The sound of the rune-etched pick striking stone was the only thing that mattered.
Each blow from Borin landed with the force of a small earthquake. He was not just a strong man; he was a force of nature, his movements economical and devastatingly powerful. The ancient rock, which had held firm for a hundred years, groaned and fractured under the assault.
Arthur didn't help with the labor. His contribution was his mind. He pointed out stress fractures, directed Borin to a weaker join between boulders, and conserved their energy for the true trial ahead. Patrin, meanwhile, huddled by the cart, nervously sorting through tools they might need, his hands trembling.
Hours bled into one another.
Finally, with a great, grating roar, a huge keystone shifted and tumbled inwards, creating a dark, jagged hole in the rockfall.
A wave of stale air washed over them, hissing out of the darkness. It was the mountain's first breath in a century.
It smelled of deep, undisturbed stone, of bone-dry dust, and something else. A faint, unsettling scent, like corroded metal and old decay.
"That's it," Borin grunted, his massive chest heaving.
Arthur nodded, pulling a glowing crystal from his pack. Its cold, white light cut into the oppressive blackness beyond the hole. "Let's go. Stay close, Patrin."
He was the first one through.
The silence on the other side was absolute. It was a heavy, physical presence that pressed in on them, swallowing the sound of their footsteps and the nervous rustle of their gear.
This was not a natural cave. The tunnel was immense, wide enough for ten men to walk abreast. The walls were unnaturally smooth, carved by a forgotten technology. Faded, geometric patterns spiraled across the ceiling, where channels for light or water now lay dark and dead.
This was a lost highway. A tomb.
They walked for what felt like an hour, the only light coming from Arthur's crystal. The sheer scale of the tunnel was humbling. This was the work of an empire at its peak, a civilization that could command mountains.
Then they came upon the first sign of the battle.
A body. It was slumped against the wall, a desiccated husk still clad in the silver and blue armor of the old Empire. Its skin was stretched like parchment over a skeletal frame, its mouth open in a silent scream.
Then they saw another. And another. Soon, the tunnel floor was a macabre gallery of the dead.
"Gods..." Patrin whispered, his face pale in the crystal's light. He pointed a shaking finger at a different suit of armor, this one jagged and black. "That's one of Valerius's Shadow-guards. But… they're all mixed together."
It was true. Soldiers from both sides lay in chaotic heaps, not in proper battle lines. Some were back-to-back, as if protecting each other from a common enemy. Others seemed to have been struck down while running.
Arthur knelt beside one of the Shadow-guards, his Sovereign's Gaze active. The armor around the corpse's chest was melted, the edges bizarrely smooth, as if splashed with a powerful solvent. The tag that appeared was chilling. [Cause of Death: Hyper-Corrosive Agent].
He moved to another corpse, this one an Imperial soldier. Its limbs were twisted at impossible angles, the armor strangely dented from the inside. [Cause of Death: Massive Internal Ruptures].
Borin let out a low growl, his hand never leaving his axe. "This was no battle. It was a slaughter."
"Worse," Patrin breathed, pointing at the tunnel wall. "Look at the stone itself."
Arthur ran the crystal's light along the wall. The smooth, engineered surface was marred by huge, sweeping gouges. The edges of these marks were glassy and slightly bubbled, as if the rock itself had been melted and scooped away like soft butter.
He approached a third body, one that Patrin had been staring at in horror. The soldier's armor was cracked open, and a strange, shimmering crystal, like quartz, had grown out of its ribcage. A delicate, deadly bloom of translucent mineral.
[Cause of Death: Parasitic Crystallization].
Arthur stood up slowly, the pieces clicking into place in his mind. Acid. Internal explosions. A parasite that turned flesh to crystal. This wasn't one enemy. It was a nightmare that killed in a dozen different ways.
His thoughts flashed back to the purifier, to the [External Link: Severed] tag. This was no simple cave-in to stop an army. Kaelan hadn't been a fool. He had been a jailer. He hadn't collapsed the tunnel. He had sealed a containment breach. He had locked this horror in the mountain's heart, sacrificing the city's long-term survival for its immediate salvation.
"Commander..." Borin's voice was low, tense. The big man wasn't looking at the bodies anymore. He was staring at the far wall, his axe held at the ready. "There."
Arthur moved the light. Scrawled on the wall in what could only be dried blood were two words. A final, desperate warning left by the last soldier to die.
IT HEARS
The words seemed to pulse in the cold light. The silence that followed was deeper, more menacing than before. Every shadow seemed to lengthen, to twist with unseen malevolence.
And then, from the impenetrable darkness far down the tunnel ahead of them, a sound finally broke the century of stillness.
It was not a roar. It was not a shriek.
It was a faint, rhythmic click-scrape.
The sound of something hard and sharp, dragging itself slowly across the stone floor. It was the only thing moving in this entire, dead section of the world.
And it was getting closer.