The cave air was suffocatingly heavy, as though the chamber itself had soaked up every ounce of moisture and hope. The crackling fire at their feet cast a trembling orange glow, fighting back pockets of shadow that hungrily licked the walls—but it could not banish the chill that gripped each of them at their core.
Raine leaned against the slick stone, each breath a reminder of the dagger-sharp ache in his chest. The forging of the Starflame Blade had hollowed him out; Thalia's secret healing had mended his body, but woven him into a deeper mystery, its threads tighter and darker than before.
Across the fire, Karrion scrubbed at the runes engraved on his battle-axe head. The steel flashed cold light, but his eyes repeatedly flicked toward Thalia. Beneath that hooded cloak she was an enigma, and every shiver of her breath spoke of pain she would not share.
Thalia drew her cloak closer, melting back into the enveloping shadows. She sat with her eyes closed, but Raine sensed her muscles twitching, as if she were battling unseen flames coiling around her spirit.
"This blasted place," Karrion rasped at last, his booming voice muffled by the damp air, "I swear even breathing in this muck makes my lungs turn to rot."
No one answered him. A stone-deep silence rolled in, heavy as a tomb lid.
Then—drip… drip…—a faint patter echoed from the tunnel's mouth, soft at first, like waterlanding on distant leaves. Within moments, it grew insistent—plip, plop, plip-plop—as if countless droplets raced through an invisible spout.
Raine and Karrion both froze. Thalia sprang upright, her gaze slicing through the gloom. "Something's wrong," she whispered, voice brittle with foreboding.
A distant rumble answered her, like muted thunder far overhead. Then, with a sudden rush, the pattering turned into a furious torrent:
"SHHHHHH—that's not rain!" Karrion bellowed, scrambling to his feet. A noxious, acidic stench surged in behind the downpour. "It's corrosive rain!"
The drumming of black droplets against rock sizzled like molten metal, fumes curling upward in whorls of white smoke. Within seconds, the acid was eating into the stone, spitting out pits and shallow holes. Karrion raised his gauntleted arms and slashed arcane runes into the rock face. Faint amber sigils flickered at his palms, but their glow blinked and died beneath the relentless onslaught.
"It won't hold!" he cursed, sweat stinging his eyes. "We'll be buried alive—let's move!"
Raine and Thalia fell in beside him and fled into the heart of the cave. Outside, the forest had become a writhing nightmare: trees drooping under the acid's burn, bark dissolving in hissing sheets, tendrils of corrosive steam rising in the gloom. Visibility vanished in a shroud of black rain and fetid vapor.
"Where to?" Raine rasped, muscles screaming.
Thalia scanned the smeared wall. "Down," she snapped, then pointed as the ground beneath their feet collapsed in a slick plunge. Raine slipped, sprawling into a mire of acidic sludge. He sputtered, choking as the burn slicked his clothes.
Karrion caught him by the forearm, hauling him free with dwarfish grunts. "You alive in there?"
Raine coughed once, twice, then nodded. He wiped acid and mud from his face to reveal a yawning pit in the earth—wet, black, and lined with crumbling stone steps leading into a deeper, unseen realm.
"A secret entrance," he panted.
Thalia knelt by the opening and brushed away vine and mud. "An archive—or a library—sunken ages ago," she murmured. "Look at those vaultlike shelves… you can still make out the carved ribs of stone."
Karrion grunted your assent and employed heavy boulders and vines to seal the gaping mouth above them. "At least this keeps out the acid," he observed, voice grim.
Raine struck a small blaze with residual star-forged magic, illuminating their descent. Every step down the mossy stairs sent ripples through ankle-deep water tinged with mud and decay. The walls closed in on them as they entered a huge, ruined hall flooded to its mid-columns.
Half-submerged shelves lined the water's edge, scattered with soggy scroll cases and corroded metal cylinders. Faded mosaics and weathered bas-reliefs hinting at constellations and star-spirits clung to the walls above the waterline.
Karrion knelt and pried one corroded cylinder from the muck. He wiped away crusted grime to reveal a small latch, then cracked it open. Inside lay a narrow, metal‐laminated scroll—its surface protected by a waxen seal that had preserved the brittle glyphs beneath.
He gently unfurled it, the soft creak echoing eerily. "By the anvils… it's in Dwarven runes interwoven with... star-glyphs?" he marveled. His ruddy face paled as he scanned the etchings. "This is… a record of the first spread of the Shadowblight."
Raine and Thalia pressed close, peering at the scrolling diagrams: symbol-laden text describing how the corruption first seeped from the earth, how ancients of mixed lineage—dwarves and star-kin—joined forces to resist it.
Karrion's finger traced a densely packed illustration of a sword inscribed with runic channels. "They speak of a blade born of star-blood… forged in a 'Leyforge' powered by the earth's primal fire," he read, voice trembling. He glanced at Raine's Starflame Blade. "It's the prototype for our own Starflame!"
Raine's heart thundered in his ears. "Then the Leyforge must still exist… somewhere below us."
Before they could speak further, a soft scraping echoed from the flooded stacks behind them—cold, deliberate. Murky shapes slid beneath the water's surface, sending ripples across the reflected vault.
"Not alone down here," Karrion warned, hefting his axe.
Thalia drew a slender blade of darkness around her. "Stay back," she hissed, stepping between the water and Raine.
From the gloom's heart, a pair of dim, phosphorescent eyes flickered. The acid rain had driven some of the forest's lesser mutants into this tomb. Their fishlike silhouettes slithered through the murk, drawn by the flicker of their torches and the scent of ancient ink.
Raine gripped his Starflame Blade, star-etched lines pulsing dimly in sympathy with the archive's lingering magic. Above them, water dripped from broken ceiling fissures, each drop echoing like a tolling bell.
In that grim, half-sunken hall, amid the crumbling chronicle of ages past, they braced themselves. Corruption's first lines were drawn here, but so too were the seeds of resistance. Now, armed with that knowledge, they had to face whatever dark watcher stirred in the black water—and perhaps, uncover the Leyforge that might turn the tide of their war.
Outside, the black rain continued its relentless assault, but inside this drowned sanctuary, the survivors prepared to leap into history's depths—and risk everything to save a world slipping ever further into shadow.