Halver didn’t speak he just turned away, jaw clenched, as if afraid that words might break whatever fragile miracle had just happened. He stood rigid, his back to the others, his fists curling and uncurling at his sides.

  Hessa knelt beside Jessel, murmuring soft prayers under her breath. Her hands trembled as she brushed ash from the girl’s face, fingers hesitating as if Jessel might vanish again.

  “That… that shouldn’t have worked,” he said, voice raw with disbelief. “That was Aerlyntium, wasn’t it? You—” He swallowed. “You brought her back.”

  His gaze slid toward me, not with awe, but unease. “What magic is this?"

  There wasn’t time to dwell, for the next room had begun to open. The archway peeled itself from the far wall of the plaza like a scab tearing free from old flesh. Fragrant smoke spilled out in waves—violet, wine-red, and a sickly gold—carrying with it the scent of wilted flowers, spoiled incense, and something like cheap perfume soaked into silk.

  Hessa flinched at the smell. Her voice came barely above a whisper. “That scent…I hate this place.”

  Tovin’s breath caught. “The Perfumed Prison…”

  Halver’s hand drifted to his sword, knuckles whitening.

  The fog met us at the threshold—color-saturated and cloying, thick as smoke and too warm to be natural. It curled through the air in slow, deliberate tendrils, painted in bruised violets, dried-blood reds, soured greens, and a pale funeral blue. It wasn’t mist; it was perfume left to rot, the scent of memory made wet and stale. Every breath tasted like wilted flowers soaked in wine, like incense spilled on a corpse.

  The chamber beyond the arch yawned open, deceptively wide, its ceiling lost in haze. Cells lined both sides, their iron bars warped and fused in strange angles, melted where fire had kissed the stone and then frozen in place like sculpture. Beneath our boots, the tiles shimmered faintly with an oil-slick color; while their surfaces offered a deceptive variety—some warm, others soft—a pervasive sense of danger made it clear no single tile could be trusted.

  I moved first, ready to cast, but Aurentum stayed suspiciously quiet; there were no hostiles, not yet, at least. Jessel stuck close to Hessa, both of them tense, drawn inward. Syla cursed softly under her breath and vanished into the fog, blades in hand, eyes narrowed. Tovin mumbled something about "optical illusions" and started cataloging the colors, his fingers twitching like he was writing invisible notes in the air. Halver said nothing, but he never sheathed his sword.

  I knew this place. The Perfumed Prison, once home to Kingsley’s twisted brothers and sisters, now sat silent, emptied of its Grendelblins, stripped of the Djinn’s games, but not cleansed. The layout was the same: three rows of cells, a central aisle, and faint grooves in the stone where multicolored tiles lay dormant. There was no laughter and no clinking chains, just the low hum of reconstruction waiting to happen. Part of me was glad I hadn't yet placed the gaoler.

  From the far end of the chamber, a purple cell pulsed faintly through the fog—its bars untouched by warping, its interior too clean. And above it, suspended in the air like a droplet caught mid-fall, an Aerlyntium shard spun slowly, faintly lit from within. It was pale gold, like the one that had brought Jessel back.

  Behind me, Hessa stopped walking. I turned. She was still, her expression unreadable, but her eyes were glassy, wide. The cell sat at the far end of the row, quiet and clean—too clean. Unlike the others, it bore no scars; the rusted smears, shattered chains, and warped bars were all absent. This one was… pristine, as if untouched by the collapse, by Djinn, by time itself. It didn’t just sit in the room; it waited.

  Hessa moved toward it without being told. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t flinch at the glow or the quiet. She walked like she’d known the way all along, like her feet had remembered something her mouth wasn’t ready to say. The others held back, and Halver watched with arms folded, Syla kept to the shadows, and Tovin muttered a nervous string of half-thoughts under his breath, but none of them stopped her.

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

  She reached the cell door and knelt slowly, placing her satchel beside her as if laying an offering at a shrine. Her head bowed. Her hands folded over her knees, fingers smudged with ash, curling inward like petals. Then she began to whisper—not in words I recognized, but in a hush that felt older than language, a rhythm more felt than heard. A gentle warmth began to pulse around her, its presence subtle yet undeniable, rather than anything bright or intensely hot, and the dungeon noticed.

  A low tremor slipped beneath our boots—not a quake, but something deeper, a change in tension, like a thread being pulled tight. Dust rose from the floor. The purple gas, once swirling lazily around us, recoiled from her like incense caught in a gust. The chains inside the cell stirred, their movement a subtle rattle, more like a breath drawn through iron teeth than any loud clatter.

  “She’s triggering something,” Tovin hissed.

  “I see it,” I said, stepping forward. The Aerlyntium orb still floated above the cot, rotating with slow, deliberate grace. Its glow had deepened, no longer pale, but molten with purpose. As I approached, I felt it pulse in time with my steps.

  I raised my hand, fingers tingling before contact. When I touched the orb, everything snapped. There was no warning—just suction, a deafening, airless pull that tore through the chamber like the breath of a giant. The fog spiraled inward, drawn toward the cell in curling bands of color—purple, red, green, and gold—all collapsing into the orb with a sound like silk being shredded underwater.

  And then there was clarity: the fog was gone, and the room had changed. Bars once melted and broken now stood restored—blackened iron straight and whole. Wall sconces reappeared on the columns, flaring to life with flickering orange flame. Across the stone floor, chalk runes long thought erased glowed faintly in the seams, as if they’d never left. And in each cell, figures flickered like candlelight behind thin gauze: guards in gleaming half-plate, prisoners hunched in chains, some whispering, some silent, none fully formed—they were ghosts, not of the dead, but of decisions, of cause and punishment.

  Tovin was the first to notice it. While the others scanned the reconstructed cells or edged toward the far wall, he lingered near one of the newly restored pillars, frowning at something the rest of us had missed—a statue. It was tall, misshapen, and wrong. It stood where no statue had been before, twisted stone posed like a Grendelkin, but off in every proportion. The limbs were too long. The shoulders hunched like they were bearing a weight the stone couldn’t carry. Its head was cocked at an unnatural angle, eyes hollow, its mouth stretched into a grin that was carved too deep into the stone, like someone had chiseled joy into something that had never felt it.

  “I don’t like that,” Tovin muttered, stepping closer despite himself. His voice had gone thin again—high and airy, like he was trying to convince himself it wasn’t real. “This wasn’t here. I—I know this wasn’t here.”

  None of us responded; we didn’t need to, as we felt it, too. He reached out, hand trembling, not quite touching the stone—just hovering inches from the surface. The moment his shadow crossed its feet, the air shifted, and the statue’s own shadow pulled loose. It detached with a soft, sickening sound almost like fabric being peeled from wet flesh, and slithered up the wall behind it before collapsing forward. The form re-solidified midair, dropping onto all fours before rising to its full height in a grotesque mirror of the original statue. Stone turned to sinew, and the grin widened. The mimic’s shoulders cracked as it rolled them forward, armor forming piece by piece from its own dark flesh, crystalline veins running under its surface like veins in obsidian. It wasn’t just mimicking a Grendelkin; it was exaggerating it, worshipping the shape, and mocking it.

  And then, the sound of stone grinding echoed behind us. I turned just in time to see four more statues rising from the floor—one in each quadrant of the chamber. It was like the dungeon had waited for a trigger, and Tovin’s curiosity had given it permission. Each statue began to twitch, shift, and writhe.

  “Hells,” Syla breathed. “Those things weren’t here five seconds ago.”

  I stepped forward, drawing my weapon with one hand and gesturing toward my summoning slot with the other. “Those aren’t statues,” I said, voice flat, eyes already tracking movements. “They’re mimics.”