The Ashen River dungeon was a nightmare of black stone and humming magic.
Mikhailis had seen ruins, tombs, corrupted groves, and experintal labs gone wrong.
Nothing felt like this.
The landscape around the Ashen River felt dead and awake at the sa ti. The river itself flowed thin and dark, like a wound cutting through the land. Jagged black stones jutted from the banks, slick with so kind of faint, colorless sheen that didn’t look like water.
Mist clung low to the ground, thick and pale, moving like it was breathing. Every now and then, it shimred faintly when mana currents shifted.
The dungeon entrance wasn’t a nice circular door or grand archway.
It was a broken scar in the cliffside—a shattered arch of old stone, half-lted, half-cracked. Strange sigils crawled across its surface like old scars that hadn’t healed properly. So glowed faintly. Others were dark, but he could feel their presence like old anger.
Mikhailis walked alone toward that shattered arch.
His escort had stopped far behind, at the safe radius they had agreed on. He could feel their eyes on his back even from here.
Technomancer scouts watched from an even greater distance. He could pick out their silhouettes on a far ridge: armored outlines, faint chanical glints, constructs standing unnaturally still.
Lovely audience, he thought. No pressure at all.
Cold wind cut across the open ground and tugged at his coat.
Inside his glasses, Rodion’s interface pulsed quietly.
Thanks for the review, Mikhailis thought.
He didn’t answer aloud. Not here.
He adjusted the strap of his bag, feeling the weight of his tools, his scrolls, and the small hidden vial containing his first batch of Chira Ant scouts.
He halved his breath, letting it in slowly, letting it out even slower.
Then he stepped under the broken arch.
It felt like walking through a layer of cold honey.
The air shifted instantly.
Sound dulled.
The faint breeze outside vanished. The sll changed from river and stone to old dust, tal, and sothing like burned ozone.
The dungeon welcod him in its own way.
Not a warm welco.
More like a deep inhale.
He walked forward cautiously, each footfall asured and light.
The corridor ahead was made of the sa dark stone as the cliffs, but smoother, as if sothing had lted and re-shaped it long ago. Sigils were carved into the walls at regular intervals, so glowing faintly, others inert.
Rodion murmured.
He adjusted his steps slightly.
"Of course you’d be excited about gravity," he muttered under his breath.
The first illusion hit a few ters in.
It wasn’t a visual one.
It was auditory.
Whispers slid along the walls, faint at first, then clearer. Old voices, maybe. Angry. Desperate. Promises. Threats. His na.
He recognized the pattern.
He slowed down, shut his eyes, and deliberately tapped his finger against his thigh in a fixed rhythm.
One-two-three. One-two-three-four. Repeat.
The whispers tried to match it.
He changed the pattern.
They missed a beat.
Echo illusions, he thought. They want to lose track of ti, not direction.
He refused.
When he opened his eyes again, the corridor was unchanged. The whispers faded into background noise.
He moved deeper.
Gravity shifted more noticeably now. One step felt heavier than the last; another felt almost too light. The stone under his boots sotis humd faintly as he passed, like a tuning fork being shaken.
He used simple tricks.
A small weighted charm on a string to check for hidden pull.
A mirror shard to see around certain corners.
Chalk marks on the wall to track where illusions tried to make the corridor look longer or shorter.
All the while, Rodion fed him quiet data.
Noted.
At two specific points—carefully chosen, with Rodion’s help and his own instincts—he slowed down and stepped very deliberately into the shadows where the scrying lines couldn’t reach.
They had mapped the approximate angles earlier: where Technomancer scryers could see from their vantage points, and where Serelith’s own observation magic might be watching.
In those tiny blind spots, Mikhailis slipped his hand into his coat and touched the small container at his side.
"Wake up," he whispered.
Ants the size of his thumb slid out onto his palm.
They were almost invisible in this light, their chitin a shadowy mix of black and dull violet, patterns shifting slightly as they adapted to the dungeon’s glow.
Through the link in his mind, he felt them like small, awake minds at the edge of his awareness.
Anchor unit one, he thought clearly. Objective: map. Stay hidden. Avoid direct conflict. Use cracks, old lines, sub-surfaces.
One of them responded in a faint ntal pulse that wasn’t quite words.
Anchor. Mapping begins.
They crawled off his hand and vanished into a narrow hairline crack between stones, their bodies flattening in a way normal insects couldn’t manage.
He stepped back into the line of sight.
To anyone watching, he had just paused to adjust his bag or catch his breath.
He repeated the act deeper in.
Another blind spot.
Another small pause.
Another handful of scouts into the wall, into the floor, into hidden cavities of cursed stone.
The dungeon reacted faintly.
He felt it like a shift in the air pressure. The humming in the walls changed pitch. Sigils near his hand glowed a little brighter for a mont, then dimd.
But the ants weren’t normal intruders.
Their necromantic-shadow nature let them blend with the dungeon’s own twisted mana, like smoke mixing with fog.
He moved deeper.
His ribs already ached from holding his breath too often.
His eyes stung from the flickering lights and shifting illusions.
Finally, the corridor opened into a large chamber.
The ceiling rose high above, vanishing into shadow. The walls here were covered with more complex sigils, spiraling patterns that seed to twist if he stared too long.
In the middle of the chamber stood the golem.
It was huge.
A massive construct of stone and tal, layered with old runes and newer repairs. Its body was humanoid in shape but exaggerated—arms too long, hands with thick fingers ending in blunt, crushing tips. Plates of dark tal were fused with stone, and between them, faint radiant lines pulsed, like veins of light.
Its face was blank except for two closed eye-like slits.
It looked dormant.
It wasn’t.
His intel—Arcane and Technomancer both—said this construct was one of the dungeon’s anchor points. A physical focus for so part of its will.
They also said it didn’t attack everything.
Only certain things.
Only certain attempts.
Ti for you to throw out, he thought.
He took a few steps forward, boots echoing softly in the wide chamber.
He let his mana flare just a little. Not in a wild way. In a precise, sharp spike that made it clear he was both strong and pushing deeper.
The golem did not move at first.
The dungeon did.
He felt it.
Sothing invisible pressed in on him, like a large hand suddenly cupping the air around his body. The humming in the walls rose, layering into discordant notes.
Then the golem’s eyes opened.
Two slits went from dark to searing white-blue in a blink.
The construct shifted.
Stone groaned.
tal plates scraped and clicked.
Its head turned toward him in a slow, unnatural movent that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
"Hi," he said dryly. "I’m here for the ’no survivors’ tour."
Rodion said.
"Relax," Mikhailis murmured. "We want it angry."
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