Rem’s boots struck stone—the cave floor dropped. He stumbled once, caught himself, and steadied his weight. Thin air pushed against his face. Damp. The raw mineral scent rose with it. He let his eyes settle. Behind them, the glyph stone dimmed in a slow ring until the last trace of light pulled inward and died. Ahead, a soft glow eased around a bend in the rock.

  The others were stripping their outer layers. Cloth slid off shoulders. Buckles tapped the floor. Piles of gear rose against the wall in uneven stacks. Mara stood nearest the glow, broad-shouldered, movements clean as she shrugged out of her coat. Eva worked beside her, spine straight, dark hair pulled tight, pale-blue eyes cutting toward Rem once before turning away. Finn crouched behind them, lean frame bent as he lowered his pack.

  Rem knelt. He pressed his hand to the ground. The grit shifted under his palm. A thin trace of moisture sat in the shallow cuts where water had moved through. He set his pack with the others and rose.

  CHALLENGE FOUR

  Skills, traits, and class abilities unlocked.

  Objective: Gain a skill, trait, title, or profession.

  Reward: Variable.

  “This way,” Mara said. Her voice struck the stone and carried down the tunnel.

  Rem followed. A few steps in, the cave widened. He caught details he’d missed earlier: two bedrolls against the wall, long flattened; one corner pushed back as if someone had left in a hurry. An open crate sat beside them, dried rations stacked in rows, half the top layer missing. An oil lantern hung from a hook driven into the rock, glass smoked near the top. A second lantern sat on the floor with a trimmed wick.

  Their footsteps folded into one sound until the rhythm thickened, louder than their small group should’ve made. The tunnel widened in slow degrees. The floor rose and dipped. A thin stripe of light marked the next turn. As they moved toward it, the ceiling climbed and their echo stretched until it thinned and drifted.

  The cavern opened.

  Rem halted at the threshold. Brightness pushed at his eyes. He raised a hand, waited through the glare, let the view settle.

  A lake filled the space—still water, a level surface holding the sky. Hard to judge the distance. First estimate too far to throw across. Second closer, but not by much. He stepped to the stone lip of the cave. The air from the water slid along his arms.

  Near the shore, the bottom showed in sharp detail. Grey stones. White ones. Darker pieces scattered between. Many carried clean breaks, edges unworn. Larger chunks matched the color of the overhang above the cave mouth. A faint trail of broken stone led back toward the shelf where past falls had landed and rolled into the lake.

  “Looks charming at first,” Finn said behind him, voice too bright. Rem caught the quick dart of his eyes as Finn pushed a curl off his forehead. “Gets old fast.”

  The quiet pressed at Rem, steady and wrong. No wind. No sound of life.

  He lifted his gaze. The ground around the lake rose in uneven lines. More rock than soil. Heavy boulders sat in clusters, some half-buried, others resting at the end of shallow grooves. A few leaned in unsettled angles. Higher up, broken slabs dotted the incline under the cliffs.

  Farther downhill, a forest tightened in a dark mass. Behind them, the cave mouth sat low in a hill that climbed toward broken rock. Above that, cliffs and ridges ran into mountains buried in cloud. Nothing in the terrain held any ease.

  Eva stepped past him onto the stone shelf. The lake’s surface lifted her outline in a clean reflection. She held a small book. “Welcome to Challenge Four,” she said, raising it slightly. “Zelfstryf’s new book. Fastest bestseller since the arrival. I thought I might get the first signed copy.”

  Rem frowned and held out a hand. She passed the book without pause. Mara and Finn watched as he flipped through the pages. Mara’s arms crossed, posture steady, braced. Finn hovered closer, eyes flicking between Rem and the spine of the book as if tracking data.

  Rem stopped halfway through. Checked the back. Returned to the center. The binding felt tight. Pages thick. Whatever made it, it survived the glyph. It felt real. Finished. He’d tell Saskia they did good work. He held the book out. Eva took it.

  “I checked the timing,” Mara said. “You leveled the same day as Zelfstryf’s record run. Denying it won’t help.”

  Eva’s expression tightened, pale eyes narrowing. “So. Are you ready to admit it?”

  “This was all them. I told them confronting you was a terrible idea,” Finn said, shaking his head.

  Rem looked out over the water again. “Where are the birds? Animals. Insects. Anything.”

  “There aren’t any,” Finn said. “I haven’t observed anything alive out here except plants. My theory is that it’s too cold at night.”

  “Cold?” Rem asked.

  Mara answered first, voice level. Light slid over her blonde hair as she shifted. “You can’t ignore it. We need to know who we’re teaming with.”

  Eva’s reply came clipped. Shoulders squared. “You aren’t going to be able to ignore this.”

  Rem turned toward them. “Is the water safe to drink?”

  Finn blinked. “Safe. Been drinking it all week.”

  Rem nodded. He stepped away from all three. He lowered his satchel to the ground, loosened his vest, set his boots aside. In the pale cave light, the angles of his thin frame showed. His dark hair clung to his forehead as he stripped down to his undershorts.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  He scanned the hillside once more. Fresh breaks. Trails without weathering. Nothing settled.

  He didn’t hurry. His movements stayed quiet, deliberate. Without their expectations pressing on him, he looked lighter.

  “I don’t need a team,” he said. “I do need secrets. So you decide what you want.”

  The water took him in one blow. Cold locked across his ribs. It emptied his first breath before he reached the surface. He came up hard, dragging air through a tight throat. His arms worked in short, jerking strokes. His legs scissored to keep him upright. Every part of him shook as the cold drove him forward.

  Even in the sun, the water held near freezing. His limbs fought him at first, strokes uneven. He forced them into rhythm, breath by breath.

  By the far side, the shock eased. His muscles warmed with the work. Moving felt cleaner than standing under their eyes. He floated once, drew a long breath, and slipped toward the lake’s center. He filled his lungs, held it, and dove.

  Cold tightened again as he went under. The stones blurred below. Pressure built along his ears. His chest tightened sooner than he wanted. He braced a hand on the lakebed, steadied himself, then pushed off a larger stone and drove upward.

  He broke the surface with a deep pull of air. Hard to judge the depth—four meters, maybe five. He’d swum the longest line from the center, drifting farther from the cave.

  By halfway back, fatigue set in. His arms dragged. His legs lost their drive. He angled toward the cave instead of forcing the full return.

  He reached the bank and pulled himself onto the stone ledge. Water shook from his skin. He sat, breath working through him, cold still holding in his muscles.

  He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The silence had already thickened around them.

  He stood and pulled his shirt back on, fingers steady on each button. Water streaked his dark hair.

  “What did you decide?” he asked.

  Mara answered before Eva could. She held his gaze. Shoulders squared. “Secrets are fine. Everyone has them. But not every secret carries the same risk.”

  Eva crossed her arms. Her jaw set. “Exactly. If someone in our group shattered a world record and sent half the world spinning—that matters.”

  Rem looked at her. “Why.”

  Eva didn’t step back. “Because someone operating at that level shifts everything. Dynamics. Safety. Opportunity. Trust.”

  Finn exhaled slowly. “Yeah. If you were Zelfstryf, it’d affect all of us.”

  Mara stayed steady. “We’re asking whether you’re carrying something that could blow back on us.”

  Rem stayed quiet. “Sounds like risk management.”

  “Correct,” Mara said.

  Eva didn’t deny it. “It’s practical. Not personal.”

  Finn rubbed his arm. “This one’s big. Pretending we shouldn’t ask feels wrong.”

  “I understand your point,” Rem said. “But your approach is wrong.”

  “Oh, please tell us what we’re doing wrong,” Mara said.

  “To start, that was your first please, and it wasn’t genuine.”

  They held still at that.

  Rem drew a slow breath. “You didn’t ask me to share. You ambushed me.”

  .We could kill them. It would reduce our risk to zero.

  .And explain three deaths in a challenge with no animals?

  .Rockslide. Plenty of loose stone. Clean story.

  We are not killing my friends.

  .Some friends.

  His hands tightened once at his sides. The merge domain rose in his mind—stones spinning in a tight circle, fast enough to break anything they touched. It would end quickly.

  Eva’s brow pinched.

  Finn’s mouth opened and closed with no sound.

  Mara straightened. Not defensive—measured. “There’s no team without trust.”

  “You invited me here. I didn’t ask to join you,” Rem said.

  Eva stepped forward half a step, jaw tight. “You think we’re being unreasonable for being cautious?”

  Finn’s eyes flicked between them, shoulders sinking.

  “I think I’ve got better things to do than worry about how you feel.” Rem looked at each of them. Mara’s controlled anger. Eva’s tension cutting hard along her jaw. Finn hovering back, unsure where to stand.

  None of them moved toward him, but their bodies leaned in small ways, as if the tilt alone might pin him in place.

  He looked down. Cracks spread across the stone: thin, branching paths, marks of some long past impact. Nothing here carried ease.

  “I said what I wanted. You said what you wanted. We want different things. It doesn’t need to be strange.”

  No one moved.

  Mara’s mouth parted, heat rising under her control. She didn’t step. Eva froze, jaw tight, shoulders pulled in. Finn’s eyes dropped.

  Rem stepped past them. Water-darkened hair hung across his forehead. None followed.

  He slung his satchel over his shoulder and walked for the tunnel. His footsteps stretched, thinned, and faded. No one called him back.

  He didn’t look back.

  Rem stepped into the cave and let his eyes adjust before moving.

  The tunnel took shape the same way it had before—same bend, same drop in the floor where his boot had caught earlier—but it felt sharper now. Stone held its edges. The ground kept its grain. Each step landed on rock that hadn’t been worn into ease.

  The air carried a clean chill. Mineral. Damp. It moved in a slow draft along the passage, brushing his face and sliding past his ears. His footsteps rang clear and came back thin, stretched longer without breaking.

  As the tunnel widened, the space opened without clutter. The floor ran uninterrupted to the walls. The rock rose clean from it, surfaces tight and unhandled. Water had traced narrow paths through the stone over time, leaving shallow cuts that caught the light and let it go.

  He followed the curve by memory. The ceiling lifted where he expected it to. Sound spread, thinned, and settled again.

  The cavern opened.

  Daylight reached it in a flat spill from the entrance behind him, laying a dull sheen across the lake. The water held the light without movement. Near the edge, the bottom showed through—stone laid bare in sharp detail, breaks clean, fragments resting where they’d fallen.

  He walked to the outcropping and stopped.

  The stone dropped away at his feet in uneven steps, fractures old and set. Below, the water darkened fast, depth pulling the color down and closing over it.

  He looked over the edge and measured the distance. Let the cold rising off the lake settle against his legs.

  The cave held its shape around him.

  He stood there, weight forward, and took it in. His eyes went to the markings he’d noticed earlier—the reason he’d gone back to his storage locker for supplies.

  The carving sat etched into the stone near the edge of the outcropping. One straight line ran toward the lake, starting closer to the cave and stopping just short of the drop. To its left, a shorter line bent at a right angle, its two ends pointing toward the cave and down into the rock. The cuts were clean, deliberate, carved to the same depth.

  Beside them were two glyphs. Smooth. Fluid. Unmistakable. One set to the right of the long line, the other near the angled mark. Around all of it, a ring of smaller glyphs repeated in a tight pattern.

  Rem knelt and ran his fingers along the grooves. The stone was worn smooth where the tool had passed. No cracks. No guesswork.

  “So you’re why they asked me to join,” he said quietly. “A puzzle obvious enough they tried thinking first.”

  Inspect.

  Nothing.

  No system response. No information. Just stone.

  Both lines pointed toward the lake.

  Rem pulled his satchel around, took out his journal, and began copying the carving. Charcoal traced the cuts easily. When he finished the sketch, he tore out a page, laid it over the glyph circle, and worked a rubbing.

  Then he reached deeper into the satchel.

  Surveyor’s Wand

  Level 3, Rank Rare

  Charges: 15/15

  Fuel: Core (any)

  Pattern: Measure

  Used to measure distances and elevation instantly.

  Potion of Magical Trap Finding

  Level 3, Rank: Rare

  Consume to gain essence sight (poor) for 10 minutes.

  Rem smiled. Let’s get to work.