The moment I stepped into the vaulted rotunda, I knew I should not have indulged Anabeth.

  Saint Merin did not list ‘acquiescing to aesthetic motivations’ among the virtues of a valiant knight, and yet here I was, standing in a chamber that satisfied every criterion for intentional construction.

  The ossuary corridors behind us had been linear and opportunistic, but this chamber seemed the opposite. Each plate had been cut to uniform curvature and set with tolerances tight enough that I could not see daylight between them. Load-bearing ribs climbed the walls in even intervals, their stress lines clean. Someone had decided exactly how much weight this room would hold and then given it margin, and I did not want to find out who.

  The ceiling rose three stories and did not sag. Skulls were set into the walls at uniform heights, and at the center stood a dais of fused vertebrae and pelvic stone. Ossified tendons, calcified into something resembling chains, rose from its perimeter and disappeared into the ceiling above.

  “Oooh,” came Anabeth’s voice alongside me. I did not catch what she said next, since my attention was fully on the dais.

  “My lord,” she whispered. “This is a keystone vault.”

  From the center of the dais, a rib-formed torso rose from the dais before vertebrae extended far past what any anatomy would justify. Femurs arranged themselves as arms, and where a head should have been, a single block of engraved stone turned to face us.

  The chamber grumbled.

  Great. It was too high-level for me to assess.

  Anabeth had been right about one thing.

  There was a skull-shaped earring. It hung from the stone block that served as the Archwarden’s head, carved from a material that was polished and etched with sigils so fine they blurred if I stared too long.

  She had been wrong about another thing, though.

  This was definitely a boss.

  I swallowed and glanced back at the readout. A Low Tier II Slime King had been just brute force and clever positioning. This was architecture with intent. This was the difference between a dungeon that contained monsters and one that deployed them. High Tier II. Saints above, the gap was obscene.

  Along the ossuary walls, Sumpwardens pulled themselves free from faraway alcoves. Their limbs swung into motion with a speed that made my stomach drop.

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  They were faster than me.

  I hadn’t even seen the locked skills, but I didn’t need to. One of those missing lines was an aggro call. A structural summons.

  It could call upon minions to swarm. It was weak to ranged attacks, but not Stone-based magic. Quick; I must conjure a strategy.

  “Heed my call now, Anabeth of Archival House!” I raised my sword skyward as if bellowing a call-to-arms. “Stand off and keep distance, lest you wish to get murdered! Draw the Sumpwardens and let them bunch. Then scour the space between you and them! Full breadth, wide discharge, or do not sully my name with your mouth anymore!”

  “Yes, my lord!” White-blue light immediately crackled into the air around her hands. The first wave of Sumpwardens surged, and bands of ionized light erupted, snapping shut with a sound like iron chains. The creatures were yanked off by the cervical stacks where skull met spine, bindings biting into exposed vertebrae and ligament-calcified joints.

  She just… shackled them by the neck. Then she slammed them all together.

  “Is this to your satisfaction, my lord?”

  My satisfaction lasted exactly half a second.

  More Sumpwardens were hauling themselves free from the ossuary walls on both flanks. The Archwarden hadn’t called one wave.

  It had opened the floor plan.

  “No!” I barked. “You disappoint me so, wretched witch! That was containment, not denial! Break the space! Full radius—clear the hall or be buried in it! The lord desires them off the floor or dead!”

  The white light around her hands expanded.

  “Yes, my lord,” she said. Then the glow tore in a violent ring that ripped along the floor and walls alike. Sumpwardens were hurled back as they lunged.

  That blast seemed to have taken more out of her than she let show.

  Anabeth staggered as the light collapsed back into her hands. Her breathing was shallow now.

  “Anabeth of Archival House,” I intoned. “You will loose no more grand displays. Strike the custodian from afar. Do not provoke its full measure.”

  She drew herself upright despite the tremor in her hands. “Yes, my lord.”

  The light gathered again, shaped itself into a hard lance of force that fired and struck the rib-formed torso in the chest.

  The Archwarden barely recoiled—but it registered. That was perfect. Her hit was not strong enough to trigger Structural Sovereignty.

  Anabeth lowered her hands a fraction too slowly. Her shoulders trembled before she could stop them.

  She could do it. But she couldn’t do it forever.

  Was there anything I could do? I had to find it in the only place that offered any potential solution.

  Saints damn you.

  I was about to dismiss the interface when a subheading unfolded beneath Foundational Techniques, one I had never seen before.

  I felt my soul attempt to leave my body.

  Why did Ceralis even track that metric?

  Why was it this precise?

  Why was it under Foundational?

  I glanced at Anabeth. She was burning herself out for me.

  I winced hard. Fine.

  “Anabeth of Archival House,” I said, my voice carrying across the rotunda despite my horror. “Attend me.”

  “Yes, my lord,” she answered immediately.

  “You have done exceptionally,” I declared. “You stand radiant in my sight, unbowed by death or stone. Endure a little longer, and when this custodian falls, I shall see your efforts properly rewarded.”

  “Whatever do you mean, my lord?”

  I felt heat climb my neck. I directed my gaze over the ribbed walls, the ossified chains, the looming Archwarden drawing breath it did not need… anywhere but her face.

  I coughed into my hand. “When this battle is concluded, you may claim of me a… personal boon.”

  My words felt like fraud.

  Anabeth whimpered.

  Her cheeks flushed. White-blue bands detonated around her.

  This was just... draining her faster. Great...

  She made a sound that was not meant for a battlefield.

  The next wave of Sumpwardens stepped into the field, got torqued like a bundle of wet femurs caught in a mill, then vanished.

  “My lord, you shall be my load-bearing structure,” she whispered as she shot another blazing lance at the Archwarden, dealing exactly 49 HP.

  I wanted to crawl into the ossuary walls and entomb myself.