The limp figure sagged when the last mark burned itself in. Another stepped in to steady them. From this distance, with the strange distortion between them, Rhaen could not see their faces.
But she could feel sothing.
Intention.
The desire that had driven them to cut these marks here. To turn this hall into sothing more than a passage.
They wanted control.
Control of the mana that flowed here. Control of the dungeon's growth. Control of whatever lay deeper down.
Her own chest hurt.
For a mont the scene in front of her twisted with sothing else.
The hall flickered.
The we blurred under her feet. The sigils at the far wall shifted, and suddenly she wasn't looking at robed strangers anymore. She saw her own team.
Four people around a small camp table in a low stone room.
Rik sitting cross-legged on a crate, teasing Jessa about her handwriting. Tam pulling off his boots with a groan. Lira—no, not this Lira, a different one, her squad's Lira—leaning over a half-finished map.
Rhaen herself standing at the edge of the lantern light, hands on the table, arguing with Kael's last order.
"Just mark the safe tiles and co back," he'd said, in that dry, calm way he had. "I don't need a hero. I need a usable route."
"And if 'usable' gets us killed?" she'd shot back.
He'd smiled then, tired and sharp.
"Then I send fewer people next ti," he'd said. "Counting corpses is still accounting. Bring sothing no one else has and I'll make sure no one you care about walks blind again."
Her throat tightened.
The mory cracked.
The hall didn't show what ca after—the screams, the crushed bodies, the tiles that ate half her team.
It didn't need to.
The weight of it was already in her bones.
The images layered.
Old miners. Proto-dungeon. Unknown sigil carvers. Her own squad.
All of them overlapping in the sa space.
The sa hall.
The sa grooves underfoot.
The sa intention repeating with different faces.
To take this place and make it theirs.
The sound rushed back in all at once.
Rhaen staggered.
Her bad leg buckled. She caught herself on her sword, chest heaving.
Sweat soaked the back of her neck, cold against her skin. Her side throbbed under the bandage.
For a long mont, she just knelt there, breath rasping.
The lines under her palms humd.
The hall had not just shown her things.
It had tasted what she felt about them.
Her anger at losing her team. Her tired loyalty to Kael. Her new, sharp refusal to let their deaths be just another number in soone else's report.
"You're recording ," she thought.
Not just where she stepped.
But why.
The idea made her stomach twist.
If the dungeon could eat bodies, this room ate intentions.
It collected them, layered them, replayed them.
Router, she thought, the word of Kael's tacticians sliding into place in her mind. Not just for mana. For mory. For will.
Ashen River used this hall to decide how to move its power.
And now it had a very clear, fresh taste of hers.
She pushed herself slowly to her feet.
Every muscle complained. Her head throbbed with the ghost of the visions. She ignored it.
"Fine," she thought. "Watch, then. But I pick where I walk."
She adjusted her grip on her sword and stepped off the junction, back into the flowing patterns.
Far above, the picture hanging over the war-table rippled like disturbed water.
For a second, the image of the hall vanished.
The pane went flat and grey. No columns, no gleaming lines, no small figure of a woman standing at the centre.
Then it snapped back.
The hall returned in a jolt, but wrong.
The angle was off by a few hand-spans. Lines that should have glowed bright looked dimr. One of the columns in the back flickered between cracked and whole.
Mikhailis stared at it, fingers tight around his cup.
This is new.
Rodion's voice slid through his thoughts, clean as ever, even if the picture in front of him was anything but.
On the pane, Rhaen's outline doubled for a heartbeat, then rejoined.
Lira stood just behind his shoulder, tray forgotten in her hands.
"That is not just my eyes, right?" she asked softly.
"No," he said. "If it was, I'd be more worried."
"That's your idea of comfort?" Cerys muttered from the side, arms folded, eyes narrowed at the flickering image.
Serelith rested her chin on one hand and watched the warping light with interest that was a little too sharp.
"If the dungeon is annoyed enough to start poking your toys," she said, "you must be doing sothing right."
Rodion answered.
Mikhailis almost smiled.
Out loud, he only said, "How bad?"
"Like mud in clear water," he murmured.
On the pane, a part of the floor vanished for a heartbeat. The hall looked like soone had cut a square out of reality and then pasted it back a fraction of a second late. Rhaen's foot moved, then moved again.
Elowen's fingers tightened around her cup.
"If it continues like this," she said quietly, "you will not be able to see anything useful very soon."
"Working on it," Mikhailis said.
He could feel the scouts through the link—small minds, sharp and focused, like points of light clinging to stone. Every ti one of them reached for the glowing sigils, a spike of discomfort hit the network.
"Pull them back from direct contact," he thought.
The order flowed down.
So of the scouts retreated, shifting into cracks just above the hall, watching with eyes only, not with mana-feelers in the grooves.
Others stayed, hanging on the far walls, their perceptions overlapping.
Rodion started to weave the separate views together.
The image over the table steadied a little.
Not perfect. But less like a broken mirror.
Cerys watched Rhaen's small figure move across the floor, her jaw tight.
"She is not even ours," she said. "And you are still throwing your… scouts into that storm."
"It's not for her," Mikhailis answered.
He paused.
"Not only for her," he added.
Lira's gaze slid sideways toward him.
"And if she dies while you experint?" she asked.
Her voice was calm, elegant, but there was steel under it.
"Then we lose a good pathfinder and gain so data," he said.
The words tasted like ash even as he said them.
Elowen's eyes narrowed.
"At so point," she murmured, "you will have to decide which matters more. The map, or the person drawing it."
I already decided, he thought. I just don't like the answer.
Rodion humd in the back of his mind.
"How non-trivial?" he thought.
Lira did not hear the numbers, but she watched his face.
"I don't care if the picture is noisy," she said, more sharply now. "I care if you start acting like she is just another input source. She is a person who is bleeding for information you are happily using."
The tent went quiet for a heartbeat.
Serelith's eyebrows arched.
"Oh?" she murmured, lips curving. "Our lady of the tray speaks."
Lira did not look away from Mikhailis.
"I have cleaned your coats after you ca back from the field," she said softly. "I know the difference between 'acceptable loss' on paper and the sll it has in a basin."
His throat tightened.
He held her eyes a mont longer, then inclined his head.
"You're right," he said. "She's not just an input source."
He looked back at the flickering pane.
"She is also the only idiot currently feeding us live data from a core-adjacent hall," he added. "Which makes her… complicated."
Elowen's mouth twitched despite herself.
"If you break the hive on the back of that complication," she said, "the dungeon will not need to hunt us. We will have done half its work."
"Noted," he said.
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