The first step into the Sub-Cuts hurt.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
Tareth felt something peel away the moment his boot crossed the threshold—an unspoken assumption, a quiet rule he had never known he relied upon. Distance behaved oddly here. Sound arrived before motion. Shadows detached from their sources and lagged behind like reluctant memories.
The Inquisitor did not hesitate.
That was how Tareth knew she had never been here before.
Veterans slowed at thresholds they understood. She moved because doctrine told her momentum prevented doubt.
The passage behind them sealed without noise.
No stone grinding.
No locks engaging.
Just absence where an exit should have been.
"Sub-Cuts," the Inquisitor said, voice steady but low. "Ironreach's original foundations. Built when Kaelvar doctrine hadn't yet decided what to deny."
The sword at Tareth's side did not tick.
It listened.
The corridor ahead was wrong in a different way than the Deep Galleries. There were no Failed here. No echoes of rejected masters.
Only space that had been sliced too many times and never healed correctly.
Walls ended abruptly, edges too sharp to be stone. Floors dropped into black planes that reflected nothing. Occasionally, a line would appear in midair—a cut without a blade—opening briefly before sealing again with a sound like a held breath released.
Tareth's skin prickled.
Something moved.
Not ahead.
Alongside.
A distortion slid parallel to them, separated by an invisible boundary that curved and flexed like stretched glass. Within it, shapes suggested themselves—partial figures, incomplete geometries, thoughts that had never agreed on how many dimensions they required.
The Inquisitor slowed.
Her hand tightened on her hilt.
"You see it too," Tareth said quietly.
"Yes," she replied. "That's unfortunate."
The thing beside them noticed.
The boundary rippled.
A limb pushed through—not fully manifest, its outline tearing at the air as if existence itself resisted the intrusion. Where it touched the corridor wall, the stone did not crack.
It reconsidered itself.
The Inquisitor moved instantly, blade flashing in a perfect Kaelvar arc.
The cut landed.
Nothing happened.
Her sword passed through the limb without resistance—and came out wrong. The steel warped slightly, edge bending by a fraction of a degree that made it unusable for proper form.
The Inquisitor froze, staring at her blade.
The thing pushed further through.
Tareth felt the pull then—not from the sword, but from the wound in reality beside them. It wasn't hunger.
It was curiosity.
"This is not demonic," the Inquisitor said, backing away slowly. "Demons negotiate."
The thing's outline thickened, a suggestion of a head forming where heads should not logically exist.
"No," Tareth agreed. "This hunts broken rules."
The sword ticked.
Once.
The thing flinched.
Not in pain.
In recognition.
It withdrew slightly, reforming its limb into a sharper geometry, edges aligning more closely with the sword's presence. It was learning—adapting itself to the grammar that had wounded the system.
The Inquisitor swore under her breath. "It's calibrating."
Behind them, the corridor began to shorten—not collapsing, but compressing, distances folding inward so retreat became meaningless.
Ahead, the Sub-Cuts opened into a vast chamber scored with countless intersecting lines. Some glowed faintly. Others drank light entirely.
At the chamber's center stood a pillar of black stone split cleanly down the middle, the halves held apart by nothing.
Between them hovered a void thin as a page.
A prime incision.
The sword in Tareth's hand pulsed, harder this time.
The thing beside them surged forward, no longer cautious.
The Inquisitor turned to Tareth, eyes sharp. "You brought this instability here."
"I didn't bring it," Tareth replied. "I made room."
The predator lunged.
Space tore as it crossed the boundary, reality screaming as incompatible assumptions collided. The chamber shook, cuts igniting across walls and floor as the system attempted to compensate.
Tareth stepped forward, pain flaring as his damaged body protested.
The sword did not correct him.
It waited.
Because this time, the next cut would not be about survival.
It would be about definition.
And whatever he chose to define here—edge, predator, or himself—
would decide whether the Sub-Cuts became a tomb…
or the first place the system learned how to bleed without dying.