Prologue

“I didn’t fail the audition, go fuck yourself.”

She snapped into her smartphone. Someone was laughing at her. A few heads turned as a young woman stormed out of the theater and onto the streets of Galway.

“Listen—no, shut up and listen, Sam. First off, it’s not an ‘audition.’ They don’t do cattle calls anymore. I was at a callback. I sent in my tapes and I got a callback. I was one of three for the leading role, understand?”

Her boots kicked onto the pavement as she strode through a blinking crosswalk. A huge scowl was set on her face, and her brown ponytail bounced with each stomp.

“I. Didn’t. Fail. I walked out. What?”

She listened to the voice on the other end.

“No, I wasn’t intimidated. I can sing better than both the other two. I left because—I hated the main character. I was going to fail. So I cut myself. I couldn’t see myself doing the part. She’s too idealistic. It’s not a realistic story.”

One hand ran her fingers through her hair. Trimmed. She’d gotten dressed up for today. Audition clothing casual; t-shirt and jeans, nothing fancy. You were the star, not the clothing. But she had prepped and been memorizing her lines on the bus ride over. All gone to waste.

“It’s a sappy lead. She’s supposed to be this ingenue who has a dream, gets it crushed, and then her hero swoops in. Only, it’s not a guy so it’s progressively amazing. It’s…”

She stared up at the sky as she came to a second crosswalk, seamlessly joining the other people waiting for the light to change. They ignored her. The young woman’s lips moved.

“Unrealistic. You’re not getting that hero. And she’s not the heroine. She’s some dumb kid who gets lucky the entire way through. That doesn’t happen in real life, and this is supposed to be a realistic musical. You know what I mean. You don’t get random heroes, Sam. Or if you do, it’s a bad story.”

The young woman stopped. For a second, her face twisted up and she closed her eyes.

“It’s…not real. You know what I mean, Sam. I couldn’t do it. I know it’s acting but I couldn’t. I really wanted the role…”

The voice on the other end turned instantly sympathetic, and she turned snappish.

“It’s my fault. I take responsibility. And don’t tell me there’s next time! You get one shot!”

She was still annoyed with herself. Or rather—all that effort gone to waste. What next? Get home, wash off makeup, compose a message for when her parents inevitably called and asked, ‘did you get the role’? Sam was the test case.

“I wasn’t psyched out. I just…I hated her guts so much I knew if I got on stage, I’d make such a bad impression the director and company probably wouldn’t want me again. I just had to listen to her lines and it hit me. I’d be scowling the entire way through. She doesn’t exist. It was just—”

She sighed as the light changed. The young woman saw a crowd take off across the street but she lingered for a moment. Then she took a step.

“Unrealis—”

Her foot never hit the ground. The young woman took the wrong step off the sidewalk on the streets of Galway, Ireland.

Straight into another world.

1.00 P

She fell into another world. Mid-step, walking off the sidewalk onto the street, she put her foot down on nothing but air.

She fell out of the day and into a void, a shout of surprise on her lips. The smartphone in her hand glowed as she fell, ear buds still playing a hangup tone back to her.

The light from her world was there for just a second. And in that brief window before the gateway between worlds closed, she could see she was falling down into a vast tomb.

Falling. Falling, through the air. For a moment, less than a microsecond, the world was illuminated. The ceiling, vastly high above her, the ground, worryingly distant as well. A seemingly endless tomb—a thousand feet below—

She started screaming but the thump as she hit the stone floor knocked the wind out of her.

For a moment, the girl from Ireland just lay there. The light was gone. The darkness, absolute, but for a slight glow from the old, battered iPhone she’d been carrying. The traveller lay there for a second in pure shock.

“What the fecking fuck? How the—what? What? What the f—”

She had a tendency to swear when she got upset. Which was sometimes often. The young woman pushed herself up. She wheezed; the impact had bruised her gently, but she was alive. And now—

It was dark. Her iPhone lay on the ground, cushioned from the fall by her much less expensive body.

That was something.

“Fecking manholes. What in the shite is happening here? I could have sworn I was—what happened?

What?”

She hadn’t seen a subterranean hole when she fell and she felt certain she should have broken more bones.

“Hey! Can anyone hear me? I fell and—Sam? Are you there? Sam? Hello?”

Her voice cut off as her fumbling fingers activated her smartphone and the beam of light illuminated—

everything.

A tomb. Vast, and at first, featureless. Something so monumental that it deserved another name. The girl looked around, shifting her glowing electronics to flashlight-mode to better see.

And she did.

She had fallen out of the air, not come in through the ceiling. There was no other explanation for it; the ceiling was so high above her it was invisible. She could only see the walls creeping up until the darkness consumed them. Her flashlight’s light was weak in such a vast space, but the place was so perfectly dark that even a mote of light held power.

At first, it seemed like she was standing in the middle of an odd art exhibit. Or…some kind of surreal park with benches.

Only—stone benches. Until she realized that those flat, square things were graves, reaching up to her midriff in height. Her skin crawled. The young woman swung her flashlight and the shadows danced crazily.

She flinched; each casket cast a long shadow. They creeped across the floor, lengthening, trembling with her hand’s slightest movements. The longer she stared at them—

The more it seemed like something was moving. If she stared too long, she had the feeling something was crouched behind one of the shadows, peeking out.

“Bloody hell.”

She was in a crypt. A mausoleum. No, a—a catacombs? An ossuary?

There were caskets. Tombs. Each one made of stone, sealed by heavy stone lids. Separated by a dozen feet for each—a curiously open design.

And each one large, larger than a Human body needed. And a body could be crammed into very sparse compartments if need be.

She was in a crypt of the dead. The very walls were hollowed out in alcoves, multiple floors by which the dead could be stored in their very inefficient patterns. The young Irish woman shivered. She turned around.

“If this is a prank…”

Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t imagine that, as easy as it was to jump to a trick as a logical reality.

She was suspicious by nature. But this was too vast. Either she had been hit on the head and this was a dream—

Or she was looking at tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions of graves within this immense catacombs. How had this happened? For a moment—she just stared. Her glowing phone swept around, and she felt the artificial light was unwanted in this solemn place.

An intrusion.

One light in the darkness as vast as…she looked up. Above her, a ceiling so tall that it seemed to be a sky unto itself. She only knew it was a ceiling because there was no light; no stars or even the hint of them behind clouds if it were night, and no daylight.

“Where am I?”

Ireland had no catacombs like this. She was certain.

This…this was beautiful. And terrifying. The young woman looked around. But the darkness was absolute. And no matter where she swung her flashlight—all she saw was more dark stone.

“Hello? Can anyone hear me? Sam?”

She tried to make a call, but saw she was out of range of any service. So she raised her phone like a flashlight instead.

The beam of light spread out, growing wider and wider in the perfect silence and darkness.

Illuminating…sarcophagi. Closed caskets. No living people. That was almost a relief. Because this was the kind of place serial killers and nightmares lurked.

Tricks of the mind? She had the distinct impression she was being…

Watched. The young woman’s head swung around rapidly. Shock was fading from her veins as mortal panic began to set in. The sky was gone. She had just been walking down the street, having failed her audition—and now she was here.

It was natural to panic. Or think this was some kind of—nightmare. The first thing the girl did was slap herself. Hard.

“Ow.”

The crack of flesh on flesh was loud in the silence. Somehow—reassuring. She rubbed her cheek. She felt the stinging pain, and believed this was reality.

She inhaled deeply; it smelled of dust down here. Dust and stone and—

Not actual death, or the mortification of corpses. That was a relief. Actually—there was this old, herbal smell in the air. And there was air to breathe.

But no wind. The young woman began to panic again.

“Hello? If this is a joke, I’m not laughing! Can anyone hear me? Hellooooo—”

She shone her phone up desperately. But there was no sign of anything that could point to how she had fallen. And the ceiling was so high up—if she had fallen the entire way, she would have splattered her entire body across the ground and thus joined the inhabitants of this place.

What had happened? For a second, she panicked again. Then she slapped her cheeks again.

“Focus, Sid—”

She growled. She wasn’t a child. She was twenty five, damn it. A respectable…sometimes unemployed…member of society. She had work sometimes. She was an actor! She might not have graduated from university, but who needed that racket?

She wasn’t helpless. The first thing she did after the immediate panic was to check her phone.

“No reception.”

She sighed. But part of her had expected that. If she was far underground, she’d be out of the range of cell service. On the other hand—her mind was now beginning to process past shock. This could be aboveground too. It only felt like an underground vault. The lack of sunlight proved nothing.

How did I take one step onto the street and end up in the air in here, though? That was what strained her mind’s ability to process. It was like…magic. The young woman shook her head rapidly. No, that was not where she was jumping first.

“Believe nothing. If this is some kind of trick, I—I’ll find a knife. And stab someone.”

She growled. Violence wasn’t her first resort. She was faster with her mouth than fists, and faster with her feet than either. But staying angry helped.

“Hey! What’s happening? Can anyone explain this? Is anyone…here?”

Her voice faltered as she looked around. But no one answered. The oppressive silence began to weigh on her. Slowly, the intruder spun around once more. But everything was so organized. So similar.

“I guess…I’ve got to do something.”

That was her only conclusion. So the young woman began walking. Left, not that the direction mattered.

The walls of the tomb indicated it was a very long, horizontal area, whatever that meant. So she walked left—which was right by another frame of reference—between the endless, identical rows of graves.

How had she entered this world? She walked and tried to figure out how she had come here. To find a logical answer. It was that—

Or scream.

——

Four hours later—the visitor stopped. She looked around.

“Fuck. This place is big.”

It wasn’t the most…astute of observations. But after four hours of walking—running—shouting—she was convinced it was accurate.

Everything looked the same. At first, she’d been convinced she’d find something after only a while. But the tomb hadn’t changed.

It was so large. Who could make something like this? After four hours, the intruder, for she was both visitor and intruder, had a few observations.

“This floor isn’t right.”

She squatted down and stared at the floor, narrow-eyed. It was too…rough. If that made sense. Not rough, rough, like crudely hewn stone. It didn’t have that smooth look that would result from power tools carving their way through stone. There were blocks making up the floor, and each one seemed—

hand-carved.

“But that would be insane.”

The actress from Ireland swept her phone’s flashlight across the floor—and then turned it off. She was running low on battery. Well—she actually had 55% power. But she had started with 71% and she was suddenly conscious that she was probably far from a charging port. Let alone her apartment.

The darkness was absolute when the iPhone turned off. But she was no coward.

Okay, if someone snuck up on her she’d probably need new pants and ten years of therapy, but she could at least handle being in the dark.

Okay, she was just barely able to keep from screaming.

Fine, she’d screamed for a few minutes but her throat hurt too much to keep it up. And besides, no one had come to help her.

And she needed to keep her iPhone alive. So—that brief inspection confirmed what she had noticed.

She ran her hands across the ground, feeling where chisel marks had tried to create near-smoothness.

“Hand-carved. And that’s one block. How…? And how?”

She moved left and touched a tomb. She didn’t recoil as she had the first hundred times she’d touched the slabs of dark stone. This time she felt at it, muttering to herself.

She didn’t pray for the forgiveness of whomever’s grave she was intruding upon. She wasn’t religious.

But she still apologized.

“Sorry, friend. I need to check something.”

Aha. In the darkness, her fingers found little engravings on the front of the tomb. The iPhone was retrieved. She flicked it on for twenty seconds and read.

“Secaris Ladel IV. Son of Secaris III, beloved son of Daeltren, died as he lived in earnest work. Survived by two daughters; died of heartbreak after disease took his wife. [Farmer], Level 23. What the hell?”

It made no sense. Part of it did—it was clearly the equivalent of a plaque. A memorial for the dead. This man had been a decent fellow: a farmer. But, why was he called a [Farmer]?

They’d even put it in brackets. And—Level? Was this some sort of…game?

The young woman hadn’t grown up with video games, not exactly, but she had a passing familiarity from the few she’d tried. Someone had tried to get her to play Dungeons and Dragons and this all sounded…too familiar. In the darkness, she frowned.

“Someone is pulling my leg. It can’t be—”

She moved left. After a dozen feet—or three metres, the proper way of measuring it—she reached another tomb. Bumped her knee. Cursed—and then turned on her iPhone for another look.

“Aidai. Daughter of Shamei. Wife of Secaris IV. Fuck. That’s not good. Let’s see…beloved daughter…survived by her husband…and leaving two daughters behind? The plague? Is this from The Black Death? [Farmer], Level 14? [Midwife], Level 18? What is this garbage?”

But after the sixth tomb that listed names and levels, she began to believe. In the darkness, the young woman shivered. The tombs were all alike.

They listed names, relations, cause of death—from old age to sickness, to, in one case—monster attack?

And then the levels of the deceased. As if that were just a fact of life. She…didn’t know what to think.

“Let’s see, Sid. If this is some kind of joke—someone spent a lot of money on it.”

To test her theory, she had run straight ahead until she was tired and then checked another tomb. But they were all the same.

“Lord Merigal…fell to Goblin treachery…Level 38…Goblins?”

They were all tombs. If she was in some kind of—of—simulation, a prank, or experiment, it was hard to imagine what for.

Which made it even more disturbing to think this was reality. But what else could explain this? Sid—

well, that was her nickname—shivered. Panic was setting in again.

But she could not panic. Not now. She took a breath, and then another, as if she were about to go on stage.

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon stage.”

Her voice was hoarse from shouting and muttering to herself without water. But the lines were solid.

Memorized. Macbeth. Act 5, Scene 5, Page 2. Hold for the applause.

Sid held for the applause. It never came. But the process of making herself an actor helped her. The recitation, the performance, kept her from being a terrified young woman, alone and screaming in the dark. It was all she had.

She was, after all, a theater girl. She’d been leaving an audition.

Well, they’d know she’d left and assume she was going home. No one would notice for a long time. Sam might, but she’d assume the young woman would call her back or gotten angry and hung up. Why would she sound the alarm today? Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.

Her parents? They’d call at the end of the week to see if she’d gotten the part. But if she didn’t reply, how long would it take to check for her? The landlord was more likely to check—her rent was due in three days.

Even so—he’d just toss her stuff out. She wasn’t exactly the most sought-after performer. She was a small-time girl from Ireland. Not the star she wanted to be. She was…

Who will look for me? Her head rested on the lid of the tomb for a moment. Then she pulled herself up.

“No. This isn’t where I die. I’ll find a way out. This—this has to be a trick of some kind!”

Her calm conclusion after four hours was that this might be some kind of…trap. And that someone was stalking her among the tombs, in their sick and twisted world. And she was going to die if she couldn’t find a weapon, or a way to survive.

Either that—or she’d gone nutters. All the failures of her auditioning had caught up to her. Which would be odd; she had performed in some good plays! She wasn’t happy that she wasn’t a star, but she was putting the effort in, getting her name out there, learning. Why would she have gone mad now?

Which left only one option. That if this was not some kind of trick, or a delusion of the mind, this tomb, the letters on the stone coffin, all of it, was real.

She didn’t know which option she preferred. A trick, probably. She didn’t want to be insane. As for reality?

“I’m not the right person for an adventure. I’m too old to be a wizard, or whatever, and I’m pursuing a career in theatre. That’s not the same as fantasy.”

She informed the silent audience of the dead. She was a fan of the stage.

“You hear me? If this is a prank—”

The intruder took a deep breath. There was one thing she hadn’t checked yet. And that was how far the designers of this…game were willing to take things. She stepped around the coffin.

“Huh. Heavy lid.”

As if the designers were afraid the dead would up and walk off. Not—not a pleasant thought, actually.

You could almost believe it down here. It was so heavy that even when she threw her weight across the lid, she barely shifted it.

“Sorry. But I have to know. There’s no way this is real.”

She informed the grave. After a moment the young woman caught her breath and pushed.

Six minutes passed. By millimeters, by desperate strength and panic, the lid moved. So slightly. But enough. She felt a small opening. The intruder looked down, reached for her iPhone with shaking hands.

“Phew. I bet they can’t fake—oh god.”

The light illuminated a sliver into the stone casket. But a sliver was enough. The young Irish woman recoiled. She saw an emaciated—the dead flesh just lay there as the young woman—

“Oh god. Oh god.”

For a second, she stood there. Staring at what she was sure couldn’t be faked. It was too—real. It smelled. The corpse had been embalmed before it lay there. And someone had placed something on the chest. That was what sold it for her.

The little doll, and the flower, crudely made. Partly-disintegrated by time. Flakes of paint and a wilted mass of petals and organic decay. She stared at the corpse. She screamed. And then she fled.

And she believed.

Long after she’d fled, something found the opened coffin. It studied the disturbed grave, then replaced the stone lid. It turned, following the only sound to break the silence of this place in ages. Besides the damn mice, of course.

——

Nine hours.

Nine hours later, the screaming was done. The panic ended. Exhaustion had set in.

And lack of water. She trudged through the darkness, afraid to turn on her iPhone. She was tired.

Hungry. Thirsty.

Lost.

But she believed.

“What is happening? Where am I? I was just walking—there’s no way.”

A hallucination. She had stepped onto the street. Either it was some kind of amnesia that prevented her from remembering what had come after—or—or—

“Magic.”

But that was impossible. She knew it. She was a realist. The magic existed on the stage. Magic didn’t exist on Earth. Miracles didn’t happen. Hard work was the only thing that worked, and people loved to call it ‘magic’. But ‘magic’ just meant things that they were too lazy to accomplish themselves. Magic was…

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