I ACCIDENTALLY MARRIED A DUNGEON

Several minutes slipped by as Felix stared at the empty patch of ground where Dune had been lying, where Hakimi had lifted her into his arms and walked away without so much as a glance back. His body had already started shedding the last of the battle’s heat, and in its place came the pain, real pain, surging into every fiber of muscle he had left, the dull grinding ache of cracked bone settling in beneath it all.

He rolled himself over slowly, groaning through the effort, and looked up at the sunken remains of the mountain above him. His jaw tightened, teeth grinding hard enough to ache, and his left hand curled into a fist against the broken stone. He drove it down. Then again. And again, the frustration in his chest climbing with every ragged breath he pulled in.

"I couldn’t save her." The words came out cracked, barely audible, more confession than complaint. He wanted to scream, he wanted to just lie there and let the mountain finish what the fight had started. "Someone else had to step in. Someone else had to fix what I couldn’t."

He shut his eyes, and the tears came without permission, hot tracks cutting through the dirt and blood already caked across his face. That’s when the pain hit his back, sharp and sudden, like every blade etched into his skin had turned to something physical, digging in deep all at once. He felt the warmth spreading beneath him a second later, blood soaking fast through what remained of his shirt, pooling against the stone at his side.

"I broke the rule."

He waited. The mountain groaned again somewhere above, another slab of rock shifting loose and crashing down further off. Nobody came. No footsteps. No voice calling out to check if he was even still breathing.

"Why was I even expecting anything." He let out a hollow, humorless breath, half laugh, half sob.

He forced himself upright despite every part of his body screaming against it, pain lancing through each limb with the movement, and somehow made it to his feet. He turned toward the tunnel mouth, dragging one leg behind him, stumbling twice over loose, dying vines still littering the ground, and kept walking anyway. The mountain shook harder with every step he took, more debris raining down from above, until finally the tunnel spat him back out into open air.

He stopped a few meters clear, doubling over, hands braced against his knees as he fought to catch a full breath. When he finally straightened enough to look back, the sight stopped him cold. The entire right half of the mountain had sunk low into the earth, split clean away from the rest, like something had carved straight through solid stone in a single motion and let gravity do the rest.

—

Diana lay curled on her bed, caught somewhere between waking and sleep, when the door slammed open hard enough to rattle against the wall.

"Lady Diana."

She shot upright, startled fully awake. "Hakimi! I told you not to—"

The words died in her throat the instant she actually saw him.

Blood stained the front of his uniform in dark, spreading patches, and cradled against his chest, one arm hanging at a wrong angle, was Dune, drenched in it from head to toe.

"That, the dungeon girl. What happened to her?" Diana was already off the bed, crossing the room fast.

"I don’t know exactly what happened." Hakimi’s voice stayed level, controlled in a way that didn’t match the state of his own clothes. "She called for me. By the time I arrived, she was already like this. I didn’t want anyone else seeing her in this condition, so I brought her straight here."

"Yes, yes, you did the right thing." Diana said it fast, mind still catching up to itself. She shook her head hard. "No, put her on the bed, now, quickly."

Hakimi crossed the room and laid her down as gently as his own exhaustion allowed. Diana fumbled the pillow into place beneath her head, hands trembling badly, and a fresh trickle of blood slipped from the corner of Dune’s mouth as she moved.

"I’ll bring Barbara. She can heal her."

"Yes, go, go now." Diana barely got the words out before Hakimi was already turning, already gone from the room.

Diana stayed at the bedside, watching Dune’s eyes flutter, barely open at all. She grabbed a cloth from the nearby basin and wiped gently at the blood smeared across her cheek. "Don’t worry. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Barbara’s the best healer in the whole palace, she can fix anyone. You’re going to be just fine, I promise."

A few minutes later, Barbara entered the room, still adjusting her hair into a ponytail, the short maid’s skirt she wore clearly thrown on in a rush.

"I said stop pushing me." She shot Hakimi an annoyed glance over her shoulder. "You didn’t even let me get properly dressed."

"I told you it was an emergency." Hakimi kept a hand at her back, ushering her forward, a wooden box balanced in his other arm.

"That’s not an excuse to barge into my room while I’m changing." Barbara shook her head, still tying off the last of her hair.

"Barbara." Diana spun toward them the second the door opened. "Hurry, her eyes just closed. Do something, quickly!"

"Yes, my lady." Barbara offered a quick, reassuring smile and crossed to the bed, climbing up onto it with her knees bent beside Dune. Her eyes swept the full length of her body, head to feet, and her expression sobered fast. "This looks genuinely bad."

"Just say you can heal her." Diana’s voice cracked slightly. "Please. I’ll buy you that dress you wanted, the one from the tailor on Marchand Street."

"Appreciate the offer, my lady." Barbara raised both hands above Dune’s chest. "Let’s see if the inside’s just as bad first."

She channeled Numen down through her core and into her palms, and within seconds thin wisps of white steam curled up from her fingertips. She lowered her hands slowly toward Dune’s head, letting the steam spread and settle across her skin, sinking in and turning to fine mist as it worked its way lower, tracing the length of her body.

Barbara’s brow furrowed as she read the results. "Her core itself is stable, surprisingly. Numen flow’s still holding steady. Most of the damage is purely physical, all four limbs fractured, internal bleeding in at least five separate points, and, this is the concerning part, there’s blood pooling around her brain. That kind of pressure slows neural response significantly, and it can actually destabilize Numen circulation throughout the rest of the body as a result, since the two are more connected than people realize. Now, you might be wondering why I mentioned her flow being stable despite all that, and honestly, I’m a little surprised myself, because usually when there’s this much—"

"Barbara, you can give the anatomy lecture later." Diana’s voice cracked with impatience. "Heal her. Now."

"Yes, my lady." Barbara reached for the wooden box beside her and flipped it open, revealing a neat row of strange, gleaming instruments and vials inside. She lifted out a pair of black gloves, putting them on with careful precision. "She’ll be fine."

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