The hastily barricaded side tunnel offered only temporary respite. Sounds of pursuit faded behind Borin’s strategically triggered rockfalls, leaving them in a tense, echoing silence broken only by their own ragged breaths. They pushed onward, deeper into levels of the mountain Borin confessed hadn't been mapped in living memory.

  "These tunnels…" the Duergar muttered, running a hand along the sweating rock wall, his lantern light catching strange, crystalline formations unseen above. "Old workings. Some say cursed. Sealed off after… collapses. Unexplained disappearances, even before the Blight." He shook his head, his expression grim. "Going deeper feels wrong. Like trespassin'."

  The air grew steadily warmer, thick with the taste of sulfur and damp earth. Steam vented from hairline cracks in the stone, hot enough to sting exposed skin. Isolde walked with a constant, low-level tremor running through her, the psychic 'presence' no longer a fleeting touch but a constant, heavy pressure against her mind, making coherent thought difficult. It felt like wading through thick, cold syrup laced with malice.

  "The presence… it's much stronger here," she managed, her voice strained, wiping sweat from her brow despite the chill dampness clinging to the rock. "Focused. Ahead."

  Lyraen nodded, their pale eyes scanning the tunnel walls, tracing unseen lines of energy. "The natural telluric currents are severely distorted. Warped. Converging towards a significant anomaly."

  Edmund kept his hand on his sword, his senses straining against the oppressive atmosphere. Every flicker of shadow, every distant rumble of shifting rock, felt amplified, menacing. "Whatever it is," he said, his voice tight, "we're getting close."

  The signs grew more blatant, more disturbing. Veins of sickly, pulsating violet light snaked through the rock itself, warm to the touch, seeming to throb with a slow, diseased pulse. They passed sections where the stone was fused with grotesque fungal growths that seemed almost… vascular, pulsing in rhythm with the light veins.

  Discarded Duergar machinery appeared more frequently—rusted ore carts embedded in fleshy Blight-mass, drill components overgrown with pulsating sacs, heavy gears partially dissolved by corrosive slime. It looked less like random corruption and more like deliberate… integration. As if the Blight were consuming and repurposing the remnants of Duergar industry.

  "Stone take them," Borin choked out, staring in horror at a complex Duergar pressure regulator now fused into a pulsating fungal mass, tubes feeding into it like grotesque arteries. "That… that controlled geothermal pressure for three levels. Precision work! Now look at it! Defiled!"

  Isolde reached out tentatively towards one of the glowing veins in the wall. As her gloved fingertips brushed the surface, she recoiled as if burned, gasping. "Cold," she whispered, her eyes wide. "Not heat… but a feeling. Like… like touching alien thought. Pure calculation."

  Lyraen knelt, examining a patch of strange, heat-resistant fungi growing near a steaming fissure. "Fascinating," they murmured, though their voice lacked its usual detachment. "The Blight is not merely surviving the geothermal activity; it appears to be drawing energy from it, adapting, integrating the heat into its corrupted life cycle." They pointed ahead. "The energy convergence is extremely sharp now. We are very close to the source."

  Edmund scouted cautiously around a bend where the tunnel widened slightly, the heat becoming almost unbearable. The air ahead shimmered, thick with heat haze and something else—a low, resonant thrumming that vibrated through the soles of his boots.

  He waved them forward, then peered around the final corner. What lay beyond wasn't a tunnel, but the threshold of a vast natural cavern, illuminated by an unholy, pulsating light. Edmund froze, his breath catching in his throat, unable to process the sheer scale of the horror before them.

  The cavern was immense, far larger than Sector Gamma. Geothermal heat radiated in visible waves from cracks in the floor and walls, where rivers of molten rock likely flowed deep below. And in the center, suspended in the superheated air by thick, root-like tendrils of Blighted fungus anchored to the cavern roof and floor, pulsed the source of the intelligence.

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  It was a nightmare made manifest. A colossal mass of interwoven fungal matter, glowing Duergar machinery, and crackling geothermal conduits, all fused into a single, horrifying entity easily the size of a large house. Sickly violet and green light pulsed rhythmically from deep within its core, casting grotesque shadows across the cavern walls. Thick, translucent tubes, disturbingly like veins, snaked through the mass, carrying pulsing fluids of corrupted energy drawn directly from the geothermal vents below. Smaller Blighted creatures—shapes barely recognizable as Duergar or mountain beasts—crawled across its surface like parasites, tending to ruptured conduits or reinforcing fungal anchors with jerky, purposeful movements. The air thrummed with a low, resonant, gut-churning frequency, the source of the vibration they'd felt earlier. It felt obscenely, terrifyingly alive.

  Borin stumbled forward, stopping beside Edmund, his face paling beneath his beard, his hand gripping his pickaxe until his knuckles were white. "Stone Fathers… Mother Earth… what is that abomination?"

  Lyraen appeared beside them, their usual calm composure fractured, their pale eyes wide with horrified awe. "A syncretic bio-mechanical entity," they whispered, their voice barely audible above the thrumming. "A perversion of natural cycles on an unprecedented scale. Life, earth energy, Duergar craft… all consumed and repurposed into… this."

  Isolde staggered to the threshold, leaning heavily against the rock wall, one hand pressed to her temple. The psychic 'noise' emanating from the nexus was overwhelming, a deafening roar of cold, alien thought—calculation, hunger, and a terrifyingly patient awareness. "This is it," she gasped, nausea churning within her. "The presence… the Blight Mind… it's here." She could feel its vast, malevolent consciousness, a palpable weight pressing against her own mind.

  Borin pointed with a trembling finger towards the base of the nexus, where heavy Duergar power regulators, designed to handle immense geothermal pressure, were visibly integrated into the fungal mass, glowing sickly. "Those regulators… ancient designs… meant to harness the earth's fire safely… now twisted… feeding this… cancer." His voice was thick with disgust and rage.

  They remained frozen for long moments, hidden in the tunnel mouth, grappling with the sheer scale and horror of the Blight Nexus. It wasn't just a source of corruption; it was a thinking, growing entity, actively integrating technology and natural power into its monstrous form.

  Slowly, shaking off the initial shock, Edmund forced himself back into tactical assessment. "Defenses?" he whispered, his eyes scanning the cavern. "Those crawling things… guards?"

  "Sensory nodes, perhaps," Lyraen murmured, observing the smaller Blighted creatures. "Or maintenance drones. Notice their movements—they seem directed, purposeful."

  Borin pointed towards the thick, root-like tendrils anchoring the nexus. "Those anchors… connected to the main geothermal conduits. That's its power source. And maybe," his eyes narrowed, "its weakness. Sever those…"

  "The energy field around it is immense," Isolde warned, shivering despite the intense heat radiating from the cavern. "Getting close will be difficult. And the psychic pressure…" She swallowed hard. "It’s strong enough to overwhelm unprotected minds."

  They began a tense, whispered discussion, analyzing potential approach routes, structural vulnerabilities related to the Duergar tech, the energy flows Isolde could sense pulsing through the nexus, the number and disposition of the Blighted drones.

  As they spoke, debating the risks of a direct assault versus sabotage, Isolde suddenly stiffened, her head snapping up, her gaze fixed on the pulsating core of the nexus across the cavern. Lyraen simultaneously went utterly still, their hand drifting towards the bow slung across their back.

  The oppressive psychic thrumming hadn't changed, yet something had shifted. A feeling, cold and distinct, prickled at the edge of Isolde's senses. A focused attention, turning slowly, deliberately, towards their hiding place.

  It knows, Isolde thought, her blood running cold. It knows we're here.

  One of the Blighted drones crawling across the nexus surface paused, its multi-faceted eyes seeming to swivel, fixing directly on the tunnel mouth where they hid.

  The Blight Mind was aware. And it was waiting.