The deeper they went, the stranger it became.

  It was as though the world around them had folded in on itself. No screams from without, no clash of steel, not even the distant rumble of siege weapons and crumbling masonry.

  Only silence surrounded them, aggressive and domineering. Their bootfalls muffled, swallowed by stone.

  The stench came stronger now, each wave more fetid than the last. It clung to their throats like spiders to web.

  The bastion itself seemed diseased, spewing toxic exhales of putrid breath from its gangrened lungs.

  Shadows shifted unnaturally. Some lingering too long, others vanished too soon.

  Always at the edge of vision. Never fully seen.

  The Stormguard advanced in formation. Alric taking point at the front, flanked by a shield-bearing soldier, short blade in hand.

  Behind them, the four sappers followed in disciplined step. The rear was guarded by three pairs of soldiers, eyes sharp, weapons drawn.

  As they neared the entrance to the central hall, the corridor widened, offering more room to manoeuvre.

  “My Lord…” One of the Stormguard muttered, unease barely masked.

  “I know.” Alric replied, his voice steady. He acknowledged the fear, unwilling to feed it.

  The ornate double doors loomed over head.

  Relics of a once proud authority, now marred by war and brokenness.

  With a silent nod, Alric signaled two of his men forward.

  They lowered their weapons, took hold of the metal rings, and pushed.

  Beyond lay a chamber wide enough to hold fifty armoured men.

  The architecture was stark, austere, cold.

  A long, wooden table dominated its center, ringed by high-backed chairs.

  At the far end of the room, a single raised stone dais supported the governor’s chair.

  There, strapped to the throne-like seat, was the man who they believed to be the rebel commander.

  He bore the name of ancient Valekyrian nobility: Maerenth Molvane.

  Once a voice in the Senate.

  Now, strangled by the cords of sin and judgement.

  He wore the marks of prolonged dread.

  Head lolled.

  Missing fingers.

  Nails torn out.

  Flesh bloated. Cut. Bruised.

  Dark patches of rotting skin scarring his entire frame.

  But what disfigured him above all else, were his eyes sewn shut with crude, metal wire.

  Blood, both fresh and crusted, streaked his face, weaving through his matted hair, and dripped to the ground in deliberate taps of scarlet.

  Tap.

  The blood flowed.

  Tap.

  The blood listened.

  TAP.

  The blood answered.

  Then… Nothing.

  It struck the ground like a bell tolling in reverse.

  And with it, sound absconded its rightful place.

  No breath. No rustle of armour. No footfalls.

  Not even the grinding of sabatons on stone produced a whisper.

  The world had taken in air, only to drown in a sea of silence.

  Alric’s eyes scanned the room. His men stood behind him, ready. Yet something had shifted.

  Their posture had stiffened.

  Jaws clenched.

  The weight of despair settling over their shoulders.

  One Stormguard stepped forward, hesitating, and reached for Alric’s shoulder.

  Alric turned.

  The man’s eyes pleaded: Turn back. Regroup. Rethink.

  Alric’s gaze, colder than steel, held him fast.

  Slowly, deliberately, he shook his head.

  Then, raising his gauntlet, he pointed upward with two fingers and fanned his hand.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The message had been delivered.

  We continue. Split. Begin search.

  His men understood immediately.

  They moved like extensions of his will, readying their blades, adjusting formation.

  Two sappers veered right, accompanied by two Stormguard.

  They hugged the outer wall, scanning each crack in the stone and every irregularity along the floor’s edge.

  One sapper crouched, tracing a finger along a discoloured seam in the masonry, while the other tested the flagstones with a gloved fist, feeling for loose plates or false hollows.

  To the left, the remaining two sappers crept wide beneath the broken arches of the chamber’s stained glass. Dust flared in faint shafts of light.

  Both guards escorting them watched their backs, blade drawn low, eyes cutting from pillar base to ceiling.

  One sapper ran a hand along the iron sconces, checking for catches or firetraps.

  The other pried up a floor tile with the curved end of his dagger’s sheath, nose wrinkling at the scent that puffed out.

  The penultimate two Stormguard remained by the double doors, facing outward, weapons poised to intercept whatever might pursue from behind.

  They spoke no words. Only flicks of the eyes, a slight shift of weight, the faintest nods between them.

  The last one remained near the entrance to the central hall, shoulders squared before the threshold.

  Should the unseen strike, or the curse activate, his duty was to flee outside and warn the others of what had happened inside.

  Alric, turned forward once more, toward the rebel leader.

  He strained to hear.

  Nothing.

  Not even his own heartbeat answered him any longer.

  His thoughts pressed against the inside of his skull like hammers, but even they dared not utter a single word.

  They had entered something older than silence.

  A burial of the senses. A space forgotten by sound.

  His ears prickled. Pressure, not pain.

  Like the seconds before thunder.

  Like the air just before the blast.

  And then.

  A swoosh.

  Delicate. Imagined. Real.

  It rippled beneath the stones,

  crawled through his marrow,

  up his spine.

  Like a parent tracing comfort into the back of a child during a storm.

  He resisted the urge to shout. It would go unanswered.

  Worse. It might feed the hex.

  Enough.

  He stepped forward, casting off the veil of horror descending upon him.

  Regarding his surroundings with careful eyes, sweeping his gaze across the hall, he moved ever closer the stone dais.

  His spine tingled. Fingers lovingly embracing his marrow like butterflies clinging to tiny branches.

  The circle came into view. Seemingly breathing itself into existance.

  Black powder, more clearly seen now without the ash, coiled in perfect symmetry across the room.

  It stretched beneath the table, spidering around the feet of the chairs, and radiated outward like arteries from a buried, dead heart.

  It reached shy of Molvane, as though only the blood from his blinded eyes was permitted to feed the dust-maw.

  Alric stopped and observed it.

  It was beautiful in a way that mocked the divine.

  It pulled at the eye, tantalizing the soul and mind.

  He had known it would be here. But expectation bore no understanding. Not in the face of such sacrilegious beauty.

  It baffled the mind. It burdened the senses.

  The intricacy of each intertwining sigil captivated the spirit. A bewitchment born of succubi whispering secrets shaped like salvation.

  It snaked its way through the eye, coiilng in the hollows of the mind.

  And there, it nested.

  He felt its call. Its pull.

  No.

  He killed the thought before it bloomed into something unspeakable.

  He turned back to the sappers.

  They answered in silence.

  One rested his palm on the hilt of his blade, shaking his head. Another gave a single nod.

  A third tapped the butt of his sheath against the floor, then mirrored the same refusal. The last ran his fingers along the wall and raised a thumb in quiet approval.

  No traps. No fire triggers. No pressure plates.

  Only powder. Only death.

  As he looked, an unsettling suspicion curled in his heart.

  That the circle was gazing back at him.

  He crushed the thought. Turned inward. Focused.

  Molvane. No mistaking it.

  Why like this though? Bound, hollowed, and displayed like a trophy to admire?.

  Not the mastermind probably. Someone else took the reins in his stead.

  Black powder. Ritual signs.

  A message.

  For me, the court, or both.

  The circle draws in.

  Doesn’t matter.

  I’ll tear him from that throne and make him speak.

  Having steeled his mind and decided on what course to take, he started his slow march.

  He would have to cross the outer edge of the circle and cross it fully to reach Maerenth.

  And as he put his sabaton on the outer rim’s dust, something shifted.

  The air felt… off.

  As if something had slithered between the beat of two breaths, lasting only for an instant, gone the moment Alric became aware of it.

  A bootfall. Then another.

  And just as he was about to place his foot beyond the outer rim of the circle, something called to him.

  Not in words, nor in sounds. But in thoughts and memories. As if the folds of time had spoken to him personally.

  “Don’t turn back. Whatever you do, don't turn your back on me. Please!”

  Neither spoken nor heard. Known from the beginning.

  As if it had always been there, buried in his bones.

  A warning whispered by his future self.

  He froze, shoulders taut, shield raised.

  Something was behind him.

  Slithering.

  Shaping.

  Becoming. Neither completely formed, neither fully formless.

  He felt it reaching for his shoulder with half-formed fingers. Cold. Childlike. Yearning.

  They lingered with the simulacrum of affection, as if miming love for a father long gone.

  The urge to strike the demon down came instinctively, but he held back.

  The voice, if one could call it that, had wept with fear, sorrow, and grief. Not malice.

  And though he knew better, he wanted to believe it.

  As though he’d known her since the beginning of time.

  So, he stood. Still as marble. Silent as the crypt around him.

  A minute passed. Then two.

  What had been the formless form, became shifting shadow, now just the breath of air touching skin.

  Mimicking caresses.

  Prodding his cheek.

  Lovingly hugging.

  Enduring the defilment, he stepped over the circle’s heart.

  As he did so, the world tilted.

  The shadow, now gone, gave way to a pallor of grey, as though the walls had expelled the very notion of colour from their essence.

  The room felt suffocating, but familiar.

  Distant, yet close.

  The kind of closeness that presses against the ribs like a blade to the heart, and blood to the fabric.

  He almost tripped over himself taking that final step, as if his mind had forgotten what it meant to have feet.

  His legs moved. But it felt rehearsed, not lived.

  Like the memory of having walked.

  His pauldrons, once snug on his shoulders, were now pressing against his chest.

  His body rediscovering the meaning of being flesh and bone.

  Gravity also betrayed him.

  He felt it pulling and prodding from all directions, like in a lake of heavy water too deep to walk in, but too shallow to swim in.

  Time, too, forgot to breathe its last second.