The Holdfast's noise thinned to a hush the deeper Lucas went, like someone was pinching the sound out of the air. The upper galleries still thrummed with carts and voices and the soft pulse of blue veins in the stone, but down here the light dimmed and the echo of his boots turned private. Blue flickers stuttered along the tunnel ribs, then slipped toward a color that didn't belong in these shafts—gold, faint as breath on a window.
"OSHA would have a stroke," he muttered, ducking under a bent crossbeam. "Mandatory handrails. Emergency exits. Maybe a sign that says 'Welcome to the death tunnel, please enjoy your stay.'"
His Vein Sense rode quietly behind his thoughts, tugging him left around a choke of fallen rock, then right past an abandoned winch where a rusted hook still swung in a draft that shouldn't exist. Every so often the bracer on his wrist answered with a soft thrum, as if the veins were tapping back through metal and skin.
The air changed—drier, metallic. He slowed. The old service tunnel ahead pinched into darkness. His Reaper's Hook gave a small, almost embarrassed vibration in his palm.
"Great," he whispered. "My shovel-knife is nervous. That's a good sign."
Then came the smell. Ozone, hot stone… and wet fur.
A low growl crawled up the tunnel and through his ribs.
"Please be a lost miner dog," Lucas said. He lifted the Hook, stance instinctive now. A pair of eyes opened in the dark, gold on gold, and the fur on his arms prickled.
The shape stepped into the light in pieces—the broad muzzle, the slab shoulders, the crown of crystal spiking from the skull, glossy black veined with a sickly, glimmering gold. Cold blue mist laced its breath. The crystal crown hummed, a disharmonious chord against the tunnel's heartbeat.
A pane slid across Lucas's vision, clean and cruel.
[Crowned Wolf — Lv. 9]
Corrupted Vein Mutation. Predatory. Unstable.
"Of course it's level nine," he said. "Why not throw in a miniboss while we're at it?"
The wolf came without a warning lunge, just there and then closer, claws throwing sparks from stone. Lucas rolled hard; air flashed where his stomach had been. His shoulder clipped a rib of rock, pain bright and immediate. He staggered up in time to hook the Hook's curve under one jag of crystal. The pull wrenched his elbows; the beast's head snapped down and sideways, its momentum breaking a pace short of him, claws screeching.
Tight tunnel. Bad footing. Fast enemy. He didn't bother thinking it through—he let the rhythm he'd hammered into himself on the training grounds carry him. Step, slip, cut. The Hook hissed as it crossed nothing; the wolf's muzzle caught moon-pale light and then vanished again into shadow.
Another growl, lower. It feinted left; he bit, swung, felt the blade ring off crystal.
"Noted," he grunted. "Head's a no-go unless I want to snap my wrists."
The bracer flared. He didn't tell it to; the decision had already happened somewhere between fear and need. Heat licked his palm. The Hook vibrated from the inside out, veins of light waking along the metal like a constellation sketching itself in a rush.
[Skill Used: Vein Channeling — Lv. 2]
Temporary Buff: Weapon Infusion (20s)
"Right," he breathed. "Let's try again. Have a feeling this time it will do some damage."
The wolf launched. Lucas stepped into it, not away, and drove the blade up along the seam of fur and flesh beneath the crystal jaw. The impact detonated a burst of gold static. The shock ran through his arms and spine and threw him back onto one knee; the creature yelped, a sound like metal torn in half, and crashed sideways into the wall. Golden sparks skittered across the tunnel floor and fizzled out.
The crown's black facets glowed from within now, hairline fractures spidering across them like frost racing a window. Blue mist boiled around the wolf's muzzle. It shook its head hard enough to crack stone.
"I don't know what you are," Lucas panted, hauling himself to his feet, "but you really need to moisturize."
The beast came again, slower only by a heartbeat and angrier for it. He slid left along the wall, ducked the swat that would have turned his ribs into pebbles, caught the lowering of the skull at the last breath and took the only open line—under the chin, behind the jaw hinge where the crystal didn't grow.
The Hook buried deep. Gold sang through metal and meat. The wolf shrieked, legs spasming; the crown split along the brightest of the fractures and blew outward in a shower of glittering dust. The creature's weight sagged into the blade. Lucas wrenched free and stumbled back as it collapsed in a heavy, twitching heap.
Silence came back in one loud piece. Dust hung like tiny stars in the lamp glow.
A window blinked to life.
[Crowned Wolf lvl 9 — Defeated]
EXP +250
[Level Up! Lv. 5 Achieved]
HP +20 | ST +15 | STR +1 | AGI +1 | INT +1 | MP +5
Lucas stood there for a few seconds, listening to his breath bounce off the stone and the soft, post-storm hum of the Hook cooling in his grip. A faint golden line still ran along its curve, like the weapon had learned a new way to glow and wasn't ready to forget.
He crouched by the body. The fur around the wound was singed black and dusted gold; underneath, the flesh had already begun to gray as the corrupted energy fled whatever shell it had owned.
Near the ruined crown, something pulsed—no, answered. He pinched it free with two fingers. The fragment was no bigger than a coin, warm and wrong, its inner light swaying between blue and gold like a candle arguing with itself. It made the bracer thrum in a way that prickled the hair along his wrists.
"Let's see what Karen can do with this."
Lucas slid it into his jacket.
He wiped the Hook on the wolf's shoulder, or what was left of it, checked the blade for nicks (none; Karn knew his craft), and straightened. The hum on his wrist nudged again, south and down, where the service tunnel narrowed into a throat of stone.
"Ready for round two," he said, and went.
The floor tipped slightly and the air cooled, the way it did when a cavern opened ahead. He slowed again as etchings appeared in the rock, shallow at first, then deeper—spirals and ribs and clustered sigils that didn't look cut so much as grown. Someone, or something, had taught the stone to keep notes.
He wiped dust with the back of his hand. Warm. The spiral didn't simply glow; it pulsed, a heartbeat caught in mineral. In the corner of memory he saw Jeff's napkin maps, the curling loops and careful, casual lines.
"'Sometimes you just listen to what the walls are humming,'" Lucas said under his breath, and put his palm against the mark.
Light ran up his arm like water finding a channel. His stomach dropped. For a slice of a second he was nowhere and everywhere, a web of blue and gold spooling out from him through mountains and galleries and nameless hollows. He was a bead on the net and the net itself; he felt the weight of stone and the ache of fractures, the quick ribbon-rush of healthy flow and the slow, wrong churn of places where something had settled and soured.
A fracture opened in that imagined web and the world jerked. Opening a new way for Lucas to go through. He tore his hand away with a shout. Pain shot through his wrists and elbows, bright and neat as wires sparking.
Two panes snapped into being, cool and clinical above his panting.
[Skill Leveled Up: Vein Channeling → Lv. 3]
Efficiency increased. Minor resistance to feedback gained.
[Skill Leveled Up: Vein Sense → Lv. 3]
Sensory range expanded. Emotional resonance detectable.
He leaned his shoulder to the wall until the shaking eased. Faint lines of gold clung to the skin of his palm, then faded like chalk in rain.
"You couldn't just had a door like a normal person would. No, you had to had a magical entrance that only opens when one is in severe pain after using this weird golden power."
The carvings dimmed again to their patient throb. Down-tunnel, the glow he'd been chasing gathered itself and settled, a low, steady light pooling around a bend. Not blue. Not any shade the Holdfast sanctioned. Gold like dawn trapped under a mountain.
He tightened the strap of the mask across his face and set the Hook's haft more firmly in his palm. His ducks peeked below the edge of the veinwoven jacket; the sight made him huff once, a pocket-laugh in the quiet.
"Alright, Heart, I'm here," he said to the humming stone. "Let's see what all the fuzz is about."
He rounded the bend toward the glow, toward the opening that hadn't been there last week and had probably always been here. The light rose to meet him.