna chewed her thumbnail, reading and rereading. Riley watched the timer. Thirty-one minutes.

 

"Ari," he said. "Clock's running."

 

"I know, I know. It's just—mine are all about creatures. Feral Sense for basic, it links my senses with nearby beasts, lets me feel what they feel. Dominion Call for mid, I can issue commands to bonded creatures and coordinate them in a fight. But the high tier..." She turned her phone around. "Bestial Raiment. Armour woven from the essence of bonded beasts. It says the more creatures I've bonded, the stronger it gets."

 

"So bond a lot of creatures," Miko said.

 

"The first step is bonding one. I haven't bonded anything. I don't even have a houseplant."

 

"You kept that sourdough starter alive for three months," Amber offered.

 

"That's not—" Arianna stopped, and something in her expression shifted. The panic from before was still there, but it was being shouldered aside by something harder. "Right. Fine. I'm choosing it." She confirmed.

 

All four phones chimed simultaneously. The selection timer vanished, replaced by a single line of text that appeared on each screen.

 

SELECTIONS LOCKED. SYNCHRONISATION IN PROGRESS. MOONRISE INTEGRATION: COMPLETE.

 

Riley felt it immediately. A warmth that started in his chest and radiated outward, settling into his bones, threading through muscle and tendon. The moonlight streaming through the window intensified on his skin, and for a fleeting instant he felt something solid form around his forearm—a bracer of pale silver light, cool and hard as steel—before it flickered and dissolved.

 

Across the table, Miko flexed her empty hand and something shimmered between her fingers, the outline of a hilt that wasn't quite there yet.

 

Amber pressed her palm to her wounded calf and inhaled sharply. A faint golden warmth pulsed beneath her fingers.

 

Arianna stared at the dark window, and somewhere outside, distantly, an animal called into the night.

 

"Forty-seven minutes to spare," Riley said. He looked at each of them in turn, these three people he'd trusted long before the sky broke. "Now we figure out how to use them."