Dawn came slow and thick, like honey poured through mist, catching on the dew-damp ruins and setting the lingering fog aglow in pale, shifting gold. The old bones of the town stretched around the camp in hushed reverence, stones weathered to ghostly shapes beneath creeping moss. Birds called faintly from the trees overhead, their voices soft as though unwilling to disturb the dead things slumbering below.

  ProlixalParagon knelt by the edge of the cookfire, tearing a strip of charroot bread with his fingers. The light breakfast was simple — flatbread, dried goat strips, and a thin, herbal broth that smelled of iron and earth. It wasn’t a feast, but it sat warm in his stomach, steadying him for the descent ahead.

  Around him, the others prepared in quiet.

  Kaelthari crouched near the fire, carefully coiling a length of woven cord. The Cataphractan woman’s mulberry scales shimmered faintly in the dawn light, and her curved markhor-like horns caught the glow, the small golden chains strung between them tinkling softly as she moved. Tiny charms and crystal shards hung from the loops, catching firelight in glimmers of green and violet. She stayed close to the edge of the group, saying little, her wary blue eyes flicking between faces, lingering on ProlixalParagon now and then as though measuring his quiet presence for safety.

  Ralyria stood by a broken archway, spear resting across her shoulders. Her polished frame gleamed with condensation, the blue-white glow of her mana core pulsing faintly beneath the plating at her throat. She ran a hand along the haft of her weapon, checking for splinters, her gaze steady. When she spoke, her voice came clean and even.

  “Scouts… say mist won’t… lift before midday. Good for… cover.”

  The words caught near the middle, stuttering on a faint glitch before smoothing out again.

  Marx sat on a flat stone with one booted foot resting on a smaller rock, the heavy weight of his Ember Reaver core hanging visibly beneath his tunic — a faint red glow spilling from the seams where it nested against his chest. The human’s olive skin gleamed with sweat despite the chill, his dark hair tied back, and a pair of well-worn wood carving knives balanced across his palms. He was sharpening them slowly, not because they needed it, but because the act kept his hands steady.

  Arelis sat alone, pale fingers clasped around a shallow tin cup of broth. The sickly Soohan elf’s armor, battered and patched though it was, had been cleaned with meticulous care. His silver hair was bound at the nape of his neck, and his longsword — plain, utilitarian — lay across his lap. His breath misted faintly in the chill air, but his pale eyes held a brittle, bright light.

  ProlixalParagon shifted his satchel, the familiar weight of tools, caltrops, and his dagger grounding him. The gear was plain, worn from use, but it was his, and that counted for more than gold in places like this.

  Lyra emerged from her vardo as the sun crested the treetops, turning the mist to scattered amber ribbons. Her silver fur seemed woven from dawnlight, her staff thudding softly against the damp earth as she approached. Her golden gaze lingered on each of them in turn.

  “You don’t owe this,” she said, her voice dry and rough with old roads and older losses. “But if it must be done, do it clean. Don’t linger. Don’t trust what doesn’t bleed.”

  Arelis rose to his feet, shoulders squared. “I… swear by Lidos’ stone, I will honor their memory. And return.”

  Kaelthari gave a small, barely audible murmur of agreement, her gaze dropping quickly when Lyra’s eyes met hers.

  Ralyria hummed faintly. “I… prefer odds… evened.”

  Marx grunted. “Better to face what waits than wonder when it’ll come.”

  ProlixalParagon gave Lyra a faint grin. “We’ll be back.”

  Lyra only inclined her head. “See that you are.”

  The old matriarch’s staff tapped once against the stone before she turned, leaving them to gather their gear.

  They ate quickly, stripping down their camp to what could be left behind. No one carried more than weapons, water skins, and what supplies could be shouldered without slowing their retreat.

  ProlixalParagon checked the leather thong binding his dagger’s sheath, brushed a hand over the pocket holding his mana snare, and took a steadying breath. The earth beneath his feet felt heavy, as though it remembered too many dead.

  The entrance yawned ahead — a wide, crumbling stairwell sunken into the earth, flanked by toppled statues whose features had long since been lost to weather and moss. The faint crest of Lidos, half-obscured by lichen, sat above the arch in a weathered ring of stone.

  A cool draft exhaled from the opening, carrying the scent of ancient dust, stone, and something older. The mist pooled thick around the mouth of the stairwell, the gloom below swallowing the light before it could descend.

  Kaelthari adjusted the haft of her bardiche, the crystals in her horn-chains catching the dawn’s rays as she murmured a quiet prayer to Onthir under her breath.

  Ralyria spun her spear once and rested it against her shoulder.

  Marx rolled his shoulders, tucking his knives into his belt.

  Arelis took one last slow breath, then stepped forward.

  ProlixalParagon fell into step beside him.

  Without ceremony, without fanfare, they descended into the dark.

  The earth closed around them, swallowing their light, the ancient stones whispering of old things best left buried.

  And together, they vanished into the waiting dark.

  The stairwell swallowed them.

  Cool, damp air pressed close around ProlixalParagon as he descended, every breath thick with the scent of wet stone, old iron, and earth long undisturbed. Mist clung to the walls in fine, beaded droplets, and each step struck the cracked stone with a dull, echoing weight that carried too far in the silence.

  The deeper they went, the more the world above slipped away. No sound of wind. No birdsong. Only the steady drip of unseen water, and the careful tread of boot and scale on stone.

  Arelis held the torch, its flickering flame painting the narrow stairwell in restless, rippling light. The ancient walls bore the weathered marks of old chisels, sigils of Lidos eroded by time but still clinging like stubborn memories. The air was cold enough to sting, but beneath it lingered something metallic and stale — the scent of ancient blood left too long in dark places.

  Marx took point, his twin wood carving knives resting comfortably in his hands, the worn handles fitting his grip like old promises. There was no glow to him, no core to light his way. Ember Reavers needed no such thing. The fire they called upon came from marrow and breath, a dangerous kind of magic drawn straight from life’s own reservoir. Marx’s face was calm, olive skin slick with mist, eyes sharp in the gloom. The faint scent of scorched wood clung to him even here — a trait he never entirely lost after a fight.

  Kaelthari moved next, her mulberry-scaled form a quiet, careful presence in the torchlight. The markhor-like horns curled from her head, golden chains strung between them chiming in soft, almost nervous notes as she walked. Small charms and crystals caught flickers of flame, scattering dim reflections against the wet walls. She gripped her bardiche close to her chest, its wide, blackened blade already nicked from old fights. Her pale blue gaze lingered on every shadowed alcove, wariness written in the tight line of her jaw.

  Ralyria followed, spear balanced lightly in one hand. Her polished plating caught the torchlight in scattered gleams, damp from the mist. The hum of her mana core was faint, nearly swallowed by the heavy quiet. Her speech earlier had been clear, but ProlixalParagon knew the glitches came and went, and her stance told him she was listening as much for what the stones remembered as for the things that moved now.

  He brought up the rear, dagger sheathed but ready, a mana snare in his satchel alongside the clutter of tools, caltrops, and old scraps of brass and wire. His fingers brushed the hilt of the dagger out of habit, sharp green-gold eyes flicking over the passage.

  The stairwell opened into a wide chamber at last, the space hollowed from the earth and held by thick, squat pillars of stone veined with lichen and long-dried moss. The ceiling rose into a low vault, the damp air heavy with the weight of countless years. Stagnant water pooled in shallow depressions, catching the torchlight in trembling patches.

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  The chamber’s scent was different. Not just earth and decay, but the sour tang of rusted metal and something bitter, like scorched resin and extinguished incense.

  At the center stood a pedestal of dark stone, slick with condensation. Upon it rested a weathered disc of bronze, its edges crumbling but its center intact — the symbol of Lidos carved deep: a mountain crowned by a rising sun. Faint glyphs, the remnants of old wards, clung to the pedestal’s face in tattered threads of ghost-light, powerless but not entirely forgotten.

  ProlixalParagon’s ears flicked at the distant drip of water. The torch’s light seemed reluctant to cling to the chamber’s corners, the shadows clinging thick as old cobwebs.

  Kaelthari shifted beside him, voice quiet, her shyness softening the words to little more than a murmur. “I… don’t like this. It… feels like it’s watching.”

  Ralyria’s voice came next, steady this time. “Not empty. This place… remembers.”

  Marx stepped toward the pedestal, his knives loose in his grip. “Doesn’t feel like a trap,” he muttered. “Feels like it’s waiting for a reason.”

  Arelis’s gaze was fixed on the ancient murals faded into the walls, figures with bowed heads before a crowned figure wrought in old black and gold — Lidos in his mountain throne.

  “This is… the first of his trials,” the elf murmured, reverence laced with the brittle edge of desperation. “The stone remembers the unworthy.”

  ProlixalParagon’s fingers brushed his satchel. His stomach clenched against the oppressive weight of the room, the sense of old eyes, and the ancient tang of blood in the air.

  “Whatever’s waiting,” he murmured, “I don’t plan on giving it long.”

  The chamber seemed to breathe around them, the weight of centuries pressing close.

  And somewhere deeper in the earth, a sound.

  A scrape.

  A shift of stone against stone.

  Not the dead stirring — something else.

  Ralyria’s head turned sharply toward the sound. “Movement… south passage.”

  Kaelthari gripped her bardiche tighter, chain-charms chiming softly.

  ProlixalParagon drew his dagger, the weight of it familiar, solid. His voice came quiet, sure.

  “Form up. Whatever’s down here, we deal with it together.”

  The old stones pressed close.

  And the dark began to stir.

  The air in the chamber pressed close, heavy as wet cloth, thick with the scent of stone dust, stagnant water, and the deep, metallic tang of rusted iron long left to decay.

  ProlixalParagon’s boots struck damp stone with careful steps as he approached the pedestal at the heart of the chamber. From a distance, it had looked like the others — rough-cut black stone, worn and mist-slick, with a disc of ancient bronze upon it, half-choked in grime and age. He expected, as they all did, to see the familiar rising-sun crown of Lidos engraved upon its face.

  But as he drew close, the air prickled cold against the nape of his neck.

  The symbol was wrong.

  Even beneath the patina of green corrosion and lichen-smudged surface, the shape was unmistakably not a mountain. No sun. No crown. Instead, twisting, spiraling lines coiled around a central void — a hollow circle encircled by jagged, radiating etchings. The sigil gave the impression of motion, like something pulling inward and outward at once, devouring and birthing in the same breath.

  A slow, crawling discomfort tightened ProlixalParagon’s gut.

  Kaelthari edged forward, her bardiche clutched in both hands. The tiny chains and charms woven between her horns chimed softly with each nervous movement. “That’s… not Lidos,” she whispered, voice barely audible.

  Ralyria’s pale, artificial gaze fixed on the symbol, her voice flickering faintly at the edges. “I… do not… know it.”

  Marx scowled, wood carving knives at the ready, shifting his stance. “Thought you said this was a temple to your rock god,” he muttered toward Arelis.

  Arelis was staring, his pallid face gone even paler, silver hair clinging to his damp skin. “I… I thought it was,” he whispered. “The murals — the sun crowns — everything above…”

  His voice cracked as though something cold had slipped through his veins.

  Ralyria stepped nearer, her gloved hand hovering over the strange glyphwork curling around the pedestal’s sides. “These wards… old. Not dead. Wrong shape. Twisting runes. Not… of Lidos.”

  ProlixalParagon knelt beside it, pulling a thin brass mirror from his satchel. He angled it beneath the lip of the bronze disc, watching for mechanisms, glyph traces — anything familiar.

  What he found unsettled him more.

  Fine, hair-thin lines of ancient warding script spiraled beneath the disc, curling into looping, recursive shapes he couldn’t read. They coiled in on themselves, fractured and joined again, patterns designed to hold something, though whether to keep it sealed or fuel it, he couldn’t tell.

  “This… isn’t right,” ProlixalParagon murmured.

  A faint vibration shivered through the floor — a deep, low tremor, as if something immense and patient shifted far below.

  The scraping sound came again from the south passage. Closer now.

  Arelis backed a step away, his grip on his sword trembling. “We shouldn’t be here,” he said hoarsely.

  Kaelthari’s scales shivered visibly, the small crystals dangling from her horns catching the torchlight with each soft, chiming note.

  “Do we leave it?” Marx asked, voice tight.

  ProlixalParagon’s gaze fixed on the hollow circle engraved in the bronze — that void at the center of the sigil, surrounded by jagged lines that seemed to move if he looked too long. His stomach knotted. Whatever this place had been, it wasn’t what the surface suggested. Either someone had built a shrine to something else in the heart of Lidos’ house, or the entire ruin’s nature was a lie.

  “No,” ProlixalParagon said, standing. “We need to know what this is. Or what it’s holding.”

  A sharp clang echoed from the south passage.

  Ralyria’s head snapped toward it, her voice steady now. “Incoming.”

  The torchlight guttered as the air thickened, a heavy, leaden cold descending over the chamber like a breath held too long.

  Whatever was coming… it had been waiting.

  And it would not wait much longer.

  The heavy scraping sound grew closer, the kind of slow, deliberate drag of something large moving over stone. The torchlight wavered, casting restless shapes on the chamber’s damp walls.

  ProlixalParagon’s grip tightened on his dagger.

  Kaelthari shifted her stance, bardiche rising, the delicate charms and chains between her horns chiming a nervous, trembling note.

  Ralyria’s spear leveled toward the south passage, the glow of her mana core pulsing a cold, steady rhythm. “Something… moving. Big.”

  Arelis swallowed, his pale face tight as his sword quivered in his grip.

  Then — a shape emerged from the gloom.

  Tall. Robed. The figure’s silhouette rippled with a cold, alien elegance as it stepped into the edge of the torchlight. Robes of deep silver and ebony flowed around a slender, digitigrade frame, the fabric’s surface catching faint glimmers of old magic woven into the weave. The figure’s scales were a tapestry of natural earthen hues — deep mossy greens, streaks of stone-gray, ochre, and hints of lunar blue along the jaw and crest.

  A reptilian face turned toward them, eyes narrow and luminous. When the figure smiled, it revealed rows of sharp, predatory teeth — not crude, but regal, every movement measured and precise. Their presence was not frantic, nor brutish, but unsettling in its practiced poise.

  The figure’s tail swayed behind them, the tip flicking lazily — a calculated social cue among Quang. ProlixalParagon recognized the posture’s implication, though it wasn’t friendly. Not hostile, but watchful. Measuring.

  And then came the voice — a low, menacing purr that resonated in the bones.

  “Well,” the stranger drawled, each syllable smooth as wet stone. “I expected to find scavengers or bones. Not… company.”

  Their chuckle followed, a low, rolling sound that stirred the damp air.

  ProlixalParagon’s eyes narrowed. Not a dungeon spawn. Not a hollow.

  A player.

  “Name,” Marx demanded flatly, knives at the ready.

  The figure’s grin widened. “You can call me… PillowHorror.”

  Arelis blinked, visibly thrown by the incongruity of the name.

  ProlixalParagon kept his dagger lowered but ready. “You’re a long way from the entry paths.”

  PillowHorror’s head tilted, the gills beneath their arms fluttering briefly as they stepped closer, moving with a languid, reptilian grace. “And so are you. Most avoid places like this. Places older than the world’s tame gods. But some of us… some of us still honor what came before.”

  Their tail lashed once, scent glands stirring the air with a sharp, earthen spice ProlixalParagon didn’t recognize.

  Kaelthari’s voice was soft, unsure. “You… know what this is?”

  PillowHorror’s gaze drifted to the pedestal, sharp teeth gleaming in the flicker of Arelis’s torch.

  “I know it is not of your petty pantheon,” the Quang Consul murmured. “It bears no sun crown, no skyward branch. This is something older. A mark long scoured from your histories.”

  Their scaled hand brushed the edge of a hanging silver sleeve.

  “My people would call it a cradle stone,” they continued, voice low, reverent. “A place where his breath lingers. A place meant to test or unmake those too foolish to see which they are.”

  ProlixalParagon’s brow furrowed. “And who’s ‘his’?”

  PillowHorror’s grin widened, but the answer didn’t come.

  Instead, they simply said, “You might find out. Assuming you survive.”

  The scrape of movement came again from deeper within the south passage — heavier this time.

  PillowHorror turned their head, scenting the air, expression unreadable. “You may want to decide quickly if you mean to run… or stand.”

  ProlixalParagon felt a cold certainty settle in his gut. Whatever this place was — whatever gods the Quang Consul’s people whispered of — it wasn’t waiting idly.

  And neither was whatever stalked the dark.

  He glanced to Marx, to Ralyria, to Kaelthari’s wary, mulberry-scaled face, and to Arelis pale with tension.

  They’d made it this far.

  They weren’t leaving empty-handed.

  “Form up,” ProlixalParagon said grimly. “If something’s coming, we face it together.”

  PillowHorror’s laugh was a soft, rattling thing. “Excellent.”

  And the dark stirred once more.