Bastard Son of the Cosmic Devourer

Josiah Sweetwater—JoJo to anyone who cared—was absolutely going to die under a keg of half-fermented piss. Barrel-boy extraordinaire.

That’s what it felt like, anyway, as he shoulder-checked the cask for the third time. He knew this barrel. It always rolled left. He rolled right. They hated each other.

And to make things worse, his loins were feeling annoyingly full… again.

Vaulted Gods knew why. There wasn’t anything remotely sexy about dragging ale through a sweatbox cellar that reeked of feet, yeast, and damp grain. But his cock had twitched when the cask slipped, and now it wouldn’t let him forget.

Above him, the tavern floor thudded with drunken feet, bleeding sweat and ale through the warped boards. The air was thick with hops and mixed with his resignation.

JoJo grunted and shoved harder, trying to ignore the sticky heat coiled low in his gut.

One more shift. One more barrel. One more excuse not to touch himself.

He kept working—methodically, patiently—like the tavern’s survival hinged on whether this ale made it upstairs without another crack.

Which, in a way, it did.

He paused to wipe his brow. The back of his hand came away streaked with cellar dust and dried pine resin.

JoJo looked like someone you didn’t pick for anything important.

Five foot four on a good day, broad-shouldered, built low to the ground. Warm brown skin, a stubborn spatter of acne, close-cropped curls soaked with sweat. His shirt clung damp to his belly. His pants dug into the soft line of his hips. He wasn’t ugly. He just looked...unfinished. He was nineteen, and looked like someone who’d skipped the part of adolescence where you grew into yourself.

There was a tiredness behind his half-lidded eyes—not laziness, exactly, but the kind of bone-deep patience you got from being useful, but not wanted.

Around him, kegs were stacked like tombstones. Shelves sagged under jars of pickled roots, cured meats, and old wine that hadn’t moved since the local Labyrinth Door vanished. He flipped open the rusted ledger pinned to the wall.

Six weeks late on merchant dues. Three kegs sold below cost. One barrel cracked.

He exhaled through his nose.

The Sweetwaters had taken out a loan five years ago, back when Duskmoor still had promise—when the Labyrinth Door pulsed just north of the ridge and Challenger coin flowed like summer rain. But then the System moved on. Like it always did.

Now the roads were dry. The Challenger parties were gone. And the loan belonged to the Glintwell Consortium. Which meant rot-like interest.

They wouldn’t say it to his face—especially not Mama Sweetwater, who still smiled like it might turn things around—but the tavern was sinking.

So JoJo hauled. And mended. And chopped. And scrubbed. It was the least he could do, being the boy they “found on the doorstep” and decided to keep.

And maybe that was why he tried not to slip.

Not even when he woke up hard and aching.

He believed in holding it. In saving it.

The old Sages wrote that seed was spirit, and spirit was strength.

Every drop lost was a step further from his potential.

If he could just keep himself in line—keep his hands off, keep his thoughts clean—

Maybe he’d earn something better. Maybe even a key to the Labyrinth.

Just as JoJo felt himself slipping into the daydream, the trapdoor creaked open above.

“Jo! You alive down there?”

Benny. Local halfling. And the closest thing JoJo had to a best friend. Tonight, he was drunk on nothing but proximity to someone cooler.

JoJo grunted. “Cellar didn’t eat me yet.”

“Well hurry it up! Maddox is about to do the flare again!”

“I’m working.”

Benny snorted and slammed the door shut.

JoJo rolled his eyes. Maddox and his fucking aura flare.

Of course he was. JoJo didn’t know the official classification. Neither did Benny.

It was some kind of radiant buff, and it lit Maddox up like a festival lantern—warm, golden, just unnatural enough to feel important.

People said it made you feel calm. Centered. Like standing near a sunrise. And he’d been flaring it once a day ever since he came back from his first Labyrinth Room.

Most Challengers didn’t bother with gaudy displays like this anymore. But Maddox had always had that effortless charm—the kind that made even cringe look cool.

He could picture it now: shirt half-unbuttoned, boots kicked up on a table, Maddox throwing his head back and letting the glow spill out just as Anya walked by.

JoJo didn’t hate him for it. Not exactly.

He just hated that it made his gut tighten.

Anya would be there tonight. She always helped out at the bigger events—her aunt ran the dress shop across the square.

She was tall, soft-spoken, with long legs and dark eyes that didn’t miss much.

She wore her hair tied back with a ribbon, neat as a temple carving.

JoJo had barely spoken to her. “Table’s ready.” “Need anything?” And once—when she smiled directly at him—he’d squeaked out a “Sorry.”

He turned back to the barrel, hands working on reflex.

But his mind didn’t follow.

It drifted. Not to her exactly. Not even to Maddox, really. But to the way the room might glow when Maddox turned it on. The way people leaned toward him. The way he never had to try.

They were cousins. Well, adopted cousins. JoJo had seen him his junk plenty of times. It’s bound to happen when you grow up together.

He told himself it didn’t matter. Size was just a distraction. Glow didn’t mean strength—not real strength. And every drop he held in made him more.

That was the rule. That was the discipline. That was how he’d earn something bigger than attention.

Just as he reassured himself, a chorus of cheers and applause erupted overhead.

Fucking aura flare.

He gritted his teeth and shoved the barrel forward with a final heave.

The rim scraped stone. The scent of red wine and earth rose—sharp, heady, wet.

He took a breath.

And then he saw it.

A flicker of light. Not torchlight or lantern fire. Something else, hovering inches above the old barrel’s lip. It shimmered like heat off summer stone, folding into itself, coalescing into a small angular shape.

A Key. It wasn’t made of iron or gold or wood, but of light — translucent and humming, its edges fractaling like frozen lightning.

JoJo’s breath caught in his throat.

The temperature dropped. Or maybe it didn’t — maybe that was just the feeling of something vast leaning in from behind the veil of the world. The cellar noise faded. The floor felt distant.

The Key turned slowly in the air, pulsing once with a faint tone, like a chord struck on an unseen harp.

Then a voice — low, sexless, ancient and intimate all at once — echoed directly into his mind:

“Josiah Sweetwater… the Labyrinth calls. Will you answer?”