"Mana stress lines?" she muttered. "Or just wear?"
She couldn’t be sure. But when she chose her path, she found herself avoiding the places where the lines clustered, stepping instead where the stone looked untouched.
She didn’t know that the faint marks were left where sothing else had walked in careful patterns. To her, they were just another datum.
She descended to the next terrace along a narrow switchback.
The first trap found her there.
The terrace was covered in square tiles, each about the size of her boot. So were cracked, others pristine. A faint flicker of light moved beneath the surface of a few.
Rhaen stopped at the edge.
"Of course," she sighed.
She drew a coin from her pouch and whispered a small chant, infusing it with a flicker of mana.
Then she tossed it onto the tiles.
It landed, bounced once—and vanished.
Half a heartbeat later, a spike of concentrated light shot up where it had been, punching into the air and then fading.
Rhaen raised an eyebrow.
"Good to know," she said.
She crouched and studied the tiles more closely.
The cracks ford patterns. So seed connected in invisible lines. Others were isolated.
She chose a tile near the edge that looked solid and lightly tapped it with her boot.
Nothing happened.
"Safe," she murmured.
She stepped onto it and, using a piece of chalk, marked a small cross.
Slowly, carefully, she tested another tile in front of her.
A spike of light erupted inches from her toes.
"Not safe," she said.
She worked her way across the terrace one tile at a ti, mapping safe stepping stones with chalk until she reached the other side.
By the ti she stepped off onto plain rock again, sweat dampened her back.
"Dungeon hates us on principle," she muttered.
The dungeon did not answer.
The first creatures to greet her were small.
At a bend where a mana stream cut close to the path, sothing latched onto her boot.
She jerked her leg up, expecting a rock.
Instead, a translucent leech-like thing clung to the leather, its body pulsing faintly as it drank.
A second and third latched onto her other boot, drawn by the warmth of her presence.
Rhaen swore and shook her feet.
They held on.
She drew one of her short blades and slashed down, slicing through the leeches’ bodies.
They burst into sticky, glowing sli.
Her boots tingled as the mana they had been drinking rushed back out.
"Crystal leeches," she muttered. "Nasty."
She nudged the remains with her blade.
The cores inside—the tiny, hardened bits—glimred faintly.
She popped one free and weighed it in her hand.
"Worth sothing," she said.
She tucked a few into a pouch and moved on.
Ti blurred into a slow, careful dance.
Rhaen skirted mana streams that flowed too fast, used broken pillars as cover when crossing open spaces, and tested every new surface before stepping fully onto it.
Where the air slled faintly of ozone, she knew lightning traps could be nearby. She threw pebbles ahead, listening for unnatural echoes.
Where the mana currents swirled without pattern, she stayed away entirely.
Every so often, she stopped, pulled a scrap of leather from her pocket, and sketched a rough map.
Here, a safe crossing. There, a tile field to avoid. Up ahead, the outline of a broken archway that might hide sothing useful.
Her bag grew heavier with collected cores and small relics—nothing ga-changing yet, but enough that a lesser team would have turned back already, content with profit.
She didn’t turn back.
The first treasure room looked almost shy.
Half-buried in a wall near a gently flowing mana channel, an archway jutted out—its top cracked, its sides stained.
Faint, old sigils lined the stone.
Rhaen stepped closer and brushed dust away.
So of the symbols matched the briefing Kael’s scholars had given them.
"Storage node," she murmured. "Not a spawn point."
She laid her palm against the arch.
No imdiate reaction. Just a slow, steady thrum.
She opened Thane’s small rune-book and flipped through the pages until she found a sketch of a similar structure.
"Interlocking channels," she said. "If I invert this one... and this..."
She traced two of the lines with her finger, imagining the flow paths.
Then she drew a tiny, careful glyph at the base of the arch, redirecting a thread of mana.
The air inside the arch shimred.
With a soft sigh, the invisible barrier dissolved.
Inside lay a narrow chamber.
Crates—old, cracked, but still mostly intact—lined the walls. A pair of tal fras sat in the centre, their shapes half-lted. A dim light pulsed from within a couple of them.
Rhaen checked the corners first, making sure nothing waited to bite her ankles.
When nothing leapt out, she stepped fully inside.
The crates held rods and plates of strange alloy, lighter than iron but tougher. She picked up one and flexed it experintally.
"Armourers will drool over this," she said.
Two small cores sat in a tal bowl on a shelf, humming quietly.
She pocketed them.
The broken construct fras were mostly useless, but the etched designs along their sides told stories of how the dungeon had once shaped guardians.
Rhaen traced one pattern with a fingertip, then shook her head.
"I’m not a scholar," she said. "I’ll bring back the parts that pay."
Before she left, she carved a tiny Kharadorn claim rune on the inside wall, hidden behind a crate.
"Just in case we ever admit we were here," she said.
She found the second cache near a mana river.
A broken pillar leaned at an angle, creating a small hollow behind it. The air there slled faintly sweet.
When she peered around the pillar, she saw a cluster of crystalline bulbs sprouting from the floor, their surfaces glossy.
They pulsed gently with light.
Rhaen’s instincts prickled.
She reached for her silence talisman—a thin strip of tal engraved with runes—and pressed it to her throat.
The world muffled. Her own breath sounded distant.
She moved slowly into the hollow.
As she approached, the bulbs quivered.
Thin filants extended from their bases, tasting the air.
She spotted the root—a thick, crystal-veined mass embedded in the rock.
Without a word, she stepped in close and slashed her blade through the root.
The bulbs twitched once, their light flaring, then went dim.
"Guardian plant," she thought. "Tied to sound and vibration."
Behind the cluster, a low stone chest sat half-buried.
Inside she found scroll tubes bound with tal bands, their surfaces etched with pre-dungeon ritual sigils, and a relic hilt with no blade, humming faintly in her palm.
She wrapped the hilt carefully and slid it into her pack.
Piece by piece, a picture ford in her mind—of a floor once orderly and controlled, now broken and angry.
No wonder the prince almost died, she thought as she skirted the distant portal plaza with deep wariness. This place hates us on principle.
She didn’t know that each room she opened, each cache she emptied, each trap she marked, left traces.
Mana flows shifted slightly. Empty spaces where weight had once been changed how currents moved. The faint scuff marks on stone grew more nurous.
In shadowed crevices, small shapes stirred.
But she felt watched only in the way any experienced soldier did—in the sense that the world itself had eyes.
The path to the second floor did not look special at first.
Rhaen had been following a mana river along the edge of a terrace, using its steady glow as a guide, when it reached a cliff and fell.
The liquid light poured over the edge in a silent cascade.
Halfway down, it vanished into nothing.
She frowned and edged closer, careful not to let her boots slide.
The drop below was filled with misty blue haze.
She picked up one of the leech corpses from her pouch and tossed it into the falling mana.
It rode the stream down, glowing faintly... then vanished.
She waited.
Nothing.
No flash. No scream. No explosion.
She tied a stone to the end of her rope and lowered it over the edge.
It fell, fell... then the rope went slack.
She pulled it back up.
The end was warm, but intact.
"Vertical shaft," she said. "Hidden by the mana. Like the one we ca down, but calr."
She checked her ribs, tightening the bandage. Her breath ca short but manageable.
She swapped her heavier gear for lighter, tucking away anything that might catch.
"Last chance to turn around," she told the empty air.
The dungeon did not answer.
She smiled without humour.
"Thought so."
She whispered a short, crooked prayer—more habit than faith—to whatever half-forgotten god watched fools like her.
Then she stepped into the falling light.
The mana pressed against her, warm and smooth.
For a mont, she floated.
Then gravity rembered her, and she slid down, hugging the cliff wall, boots finding small holds on the way.
The light thickened, then thinned.
Her feet hit sothing soft.
She staggered and dropped to one knee.
The ground beneath her glowed faintly—soft moss that cushioned her landing.
She stayed there for a mont, breathing hard.
Then she laughed once, hoarse.
"Kael, you idiot," she whispered. "You were right to trust us. I made it."
When she lifted her head, the second floor of Ashen River unfolded around her.
Crystal columns rose like trees from the glowing moss, their surfaces shot through with veins of light. So were clear, others cloudy, catching and bending the ambient glow.
Between them, strange jellylike constructs drifted lazily, bobbing as if on unseen currents. Small clusters of leeches clung to the bases of so columns, feeding on slow mana seep.
The air was cool and almost pleasant, with a faint, tallic tang.
Rhaen pushed herself to her feet.
She took a cautious step forward and brushed the moss with her fingers.
A gentle coolness flowed up her arm. The ache in her muscles eased slightly.
After a few seconds, her thoughts felt... fuzzy.
She jerked her hand back.
"Helpful and dangerous," she said. "Of course."
She wiped her hand on her trousers and rolled her shoulders.
Tactically, the place was both a blessing and a nightmare.
The crystal trunks offered plenty of cover. Line-of-sight would be short. Good if sothing threw projectiles. Bad if sothing liked to lunge from behind.
She drew one of her blades and used the tip to carve tiny marks into the nearest trunk.
Breadcrumbs.
If she had to run, she wanted so hope of not sprinting in circles.
She moved between the columns, steps soft on the moss.
The jelly constructs ignored her, drifting along their own paths. Once, one floated close enough that she felt its mana field brush her skin—a tingling sensation, not imdiately hostile.
"Let’s keep it that way," she murmured, easing past.
Near a cluster of three columns that leaned together, she found a small hollow filled with crystalline shards.
They glead faintly, as if recently broken.
She crouched and sifted through them.
Several were worthless, just sharp glass. A few, though, had solid cores that pulsed steadily.
She collected those.
"Mini-hoard," she said. "Leftovers from sothing bigger dying here."
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