The dungeon had settled into the land like it meant to stay.

  Some dungeons felt temporary, like they’d been slapped together overnight, half-formed, waiting for some overeager band of idiots to clean them out so they could collapse into history. But not this one. This one had roots. A wound the world had stopped trying to heal.

  And wounds festered.

  “It feels worse,” Marielle murmured.

  She wasn’t wrong. The air had changed. It pressed against them in a way it hadn’t before, like the dungeon was watching. Like it knew they had come back.

  “It’s a lich’s lair,” Garrick said. His voice didn’t waver. The weight of his armor sat on his frame as effortlessly as his conviction. “It will wither in the face of divinity.”

  Markus adjusted his grip on his shield. “I don’t care what it feels like. We’ve dealt with worse.”

  Raven, leaning against a tree with all the ease of someone who wanted to look relaxed, gave a slow, humorless smile. “Oh, absolutely. Plenty of first-floor liches in our line of work. You see one, you’ve seen them all.”

  No one laughed.

  Then she saw it.

  She straightened, chin jerking toward the entrance. “That wasn’t there before.”

  The others turned.

  A sign had been planted just before the dungeon threshold. Just before the cave mouth, not quite outside, but clearly visible.

  The wood was warped, damp from the mist curling around the edges of the cavern. The letters had been carved deep, not written but torn into the surface with something that hadn’t cared for precision.

  LEAVE US ALONE, OR DIE.

  “That…” Devon finally said, flipping open his logbook. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It makes less sense the more you think about it,” Markus muttered. He frowned. “Liches don’t warn people away.”

  “They do if they think it’ll help,” Talia murmured, stepping closer. Her fingers hovered near the crystal of her staff, her focus narrowing. “This isn’t a taunt. It’s a warning.”

  “A warning,” Markus echoed, slower this time.

  Devon tapped his quill against the open page of his logbook, eyes fixed on the jagged letters. “You don’t warn people you want to kill.”

  “Exactly,” Talia said, still looking at the sign. “So why warn us at all?”

  Garrick moved forward, his boots grinding against the loose stone. The others watched him like someone might watch a man poking a sleeping bear.

  “This creature is cunning,” he said, calm as ever. “But it is still a thing of death. An affront to divine order. It will fall like all the rest.”

  Marielle’s fingers curled tighter around her holy symbol. “It’s already broken all the rules,” she murmured. w

  “It can break as many rules as it likes,” Garrick said, not looking at her. “It will still end.”

  No one argued.

  The sign stood where it had been planted, its jagged letters gouged deep, its message less a challenge and more a suggestion in the same way an open grave is a suggestion.

  Talia drifted forward before anyone could stop her, the hum of her staff growing stronger, responding to something unseen. The glow at its tip pulsed a faint rhythm.

  “Talia,” Devon called, his voice tight with exasperation, “maybe don’t stand directly in front of the creepy death warning?”

  “Just looking,” she murmured. Her gaze flicked between the rough lettering and the darkness beyond the entrance. “It doesn’t feel like a threat. More like… a dare.”

  “A dare that could get you killed,” Markus said, but his usual bite wasn’t there. He was watching her carefully, fingers tapping against the edge of his shield.

  Raven muttered something under her breath, shifting slightly. Garrick exhaled sharply, irritation breaking through the smooth edges of his tone.

  “Mage, fall back,” he ordered. “This is what rogues are for. Let her do her job.”

  Talia hesitated. Before she could argue, Raven stepped forward with a dismissive wave of her hand.

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  “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m not detecting any traps. Magical or mechanical.”

  She moved fluidly, checking the edges of the threshold, eyes flicking between stone and shadow with practiced ease. “Nothing’s set. No runes, no pressure plates, no tripwires. Just a nice, welcoming entrance to a deeply cursed hole in the ground.”

  Garrick didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t stop her.

  Talia didn’t wait. She reached the threshold. The glow of her staff illuminated the uneven stone floor just inside. She took another step—

  And the ground was no longer there.

  Devon’s scream sliced through the air. “TALIA!”

  He was on his knees before anyone could stop him, one hand gripping the crumbling edge like he could anchor reality with his fingers. "Talia! Are you—are you alive?”

  A groan from below, pained but unmistakably hers. “I’m alive, Devon. Calm down.”

  The relief was instant, visible. Devon sagged, muttering something half-prayer, half-swearing under his breath.

  Markus was already stepping up beside him, yanking him back before he followed her down. His shield scraped against stone as he peered over the edge. “That wasn’t here last time.”

  “No,” Raven muttered, already circling the pit, knives flashing as she checked the edges. “And I didn’t miss it. If you’re about to say I missed it, you can—”

  “You missed it,” Devon snapped, rounding on her, face pale with anger and leftover panic. “You were supposed to check for traps. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Why didn’t your precious skills stop this?”

  “Because this—” she jabbed a finger toward the pit “—isn’t a trap, you sanctimonious little shit.”

  Markus frowned. “It’s a giant hole in the floor.”

  “Yeah, Markus, I can see that.” Raven crouched, running her fingers along the jagged edge. “No triggers. No residual magic I can sense, no mechanical parts. Nothing.” Her frown deepened as she touched the break itself. “It’s just… stone. But it’s weirdly thin right here. And this break…” she traced the edge, “it’s too clean. Too sharp for a natural collapse.”

  “Sharp?” Devon’s voice pitched higher than usual, disbelief threatening to tip into fury. “She fell through the floor because the rocks were sharp?”

  “No,” Raven snapped, standing up, looking frustrated. “It means it shouldn’t have broken like this naturally. It looked solid, but the integrity underneath… it was gone. Like something hollowed it out without leaving a trace.”

  Devon’s hands curled into fists. “So what, the lich is a bloody stonemason now?”

  “No,” Raven said. “Just smart. Smart enough to know we wouldn’t question a floor that looked right.”

  Markus exhaled sharply. “This isn’t what I expected.” His tone was quiet, grim. “This isn’t brute force. It’s not basic traps. This is deliberate.”

  “And it worked,” Marielle murmured. “Because we’re still treating this dungeon like it’s following the rules.”

  Her words sat heavy between them.

  Garrick didn’t hesitate. He drove a piton into the ground, hammering metal, into stone punctuating the silence. The rope uncoiled in his hands, looped, knotted, secured.

  “Can you stop wasting time and get me out of here already?” Talia’s voice rose from below, sharp with pain. “Shattered ankle, in case you forgot. And if I have to listen to you all argue about rocks much longer, I will start climbing myself.”

  Garrick commanded, tossed the rope into the pit. “Grab hold.”

  “Easier said than done.” Talia gripped her staff as she pushed up. She forced herself to move, despite the sharp pain that flared up her leg like fire.

  Then she froze.

  A sound.

  Faint at first. A wet, clicking noise, like claws against stone.

  Then a groan, deep and guttural, thick with something worse than pain.

  Then the stench hit. Thick. Vile. The air turned heavy, humid with decay. Like meat left to stew in stagnant water.

  Her pulse hammered against her ribs. Not just from the fall. Not just from the pain.

  The glow of her staff flickered against the uneven walls, casting jagged shadows. She tilted the light towards the noise and the glow caught something in the dark of the pit.

  Eyes.

  Dozens of them, low to the ground, unblinking, sickly yellow. Catching the light like shards of broken glass.

  Something shifted.

  Channelling more mana into her staff, the glow stretched further, peeling back the dark like a rotten curtain.

  Flesh. Or what was left of it. Stripped away in places, clinging too tightly in others. Jaws slack, twitching, teeth clicking together in a grotesque rhythm.

  The first one lurched forward.

  One milky eye swayed loose in its socket, barely held in place. The other glowed with the dull, unnatural light of undeath.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Eight total. Goblins. Zombies. Creeping forward, hunched and twisted, moving with the weight of death in their rotting limbs. Ruined claws scraped stone as their feet left trails of black ichor in their wake.

  Their eyes never left her.

  “Talia!” Devon called, voice thin with panic. “Grab the rope! We’re pulling you up!”

  She barely heard him.

  Her breath had gone shallow, muscles locked, heart hammering.

  The zombies shuffled closer.

  Their teeth chattered, their groans twisted into something that sounded almost like words.

  “Talia?” Markus again, voice tight. “What’s happening?”

  She opened her mouth, but no sound came.

  Then the first one lunged. It’s claws swiped through the air, missing her by inches, scraping the stone with a sound like knives on glass.

  She gasped, breath hitching into a cry, the terror clawing its way up her throat in a single, raw, instinctive scream.

  Above, Devon flinched. Markus’s grip on the rope locked tight. Garrick’s sword was half-drawn before he even finished barking the order:

  “Pull her up. Now.”

  The scream didn’t stop. It twisted through the pit, echoed in the tight walls.