They met more of the creatures along the way.

  Fire Imps, clustered in pairs and threes, huddled near walls or gathered at stone altars made from nothing but piled rubble. The little beasts shrieked when spotted, but their shrieks were short. The Red Sparrows moved without haste. Arrows found marks. Steel met bone. The tunnels grew quiet again soon after.

  Syras gathered no more remains.

  His [Inventory] had limits—slots measured by category, not weight. Already he carried three jars of Fire Salt and four tied carcasses. No room for more. He let the bodies burn where they fell, or watched them crumble to dust, carried off in swirls by the heat rising from the veins in the stone.

  The further they walked, the hotter the tunnels became. Not from the bodies. Not from the breath of beasts. But from the earth itself. From the stone.

  Fire Stones.

  They littered the path now, growing from the ground in spiked clusters or pressed like ore into the cave walls. Some glowed soft and low, the embers trapped deep in the crystal’s heart. Others burned bright, flickering red and orange and gold. None gave off smoke. They didn’t crackle like wood. They simply burned. Forever.

  No gold here. No silver, copper, or bronze. Nothing the prospector likely hoped for. But valuable all the same.

  Fire Stones held more coin in them than most metals.

  They weren’t mined. Not really. They were gathered. Cut loose with care and sold to Alchemists and Enchanters who dealt in elemental reagents. A stone the size of a man’s fist could simmer a cauldron for years. Rich lords lined their hearths with them. Noble kitchens used them for cooking. A single Fire Stone, clean and pure, could keep a palace warm through winter and never dim.

  He thought of the Laughing Rat.

  Old place. Carved from basalt and ash-wood. Not in a city, but near one. Built during the Age of Heroes, or so the signs said. The building was sloped and leaning now, but still stood. The master stock there had never once gone cold. Eight centuries of bones and broth. Kept simmering on a stone no bigger than a skull. Syras had eaten there once. Long ago. He remembered the taste.

  The problem, however, was that Fire Stones were highly regulated by almost every nation or state and, in most cases, a merchant or trader needed numerous permits to sell them anywhere, unless they were auctioned through the Lybran Black Market in bulk, but at a far lower price than if they were sold legally.

  He walked past a wall where the Fire Stones jutted like broken glass. The glow lit his face and his shadow dragged behind him.

  He didn’t touch them. Didn’t take any. They burned too hot to carry bare. Tools would be needed. Time. Care.

  Later, he told himself. If the tunnel turned quiet and the danger passed. Maybe then.

  They moved without pause. The earth grew hotter beneath their feet, the air tighter in their lungs. Each step drew them further from the mouth of the cave and closer to the deep dark that knew no light but fire.

  Syras moved first. Always. He walked the edge of each chamber and crawled the walls when he had to. Where there was shadow, he became part of it. When the way forked or turned strange, he went alone for a time and came back with his findings spoken in few words.

  Vanya followed behind. Bow unstrung, arrow notched. Her steps mirrored his. Soundless. She walked with her eyes. Watched where the walls bent. Watched the ground for signs others might miss. Sometimes she said nothing for hours.

  Behind her came Thrane. Iron-wrapped and patient. His armor did not jangle. Did not scrape. Each piece had been tied down, each buckle cinched tight. His spear rested against one shoulder like it had grown there.

  Orlen walked fourth. His eyes moved always. To the corners. To the cracks. To the faces of his team. He kept a hand on his crossbow and the other near the edge of his shield. He had seen more tunnels than the others, and more deaths in them too.

  Kidu brought up the rear. Quietest of them all. He walked with his palms out, fingertips grazing stone. He left no chalk lines now. He used thread, glowing faint with an alchemical tincture that shimmered in the heat, strung from spike to spike in the rock. Flags too. Folded strips of waxed canvas, marked with numbers. They glowed only when seen from the rear. A trick of ink and angle. It would not guide a beast. Only them.

  They killed what they had to. Fire Imps mostly. A few other things that slithered or crawled or flared like oil when cut. Elemental Beasts that could not be cooked or eaten and left no trace after death, save for fire. Syras never wasted motion. Vanya shot without hesitation. Thrane struck like a hammer. Orlen filled the gaps. Kidu kept his blades hidden. Syras noted they moved like a single thought. He fell into step without effort. Like he had always been there.

  The walls changed as they pressed deeper.

  Fire Stone veins widened. They no longer ran thin like spiderwebs, but bloomed in clumps, in sheets. Whole segments of the tunnel wall pulsed with heat. At one point, the light alone was enough to walk without lanterns. The air shimmered around them. Their breath steamed even in the heat. Water from their skins turned tepid and metallic.

  Then they heard it.

  A low bubbling. A groaning rumble, slow and ancient.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The path narrowed again. The ceiling dipped. Syras went forward, alone, and signaled the all-clear. The others followed.

  And there it was.

  A river.

  Wide as the hall of a lord’s keep, maybe thirty meters from end to end. It simmered red and gold and white, not with water, but with molten stone. Fire Stones floated atop the surface like coals in soup. The bank they stood on trembled faintly with the flow. There was no bridge. No natural ledge. Just heat and light and the sound of boiling rock.

  They stood there a long while, saying nothing. Just listening to the river speak.

  Then Orlen stepped to the edge. He crouched low, reached down, and tossed a pebble in. It hissed and vanished.

  “Well,” he said, rising, “I guess that ends it.”

  Kidu nodded once and pulled another flag from his belt. He pressed it into a crack near the wall and ran a fresh line of thread from his last anchor point. The glow pulsed faintly in the red light.

  “This is the furthest point,” Orlen said, voice flat. “Mark it well. The prospector who hired us is gonna be a tiny bit disappointed in the lack of gemstones and gold, but that’s not our problem.”

  “Then we return to the surface?” Syras asked.

  Orlen nodded once. “Aye. No use staying down here. This place’s dry of anything worth bleeding for.”

  No one argued. The heat clung to them like a second skin and there was no scent of silver, no glimmer of hoarded relics, nothing in the stone but fire. The cavern had given what it would give. It was no dungeon, just earth and old heat and things that burned without rest.

  They turned and retraced their steps, following the threadline and flagged markers Kidu had laid down. The river of molten stone hissed behind them, speaking in slow burbles that faded with distance. The air cooled the higher they climbed. Lanterns swung in lazy rhythm. Boots struck stone in measured cadence.

  They passed through every chamber they’d cleared. The corpses of the Fire Imps were already fading, some collapsing into salt and dust, others hardened into statues of brittle ash. No carrion came to eat them. Nothing lived here but the fire.

  The climb took hours. No one spoke.

  When they reached the cave’s mouth, the first thing they noticed was the wind. Strong. Dry. Bitter. Night had fallen. The sky above was a dome of black set with stars like iron filings on velvet. The air outside should’ve been quiet. It wasn’t.

  They heard the hoots before they saw the beasts. Low, guttural sounds that bounced off the stone crags and echoed down into the hollow.

  The creatures stood in the starlight. Broad-backed, four-legged things with skin like flint and iron, scales layered thick over corded muscle. Their limbs were a mix of claw and hoof, and the sound they made as they stamped the earth was deep enough to be felt in the chest. Long tails dragged trenches in the dirt. Their riders wore cloaks, hoods drawn low, faces lost in shadow. But the weapons they carried were plain to see—broad axes, spears, curved sabers, black iron crossbows resting on saddle loops.

  Ten of them. Mounted. Waiting.

  Orlen stepped forward slowly, his silhouette etched in the fireglow still spilling faint from the cave behind them. He looked at the riders, then down at the ground, and spat. The spit struck dry dirt and vanished.

  “...Marauders,” he said.

  No other word fit.

  The riders did not speak. One of the lizards let out a sharp bark, its mouth lined with yellow teeth and smoke curling from its nostrils. Another clawed at the rock, dragging deep gouges with each pass. Their mounts were restless. They wanted blood.

  Syras reached for his cleaver. The others followed suit. Quiet. No words. Just the sound of leather tightening and steel whispering from scabbards.

  The wind picked up.

  No one moved yet.

  One of the riders moved.

  He reached up slow and pushed back the hood. His face came into view beneath the stars and firelight. A latticework of scars ran from brow to chin, each line deliberate, cut and cauterized to permanence. Rings of hammered bronze pierced his cheeks and jaw. Spikes of black iron jutted from his temples like the thorns of some cruel crown. His skin was dark and dusted red with powder. Eyes the color of old blood.

  Syras looked at him. Said nothing. Only the men of the far south did that. The Kitakans of Kitaran. A people of smoke and jungle and flame. Explorers of the far ends of agony. Ritualists who bled themselves to feel closer to the divine. Who worshipped pain not as penance, but as revelation.

  What one of them was doing this far north, atop a Cragland war-lizard, was a mystery not easily answered.

  The man’s voice came cold and clear.

  “I am Shulgar of the Kitani,” he said. “Lay down all your valuables and weapons, and we shall spare your lives and your limbs.”

  He sat still atop his mount, legs unmoving. The beast beneath him huffed, its flanks twitching with muscle, its claws raking furrows in the earth.

  Orlen stepped forward. Not far. Just a half-step. Enough to show the fire.

  He raised a brow. “The Kitani? Impossible. Your order was wiped out. Long ago.”

  The name stirred old memory. Syras did not blink.

  The Kitani. A death cult. A faith built on flesh. Fifty years past they had opened temples to suffering in the depths of the Kitaran wilds, where no light reached and no law held sway. They sought to bring forth their god, the Hungering One, through rites of unending pain—flayings, dismemberments, burnings drawn out for days. They had taken kings and queens, men of blooded lines, and made offerings to them.

  The Kitakan people had turned against them. Turned to the world beyond. Called for swords and flame. And adventurers from every kingdom, every land, had answered and poured into their jungles.

  They had found the Kitani temples and burned them down to the stones. The screams echoed for weeks. Nothing was spared. No children. No bones. The order was erased.

  And yet here stood one. Scarred and marked and breathing.

  Syras said nothing. But in the back of his mind, an idle thought passed. He wondered how the flesh of gods might taste.

  Shulgar did not flinch.

  “The Old Order is ash,” he said. “We are the fire born from it. The New Flesh. We and we alone have taken up the mantle. And we shall complete what they could not. Now, do as I have commanded—or we will flay you and hang what remains beneath the sun, to blacken and rot.”

  The wind shifted.

  Orlen let out a sound low in his throat. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a curse.

  He turned.

  “Kidu,” he said. “Do your thing.”

  Kidu grinned. Small and sharp. He reached into his cloak and pulled free a smooth orb the color of ash. No bigger than a child’s fist. He held it for a moment. Then dropped it.

  It struck the earth and shattered.

  A burst of smoke erupted from the stone, thick and fast, curling outward in a growing ring. The air filled with it, dry and choking, dark as coal and rising high. Twenty meters in a breath. The beasts shrieked. One of them reared. Another stamped in place, hooves pounding dirt and sparks. Voices shouted in the smoke, muffled and sharp.