Talia screamed.

  A long, tearing sound, raw enough to flay the silence apart.

  It went on, bouncing off the dungeon walls, distorting as it echoed back up. But even through the layers of repetition, there was no mistaking the kind of scream it was.

  Not fear. Not pain. The other kind. The kind that came when someone knew they were dying.

  Then it stopped.

  Not gradually. Not fading. Just gone.

  What came next was worse.

  Wet, organic. The kind of sound that didn’t belong outside a butcher’s shop.

  Snapping. Tearing. Something heavy moving through something softer. The staff's green glow still flickered from below, but it had no direction now, only jerking and twisting between the shadows as if held in a hand that no longer belonged to its body..

  Devon moved first.

  His hands hit the edge of the pit, gripping stone so hard his nails split, his breath ragged, frantic. “Talia! Talia, hold on! We’re coming! Just—just—hold on!”

  As if there was anything left to hold on to.

  Garrick didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Devon by the shoulder and yanked him back hard enough to make his boots scrape against the stone. “She’s gone.”

  Devon twisted against his grip, wild-eyed, like a dog about to bite the hand holding it down. “No! No, she’s not! She’s still—”

  “She’s dead,” Garrick said, flat. Neither emotion, nor hesitation in his stern voice. He might as well have been reciting the morning’s weather.

  Devon fought against him. Tried to wrench free, but Garrick held him fast. Unshakable. The man was iron in moments like this. Not cruel. Just steady. Just unmoved.

  “The Church will see her resurrected,” Garrick said, as if that solved anything.

  Devon froze.

  Something in him cracked. Like old, dried leather pulling apart at the seams. His breath came too fast. His hands curled into fists. His voice, when it finally came, was thin, stretched too tight.

  “Resurrected,” he repeated. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

  Marielle stepped forward, holy symbol catching the dim light, a priestess in all the ways that counted. “Devon, she will return. I swear it. But if we break here, she won’t have a party to come back to.”

  It was the only right thing to say. It still wasn’t enough.

  Devon’s chest heaved, all rage and grief stuffed into a body too small to hold it. He stared at Garrick, fists trembling, but whatever fight had been in him was breaking apart, scattering like dust in a high wind.

  Markus hadn’t moved.

  He stood apart from the group, shield braced against his leg, staring into the dark. Not looking for movement. Not hoping. Just…staring. His knuckles were white against his sword’s hilt, the creak of leather the only sign that he was still there, still listening.

  “Markus,” Garrick said, sharp. No space for lingering. “Form up. We’re moving.”

  Markus hesitated.

  Barely a breath. Just enough to flick his gaze toward Devon, then the pit. Then, finally, he nodded. Stiffly. Mechanically. And hefted his shield.

  That was the moment.

  The one where it stopped being about what they’d lost and started being about what was left.

  Garrick turned, his longsword catching a dull gleam in the torchlight. “We don’t have time to mourn her here.” A pause. Then, quieter, almost thoughtful, “The lich will pay for this.”

  It wasn’t a promise. It was a certainty.

  They followed him. Even Devon.

  Not because they wanted to. But because the alternative was standing there. Staring into the dark. Feeling the echoes of what had already happened.

  And none of them wanted that.

  The corridor narrowed as they moved, walls pressing in, the air thick with something unspoken, unseen. Markus took the lead, shield raised, Garrick just behind him.

  “I don’t like this,” Marielle murmured. Her holy symbol glowed faintly as they walked. “It feels…wrong. More than before.”

  “It’s a dungeon,” Raven muttered, low and tired. “It’s supposed to feel wrong.”

  She kept to the edges, movements quiet, watching the shadows. Her daggers were already in her hands. They hadn’t left them since the pit.

  Gray and his wolf moved in the middle, the beast’s sharp yellow eyes flicking between every movement. The wolf sniffed the air. Its ears twitched. Its body went still.

  Gray stopped.

  His grip on the wolf’s harness tightened.

  “Wait,” he said, voice barely above a breath. “Something’s—”

  One of the walls of the tunnel fell forward. It wasn’t a cave-in. It wasn’t an accident. Deliberate. In the same way the pit had been. Something had eaten the wall from the inside.

  A section of stone lurched outward, a deep, groaning crack splitting the silence a second before the entire mass toppled forward. Gray had just enough time to turn, eyes widening—then the weight of it slammed down.

  It buried him.

  His wolf barely had time to yelp before the rubble pinned it, limbs thrashing weakly against the weight. It snapped its jaws, more reflex than intent, but it was already stuck. Already done.

  Then the kobolds came. With precision. With intent.

  They weren’t beasts. They were a unit with instructions.

  Figures low to the ground, barely more than shifting shadows at the tunnel’s edges. Yellow eyes gleamed, crude weapons raised. Spears, jagged-edged blades, stone clubs. All held together with rawhide and bone.

  They moved like this was expected. Like they had done this before.

  Gray never had a chance.

  The first spear came down, piercing his side where he lay beneath shattered stone. The second followed, driving straight through, twisting.

  A single sharp exhale. Gray never drew a second breath.

  Blood seeped into the dirt, dark and final.

  His wolf snarled weakly, trying to drag itself forward. The nearest kobold drove its dagger through the base of its skull.

  And just like that, they were gone.

  Markus barely had time to react before the first kobold lunged for his throat. His shield came up instinctively, catching the creature mid-air and slamming it down with a sharp crack.

  His sword was moving before it hit the ground.

  The second one died fast.

  But there were more.

  They slipped through the dust, darting in and out, avoiding the heavy swings of steel like they knew exactly how far to keep their distance. They weren’t attacking in desperation. They were taking control.

  Marielle moved toward the rubble—toward where Gray had been—but the kobolds were faster.

  A spear aimed for her ribs.

  Raven was there first. Her dagger buried deep in the kobold’s throat, twisting before she yanked it free. It crumpled, a gurgling snarl escaping its lips before it stopped moving.

  Another kobold lunged for Devon. He wasn’t ready.

  Its dagger was inches from his ribs when Garrick’s sword came down. Hard.

  The creature split open from shoulder to hip, folding apart like a butchered animal.

  The kobolds didn’t die to the last. They never planned to. The rest were already moving.

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  They slipped away, their small, wiry bodies disappearing into the dark like breath into winter air, peeling off into a side corridor before any of the adventurers could stop them. No war cries, no final, desperate lunge—just silence and absence where a battle had been only heartbeats before.

  Markus didn’t lower his sword. His shield remained raised, the sting of the spear wound in his side pulsing like a second heartbeat, but his eyes weren’t on the corridor they had vanished into. His eyes were on Gray.

  Marielle was already moving.

  She hit the ground hard, barely feeling the jolt in her knees as she pressed her hand to Gray’s chest.

  Still warm.

  Her breath hitched. A useless, stupid thing. Like warmth meant anything. Like warmth meant hope.

  Her hands were already moving before she knew what she was doing.

  Still warm.

  Marielle pressed her palm to Gray’s chest, her breath coming too fast, her other hand wrapped so tightly around her holy symbol that the metal bit deep into her skin. She barely felt it.

  Restore. Renew. The words came easily, their rhythm beaten into her bones since childhood, the light rising on instinct, familiar as breath. Warmth. Life. Gods, please.

  The glow flared.

  Then—nothing.

  Her stomach twisted. No. She pressed harder, whispered another prayer. Poured more into it.

  The glow flickered. White. Bright.

  Then died. Snuffed out like a candle in the wind.

  Again. She had to try again.

  She yanked at the magic—harder, deeper. The kind that scraped at the edges, that left you weak and aching and afraid. She forced it forward, hands burning as the light flashed—blinding, searing—

  Then collapsed.

  It sank into him like water into dry earth, swallowed whole, vanishing into the void where his soul had already gone.

  Her throat locked.

  No.

  Her hands shook. Her chest ached with the weight of it, with the thing she didn’t want to say.

  The sob forced its way through anyway.

  “He’s gone.”

  Devon shoved past Markus, nearly tripping over Gray’s body.

  “What do you mean, he’s gone?” His voice shook, wild with disbelief, with refusal. His hands clenched at nothing, at air, at the impossibility of it.

  “You’re a priestess!” The words were more accusation than plea. “You’re supposed to—”

  “Enough!”

  Garrick’s voice cut through them all, sharp and unyielding, a blade in the gut of the moment.

  He strode forward, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Deliberate. Unhurried. Like a tide swallowing the shore.

  He didn’t even look at Gray’s body.

  Didn’t need to.

  “He’s dead,” Garrick said. Flat. Final. “There’s nothing more to be done.”

  Devon turned on him, his face twisting with fury, grief, something that had nowhere to go but out.

  “You don’t get to decide that! We can’t just leave him—”

  “We can, and we will.”

  Garrick’s gaze didn’t waver. He wasn’t speaking to Devon.

  He was speaking to all of them.

  “The hunter is beyond saving, and lingering here will only add more bodies to the pile.”

  “That’s it?” Devon’s voice cracked. “You’re just going to walk away? Leave him here like he’s nothing?”

  “Yes,” Garrick replied. No hesitation. No apology. “Because he is nothing now. His soul has returned to the Flame, and his body is an empty shell. The Church will decide whether he is worthy of resurrection. Until then, we move forward.”

  Devon’s fists clenched. His shoulders shook, every breath coming too fast, too hard. He took a step forward—not thinking, just moving—

  Markus grabbed his arm.

  Firm. Not hard. Not unkind.

  “Devon,” Markus said, voice steady, voice grounding. “He’s right.”

  Devon’s head snapped toward him, disbelieving. Betrayed. “You can’t possibly—”

  “Gray wouldn’t want us to die here with him,” Markus interrupted. His tone was calm, but heavy. The weight of it settled.

  For a moment, Devon looked at him like he might argue.

  Like he might swing.

  But then the fight drained out of him, as fast as it had flared. His anger fractured into something smaller, something brittle. He turned back to Gray—to what was left of Gray—then to Marielle, who sat trembling and silent, her head bowed over the wolf’s body.

  Slowly, Devon stepped back.

  His shoulders slumped.

  “This is wrong,” he muttered.

  Markus exhaled. A slow, worn-out breath.

  “Maybe,” he said quietly. His gaze flicked toward the empty corridor ahead.

  “But it’s what we’ve got.”

  Garrick drew his sword in a single, fluid motion, and fire erupted along the steel. It roared to life in an instant, a golden blaze licking up the length of the blade, its heat pushing back the damp chill of the dungeon. Shadows snapped against the blood-streaked walls, twisting, clawing, caught between light and dark.

  He raised the sword high, his expression carved from something harder than stone. Something that didn’t break.

  “You will follow me,” he said, his voice steady, cold. Not an offer. A command. “Or you will stay here and die.”

  The fire caught in his eyes, turning them into something unreadable. Something consuming.

  “This lich is an affront to the divine order,” he continued, as if the words were a prayer carved into his bones. “And I will see it destroyed.”

  Then he turned and strode forward, not waiting for an answer.

  For a moment, no one moved.

  The silence left in his wake was a heavy, aching thing.

  Marielle still knelt beside Gray’s body, her trembling hands clutching her holy symbol like a lifeline that had already snapped. Devon stared at the ground, jaw locked, eyes hollow, his grip on his abandoned logbook forgotten. Markus adjusted the strap of his shield, his face unreadable.

  It was Raven who broke the stillness. She sheathed her daggers with a quiet, resigned sigh.

  “Well,” she murmured, tone flat, “I suppose dying in here beats starving in a tavern.”

  She followed Garrick.

  Markus fell in behind her, his shield raised, his sword steady in his grip. Devon hesitated, his gaze lingering on Gray’s body. On the blood-matted fur of the wolf, on the pile of crushed stone that had buried them both. Finally he muttered a curse and moved to join the others.

  Marielle was the last to rise. Her hands shook as she whispered a final prayer. Her voice cracked on the last word.

  The corridor swallowed them whole as they moved on.

  The heat from Garrick’s sword did little to chase away the darkness and cold. The fire burned high, its flickering glow throwing jagged shadows against the tunnel walls, but the light felt too thin. Too small.

  They walked in it anyway.

  The scrape of boots against stone. The soft jingle of chainmail shifting. The measured, tense breaths of people who knew they were not alone down here.

  No one spoke. Words felt dangerous. Like they might break whatever thin barrier was holding back the fear.

  Marielle’s fingers hovered near her holy symbol, lips moving in silent, fragmented prayers. The faint glow of Garrick’s flaming sword painted her face in shifting gold and black, her eyes dark hollows, flickering with every flame’s movement.

  Devon walked beside her, his logbook abandoned for now, his hand wrapped tight around the hilt of his shortsword. White-knuckled. He wasn’t built for this. Not the fighting. Not the dying. But here he was. Shoulders hunched, braced for the next blow.

  Markus led them, shield raised, his sword gleaming faintly in the flickering light. His usual calm was intact, but stretched thinner now. Taut. Frayed at the edges. He was listening too hard, watching too much, expecting something he wasn’t saying aloud.

  Raven walked beside him, her steps soundless but not careless. Her daggers glinted in her hands, ready, restless. The usual sharpness in her eyes had dulled into something colder. Calculating. Like she was already tallying their odds. Like she didn’t like the numbers.

  And then there was Garrick.

  He moved with the inevitability of a storm. A tide that didn’t stop. A force bound to its course, unwilling to bend. Unwilling to break.

  The fire on his sword still burned high, but he didn’t need it to see.

  “Don’t slow down,” Garrick said, his voice cutting through the silence without hesitation.

  Raven’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Close to what?” she muttered. “The next trap? Or the next funeral?”

  “Close to ending this.”

  He didn’t look back. His tone didn’t invite argument.

  Raven’s gaze flicked to Markus. He gave no indication he’d heard. His focus was ahead, his shield just slightly higher than before. Whatever he thought of Garrick’s certainty, he wasn’t voicing it.

  Devon broke the silence instead.

  “We shouldn’t have left them behind,” he muttered, eyes on the ground. “Gray… Talia… we—”

  “We didn’t leave them.” Garrick didn’t hesitate. His voice was steady and sharp, cutting through Devon’s doubt before it could grow roots. “They are martyrs now. The Flame will honor them.”

  Devon stopped walking.

  His head lifted, his eyes burning with something not yet anger, not yet grief, but the raw place between.

  “Martyrs?” His voice wavered. “That’s what they are now?”

  Beside him, Marielle flinched at the word. Martyrs.

  She said nothing, but her hands tightened on her symbol until her knuckles paled. Her lips moved faster now, the words of her prayer spilling out in a quiet, trembling rhythm.

  “They died in the service of a righteous cause,” Garrick said, tone firm, final. “They returned to the Flame.”

  No one answered him.

  They rounded the final corner—

  And stopped.

  The corridor ended. Where the entrance had been, there was only stone. Smooth. Unbroken. As if the opening had never existed. No rubble, no seams, no sign that anything had changed at all—just an unyielding wall of solid rock where the dungeon had simply decided there should be one.

  Markus was the first to move. He pressed a hand against the stone. Solid. Not an illusion. His brow furrowed. “This wasn’t here before.”

  “No shit.” Raven was busy running her hands along the wall, searching for hidden mechanisms.

  Devon took a step back, blinking hard, like he could force the sight in front of him to make sense. “But… it was right here. We saw it. We—You’re telling me it built a wall while we were gone?”

  Markus didn’t react to that. He was already thinking ahead, already shifting. “Devon,” he said, steady, sharp. “Can you bring it down? I know your magic is slow, but you’re the only offensive caster we have left.”

  Devon hesitated, his fingers twitching toward the pouch at his belt. “I—I think so. I have a spell that should—”

  “No.” Markus cut him off with a raised hand. “Not yet.” His eyes stayed on the stone, watching it like it might shift again the second they looked away. “If this lich is playing games, then every move it makes is bait. We don’t break this wall until we’re ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Raven’s voice was flat. “Another wall? A bigger one?”

  Markus’s gaze flicked to her, unreadable. “Anything.”

  No one liked that answer, but no one argued.

  Without waiting for a response, he turned to Marielle. “Start protection spells.” It wasn’t a question. “We don’t know what’s on the other side, and I don’t want to find out unprepared.”

  Marielle’s fingers trembled as she reached for her holy symbol, the silver warm against her palm. “I—I can try.”

  “You can,” Markus said, quieter now. Almost gentle. “Just focus.”

  She nodded, swallowing hard as she lifted the symbol, her voice barely a whisper at first. The glow of divinity flickered against the stone, hesitant, as if the dungeon itself might smother it before it could take hold.

  Then the wall moved.

  A sound rumbled from behind it. Not the grinding shift of stone, but something deeper, something alive. It started low, a guttural tremor that vibrated up through their boots, setting teeth on edge.

  Then it grew.

  The air thickened. The vibration deepened into a roar—not a sound, not really, but a force that tore through the stillness and filled every breath with the promise of something coming.

  Marielle’s voice faltered. The glow in her hands flickered.

  The wall trembled violently.

  And then it exploded.