The forest pressed in around them, silent except for the rasp of boots on damp soil. Morning fog clung low to the ground, curling like smoke around their ankles. Branches bowed heavy with moss, their dripping strands brushing against shoulders and hair.

  No bird sang. No insect stirred. Even the wind seemed unwilling to pass between the trees.

  Only the memory of the Advisor’s voice lingered, echoing faintly in their minds. The words wound like serpents through their thoughts, guiding them toward a place none of them truly wished to find.

  Horren trudged ahead, a small knife spinning lazily in his hands. The motion was a habit more than a thought. His usual swagger remained, though dulled beneath the gray light.

  “My brother lies here,” he said at last, as if commenting on the weather. The words hung thick in the damp air, too heavy to drift away. He lifted his flask, drank deep, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Buried with the rest of the templars when the dark elves swept through. Decades ago now. Guess I’ll see if the old bastard is still resting.”

  No one answered. Even Horren let the silence grow until it pressed against them like weight.

  The trees broke without warning into a clearing. Before them rose the crypt, its form hewn from blackened stone, half-swallowed by roots and earth. It loomed like a carcass, ancient and cold.

  The walls had once been carved with holy sigils, faint glimmers of sanctity now eroded to formless scars. Over those traces sprawled jagged black paint, symbols slashed in fevered hands. The markings shimmered faintly, as if alive in the torchlight.

  Before the gate lay ruin. The statue of Valoria, goddess of death, lay face-first in the mud, her marble limbs snapped and scattered like bones. Moss grew from the fissures in her body. Weeds wrapped her fallen crown.

  “That’s a bad sign..” Alkibiades muttered, voice barely more than breath.

  Cold seeped from the stones. Each inhale tasted of mildew and iron. Beneath it all, faint but certain, was the scent of rot. Somewhere in that quiet, something whispered. It was too soft to form meaning, yet too close to dismiss.

  A low clatter broke the stillness. The gate shuddered. Armor scraped against stone as skeletal figures dragged themselves upright. The sound of bone on metal was a dry, rasping rattle. Empty sockets flickered with dim blue fire, hungry and hateful.

  Behind them came robed figures, their faces pale and drawn, eyes wide with fanatic devotion. Cultists. Their staves trembled in their grips, yet their mouths moved in silent, maddened prayer.

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  Alkibiades lifted his shield. The weight pulled unevenly on his arm. His armor was incomplete now, only fragments of what it once was. Lighter, yes, but every missing plate left him feeling more naked and vulnerable.

  “Hold fast,” he muttered, planting his boots into the mud.

  The nearest cultist saw them first. He raised his staff and hissed something guttural. The air bent around him as black energy gathered in a spiral, dense and hungry.

  A single bolt shot outward, slicing the fog in a jagged streak. It struck a tree beside Alkibiades and detonated. Bark and splinters erupted, raining across his armor.

  Then the dead began to move. Their gait was uneven, their joints creaking. Rusted blades scraped along the ground as they advanced.

  Lillyth’s heart clenched as the first skeleton drew close. She could feel it. Pain radiating from the corpse like heat. Their souls were fragments still clinging to rage, grief, and shame.

  Every motion carried the echo of that torment. She gasped and staggered back, one hand clutching at her chest as though the ache were her own.

  Marvel clung to her sleeve, eyes wide and gleaming. The first skeleton lurched toward them, its jaw clicking open in a sound like teeth on stone.

  Marvel dropped to her knees. Her palms struck the soil, fingers digging deep. Her eyes flared green. The earth stirred. Thin roots erupted from beneath the leaves and thickened into heavy vines, winding fast around the skeleton’s legs.

  Bone cracked beneath the pressure as the undead struggled, clawing at the air. The vines surged higher, coiling up to its ribs before twisting tight enough to splinter bone.

  Aeyona lifted her hand and spoke a single word. Frost spiraled from her fingertips, unfurling across the ground in a sweeping wave. Ice glazed the soil, glinting pale blue in the dim light. The vines stiffened instantly, snapping as the cold overtook them. The skeletons fell in tangled heaps.

  Alkibiades lunged to press the advantage, sword flashing in an arc. His boot slid on the frozen earth. He went down hard, the impact ringing through his shield. His blade skittered aside and struck stone with a sharp clang.

  “Every time, Aeyona!” His tone was somewhere between fury and disbelief.

  “I’m trying dammit!” she shouted back, cheeks flushed, frost still swirling around her hands.

  “Stop getting in the way then jackass!” Horren bellowed, swinging his knife in a vicious arc.

  The air cracked. Sparks leapt wild from the ice. Lightning forked without warning, jumping between skeletal remains, flashing across armor, and striking flesh.

  A cultist screamed as the bolt found him, his body convulsing before collapsing into smoking stillness. The stench of burnt cloth and flesh filled the clearing.

  The others hesitated. Fear flickered across their faces, but devotion quickly drowned it. They charged again, howling prayers to whatever darkness they served.

  Horren laughed, blood dripping freely from a self-inflicted cut along his forearm. He relished the sting. His blade drank the crimson flow, glowing faintly as his spell took hold. He moved like a man possessed, each swing wide and brutal.

  “Always wanted to crack skulls in a graveyard!” he shouted. The blood on his knife shimmered, then lashed outward in a crescent wave. It cut through the fog like a scythe, cleaving a skeleton in half. The bones scattered, clattering across the stone like dice.

  Each strike drew more power, and more filth from his tongue. His laughter rose above the clash of steel and the hiss of spellfire, obscene and wild. Blood sprayed against the crypt wall and steamed on the cold stone.

  The fight twisted into chaos. Marvel’s vines clawed for the cultists’ ankles. Aeyona’s frost splintered underfoot, forcing every step into a gamble.

  Alkibiades fought low, his shield bashing through ribs and skulls. The clang of his blade met the dry crack of bone. Sparks from shattered ice danced across his armor as he turned to cover Lillyth.

  When the last cultist fell, silence did not return, it only changed.

  The whispers thickened, threading through the air in drawn-out murmurs that brushed the edges of sense. It was no longer imagination.

  The crypt breathed with it. The sound seemed to curl behind their ears, teasing at comprehension without granting it.

  Alkibiades set his shoulder to the gate. The old hinges groaned as it opened, a sound deep enough to stir dust from the stone.

  They stepped inside.

  The passage beyond was narrow, carved from damp rock slick with moss. The ceiling hung low, pressing shadows close. Water dripped steadily from cracks above, striking their shoulders and armor in slow, rhythmic taps.

  The whispers swelled again. The shapes of the words began to take form, not in any tongue they knew but in syllables that pressed against the mind like cold fingers.

  None of them spoke it aloud, but all of them knew. Something waited deeper in the dark.