It had been a month since Shadow left Golem’s Gambit. On the surface, things had returned to normal.

  The dungeon thrummed with activity. Adventurers came daily, some drawn by the challenge, others by the novelty. Word of the Obsidian Blades' run had spread—sanitized, of course. Their loss was common knowledge, and the tale of their “tight finish” against the dungeon’s second floor had only fueled the mystique surrounding it.

  Now, the tracks buzzed with competitors eager to set records, to prove themselves in the same race that had tested legends.

  The rooms remained largely the same. A few hazards were refined, some transitions tightened for smoother flow, but Brent hadn’t made any major additions since that day. The foundation had held, and the challenge was still genuine.

  But underneath it all, something was... missing.

  Shadow’s absence left a gap, not just in the dungeon’s layout, but in its rhythm.

  The door to his secret chamber—Shadow’s Room of Illusions—was sealed. The entrance had been blocked by Brent himself, a thick layer of stone rerouted over the once-hidden opening. Not destroyed. Just... put away.

  A faint hum of dormant magic still pulsed beneath the surface, but no adventurer would ever know it was there. Not unless Brent chose to reveal it again.

  The minions carried on.

  Ferron oversaw structural upkeep, now with double the attention paid to moving parts. Every trap was inspected twice, every pendulum and pressure plate rechecked after each run. He never said it aloud, but it was clear he’d taken Shadow’s sabotage personally.

  Caldron’s arena had become a highlight of the first floor—the chaotic magnetism of his chamber now praised by adventurers for its “beautiful unpredictability.”

  Kagejin, though silent as always, seemed more withdrawn than before. He did his duties, tweaked trap timing, checked visual obfuscations in his arena... but he hadn’t said a word about Shadow since the day he left.

  Even Zyrris, enigmatic and aloof, had grown more present, spending more time observing runs, watching adventurers with a critical eye, perhaps gauging them for something none of the others could quite see.

  And Brent...

  Brent had buried himself in routine.

  He monitored every race. He adjusted room balance. He reviewed adventurer feedback and refined pathing. He was responsive, alert, focused—but never quite present.

  It was like watching a Core trying to pretend everything was fine by keeping the gears moving.

  The dungeon was thriving, on paper.

  But everyone felt it. The laughter was quieter. The silence was longer. The shadows were deeper.

  And Shadow’s absence was still there, in every corner of the dungeon where chaos used to live.

  But no one noticed when the temperature of the core chamber dipped.

  Not physically—Brent didn't have a body to feel the cold—but something in the ambient energy of the dungeon grew still. Not the peace of quiet triumph, but the breathless tension before a storm.

  Brent was reviewing race analytics—timing tweaks in Jungle Room transitions, a minor mana imbalance in the Magnetic Mayhem boosters—when the pulse came.

  A ripple through the dungeon’s leyline system.

  Subtle.

  Precise.

  Not his.

  He paused.

  Brent’s awareness pulled back from the analytics window, scanning the core's interior. The ambient mana was still intact, the control flow steady. Nothing on the surface had changed.

  But the pulse came again. This time, it left something behind.

  A single strand of foreign magic, so faint it almost dissolved the moment Brent touched it. But not before it delivered its message—not in sound or light, but in feeling.

  A surge of twisted life magic, bitter and ancient.

  Something feral and impossibly old.

  Brent recoiled instinctively, but the message had already imprinted itself deep into the core’s memory. And then, like mist dispersing in sunlight, the signal vanished.

  Except for what it left behind.

  A shape—etched across the back of Brent’s awareness. A symbol burned into his senses with unnatural precision.

  A blooming vine curling around a skull.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He didn’t recognize it.

  But something deep in the foundations of Golem’s Gambit did.

  An echo of emotion stirred through the stone. Fear. Not Brent’s own—but the dungeon’s bones themselves remembering something they should have forgotten.

  Brent pulsed once—erratic, uneasy. “Emil.”

  The warden appeared instantly in the core chamber, eyes sharpening the moment he registered Brent’s tone.

  “What happened?”

  “There was... a signal. A message.” Brent’s voice was low, focused. “It was disguised. Subtle. It wasn’t meant to harm—but to be felt.”

  Emil frowned. “Who sent it?”

  Brent didn’t answer right away. He instead let his awareness unfurl again, scanning for residual traces. Whatever had come, it was already gone. He could still feel the imprint, but the delivery was surgical—just enough to leave a warning.

  Brent pulsed again, darker this time. “…That wasn’t natural.”

  Emil stood silent, eyes scanning the chamber as if expecting something to reveal itself in the stone. “No signature?”

  “Nothing recognizable. Just a pulse... wrapped in something ancient. Wild. Like life magic, but twisted.” Brent hovered closer to the central core interface. “It left behind a symbol. A vine around a skull.”

  Emil’s brow furrowed. “What do you think it means?”

  Brent’s glow dimmed slightly. “I don’t know. I think so. But I’ve never seen this before.”

  They were both silent for a moment, the hum of the core room's energy echoing softly around them.

  Then the silence was shattered.

  A sharp crack of magic split the air like lightning, and a teal-green glyph flared to life in the center of the chamber—roots spiraling out of nothing, blooming into a floating image of twisting vines and bones.

  The room shifted. The temperature dropped again, and the air itself felt thicker. Older.

  A voice spoke, slow and resonant—calm, but full of coiled malice.

  “Greetings, Golem’s Gambit. We have watched your sprouting stone grow unchecked, scattering sparks into the wind and calling it brilliance.”

  Emil stepped back, his hand resting near his side weapon on reflex. Brent floated forward, core-light pulsing more tightly now.

  “We are the Verdant Depths. You have trespassed. You have been allowed to exist long enough.”

  “Oh great,” Brent muttered. “They're theater kids.”

  The voice didn’t falter.

  “You mock what you do not understand. You play at creation while rooted in nothing. Your place is ornamental. A sprig in the breeze.”

  Brent brightened slightly, voice tinged with sarcasm. “Look, we might be ornamental, but we’ve got style. Half of our traps are OSHA-certified.”

  A pause. The image flickered.

  “…We do not know this ‘O-shah.’”

  Brent sighed. “Yeah, that’s fair.” Then more seriously: “What do you want?”

  The illusion pulsed. The vines grew longer, thornier, curling downward like claws.

  “Your domain. Your submission. Your acknowledgment of the Verdant Depths as superior. You will cede the lower half of your territory, allow our roots to anchor in your foundation, and relinquish all control of structural design and expansion.”

  Brent’s glow froze. Emil’s face turned to stone.

  “In return, you will be allowed to persist—smaller, decorative, a curiosity. You may entertain the surface-dwellers as you please... within your bounds.”

  Silence.

  Brent dimmed for a long moment, as if processing. When he finally spoke, his voice was cool.

  “Let me get this straight. You want me to cut the dungeon in half, hand over control, and accept being a sideshow attraction so you don’t mulch us into dungeon paste?”

  “Yes.”

  Another pause.

  “...You know what we call that where I’m from?” Brent said. “A hostile corporate merger. Only without the donuts.”

  The image flared, thorns bristling with power.

  “You have one week to respond. Refuse, and your stone will shatter. Your minions will rot in the ground beneath our roots. Your name will be forgotten.”

  Brent pulsed sharply. “I don’t scare that easy.”

  “You will.”

  And with that, the image collapsed in on itself, the vines folding inward until they vanished in a single, sharp snap of green light.

  The core room was quiet again. But the air was no longer still.

  Emil turned slowly. “Well.”

  “Yep.” Brent’s glow flickered. “We’ve officially been threatened by an angry compost heap.”

  Emil said nothing for a moment. Then: “What’s the plan?”

  Brent didn’t answer right away. He just hovered there, quiet, thoughtful, watching where the vines had faded.

  When he finally pulsed again, it was slow, measured, and deadly calm.

  “We hold the line.”