The Mountain Descent, Day Unknown
Darkness.
It was not the kind of dark born from the absence of light — but the sort that lived and breathed, pressing against skin and bone like a second, unseen world. Rei landed first, shoulder striking stone, his teeth clacking as air fled his lungs. He rolled, barely avoiding a jagged ridge of rock that jutted from the ruin floor like a broken tooth.
The silence wasn't empty.It whispered.
A groan followed — Kaia's, sharp and low. She dropped beside him, landing with practiced grace, though the clatter of her gauntlets echoed far too loud in the void around them. For a long moment, neither moved.
Then Rei rose, slow and tense, eyes scanning. Dust swirled in the faint glow of his mark, casting shadows across the jagged chamber. Their fall had ended in what might've once been a temple, or a hall — but whatever it was, time and tremor had swallowed its shape. The stone was cracked, layered with age and soot. Strange runes veined the walls and floor, dimly glowing with the color of deep ice. They pulsed — faintly. Like breath.
Kaia knelt, fingers splayed across the cold floor. "Do you feel that?"
Rei nodded. "Alive."
"No. Not alive." She glanced toward a far arch half-buried in rubble. "Wounded."
They were beneath Thornevale's northern ridges now, deeper than the roots of the Frostfang trees — at the foot of Druvadir's southern mountains. The last ruin they had entered — a collapsed shrine of bark and bone — had led them into a chasm unmarked by map or memory. What lay below was not merely forgotten.
It had been buried.
They moved in silence, picking their way through the jagged ruin. Rei's breath grew labored. Kaia's skin gleamed with frost-sweat. Their stomachs clawed inward, pangs growing sharper with every step. No light. No food. Just stone, broken relics, and hunger. His Void mark pulsed with tension — a warning beneath the ribs, not a gift.
The walls were carved in relief — not by hands, but by pressure and claw. Runes in broken spirals whispered dead names. A brazier lay overturned, blackened with age. A skeleton, twisted and small, lay near the far alcove, its bones brittle as ash.
"I don't like this," Kaia muttered, her voice ragged.
"Which part?" Rei's voice cracked from dryness.
"The part where something used to live here, or something lives in here"
They passed through a cracked archway, descending into a sloped corridor. Pillars rose along the sides like broken fangs, each carved with warriors in stone — or what remained of them. The faces had been worn smooth, scratched out, as though memory itself had been scraped clean. One still held a blade, its edge sunk deep into the wall behind it. Kaia paused.
"Dwarven?"
Rei shook his head. "It wants to be."
Above the next stairwell, a sigil burned faintly on the arch. Rei reached out, brushing fingers across the dust-worn lines.
𐌺𐌇𐌀𐌋 𐌃𐌖𐍂𐌖𐌌
Khal Durûm
The Hollowed Halls
The name came unbidden. Spoken in a tongue Rei should not have known.
Kaia's voice was low. "You read it."
"I didn't. It read me."
They moved deeper.Their steps echoed louder now, as if the stone beneath them had grown thinner — or perhaps the thing sleeping below had begun to listen. The silence became pressure, and the pressure became weight. At times they thought they heard sounds beyond the stone — the clink of metal, a breath not their own, a slow, dragging step.
But when they turned, nothing.
Twice, Rei stumbled. Once he nearly fell into a narrow trench carved through the floor, like a vein split open. Frost clung to the edges, though no wind blew. His fingers brushed the edge — and recoiled. It burned cold, and not with ice.
The mark beneath his ribs throbbed.Not in power.In fear.
"Kaia—" he began.
"I feel it too." Her voice was tight. "There's something under this place."
A distant laugh echoed — high, warped. Then silence returned like a slammed door.
They passed into a chamber wider than any before. The ceiling arched high, lost in shadow. Here the walls bore fresher wounds — gouges, cracks. A fight had happened here. The floor was littered with shattered stone, weapons of rusted steel and splintered hafts. An altar lay broken, overturned as if by something large and furious.
Rei's breath misted. Not from cold — from something else.
Kaia turned slowly, blade half-drawn. "We're not alone."
A hum answered. Low and metallic.Then — steps.
Heavy. Unhurried.
From the far tunnel, where the light failed entirely, came a shape.
Not monstrous.
A man.
Tall — no, squat and broad, but heavy in presence. A torch flared suddenly in his hand, the fire sputtering as if unwilling to burn too bright in this place.
The figure stopped just at the edge of the light.
Massive shoulders. A broad silhouette stamped against the stone. A pickaxe — or maybe a great axe — slung across his back like a badge, not a burden. His beard caught the firelight, braided thick with rings of silver, streaked like soot and snow. He looked more like a walking forge than a man, framed in crackling orange torchlight.
Neither Rei nor Kaia moved — not out of fear, but surprise.
Then came a sound.
A hearty chuckle, rolling through the silence like a welcome storm.
"Hah! What do we have here? Strays?" The voice was deep, warm, and loud — the kind that filled halls without asking permission. "Did the soils above spit you out, or are you just mad enough to crawl into a place that even the worms won't touch?"
He stepped into view, torchlight dancing off the metal rings in his beard.
"I'll give you this — you don't look like ghosts. Not yet, anyway."
His eyes gleamed bright blue, full of mischief and steel. A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.
"Well then! You gonna speak, or just stand there gaping like skyfolk who've never seen a proper tunnel?"
The fire cracked. The mountain hummed.
And the dark, for a moment, felt almost… familiar.