The clatter of armored boots echoed through the seminary gates as Georg’s ambush party returned at dawn. Blood streaked Elara’s pauldrons, and Lapen limped beside her, cradling a fractured rib. Behind them, Orris dragged two bound Hussars by chains, their golden sigils cracked and smoking.

  “Twelve dead,” Georg rasped, tossing a Seraphim banner onto the command table. “Two prisoners. Rest are crow food in the Jaw.”

  Baruch squinted at the banner’s frayed edges. “No survivors?”

  Elara’s void-scarred hand flexed around her sword hilt. “The rocks remember how to bury secrets.”

  Lissa darted forward, pressing a damp cloth to Lapen’s split lip. “You promised no heroics!”

  “Heroics?” Lapen winced. “Tripped on a skull. Your void-moss patch worked, though. Melted their flares mid-air.”

  Claire studied the prisoners—a grizzled veteran and a lean youth with hollow eyes. “Put them with the others. Veyra’s Apostates will handle interrogation.”

  The veteran spat at her boots. “Rot under the Monarch’s Eternal Light, rebel scum.”

  Georg slammed his axe down, splintering the table. “Say that again. I’ll return the favor with your teeth.”

  Elara’s blade flickered, severing the man’s bonds without touching skin. “Save your fury for the Dungeon. We enter tomorrow.”

  The Second Dive

  Melissa scowled at the obsidian archway, her tool belt clangling with gadgets forged from dungeon iron and salvaged Seraphim tech. She glanced over her shoulder at the half-reinforced aqueducts, their stone ribs exposed to the sulfurous wind, and gritted her teeth. “This is reckless,” she snapped, adjusting the strap of her satchel crammed with blueprints. “The filtration system’s collapsing, the west wing’s foundation is held together by prayers, and you want me to play tourist in some Void-spawned maze?”

  Claire stepped into her line of sight, blocking the view of the crumbling seminary. Her buckler gleamed faintly, still smeared with treant sap from the last dive. “The aqueducts can wait three hours. What’s down there can’t.” She tapped Melissa’s satchel, her voice lowering. “Baruch found Void-forged alloys in the ore we brought back. If the dungeon’s architecture holds schematics, even fragments—”

  “Schematics?” Melissa barked a laugh, sharp and brittle. “You think the Void’s handing out building permits? That’s my job—fixing the mess your holy crusade leaves behind!”

  Myrtle leaned against the archway, her rifle’s stock dented from pistol-whipping a goblin the day before. She spun a Void-etched shell between her fingers before slotting it into the chamber with a click. “Relax, gears-for-brains. If you die, I’ll name the latrines after you. Melissa’s Privy has a nice ring.” Her smirk faded as she caught Claire’s glare. “What? Morale matters.”

  Lissa hovered at the threshold, her silver-veined fingers tightening around a fresh pouch of void-moss. The bioluminescent tendrils inside pulsed faintly, casting jade shadows across her face. “What if… what if the Void’s angry we took prisoners?” she whispered, her gaze darting to the cellar where the captured Hussars muttered hymns to the Monarch. “What if it thinks we’re like them now?”

  Veyra materialized from the gloom, her crow-feather cloak swallowing the torchlight. The Apostates trailing her froze mid-chant, their bone-painted faces tilted in reverence. “The Void hungers for change, child. Not corpses.” She pressed a taloned finger to Lissa’s chest, where the girl’s veins throbbed faintly. “You carry its breath in your blood. It does not punish—it prunes.”

  Melissa snorted. “Prunes. Right. Tell that to the treant that nearly pulped Dwang’s skull yesterday.” But her hand drifted to the fractured crystal shard in her pocket—a looted dungeon artifact humming with unstable energy. Could stabilize the aqueduct pumps… if it doesn’t explode.

  Claire gripped her shoulder, the weight of command pressing down. “We need you unshackled, Melissa. Not just your hands—your mind.” Her gaze flicked to the satchel. “Out there, you’re rebuilding a corpse. In there…” She nodded at the arch. “You could design a future.”

  A beat of silence. Somewhere behind them, Baruch shouted curses at a collapsing scaffold.

  “Fine,” Melissa spat, shoving Claire’s hand away. “But when the seminary’s sewage floods the armory, you’re scrubbing it.”

  Veyra raised her staff. The Apostates’ chant crescendoed, the archway’s obsidian surface rippling like liquid night. Golden light spilled out, thick and cloying, carrying the scent of ozone and something older—burnt stars, maybe, or the marrow of dead gods.

  Lissa reached for Melissa’s hand. Her fingers were cold, trembling. “Stay close to the moss. It… it remembers you.”

  Then the light swallowed them whole.

  The world twisted.

  Melissa’s stomach lurched as the seminary’s ruins dissolved into a kaleidoscope of fractured shadows and searing gold. Her tools levitated briefly—wrenches, calipers, a soldering iron—before snapping back to her belt with a force that bruised. She glimpsed Myrtle’s rifle floating like a relic in a storm, Claire’s rapier glinting in the maelstrom, Lissa’s silver veins blazing like circuitry.

  Then—

  Impact.

  They stumbled into a cavern of living crystal. The air tasted metallic, charged with static that made Melissa’s fillings ache. Jagged spires jutted from the ground like teeth, their facets pulsing with trapped light. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped, the sound echoing like a discordant clock.

  “Ambush in three,” Melissa muttered, her goggles auto-adjusting to the prismatic glare. She traced a hairline fracture in the nearest spire—too symmetrical, too precise. “Two o’clock. Acidic residue on the northeast column. Trap mechanism, probably pressure-activated.”

  Claire nodded, buckler raised. “Disable it. Rest of you—”

  The ground trembled. Three treants erupted from the crystal floor, their bark-armored bodies studded with glowing amber cores.

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  Melissa didn’t wait. She hurled a brass sphere—a modified gearbox rigged with Void runes—at the northeast column. It stuck fast, gears whirring.

  Click. Hiss.

  The sphere detonated, shattering the column’s hidden mechanism in a shower of shrapnel. Acid jets froze mid-spray, droplets hanging in the air like poisonous dew. [Engineering +5]

  “Nice shot!” Dwang bellowed, swinging his hammer at the nearest treant.

  “Save the flattery!” Melissa snapped, already sketching the column’s ruins in her notebook. Fracture patterns… energy dispersion…

  But the dungeon didn’t care about blueprints. It only hungered.

  And Melissa, for the first time, understood why Claire had dragged her here.

  The future wasn’t built in the light.

  It was forged in the dark.

  Dungeon Level 2: The Crucible

  The air crackled as they materialized, the dungeon’s oppressive energy pressing down like a physical weight. The cavern stretched before them, a nightmare cathedral of jagged crystal spires that pulsed with sickly, bioluminescent light—sour greens, feverish violets, and the occasional flash of gold that seared the eyes. The ground beneath their boots crunched unnaturally. Melissa glanced down and froze. The floor wasn’t stone—it was a grisly mosaic of skeletal remains fused together by translucent resin. Human femurs, rib cages large enough to cradle a horse, and skulls with elongated jaws stared up blindly, their hollow sockets flickering with trapped mana like dying stars.

  “Ambush in three,” Melissa hissed, her voice sharp over the hum of unstable energy. Her goggles whirred as they parsed the prismatic glare, overlaying her vision with tactical grids and heat signatures. She tilted her head, tracking a faint hiss from the northeast. A column of veined crystal loomed there, its surface weeping viscous amber fluid that sizzled where it pooled. “Two o’clock. Acidic residue on the northeast column—pressure-activated trap. One wrong step, and we’re liquefied.”

  Claire’s buckler snapped into position with a metallic clang. “Disable it. Now.”

  Melissa didn’t hesitate. She ripped a brass sphere from her belt—a Frankenstein hybrid of Seraphim detonator coils and Void-etched runes—and hurled it. The device clicked as it magnetized to the column, gears spinning furiously.

  KRAK-THOOM!

  The explosion tore through the crystal, shards screaming through the air like shrapnel. Myrtle ducked behind a stalagmite, swearing as droplets of suspended acid hung in the air, glinting like venomous jewels. [Engineering +5]

  “Trap’s neutralized!” Melissa shouted, but her triumph curdled as the cavern shuddered. Three fissures split the bone-littered floor, vomiting forth nightmares of bark and magma.

  The treants rose like ancient gods of wrath, their bodies armored in blackened oak studded with thorns the size of daggers. Molten stone dripped from their clubs, hissing as it struck the ground and ignited patches of skeletal debris. Amber cores glowed in their chests, pulsing in time with the dungeon’s arrhythmic heartbeat. The largest creature loomed, its maw a jagged split in the bark, and roared—a sound that vibrated in their teeth and sent cracks spiderwebbing up the crystal walls.

  “Eyes on the cores!” Claire barked, her rapier already glinting in the eerie light. “Melissa—fall back! Myrtle, cripple the knees!”

  Myrtle dropped to one knee, bracing her rifle against a stalagmite. The stock dug into her shoulder as she exhaled, finger tightening on the trigger. “Dance for me, lumberjack.” The shot cracked like thunder, punching through the lead treant’s knee in a spray of splinters and molten resin. The creature staggered, its club gouging a fiery trench in the ground as it swung wildly. [Sharpshooting +5]

  Lissa darted forward, silver veins flaring like live wires beneath her skin. She lobbed a pouch of void-moss, its tendrils squirming hungrily even before impact. It burst against the second treant’s face, vines latching onto bark with a sound like cracking ice. The creature reeled, clawing at its eyes as the moss fed, glowing brighter with every stolen wisp of mana. “Now, Dwang!”

  The blacksmith’s apprentice lunged, his hammer crackling with unstable Void energy. “Forge’s breath!” The blow cratered the treant’s chest, spiderweb fractures spreading from its core. The creature howled, amber light bleeding from the cracks as its club slipped from twitching fingers. [Strength +5]

  Veyra’s voice sliced through the chaos, a hymn older than the Monarch’s lies. Her staff flared, tendrils of violet energy lashing out like serpents. They coiled around the third treant’s limbs, freezing its magma club mid-swing. Molten stone dripped onto the bones below, sending up acrid plumes of smoke. “Claire—now!”

  Claire moved like a storm. She vaulted onto a crystal spire, boots skidding on its glass-smooth surface, and leapt. For a heartbeat, she hung suspended—rapier aimed at the treant’s core, her reflection fractured in a thousand crystal shards. Then she struck.

  The blade met resistance, the core hissing like a live coal plunged into water. Claire’s muscles trembled, her teeth bared in a snarl as she drove the steel deeper. The treant’s roar became a wet, guttural wail.

  Pop.

  The core shattered. The creature disintegrated—first its limbs, then its torso—collapsing into ash and embers that rained down like damned snow. [Swordsmanship +5 | Strength +5]

  Silence fell, heavy and unnatural. The crystals dimmed, their pulse slowing as though the dungeon itself were holding its breath.

  Melissa staggered to her feet, her journal clutched to her chest. Acid burns pockmarked her tool belt, and her goggles hung askew, one lens cracked. She stared at the brass sphere’s remnants—scattered gears still spinning feebly—and let out a hoarse laugh. “That trap was rigged to flood the whole chamber. One misstep and we’d have been bones in the broth.”

  Myrtle blew smoke from her rifle barrel, her smirk razor-thin. “Next time, maybe lead with the ‘we’re all gonna die’ bit.”

  Lissa crouched beside the bloated void-moss, now glowing like a captive star. Its tendrils writhed, drunk on stolen magic. “It’s… singing,” she whispered, her own veins pulsing in sync.

  Veyra loomed over her, taloned fingers skimming the moss’s surface. It recoiled, then bloomed—revealing a cluster of iridescent seeds nestled in its heart. “Take them,” she intoned. “They will grow where the Monarch’s rot once festered.”

  Claire wiped her blade on a clean patch of moss, her gaze lingering on the smoldering cores. “Gear up. The dungeon’s just warming up.”

  Above them, the crystals pulsed—a slow, mocking rhythm, like laughter.

  The archway spat them out at dusk, rewards shimmering weakly—half the seeds, half the ore.

  Baruch stormed over, his beard singed from forge fires. “You call this iron? I need ten times this to reinforce the gates!”

  Melissa tossed him a crystalline shard from the dungeon trap. “Analyze this. It’s a mana conductor. Could stabilize the aqueducts.” [Planning +5]

  Claire kicked a stone, her jaw tight. “The Dungeon’s toying with us.”

  Veyra cradled a shriveled berry bush. “Or teaching scarcity. Even the Void demands balance.”

  The Cellar

  The cellar prison reeked of mildew and despair. Flickering torchlight danced across damp stone walls, casting elongated shadows that twitched like restless spirits. Jarek, the young Hussar recruit, sat hunched in the corner of his cell, his once-polished armor now caked in ash and his own dried blood. The golden sigil on his breastplate—a serpent coiled around the Monarch’s crown—had been scorched black by Void energy, leaving only a scarred silhouette. He glared at the seed cake on his tin plate, its edges charred from the seminary’s overworked ovens.

  Claire leaned against the rusted iron bars, her silhouette backlit by the torches. Her voice, when she spoke, was softer than the dungeon’s whispers. “Your Archons left you to die in that ravine. No retrieval party. No rites.” She nodded to the plate. “We bury our dead. Even yours.”

  [Charisma +5]

  Jarek’s jaw tightened. “Better to rot than kneel to heretics.” But his voice wavered, betraying the cracks in his resolve.

  Veyra materialized from the shadows, her crow-feather cloak swallowing the light. She pressed a taloned finger to the sigil’s scar on his chest. “The Monarch’s light is a lie etched into your bones. The Void offers truth.” Her milky eye gleamed as mana swirled around her staff, painting the walls with fleeting visions—rebels sharing rations with Loyalist deserters, children laughing under a smog-free sky, the seminary’s ruins reborn as a city of spiraling gardens. [Charisma +5]

  Jarek recoiled. “Illusions. Tricks.”

  “Is this a trick?”

  Lissa’s small voice floated through the bars. She stood on tiptoe, her silver-veined fingers clutching a starflower plucked from the dungeon’s meager haul. Its petals glowed faintly, reacting to the Void energy in her blood. She pushed it through the bars, her eyes wide and unblinking. “It doesn’t hurt. The Void. It… it sings. Can’t you hear it?”

  Jarek stared at the flower. His hand twitched, torn between swatting it away and reaching out. “They said sunlight kills. That the Void devours souls.”

  Claire crouched, her buckler scraping the stone. “The Monarch devours. The Void frees.” She plucked the starflower and tucked it into his plate. “Taste the lies. Then decide.”

  The recruit’s throat bobbed. He didn’t touch the flower. But when Claire and Veyra left, he didn’t throw it away.

  Elara’s team gathered at the dungeon arch at first light, their weapons still streaked with blood from a dawn skirmish with scavengers. Georg’s axe reeked of burnt flesh, and Lapen’s scavenged Seraphim gauntlets crackled with residual Void energy.

  “Be careful,” Baruch grumbled, tossing Georg a sack of iron rations. “And try not to wax poetic down there. We need nails, not sonnets.” He paused, then smirked at his own joke. [Poetry +1]

  The others froze. Melissa nearly dropped her wrench. “Did you just… make a joke?”

  Baruch’s beard bristled. “And? Even gears need grease.”

  Melissa shoved a schematic into his soot-stained hands. “Then grease the pulley system. It’s held together by spit and hubris.”

  Elara adjusted her vambraces, her Void-scarred fingers tracing old sigils. “Enough. Move.”

  As the team stepped into the arch’s shimmering maw, Lissa knelt beside the newly planted seedlings. Her silver veins pulsed in time with the Void’s distant heartbeat—a rhythm only she could hear. Above, the smog peeled back, revealing a sliver of sky so fiercely blue it hurt to look at. The sunlight kissed her cheeks, warm and real, as the dungeon’s hum swelled into a chorus.

  Somewhere in the Void, Devon’s voice echoed—faint, but unmistakable. “Keep going.”

  The seedlings trembled.

  And grew.