The cave mouth sat at the base of a towering crag, a wall of black stone that rose sheer into the sky. The crag was crowned with spires—narrow, jagged pillars of rock that reached upward like the bones of some ancient thing half buried and left to fossilize in the sun. No grass grew here. No moss clung to the face. The ground was dust and broken shale, and the wind moved across it dry and silent.

  The entrance itself was wide. Ten meters across at the base, maybe more, and nearly fifteen meters tall. It loomed like a wound cut into the mountain, rough at the edges and dark within. No signs of toolwork. No markings. Just an opening, raw and black and deep. The stone around the mouth shimmered faintly where veins of metal ran through it. Gold maybe. Or copper. The color was too pale to say for sure. It caught the light in thin streaks and disappeared just as quick.

  He also had no idea how to tell one ore vein from another.

  The flag stood ten feet from the opening. A simple post, driven deep into the dirt and marked with red cloth, stiff and sun-bleached. It didn’t move in the wind. The edges were frayed. It had been there a while.

  They stood before it and said nothing. Just looked.

  The stone wall was hot to the touch. The heat of the morning sun baked the crag face and drove the air back out in slow waves. The mine hadn’t been touched in weeks. No sign of passage. No wagon ruts. No boot tracks. No tools left behind. Just the flag.

  Whatever tracks that used to be here had long since been swallowed by the earth and dust.

  Orlen moved first. He stepped forward without rush, boots pressing into the dust, and came to a stop beside the flag. He knelt, placed a hand on the wooden pole, and ran his palm along the grain. The cloth hung still. Dry. He gripped the base and gave it a small shake. It held firm. Then he stood and turned back to the others.

  “This is it,” he said.

  They stood in a loose semicircle before the mouth of the cave, the crag face behind them throwing long shadows across the barren earth.

  “Start preparing your gear,” Orlen went on. “We don’t know what’s down there. Could be nothing. Could be worse than nothing. Could be the sort of thing that waits for men to come looking just to bite them in the ass.”

  He looked to each of them in turn. Vanya had already begun checking the spine of her bow, counting her arrows. Kidu knelt near his pack, pulling out a fistful of lantern stones wrapped in oilcloth. Thrane simply waited, arms loose at his sides, one hand on the pommel of the blade across his back. Everyone laid their packs on the ground and Kidu set around it a layer of tarp to shield it from the elements. To dive into deep caves required leaving behind everything that held no practical purpose in the dark, save for whatever food rations could be carried inside without slowing a man down.

  They were in luck in that regard as Syras carried all his ingredients within his [Inventory], which negated the necessity of bags to carry food items. Within his packs were pans and pots and cauldrons and cooking knives and utensils, and other items that were of survival use.

  “Kidu’s on lights, same as always,” Orlen said. “Lantern stones. Chalk line. If we have to turn back, I want to know which path we took.”

  Kidu gave a small nod and went on unpacking.

  Orlen turned his eyes to Syras.

  “Mister Syras,” he said. “You’re a Chef. We respect that. But that’s not why we brought you.”

  Syras met his gaze. Said nothing, but nodded.

  “You’ve got the [Assassin] class. You’ve walked places most don’t come back from. Down there, that matters. I expect you to move when we can’t. See what we won’t. If something’s waiting in the dark, you’ll know it before we do.”

  Syras gave a single nod. No flourish. No promise. His five senses were heightened and sharpened to degrees nature did not intend for man, simply due to all the skill points he’d invested into passive effects for his [Assassin] Class.

  [Assassin Passive Skill: Sharp Senses] - Your five basic senses are up to ten times sharper than the senses of the average human being, with the added benefit of being able to control the intensity of the sharpness.

  “I’ve been in deep caves before,” he said. “Alone.”

  He looked once into the mouth of the cave. Black and yawning. Air still. The scent of dry stone. Not the smell of life. “Came out every time.”

  Orlen didn’t reply. He nodded and turned away to search for something in his bag.

  They continued preparing in silence. No one wasted words. The wind moved across the bare ground and brushed dust against their boots, but no one looked up. Syras stood off to the side and watched.

  Thrane was the first to shift.

  He stepped back from the others, unslung the greatsword from his back. The weapon was broad and heavy, the kind made for wide arcs and open ground. He held it for a moment, then placed one gloved hand across the flat of the blade and whispered the command. The sword vanished in a blink, gone into the fold of space that only he could reach. No flash. No sound. Just gone.

  From that same space he pulled a new weapon—a short spear, simple in shape, the head narrow and triangular, the shaft dark wood bound in iron near the grip. The kind of tool made for thrusting in tight corridors.

  Vanya stood with her longbow in hand, turning it once, eyes on the curve of the limbs. She held it a moment longer than she needed to. Then she breathed out and sent it into her [Inventory] with the same practiced ease. Her fingers lingered in the air, then reached again and pulled a smaller bow from the unseen space—a recurve of horn and sinew, stained dark with oil. It looked well-used. No shine left on it.

  Kidu unwrapped a bundle of chalk sticks and tied them to the strap across his chest. He checked the lantern stones again, rubbing the cloth away from their faces and slotting them into a pair of metal cages built to hang from his hips. One of them flickered when tested. He swapped it without comment.

  Orlen paced once around the edge of the crag’s mouth, counting his steps, looking up to gauge the height. He returned and adjusted the grip of his shield. Checked the weight of his crossbow. Loaded it. Then slung it again.

  His cleaver was the only weapon he needed.

  “I’ll go first, as always,” Thrane said.

  His voice carried without effort, low and sure. Kidu stepped forward without needing to be told. From his belt, he unhooked one of the lantern cages and passed it up to the larger man. The stone inside pulsed with a faint blue light, soft and constant, like starlight seen through fog. Mage stone. Beautiful.

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  Thrane took it in his off hand. His other held the spear.

  “I’m the most resilient,” he said. “If anything comes from the front, I’ll stop it.”

  Orlen gave a single nod. “Vanya, you stay at the back. Kidu with her. Syras, you’re with me. Center line.”

  That was all that needed saying.

  They shifted into formation. No hesitation. No protest. Vanya slung her bow over one shoulder and dropped behind the rest, her steps already measured for distance. Kidu walked beside her, pulling loose the second lantern and letting it float ahead of him. A soft rune etched into the stone’s surface glowed to life, and the cage lifted gently from his hand, held in the air by faint currents of spell-forged air–enchantments. Another followed. Two lights, drifting slow. Must’ve cost a fortune to get an [Enchanter] for the lanterns.

  Syras moved into position behind Thrane and just ahead of Orlen.

  Then he focused.

  His hearing expanded—not in range, but in depth. The world grew louder in pieces. The scrape of boot leather against stone. The creak of straps under weight. The slow, steady hum of the lantern stones as they pushed their faint glow into the dark. A faint drip somewhere deeper in the cave. Dust settling.

  Fivefold sensitivity. It was enough.

  He didn’t need eyes in a cave like this. Bats flew blind through pitch and stone. He could do the same. Sound told its own story if you learned how to listen. His steps would mark the ground. Echoes would come back. Shape would take form in the space between them.

  The air changed as they entered. Cooler. Still dry, but thinner. Old. The kind of air that had stayed trapped for years, maybe decades, behind the weight of the world. The ground beneath their boots was solid. Uneven rock. Sharp in places. Worn flat in others where time or water had smoothed the edge.

  The lanterns cast blue light on the cave walls. The stone shimmered in places. Metal threaded through the rock, veins of it—thin and bright. Copper. Maybe gold. Maybe silver. Hard to tell under the hue of the mage light. The shimmer caught the dust and made the walls look alive, shifting slow with the movement of air and light.

  “No one’s gone five meters beyond the entrance,” Syras said.

  His voice was quiet. It didn’t echo. The stone swallowed it whole.

  “Yeah, well, this whole place is unmapped,” Orlen replied. He exhaled through his nose, long and slow. “No idea what’s waiting for us in the dark.”

  They kept moving.

  The path ahead held straight. No forks. No branches. No slope. The walls narrowed slightly, but only just. It was a tunnel, smooth in a way that didn’t seem natural. Not carved. Not gouged by water or shaped by wind. Just… smoothed. The floor bore no stalagmites. The ceiling had no teeth. There was no water running, no dripping to measure time by.

  Syras walked near the front. The sound of his own boots returned to him in quiet thumps, bouncing back dull from the stone around them. He narrowed his hearing and listened deeper, then let his mind shift.

  He thought about what could live here.

  Goblins were out. They liked wet tunnels, humid places, the stink of rotting moss and mud underfoot. The air here was too dry. It would burn their noses and mouths. They wouldn’t last.

  Nosferatu Bats were out too. Nothing to feed on in the Craglands. No prey, no blood. No livestock for leagues. They wouldn’t make a nest in a dead place.

  Orcs? No. Like the Goblins, they lived for rivers, swamps, caverns dripping with runoff and reeking with life. This cave was silent. Sterile.

  Kobolds. Possible. But not likely.

  Too shallow. Kobolds didn’t live near the surface. They built deep—half a kilometer down at least, closer to the world’s roots, where the rock turned black and hot. If they were here, this wasn’t their front porch. This would be the long hall that led to something far worse.

  So what then?

  What made this place home?

  Something that didn’t eat. Something that didn’t drink. Something that didn’t breathe.

  Things like that didn’t need warmth or prey or sleep. They stayed because they were built to stay. Because they had been placed here, or born here, or left behind.

  Golems came to mind. Earthbound. Constructed. Protectors of ancient magical places. Silent and still until stirred from their slumber by intruders.

  Or worse.

  The kind of things that remembered only movement, not thought.

  He said none of this aloud.

  They walked for nearly an hour, the lanterns casting uneven shapes on the walls, revealing nothing but more of the same stone and dust. No branching tunnels. No drops or rises. Then Syras paused. His head tilted as if listening for a whisper on the wind. A faint scuffling sound reached his ears, followed by a slow, heavy pounding that echoed through the rock—distant, measured, like stone knocking against stone.

  He lifted a hand, brushed Thrane’s shoulder lightly, and raised his pointer finger to his lips in a silent request. The group halted at once, the rustle of their gear settling into stillness. Thrane stepped aside, clearing a path. Orlen nodded at Syras. Nothing needed saying. They knew.

  This was where Syras earned his keep.

  They remained behind with the lantern glow. Syras slipped forward, letting the darkness wrap around him. The pounding persisted in the distance, steady as a low heartbeat in the earth. He breathed slow. Shifted his hearing. Listened past the drip of water—if there was any—past the scuff of his companions’ boots on stone behind him.

  He moved, and his footsteps all but vanished. A passive skill, part of the [Assassin] class.

  [Assassin Passive Skill: Silent Steps] - When walking or crouched, the sound of your movement is reduced to the lowest threshold allowed by your current rank.

  He kept his palms open at his sides, feeling for changes in the air, letting small taps of his heel send echoes through the space. Like a bat. Not magic—just heightened hearing, practiced in caves and alleyways. The walls fed him hints of distance, shape, the angle of the corridor.

  The tunnel continued, narrowing slightly. The pounding continued too, growing a bit louder, echoing up the stone like a pulse. Something scuffled again—a shuffle of movement? A scrape?

  At the far end of the tunnel, a flicker of firelight broke through the dark.

  Syras slowed. The air had shifted. Warmer now. Carried scent. Not smoke, not wood—but something harsher. Brimstone. Burnt metal. Ash and salt and sulfur. He drew in a slow breath and held it.

  Then the sound came.

  Laughter. Faint, high-pitched, strange in its rhythm. Childlike in tone, but off. Too thin. Too quick. The kind of laughter that didn’t come from joy but habit. And beneath it, the steady pounding of feet against stone. Not marching. Dancing. The rhythm made sense now. Small feet. Dozens of them, tapping and hopping, hitting the floor in time with some tune only they could hear.

  He pressed forward, slow and low, letting the shape of the tunnel guide him. The firelight brightened as the corridor widened. A final bend, and then the ground opened beneath him. A shelf of stone overlooked a broad chamber—wide, tall, the ceiling lost in shadow.

  Below, at the center of the space, a fire burned without smoke. It blazed bright and clean atop a mound of Fire Stones, the kind that caught flame once and never let go. The flames shifted color with the stone—yellow at the tips, orange at the core, blue and white where the stones split.

  And dancing around the blaze were the creatures.

  Winged. Red-skinned. No taller than a child, but their proportions were wrong—long limbs, short torsos, fingers that curled too far, wings that flapped more for show than flight. Their eyes glowed faintly, yellow and slitted. They laughed and danced in a circle around the fire, stomping with joyless glee.

  Not goblins. Something rarer.

  Fire Imps.

  Cousins to the Lesser Fae and the Darkborn, rarely seen above ground. Drawn to heat and stone and places forgotten by gods. They fed on heat. Lived in it. Carried fire in their veins.

  Syras watched.

  None of them looked up. None turned toward him. The edge of the ledge gave him shadow and height. They saw only the fire. Heard only their own laughter.

  He inhaled once more. The scent was strong. Brimstone and sweat. There was meat on them. Taut, wiry. High heat meant low fat.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  Interesting.

  He’d never tasted Fire Imp before.