The Dungeon Delver's Debt

Ethan Rylan’s life had a permanent, suffocating stench.

It was ammonia. It was stale industrial carpet cleaner.

It was week-old coffee.

The smell clung to his worn-out uniform. It was etched deep into the creases under his fingernails.

He pressed the vibrating handle of the industrial scrubber down hard. It scraped deep into the polished granite lobby floor.

His shoulders screamed in protest with every slow, grinding pass.

The time was 2:17 AM. This was his third shift of the day.

It was his night shift.

Innovate Global Tech—that shimmering monolith of glass, steel, and ambition—was his territory. He was the king of its grime.

For the last six hours, he'd been scraping away the invisible evidence of success.

He cleaned the spilled latte drops left by venture capitalists. He cleaned the dried sweat of frantic coders.

Worst of all, he cleaned the microscopic, tacky chewing gum fused into the expensive stone.

Seventeen-hundred and thirty-five days.

That number was a parasite, a thought that wouldn't leave him. It was a metronome ticking inside his skull.

That’s how long he’d been working. Two, often three, minimum-wage jobs.

All since his mother died.

He never got the luxury of seventeen-hundred days of mourning. He’d been working through them.

His mother’s final illness had been a cruel, drawn-out affair.

The debt she left behind was one hell of a devastating legacy. It was immense, insurmountable, and completely suffocating.

It was a crippling, invisible chain.

He wasn't working to pay off the principal of that huge $180,000 medical bill.

He was just working to keep the aggressive daily interest from spiraling totally out of control.

It was a slow, mathematical strangulation. He was perpetually standing in place.

His bank account was stuck at zero.

Actually, it was technically negative zero, if you counted the relentless overdraft fees.

He paused the scrubber. He wiped his sleeve across his forehead.

Sweat stung his eyes. He checked the time on his old, cracked phone strapped to his arm: 2:25 AM.

His arms ached. His eyes stung from the industrial cleaner.

His hands were permanently marked by manual labor.

But the physical pain was just a distant background hum.

His focus was on the numbers. They were the real source of his suffering:

Principal Debt: $180,000

Current Balance (with accrued interest): $192,412.06

Last payment applied (to interest only): $11.00 (three days ago)

Days until collateral seizure: 1

He was totally trapped in a financial labyrinth.

He had traded sleep, a college education, and any semblance of a normal twenty-one-year-old life.

He gave it all up for the dubious privilege of keeping his head just above the waterline of bankruptcy.

He’d once dreamed of a life inside buildings like this. A future of code and innovation.

Now, he only knew the smell of their trash and the feel of their grime.

The shame of his situation felt like a heavy coat he couldn’t take off.

A brief flicker of movement caught his eye in the glass wall’s reflection.

It was his own reflection. Thin. Stooped from perpetual exhaustion.

He had deep, purple hollows under eyes that looked fifty years older than his twenty-one.

He was a ghost haunting the temples of wealth.

He took his mandatory ten-minute break. He collapsed onto a steel bench tucked into a small, windowless custodial closet.

He immediately navigated to his email. He dreaded what he knew he would find.

Subject: IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED – FINAL WARNING (Account: Rylan-9372)

The sender was Aethel Debt Management. They were the cold, impersonal organization that owned his future.

The email was enough to leave his blood running cold.

They were demanding immediate repayment in full. They threatened legal action that would cost him what little he didn't already owe.

He scrolled down, his heart pounding a frantic, useless rhythm. He found the single paragraph that truly mattered:

"Failure to secure full payment or arrange a viable long-term payment plan will result in the immediate seizure of all collateralized assets, including, but not limited to, the antique timepiece listed under Item 4C of the original lien agreement. This seizure will be executed within 48 hours of your default, which is scheduled for 8:00 AM tomorrow."

The antique timepiece. It was his mother’s watch.

It was a cheap, tarnished thing. It had a simple, engraved inscription on the back.

It was the last physical link he had to her. The only memory that hadn’t been swallowed by the relentless hunger of the hospital bills.

Its monetary value was practically nothing compared to the debt. Yet they wanted it.

It was a final, cruel twist of the knife.

A new notification popped up. It immediately overlaid the debt notice.

It was a text message from an old college contact. It was delivered with an almost comical lack of self-awareness.

Marcus Thorne: Hey, Ethan. Just landed my first proper bonus check—$15k! Gonna put a down payment on a new German sedan. You remember my old man’s BMW, right? Anyway, heard you’re still pushing that mop. Don’t sweat it, man. Not everyone can climb out of the hole, right? Keep at it, Debt-Boy.

Ethan’s hands shook with a pure, white-hot, impotent rage.

Marcus was his polar opposite. Born with every advantage. Blessed with an effortless charisma.

Now, Marcus was working a lucrative white-collar job three floors above where Ethan was scrubbing the floor.

Marcus’s casual cruelty wasn't intended to destroy. It was intended to remind Ethan of his immutable, low place.

The injustice made Ethan’s jaw clench until his temples throbbed.

He drafted a venomous paragraph. It detailed exactly what he thought of Marcus and his inherited, undeserved success.

But then, with a sigh of weary resignation, he deleted it. It wasn't worth the emotional energy.

Marcus had already won simply by existing in his elevated status.

He folded the crumpled debt notice. He slid it into his pocket.

He was done with interest payments. He was done running.

He was going to the Aethel office tomorrow morning. He would directly face the collection agency.

He would beg. He would plead. He would grovel for mercy on his mother's watch.

It was a final, desperate act of submission.

The next morning, Ethan dragged himself through the city streets. He hadn't slept.

The anxiety had kept him cycling through excuses and apologies all night.

The Aethel offices were downtown. It required a long, exhausting walk he couldn't afford to skip for the subway.

He clutched the final notice in his sweating hand. It was his white flag of surrender.

He rounded the corner onto Main Street. He pushed past the hurried morning commuters.

His mind was consumed by the script of his upcoming plea.

Please, just two more weeks... I'll sell the TV... I just need the watch.

That’s when the world began to end.

It started not with a bang, but with a color. A sickly, pulsating green and purple tore the clear sky open like cheap fabric.

A vortex of swirling energy—a spatial rupture—manifested directly over the main square.

It spat out small, chaotic, monstrous forms. They looked like badly rendered nightmares.

The sound was a deafening, tearing screech. It was like a thousand pieces of metal grinding against each other.

Commuters screamed. They dove into doorways and behind cars. Chaos exploded in a matter of seconds.

Ethan, the perpetual observer, froze.

He saw a grotesque, gargoyle-like creature claw its way fully through the swirling Gate. Its eyes burned with orange fire.

He spun to flee. But a frantic businessman, trying to hurdle a fallen street vendor cart, slammed directly into Ethan’s back.

The force was stunning. It knocked the air from his lungs.

Ethan pitched forward, completely losing control of his momentum. His body was a helpless, flailing thing.

He didn't hit the concrete.

He fell straight through the shimmering, violent threshold of the interdimensional Gate. His body was enveloped in cold, searing energy.

The last thought

that flashed in Ethan Rylan’s mind was utterly devoid of fear.

It was the bitter, absolute knowledge of his life: I failed even to escape. And now I’ll never pay the debt.

Then, darkness.