The earth underfoot was cracked and dead, gray-bck and brittle like cooled sg. Each step crunched faintly, sending up flecks of dust that clung to boots and skin. Even the pnts here were corpses—twisted stalks petrified in pce, their roots long since choked out by old magic and war.

  The sky overhead was its usual heavy shroud: cloud-thick, unmoving, an iron curtain that hadn’t parted in generations. The Burnished Lands pressed close here—its sickness seeping through the soil, its silence thick as oil in the lungs.

  Belle stood near the edge of a colpsed ridge, looking down at the tomb nestled in a fissure below. It was no shrine—just a jagged ruin of bck stone half-swallowed by a long-dead faultline. The catacombs of Malvinar. Ancient. Unmapped. Possibly cursed. No- probably cursed.

  Most importantly though, it was profitable.

  12 of them had come to cim its secrets—Ventures, though that title meant little once the knives were drawn or the monsters came crawling. Brought together out of singur interests and necessity. Not many of them took time to learn names. It didn’t do them much good when they were tied to temporary hands.

  Of the faces among them, Belle knew only a handful and shared common grounds with even less. Samael, was one of them who stood beside her, hex-kissed bde wrapped and bound at their side, eyes hidden under the hood of a patchworked coat. Their presence was as quiet as it was grounded—rooted in something darker than the others could sense. Not that Belle had ever really pried deeper on that. They all held their dark secrets. No clean soul would rightfully be this far out in these desote wastes.

  “Entrance is at the bottom,” called Vetch, the self-appointed leader. A towering reptile of jade green scales. His voice echoed over broken rock and into the open crypt. “Stairs are intact from the look of things. Aero-wards up. We have an hour of mana until they run dry.”

  He stomped down the cracked slope, armored boots ringing sharp against stone. His great-axe rattled across his back like a coffin lid.

  Belle adjusted the neckce she wore—threads held aloft a small piece of wood with etched-in runes for warding rot gas. A gentle breeze fluttered silently around her head alongside a brief flicker of green energy. Her silver-cwed gauntlets flexed as she followed.

  They descended into the fissure.

  Inside, the tomb breathed a different silence. Cold, still, and tight. The air smelled faintly of ash, old blood, and the kind of mildew that grew on stone untouched by sun.

  They moved in a loose formation. Vetch up front. Alren and Tahl, twin scouts with too-clean armor and too-sharp smiles, fanned out along the fnks. Mira, younger than Belle and twice as nervous, followed behind with her bracers alight—tiny flickers of fme running along etched channels. The rest? She never quite bothered to match other names to faces. A dwarven man cd in patchwork armor, a well-built man of the north. Even a figure in leathers that wielded a wicked rotary steam cannon.

  Belle walked beside Samael near the rear, keeping her footsteps quiet.

  The first few chambers were unremarkable. Just cold stone, colpsed shrines, a few unlit sconces that had long since rusted over. Urns had been smashed and pilfered in the hopes that they held so much as wooden baubles. Anything of remote worth was better than an empty satchel, so they took whatever they could.

  A few got lucky and found some coins. Ancient and of quality make— it earned several envious gnces from those nearby.

  A few rusted weapons, desiccated and rotted food.

  Belle was fortunate to find a small tapestry she could fold up and stow away.

  Deeper in, the group started to spread out into smaller groups of 3 to cover more ground.

  No traps sprung. No glyphs fred.

  And yet, something was off.

  “The walls here..,” Samael murmured, one gloved hand brushing against a carved relief.

  Belle followed the etching. Twisting lines. Not decorative. Her gauntlets snagged on small glimmering threads. Pulling them back, she’d rub the material between her fingers.

  “Webbing,” she whispered. “Almost looks like it’s worked into the masonry.”

  Samael nodded. “It’s too big to bring with us anyways. Let’s keep going .”

  Belle’s brow furrowed but wiped the web against her skirt before following with, giving the sculpted art one st gnce. This pce didn’t sit well with her.

  This was far from her first plundered tomb. Dungeon crawls like these were an almost daily activity for Ventures like her. Was this pce cursed? Or truly empty?

  Mira let out a shaky breath. “Feels like something’s watching us.”

  “Then something just might be,” Belle said, almost absentmindedly.

  The veil of magic was thin here. She could feel it pulling at the edges of her focus, the way a dream tries to crawl back into your eyes just after waking. Something beneath the stone. Something not asleep.

  CLANG!

  Metal cshed upon metal in a neighboring corridor, followed by the pained yelp of a man. The trio rushed into action, rounding the corner and racing down the hall to find one of their own with a rusted, fme-bded sword piercing their armor—Tahl if she wasn’t mistaken.

  Desiccated hands wrenched the bde free in an arc of crimson, felling the venture on the spot before their distraught sibling. Panic took hold and rational thought fled. The wizened hiss from warriors of unlife broke the chilled silence to follow.

  Samael was quick to react, drawing their curved greatsword from their back. It moved with unnatural speed, catching the opposition’s edge before it could cim the second sibling.

  Out of the corner of their eye, Samael could see the dead shambling from out of their cells. Bows, bdes and staffs at the ready.

  “Wight!” They alerted the rest in the midst of their counter. Sparks flew between the meeting of rusted and hexed metal while Belle and the apprentice magician hurried down the same hall.

  Belle moved with a flicker—her form blurring, smeared across the hallway like a smear of starlight. The void responded to her urgency, warping the air as she blinked forward and nded beside Samael..

  The hallway was narrow, the ceiling low, and the undead filled it like a rot slowly congealing into form. Tahl’s body slumped at the edge of Belle’s peripheral vision, lifeless eyes wide with the shock of betrayal from death itself.

  It moved without urgency, not because it was sluggish—but because it didn’t need to be fast. It was deliberate, built for economy of motion, and every inch of it radiated the quiet surety of something that only knew how to kill.

  Samael didn’t wait for it to come to them. They stepped forward, teeth bared behind, and brought their greatsword to bear with a two-handed grip. The weapon hummed faintly with runic enchantments—just enough to bite through magic when driven with muscle.

  The Wight met them halfway.

  Their bdes collided with a cng that sent vibrations up both their arms. Samael pushed in, strength meeting strength, only for the Wight to pivot and twist unnaturally, sliding out of the bind and striking low. Samael barely parried in time, the undead’s speed betraying its otherwise statuesque appearance.

  Behind them, Belle exploded into motion.

  “Keep it busy!” she barked, her voice sharp as her cws carved twin arcs through the chest of an oncoming skeleton. Cosmic void light burst from the impact, swallowing bone and air in a sudden vacuum pop. Another came at her from the fnk—short sword aimed for her throat. She dropped low, twisted, and used the colpse of space to fold her into a blur of motion, appearing behind it. One ssh. Gone.

  Mira scrambled to stay clear, focusing on small fme wards, trying to keep the narrow corridor from colpsing into a choke point.

  Samael and the Wight were left in a csh all their own.

  The undead were always a dangerous fight. They weren't like fighting a person. The Wight didn’t flinch, it could hardly be read, its bde always perfectly angled to test Samael’s guard. Its strikes were swift and almost mechanical—no hesitation, just a calcution of pressure and reach. A gash opened across Samael’s shoulder where the Wight’s bde kissed their armor and found weak metal.

  They snarled and countered with a brutal overhead swing meant to break rather than finesse. The Wight blocked it—barely—and its elbow cracked from the impact..

  Belle, meanwhile, was in the thick of it. The skeletons weren’t mindless; they were patterned, running on some embedded tactical logic etched into the necromantic runes that shimmered across their bleached bones with sickly green power. When one fell, another shifted to take its pce with perfect timing. They weren’t quick in step—but their strikes were terrifyingly fast. One opened a cut across her thigh; she spun, grabbed the shaft of the weapon mid-air, and twisted it into another's ribcage before teleporting upward in a crackling misty-step. Her hands csped together and her body became weightless. Her gravity inverted and she darted to the ceiling.

  She looked down at the scene from above, then dropped like a meteor.

  A wave of telekinetic force bsted outward upon her impact, hurling three skeletons against the walls. They shattered- their runes etched into them soon starting to dim.

  Progress.

  Back at the front, the Wight closed the distance like a machine. Not with fir. Not rage. Just quiet, unrelenting precision. Its bde moved in short, efficient arcs—nothing wasted. No sound but the scrape of bone and rusted steel.

  Samael met it with a grunt, barely lifting their greatsword in time to catch the first strike. The impact jarred their wrists, numbness shooting up their arms. They dug their boots into the stone and shoved back, teeth clenched. It wasn’t a duel. It was a test of who slipped first.

  The Wight just kept coming.

  Another swing—low, angled for the gut. Samael pivoted, barely avoiding the full bite, but felt metal graze against their side. Warmth spread beneath their ribs.

  Belle didn’t have time to look back. The shambling skeletons were already making their way back towards her.

  She lunged forward, cws tearing through a ribcage. Her magic wreathed fingers snapped the weaves of necromantic energy like overstretched thread, dragging fragments of bone into oblivion—but two more were already there, bdes coming down.

  Belle dropped into a roll, shoulder smming into the floor hard enough to jolt her vision, but she came up swinging. The edge of her cw caught one skeleton in the neck. Not enough to fell it—but enough to unbance it. She finished it with a knee to the spine and a downward strike that cracked through the skull.

  Samael’s world narrowed to the Wight’s eyes—or the pce where eyes should’ve been. No emotions. No malice. Just endless intention.

  The Wight struck again. Samael blocked high, but the bde twisted and hooked—pulled their guard open. A boot to the chest sent them sprawling. They hit the ground hard, coughing. Dust. Blood.

  They rolled out of instinct. The Wight’s bde cracked the stone where their head had just been.

  Samael surged to their feet with a raw shout and swung wide—too wide. The Wight ducked, and its return strike was a clean jab at their ribs. Armor cracked. Flesh tore. Samael screamed and didn’t stop moving. They had to stay moving.

  They smmed their shoulder into the Wight, knocking it back a step—finally. That was all they got. One breath...

  Samael was bleeding. Their grip faltered. The Wight was unrelenting, hacking at them piece by piece like it was dismantling a machine.

  They saw an opening—but it was going to cost them.

  They stepped into the Wight’s next swing, letting the bde dig into their shoulder just deep enough, and then turned with it—using the momentum to bring their sword around in a low, desperate arc.

  Steel met bone.

  The Wight’s spine cracked. Its head tilted back unnaturally, light flickering in its sockets. Samael drove their sword through its midsection and held it there, pressing forward with everything left.

  It stopped moving.

  It didn’t fall dramatically. It just shut down. Colpsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  Samael stumbled back, one hand pressed to their bleeding side. They didn’t look triumphant. Just alive.

  Belle stood panting over a small mound of shattered remains, blood and bck voidlight smeared across her arms.

  It was over.

  For now.

  Mira’s arms were in a simir state, blisters forming along singed hands from overusing her bracers. Ultimately, she suffered the least amongst them.

  Samael let their sword rest next to them before pulling a root from their pocket. They took a bite and gnawed at the tough root until they could tear a sizable chunk off and swallow.

  With a hiss, they pressed their back to the wall for relief as roots sprouted from their wounds.

  Magic vegetation twisted and knitted wounds together like stitches.

  Erd Root, cheap, painful, but effective.

  Alren, who miraculously appeared unharmed, remained knelt amongst the carnage. Their eyes were glued upon their twin’s crumpled form.

  “Everyone good?” Vetch called, approaching with a limp of their own and a broken arrow in their shoulder. The rest of the group was close behind.

  Samael pushed off the wall and motioned to the body. “Down one..”

  “Grab their satchel and sigil. We need to keep moving.” Vetch wasted little time while his friend simply stepped by Alren, rolling their sibling over to rifle through whatever pockets and effects they had. A single pendant was plucked from their pockets. Silver and fashioned in the shape of a V with the thread looped through the upper left of it. A venturer’s sigil, a show of their occupation that they all shared.

  Belle looked to the distraught twin and then to the inexperienced magician beside them.

  “Mira, Alren, let’s get going. We need all the hands we can muster if we want to get anything out of this” Vetch barked, gring over his shoulder.

  Alren didn’t move, lost to the disorienting peril of their situation. Still grappling with the sudden loss of life.

  Belle shot a gnce at Mira and tugged on their shoulder. “Come on. We don’t have time to wait for them.”

  The young magician jumped at the touch, only calming slightly when she saw Belle.

  “We’re just going to leave her?” “She can find her way back to the carriage when she clears her head. For now, we need to move.” The witch emphasized the urgency, knowing the wards they wore would only keep the air around them clean for so long. Still, Belle felt how much Mira was shaking. Her inexperience was writ upon her face. “Don’t worry. I’ve got your back.” A reassuring pat was all she could spare before moving ahead.

  They took the next path down, guided by dim bioluminescent moss. The air grew colder and colder the further down they crept. That’s when the first corpse appeared. At least, the first they hadn’t caused.

  Curled in the corner of an antechamber. Dressed in old Venture leathers. The bones had been stripped clean—hollowed out. None of their gear was taken. A boon for them at least.

  “Still got a sigil on them. None of their gear was stolen, so it wasn’t other Ventures,” Belle pocketed a silver ring and the arcane pendant.

  "Doesn't look like it was the undead that did them in either. Would have probably been risen with the rest of them.." Samael added.

  Vetch didn't seem to care much. Whatever was on them was quickly looted and not a thought further went to them.

  “Move faster,” Vetch said, already pushing past.

  They entered a long hall supported by thick, tapering pilrs. More and more of that strange webbing…

  Spiders weren’t exactly uncommon in pces like these. Let alone the rger ones that’d snare a grown man if they got the opportunity. Yet something within Belle continued to nag and gnaw at her.

  It was a faint presence, but a familiar one. Visions of figures walking through the shadows in the corners of her eye, voices whispering faintly in her mind.

  The moss around them shifted from a dim cyan hue to a brighter, vibrant purple. She could see the threads of magic flowing around her like a forest of kelp in the ocean. Swaying and swirling amidst whirling tides.

  Belle blinked and rubbed the right side of her face until the visions faded to the back of her mind.

  “Belle, you okay?” Samael’s voice snapped her back to reality.

  “Y-yeah- just, hearing things. The veil is thin here.” She scanned the rge opening they walked into curiously. Ironcd statues stood at attention within the halls, devoid of any activating runes fortunately.

  The group spread out once more, stripping the statues of any gems encrusted within them or any pieces they could stuff into satchels without running out of space.

  Faint chittering echoed just ahead—barely audible, like cws against gss. Belle froze.

  “No one move,” she hissed.

  Too te.

  Eron stepped forward. Something clicked underfoot.

  The floor shattered.

  A mass of silk and chitin erupted from below in a blur of legs and gnashing mouths. The creatures dropped like living blight, one of them snaring Eron mid-scream and dragging him into the pit below.

  Chaos erupted around them.

  More fell from the ceiling, their deep violet exoskeletons glistening and pulsing with shifting glyphs—Hex-tainted. Twisted by the Otherside. Each one screeched with a noise like grinding steel and helfire.

  Another venture screamed. Their steam rotary roared with a volley of molten spikes but it only slowed them.

  “Belle!” Mira shouted.

  Belle activated her gauntlets in a fsh. Voidlight surged through the cwed silver, casting long shadows across the chamber. She dove, sshing at a Ranchara pinning Mira down—too te. It sank its cws into their gut and wrenched.

  Now, the stone corridors throbbed with echoes—cws tapping in unnatural rhythm, bodies shifting across walls and ceilings where no man should look. The Ranchara had found them.

  Twice the size of a man, cd in exoskeletons thicker than armored pte and bristling in bded cws and teeth.

  Worst of all, they were wreathed in the taint of the Otherside. The very same wild magics many a witch utilized for their own chaotic powers.

  Belle ran.

  Her silver-cwed gauntlets shimmered with a pulse of voidlight, veins of violet crawling across her arms like consteltions.

  Behind them, a scream—cut short by a wet crunch.

  Six left. No time to check who.

  “Keep pushing!” barked Vetch, leading the retreat with all the grace of a rabid ox. His half-pte cnged with each step, dragging the group forward like a drowning man pulling others with him. “The breach is ahead!”

  A shriek pierced the tunnel—high-pitched, inhuman. Belle gnced back. A swarm of Ranchara twisted into view, their arachnid forms skittering quickly and gleaming in both blood and murderous intent, warped by the Otherside. Their limbs moved too fast. Their wails disorienting and jarring.

  She threw out her hand.

  A rift split the air with a sound like breaking ice, and voidfire crackled from her cws, spiraling into a miniature nova that vaporized the first few pursuers in a cloud of chitin and rot.

  That bought them seconds. No more.

  “Belle!” Another venture gasped, stumbling. A halfling dragging a longsword with them while they limped as fast as they could. Belle’s hand twitched toward her, almost moved.

  No. Too far back.

  She fell. The swarm was on her before she hit the floor. Belle forced herself to keep running.

  The fetid darkness made this desperate dash even more difficult. Outcroppings of stone, missing segments of floor and felled columns threatened to sneak up on her if she wasn’t observant enough.

  A boulder found itself in her path. A quick csp of her hands and she quickly unched herself up and over it, narrowly avoiding hitting the ceiling. It gave her some more space, away from the things behind her.

  They emerged into a fractured shrine hall—pilrs long colpsed, the walls crawling with more glowing glyph-web. Samael, bloodied but steady, stood at the center of the group, sword drawn. They had an opportunity to catch their breaths. To gather themselves.

  “Fell behind?” he asked dryly as Belle arrived beside him.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” Belle muttered.

  They moved. No pn. Just the raw need to live.

  The corridor thinned, narrowed, then cracked open to sunlight. They were close now. Belle could smell the cold, dead air of the Burnished Lands bleeding into the tomb. The dim light was hope. The carriage waited.

  The exit yawned wide like a wound in the stone.

  “GO!” Samael shouted.

  Vetch shoved past the others, desperate. Belle barely dodged his armored shoulder.

  Then it happened.

  Samael faltered.

  One step from the light, his boot caught on shattered debris. He stumbled, rolled, and when he tried to rise, a massive Ranchara smmed into him from the side, pinning him with a shriek. His sword cttered across the floor, skidding to Belle’s feet.

  Their eyes met.

  The others were already in the carriage. The driver screamed for them to get in or get left.

  Belle hesitated.

  Run, said the voice in her head. Run and live..

  With a scream, she lunged back into the tunnel, silver cws bursting with voidlight. She tackled the Ranchara atop Samael, her gauntlets carving into its back in a spiral of void energy. It screeched—bdes filing and cutting a grievous gash across the waist.

  She grabbed Samael by the colr and hauled him to his feet.

  “You still breathing?” she snapped.

  “Think so.”

  They staggered toward the light.

  Behind them, the matriarch Ranchara dropped from the ceiling with a thunderous crack. Its bloated body pulsed with corrupted glyphs, and its eyes—far too many—burned like emerald coals.

  The carriage was pulling away.

  Belle conjured one st bolt of kinetic force behind them, raw and unstable, and it colpsed the archway with a deafening crash. Stone and dust buried the matriarch’s shriek.

  They leapt aboard the moving carriage just as it cleared the tomb.

  Samael rolled to the floor, coughing. Belle smmed the back hatch shut and fell against it, heart hammering.

  Vetch snarled from the far side. “You almost got us all killed!”

  Belle didn’t even look at him. Her hands were still shaking and her injuries started to scream at her now that adrenaline subsided.

  The carriage rattled through the scorched earth of the Burnished Lands, streaks of ash and charred earth dancing on the horizon. Dust and blood caked their clothes. No one spoke again.

  Belle leaned back, staring at her hands—still glowing faintly with power she didn’t fully understand.

  The pact inside her stirred, restless.

  You should have let them die.

  “Shut up,” she muttered.

  The pulse of the Otherside began to slow as the Hex-twisted creatures were left further and further behind.

  12 of them had gone in… 5 came out. They made it out with at least some valuables and their lives.

  And in Rostolk, that counted for more than most things.

  The gates of Rostolk loomed like broken teeth rising from the barren horizon—cracked towers leaning against the weight of centuries, their stone walls scorched and scored bck. The skies above churned with thick, unmoving clouds, the same iron gray that had hung over the Burnished Lands since long before Belle was born.

  No sun had touched this pce in living memory. The sky had long since forgotten how to shine.

  The carriage rolled through the open gate, iron-rimmed wheels groaning against the stone. Smoke drifted in low sheets through the streets, curling around shattered statues and half-colpsed tenements. The smell of old fire hung in the air—ash, tallow, and alchemy gone wrong.

  Inside, Belle sat against the inner wall, her silver-cwed gauntlets dim now but still warm. Ash clung to her skin, caking her cloak and hair in streaks of pale grit. Her head throbbed with exhaustion, but her eye remained sharp, tracking every shadow as they moved through the war-born city.

  Across from her sat Samael, one arm wrapped in makeshift bandages. Their head was low, shadowing their face, and their cursed bde—swaddled in wards and leather—rested across their knees. The mark that bound it to them shimmered faintly under their glove, a subtle tremor of magic leaking into the stale air.

  “You’re quiet,” they said, voice ft but not unfriendly.

  “Thinking,” Belle replied.

  “Dangerous habit.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  Outside the carriage, the city rumbled with life—the ragged, uneven kind. Market hawkers yelled in six nguages. Drunks argued in alleys. Somewhere nearby, something screamed—not human, probably not still alive. No one stopped. Rostolk didn’t slow down for anyone. It barely acknowledged you were there.

  They rolled past a dried-out fountain filled with bone charms and bottle-curses. Past a shattered guildhall still smoldering from some territorial dispute. The guilds here were a swarm of hungry dogs—each with their teeth in a different part of the corpse that was Rostolk.

  The driver didn’t wait for further instruction. He knew the route. Ventures who looked like them didn’t live in the clean districts. They didn’t drink where the coins clicked too loudly. They returned to the gutters that tolerated them—and kept the knives facing outward.

  Witchside crept up around them—tighter streets, warped doorways, glowing sigils chalked in panic or precision. Witches in yered coats whispered to the shadows. A hag with a jaw like cracked obsidian pushed a cart of sleeping rats. An alchemist’s tower burned from the third floor up, and no one seemed concerned.

  The carriage finally groaned to a halt beneath a crooked archway of warded brick.

  They'd made it back. For better or for worse...

  They were home.