The Dungeon calls you, an inexplicable, inexorable thing, a siren song that cannot be avoided, ignored, cannot be denied. They say the Dungeon-born are cursed, or blessed, depending on who you ask. Cursed to always return to the place that made them, as much a part of the Dungeon as it is a part of them. 

Your rescuer, the Guide, the One Who Answered, Phoebe of the golden coat, can do no more to forbid you than she could forbid the tides to cease, the bird to fly, the sun to set. She tries, oh yes, with stories of the fallen, of those who have returned, half and half again of what they once were, damaged beyond repair. 

It doesn't matter. The Dungeon calls you, and you answer. 

You answer the Call, and the Dungeon swallows you, hair, blood, and bone. You plunge into the depths, your own footsteps echoing in your ears, until you barely remember what the Surface is, far more familiar with the dark and the decay and the despair. 

You've been here before, you think, staring up at the walls, draped in moss like funeral shrouds. You have been here before, in another time, another life—

Have you been here before? 

Are you walking in circles, forever now a prisoner of the Dungeon?

Will Phoebe find you again, to guide you back to the world of the living and the light, where the air fills your lungs and you feel bigger than you are?

"Hello, little sister." The speaker does not step into your light so much as fade into view, pale eyes in a pale face. Or—no. That pale face swims in your vision, splitting. There are two of them now, two ghosts with eyes that see...eyes that see Beyond. 

They know you. 

And you know them.

Their names come to you, escaping your lips before you know what you are saying. "Requiem. Relic." The names catch in your throat, as if your body does not want to know. Cannot bear to know.

"Little sister," acknowledges Relic, silvery eyes glinting in the lanternlight. "You have come so far to see us."

"But not far enough," says Requiem, nostrils flaring. "You have a long way to go, little sister."

"I know," you answer, tasting the bitterness of duty on your tongue. Yes, there is something you must do...something you must remember...

"Seek the headless one, and remember," Relic intones. 

"Come." Requiem paces past you, her footsteps all but silent. "It is not your time yet."

You strain to remember, to put together the fragments of sight and sound and thought, of hymns in a field of flowers, of seeds crushed between your teeth. 

"One day, you will remember, little sister." You don't know which sister speaks this time, unable to look at them. They are simply pale shapes in your periphery, ghosts who know your past...and your future. Ghosts you have met before, in this life and another. "One day, you will remember how you shattered."