Stone took the sound of their footfalls and made it small. The first ten paces were honest, just as Lirian had said. After that, the echo sat strange, as if the cave liked to answer with a breath of its own before it agreed to carry a voice.

"First turn," Lirian murmured back.

"Light for the humans," Stronric said, low.

Dane thumbed a copper-capped reed from his kit. Serene fed the linen wick a kiss of the pale fat and coaxed a steady flame. Dane set down his shield and drew a thin piece of metal from his backpack. Pressing down on the metal sconce it settled onto the top quarter of his shield. Setting his makeshift torch into the holder Dane set off. Kara took one and kept it low. Giles took another with a face set to prove something, though what that was, Stronric could not say. The light pushed the dark back a measured distance. It did not make promises it could not keep.

Bauru's whisper carried from ahead. "Floor holds. Mind yer step at the seam, right side."

Lirian brushed the reed tip across it and set a little twist of grass so even a man with tired eyes would not miss. The air was cooler here, with a slow tide that moved in and out, drawing the smell of old water and iron across their tongues.

They rounded the bend, and the cave told a louder truth. The first bodies lay arranged by someone who knew why a man clears a lane. Gnolls, three of them, set along the wall not for respect but to keep boots from slipping. One wore a half helm cut in a straight plane as if a slice of day had passed through and taken the steel without caring what it was. A spear was split along its length, yet there were no splinters or jagged breaks, only a precise, clean cut made by a sharp weapon. The cut remembered a blade that did not chatter.

"Carcharodon," Bauru breathed. "Aye."

They walked past signs of work, not rage. A shield split clean, a belt hung from a peg, stainless where a hand had grabbed for it, dark where sweat had lived. Fetishes had been removed from the center line and kicked to the edges, gut and twine severed in a single cut so no man would drag a curse's wet across his boot. There were no trophies. No pile to tell a story about the killer. Only order, arrival and departure.

The passage pitched down a hand's width and broadened into a gallery where a shelf of dripstone had broken long ago and left the floor in quiet steps. Here the mounds of bodies began to pile up. Gnolls curled like dogs that had chosen a bad place to sleep, then more piled above them where they had fallen in panic, then a few men-like things in cheap mail who had learned late that they were standing in front of a door disguised as a blade.

Serene slowed. "There are souls here," she said, quiet as a prayer. "Loose ones. They do not know where to stand."

"Keep them out o' yer pockets," Bauru said. "This cave make the yer mind wander."

Stronric let his eyes read the lanes. The cuts all agreed. One man had done most of it, or one blade that knew the hand that used it. The deeper they went the cleaner the work became, as if the first bite had torn away the doubt and the next found its purpose.

The torches showed a stain on the right wall where something heavy had kissed it fast and slid a finger's length. A greatsword's point, turned and lifted. Bauru touched the smear with two fingers and sniffed. "Fresh enough," he said. "He went through here no more than a few hours ago."

The gallery narrowed to a throat that let only two pass abreast. The air changed. The hair rose along Stronric's forearms under the tunic sleeves. The rabbit at Rugiel's heel pressed close to her greaves and its nose worked the air without sound. The Mountain Canary flattened her feathers and went low, steps measured, head down like a falcon that had decided a sky was too small.

"Something is ahead," Lirian said, voice steady but not indifferent. They emerged into a chamber that had grown into the stone rather than had been carved from it. Roots fused with limestone in slow swirls that looked like meat learning to be rock and not liking the lesson. A column rose from floor to ceiling, not quite straight and veined with a dull red that moved like breath form a cool evening lifting in rhythm of life. Shapes pushed outward along its flanks and withdrew, as if memory lived there and wanted to test its own edges.

A faint script arranged itself at the edge of Stronric's sight. It did not sing. It stood where it belonged.

Optional Quest unlocked: Crystal Hunter

The corrupted soul crystals are the heart of the invasion portal's strength. These twisted anchors pulse with malevolent power, binding the portal's chaos to this realm and steadying the rift that feeds the gnolls. Each crystal keeps the wound open.

Objective: Locate and neutralize three corrupted soul crystals anchoring the portal.

Progress: 1 of 3 located.

Reward: To be determined after completing main quest.

The script closed like a ledger.

"That is one of them," Stronric said. "A link. If we pull these apart, the gnolls lose their leash."

"Anchor," Rugiel answered, eyes narrowing. "It is keeping and it has teeth."

Near the base of the column, a husk lay partly swallowed by a wet cocoon that had hardened to a skin. Gnoll, or what had been gnoll. The head was wrong, jaw open too wide, teeth grown glassy and long. Thin cords ran from its ribs into the fleshy stone. The cords pulsed with a slow rhythm that did not match the room. The thing jerked once, then stilled. Its empty eyes rolled toward them without moving in the skull.

Serene lifted her staff, voice even. "I trained in the charity ward of the capital's cathedral, back when my house still had a name worth ink. We pulled three souls off a grief anchor near as foul as this. Same hum. Same dull red in the rock. It moves in through the eyes. If you watch it, it fattens on what you long for and writes it on the wall." She kept her gaze on the floor. "Do not look long. It feeds on attention. It will show you what you ache for."

Kara did not look at the husk at all. She studied the edges of the space where shadow pooled deepest. Lirian went to one knee and traced a seam in the floor with his knife tip. "Thin here," he said. "But not a trap door. Something like a vein."

"Hold," Stronric said, because the chamber had shifted without moving. The rock to their left wore a stain that read like daylight on a table. A woman's laughter reached them, softened by distance, then a child's voice cutting across it with the certainty only a child can afford. The stain became a scene. A small court under a summer sky. A woman with hair the color of straw, pulled back with a simple ribbon. A boy with a wooden sword and a grin too wide for his face. They ran across the stone and left no footprints.

"Do not look," Rugiel said to Giles without turning her head.

He was already staring. His mouth opened a finger's width. "Mother," he said, almost not speaking at all.

Kara stepped in front of him so her shoulder blocked his view. "Breathe," she said, and set his hand against the boss of her dagger's hilt. "Count the edges."

The scene thinned and moved as if it did not care that it had been denied. It found a new target. A knight in blue and white, his cloak in a line the wind loved, swung a long blade in a yard edged with flags. The woman laughed again, and the boy crowed his victory. The man sheared a post in half for the boy to see, then bent and kissed the woman as if that had been the work he meant to finish all along.

"Armand," Rugiel said, and this time her voice shook. "Oh, Armand."

He stood three paces from the anchor. He had come in hot and alone and had cut the room to a shape that pleased his blade. Then the anchor had offered him a door back to a house that no longer existed, and he had stepped through without moving. His sword hung at his side, the point resting in a crack that had swallowed the weight like a scabbard. His face was turned toward the scene with the woman and the boy. His eyes were open and kind, but he was not there.

Stronric lifted his hand to stop Rugiel without looking at her. "Let me," he said, quietly.

The husk flexed. The cords ran harder. The air rippled and three new figures stood between Stronric and Armand. All wore colors that had once meant something to someone. Their faces were wrong. Their mouths moved and the words they spoke did not belong to any tongue. Each held a weapon that glowed faint at the edges where the light did not want to stay. They did not breathe. They did not smell like men.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Lost," Serene said, and her staff's ferrule thudded once on the stone. "Held by the anchor. Pressed into a shape it can use."

Bauru's lip curled. "This room's a liar," he said. "We cut the lie with force if we can."

"Hold lines," Stronric said. "No rushes. Lirian, find a way to cut those cords without waking the roof and the floor. Serene, keep them from our eyes. Kara, if Giles starts to fall in, bruise him. He will forgive you later or he will not, and I do not care which. Dane, near the corner guard ready. Rugiel, with me."

The three figures came forward with the same step. They did not test. They did not feint. They reached, as if they expected the men before them to be eager to be held. Dane met the first with a short shove of his shield. The creature's eager reach turned to a stumble cutting the second oncomers angle off. Stronric stepped forward moving towards the third soul pulling his axe up and letting it fall from a short draw. The blade bit without joy and the figure split like wet cloth. Light bled away from the severing cut and ran along the floor toward the cords. Serene swept her staff across the path. The light struck the wood and faltered. She set the butt of her staff keeping in the path and the glow guttered out like a poor candle.

"Good," Stronric said. "Do it again."

The other two came on. Dane punished the first with a low hook of the shield rim and a short chop that would have broken a living man's collar and found no bone here to stop it. Rugiel's hammer met the second with a clean upward stroke that lifted it off its feet and drove it into the wall. The wall did not care. The figure went limp and then tried to find a shape again. Serene touched it with her staff and the false light unraveled.

Serene kept her gaze low. "Count them. There should be seven veins. The thin outer ones feed the visions. The heavier pair braid back into the pillar. The lowest line is the ground. In the cathedral ward the Templars handled the severing while we kept hearts beating. I only saw the order once." She drew a slow breath. "If you cut the center first, it floods the room. Do not touch the bright throat until last. Start by starving it. Outside first. Then the paired feeders together. Ground line last. That is as far as I know. I was an apprentice, not a Templar."

Lirian slid to a knee. "Show me what you mean."

"Look for the shimmer that keeps trying to meet your eye," Serene said. "That is an outside feeder. Its twin will answer on the other flank. The braid will hum under your palm if you lay it flat. The ground line sits lowest and tugs steady, like tide."

Lirian tested with the knife's flat, then with his fingers. "I have the outside on the left," he said. He touched another with the reed. "And its twin on the right. The braid's here, thick as a thumb. The low tug is… there."

"Good," Serene said. "Leave the braid and the throat until the end. If my memory is wrong, it will bite."

"Aye," Stronric said. "We can take a bite. We cannot take a flood."

Lirian marked the sequence with the reed point, quick and neat. "Outer left first. Then both feeders together. Ground last. I will set your hand."

Serene added, calm but firm, "When the feeders go, it will thrash for eyes. Do not look. If it spits heat, step your weight back and keep your cuts short."

"On her count," Stronric said.

Lirian placed Stronric's off hand over the first vein and nodded once. Serene watched the pulse and spoke like a bell. "Now."

They cut. The anchor shuddered without sound and the visions flared, hungry and bright.

"Feeders," Serene said. "Together."

Lirian set both lines under Stronric's edge. Stronric took them in one breath. The room's false men stuttered and lost their feet. Serene shifted her staff to bar the trickle of light trying to run back to the pillar.

"Ground," she said. "Last."

"Now," Stronric answered.

They severed the low line. The scenes tore like wet cloth. The cords slackened and Serene exhaled. "That is as far as I was ever taught. The throat and the braid are for a purifier. If we must, we try severing the braid before the throat. If we are wrong, it will hurt."

Armand's breath hitched. His eyes moved. He blinked as if he had never learned how and was trying it now to be polite. His hand climbed to the flat of his greatsword. His fingers knew the steel and took it like a friend. He did not lift the blade. He looked at Rugiel and knew her.

"Rugiel," Armand said, very softly as if saying the name aloud hurt his mouth.

Rugiel did not rush him. "Aye," she said. "We are here."

His brow knit. "Where are they," he asked, voice thin and raw. "My wife and my boy. Tell me where they have gone."

Rugiel's answer was steady. "I do not know, Armand, but you must listen to me."

The column answered first. A dull red beat rolled out of the stone and struck the floor hard enough to be felt in the teeth. Light like watered blood ran along a vein at their boots. It pooled at Armand's feet and climbed his greaves, before slipping under the leather at his wrist. His jaw locked. His eyes slid past Rugiel to a place that was not the cave.

He screamed. "Ada. Mon fils. Where are you?" … "Who took zem? Which of you 'as zem? I will cut ze trut' out of ze lot of you.

Giles lurched forward a step, face white. "Sir Armand," he said, barely more than a breath. Kara caught his wrist and set it hard against her dagger's boss. "Breathe," she told him. "Count the edges."

Bauru's voice flattened. "Carcharodon."

They had not all heard the stories Carcharodon. And none of them had seen it. Not Rugiel, who had walked close with him and shared counsel by low fires. Not Stronric, who had learned to respect the old blade in small, honest ways or when Armand set Dane's grip without pride, taking a spoiled baron's heir and making him stand square anyway, eating last and laughing lightly when men needed it. But some of them had heard the tales of Armand the Carcharodon. The tales had called him the great white when rage took him. Endlessly pursuing blood and violence until nothing was left alive around. Dane took a step back from the legend. The tales didn't feel smaller when a friend's eyes go that far away.

Stronric felt a heavy beat behind his ribs, the kind that says a man has more to lose than he will admit. He set it down and picked up the work.

The anchor liked what it had found. New light swam along the floor with purpose. The husk's jaw opened in a grin that had never been a smile on a living face. Shapes began to push up from the stone as if grief had decided it needed hands.

"Boss," Bauru said, not loud. "Right enough."

"Lines," Stronric said, and his axe took the angle it would hold. "Hold the man if he falls. Do not harm him unless he makes ye."

Stronric stepped into Armand's path and set his feet to a workman's square. He did not want to hurt the man who had guarded Giles when no one else could stand him, who had held a lane for them more than once without speakin' of it after. He did not intend to let a dead gnoll's spite write any names on stone.

Rugiel's breath caught, first time she had ever seen the rage and not only its echo in a tale. She did not step back. "Armand," she said, calm and low. "Stay."

Bauru's jaw set. "If he comes, I can hobble him."

"No," Stronric said. "He is mine. Ye take the boss. I will keep Armand busy."

Dane rolled his shoulder, set his shield, and found the square he would not give. Serene moved to his pocket and grounded her staff. Lirian shifted his knife to his left and marked the next seam with the reed. Kara kept Giles from the scenes and from his own ruin. The Mountain Canary lowered her head until the slate beak pointed at the husk.

The vein pulsed again. Armand's blade rose another finger's width, not by choice. The room smiled with a gnoll's spite.

"Hold lines," Stronric said. "If he breaks through, ye do not cut him. I will keep him standin' until that stone lets go."

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