Chapter Three: The Circus Gate
The dungeon entrance sat at the edge of Fairview Commons, which was either a coincidence or the System's idea of a joke because Fairview Commons used to actually host a fair, back before the gates started opening wherever they wanted and cities just had to build around it. Somebody with a sense of humor darker than mine had let the old carnival signage stay up around the perimeter fence. Faded red-and-gold letters, half the bulbs long dead, still spelling out WELCOME TO THE BIG TOP over a rift that hummed low and violet in the morning light, like it was clearing its throat before a performance.
I filed that detail away for the piece. Editors loved a little atmosphere.
"Cross! Didn't know they were sending you."
I turned, recorder already looping around my wrist out of habit, and there was Denny sound tech, mutual acquaintance from three prior clears, the kind of guy who remembered everyone's name and half their coffee orders. He jogged over with his rig already strapped on, grinning like this was any other Tuesday.
"Guess I drew the short straw," I said, which wasn't exactly a lie.
"Short straw, my ass, this is a good roster. Hale's party's been climbing fast the last few months. You'll get good footage." He said it easily, no weight behind it, no idea what the name meant to me, and I let him have that ignorance because explaining it would've taken longer than either of us had.
I saw Grayson before he saw me.
He hadn't changed much. Same easy posture, same way of standing like he already knew people were watching, hand resting on the pommel of a blade he definitely hadn't been trained on two years ago Duelist class, if I remembered his file right, decent Tier 3 rating, respectable without being remarkable. Around him, the rest of the party checked gear, murmured strategy, the low hum of pre-dive nerves dressed up as professionalism.
Then he looked over, and something in his face did a complicated little collapse recognition, then something like guilt, quickly buried under practiced charm.
"Val." He said it like testing whether the name still worked between us. "Didn't know you were on the assignment sheet."
"Neither did I, until this morning." I kept my voice flat, professional, the voice I used for guild press conferences and riot coverage. "Congratulations on the roster spot. Tier 3 Duelist's not bad."
"Yeah, well." He rubbed the back of his neck same gesture, garlic bread going cold in my memory, noodles I never finished. "Things worked out."
Things worked out. Like the System had simply agreed with his math from that dinner two years ago, confirmed for him that walking away had been the smart bet.
I didn't say anything else. There wasn't anything worth saying that wouldn't make the next hour harder than it needed to be, and I had a job to do one I'd built with my own hands, out of nothing, no class required.
The rest of the party introduced themselves while Denny got his rig calibrated. A healer named Priya, careful eyes, the kind of nervous energy that suggested she double-checked everything twice. A tank, broad-shouldered, quiet, going by Marcus, who nodded at me once and went back to strapping a shield to his forearm. And a ranger near the back, younger than the rest, barely out of his own Assignment Day by the look of him, practically vibrating with excitement about his first real sponsored run.
Five of them. One camera crew, minus me, since I was covering audio and narrative myself this time budget cuts, smaller team, more work. One violet gate humming under old carnival letters that had survived a hundred years just to watch this particular morning unfold.
"Standard clear," the party's guild liaison told us all, clipboard in hand, bored in the specific way people get when they've said the same safety briefing forty times. "Floor's rated low-threat, good visibility for sponsor content, should run maybe ninety minutes round trip. Questions?"
Nobody had questions. Why would we. It was rated low-threat. It had been rated low-threat every single time someone cleared it for the last six months, according to the file Denny showed me on the walk over, which was exactly the kind of detail that should have worried me more than it did.
The gate's hum shifted pitch as we approached not loud, just different, a half-step lower, the kind of change you'd only notice if you'd spent two years training yourself to notice things nobody else bothered to.
I noticed it. I didn't say anything. There wasn't a protocol for the ambient noise sounds slightly wrong, and even if there had been, I doubt anyone would have listened to the unranked reporter over a dungeon that had cleared clean fifty times running.
Grayson fell into step beside me as the party lined up at the threshold, gear checked, weapons drawn in that easy, practiced way people get once violence becomes routine enough to hold casually.
"Hey," he said, quieter now, just for me. "For what it's worth. You look good. Doing well for yourself."
I looked at him really looked, for the first time since Fairview Commons and felt something I hadn't expected to feel standing this close to him again. Not anger. Not longing. Just a kind of distant, clinical curiosity, like watching a stranger's life instead of the wreckage of my own.
"Thanks," I said, and meant it as little as he probably had.
Then the gate's violet light widened, and the old carnival letters overhead flickered once, and somewhere just past the threshold, I swear I heard something laugh.
Nobody else reacted. Maybe I imagined it.
I stepped through anyway, recorder rolling, credential clipped to my jacket, and the last normal breath of air I'd take for the next several hours filled my lungs as the world went violet, then dark, then something else entirely.