The Tier-3 entrance was a vertical shaft behind a cracked seal that shouldn’t have opened for another two years according to the novel.
The crack from the first tremor ran through the center of the seal in a jagged line that pulsed faintly with shadow-bleed.
Troy went first.
His knight’s light filled the shaft in a cold white glow that pushed the shadows back about ten feet before they pushed back.
Soren followed with Grimm pressed against his leg.
Selah descended third, frost coating each handhold she used.
Maren ca last, her body heat drying the frost on the rungs as fast as Selah laid it down, and the hiss of evaporation followed them all the way to the bottom.
Hansel Jay stayed at the top to watch the entrance because soone had to and because Hansel’s Stoneback Beetle was better suited for holding a position than moving through narrow corridors.
◆◆◆◆
The first sublevel was wrong.
Soren knew the layout from four wiki reads and the corridors were supposed to be straight.
The walls curved where they should have been flat and the spacing between chambers was compressed so doors that should have been thirty ters apart were ten.
The Fracture’s approach had warped the internal structure.
Mob spawns were double density.
Three stone beetles where the novel said there should be one.
Shadow constructs in corridors that were supposed to be empty.
They fought through the first two chambers in tight formation, Troy’s knight cutting a path and Selah’s frost slowing everything that tried to flank.
Maren stayed behind Selah while keeping her hands down.
Soren could see the effort it cost her because the muscles in her forearms were pulled tight and her knuckles were faintly gold at the edges.
"The map is wrong," Soren said after the second chamber. "It’s all wrong."
Troy looked at him. "How wrong?"
"The boss room is in the wrong location. Corridors are compressed. The dungeon is folding in on itself."
"Because of the Fracture?"
"Because whatever is sleeping down here is pulling the space tighter around itself."
Troy’s knight flickered once, a thing it had never done in the novel until Chapter two hundred.
"How far," Troy said.
Soren checked the system.
[DING! — Tier-3 sublevel structural integrity: 44%. Internal geography: deviated. Estimated layout accuracy from tar’s prior knowledge: 31%.]
Two-thirds of everything he knew about this dungeon was now wrong.
"Far enough that I can’t guide us by mory anymore," Soren said. "We’re going by instinct from here."
"Your instinct or hers?" Troy nodded at Grimm.
Grimm was pointed straight down the corridor.
Her ears were forward and her body was taut and she hadn’t made a sound since they entered the shaft.
"Both," Soren said.
◆◆◆◆
The third chamber had a variant Soren had never seen.
A shadow-construct made of compressed darkness that moved on six legs and hit the ground hard enough to crack the stone floor. It ca out of the ceiling.
Troy’s knight caught the first strike.
Selah froze two of its legs.
Maren flared her hands just enough to light the chamber so everyone could see.
Grimm circled behind it and waited.
The construct swung for Selah, she ducked it and the backswing caught Soren’s arm.
Then it turned and charged at Grimm.
The hit was clean.
The construct’s forelimb caught her flank, she went sliding across the stone floor and the sound she made Soren had never heard from her and never wanted to hear again.
He ran.
Troy was shouting sothing behind him and Selah was yelling his na but he was already across the chamber on his knees with his hands on Grimm’s muzzle.
The bond was stretched tight between them, pain coming through the connection.
"Get up," he said.
She pushed her head into his hands.
Soren could feel her ribs moving under the fur and one of them was wrong, shifted, the impact had cracked it.
"Get up, Grimm. Please."
She stood but cost her. He could feel it.
[DING! — Bond Tier 3 with Grimm achieved. Trust Event: [LIFE-OR-DEATH DEPENDENCY]. Tar prioritized bonded entity’s survival over tactical position. Ability unlocked: Pack Sense.]
Pack Sense hit him and the world split open.
Every shadow in the sublevel beca a window.
He could see through all of them at once, a map of the entire dungeon drawn in negative space.
He saw the corridors.
He saw the remaining mobs.
He saw the path to the crystal chamber that the warped layout had hidden.
And he saw what was inside it.
Troy killed the construct while Soren knelt on the floor processing the fact that he could now feel every shadow in the building.
Selah crouched next to him. "Are you okay?"
"New ability," he said. "Give a second."
"Your nose is bleeding."
She put her hand on his shoulder and left it there and didn’t say anything else.
◆◆◆◆
They reached the crystal chamber forty minutes later.
The room was huge, the ceiling lost in darkness, and at the center a crystal formation grew out of the floor and into the rock above in a structure.
Sothing was inside it.
Sothing with wolf ears.
Grimm stopped walking.
Her whole body locked, her head ca up and through the bond one word ca through.
The first word she had spoken with real emotion since she’d gone silent.
Mother.
Soren looked at the crystal and then he looked at Grimm and then he looked at the crystal again.
[DING! — Entity detected: FIRST SHADOW. Classification: Primordial Beast. Status: DORMANT. Relationship to bonded beast Yara Hale: PROGENITOR.]
[DING! — WARNING: if awakened, this entity will attempt to reclaim all shadow-type bonds in the facility. Including yours.]
Troy had drawn his sword.
Maren’s hands were glowing gold.
Selah’s frost was climbing up her arms.
Grimm pressed against Soren’s leg, she was shaking and he put his hand on her head and held it there.
Inside the crystal, sothing that might have been an eye moved.
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