The stairs spiraled down into blackness, swallowing us whole. We descended into the dungeon’s gullet, every cautious step a lifetime. A frantic drum hammered against my ribs, but our footfalls were ghosts, lost beneath the maddeningly steady drip of water somewhere in the oppressive dark. It was the metronome of this forgotten place, counting down to something I couldn’t name.

When we reached the bottom, the air was thick enough to chew—a foul mixture of damp earth, decay, and the faint, metallic tang of old fear. In the corner, a guard was slumped in a chair, his snores a wet rattle in his throat. His head was tipped back against the cold cobblestone, a study in oblivious negligence. I crept to the heavy wooden door, the one I remembered, and gave it a gentle tug. Locked. My eyes scanned the gloom for a ring of keys, but found only shadows.

“I have it,” Cassius breathed beside me, his voice a wisp of sound. An ethereal, white and gold light bloomed from his outstretched palm, casting no shadows but illuminating the very air around it. I watched, mesmerized, as shimmering threads of his mana flowed into the keyhole. There was no click, but a soft, metallic sigh, as if the lock itself was surrendering. The heavy door drifted open with a groan that scraped along my nerves. The guard snorted, shifting in his sleep, and I froze, my breath catching in my throat. When his snoring resumed its ragged rhythm, I slipped through the opening, pulling the door closed until it latched behind us.

Inside, the darkness was absolute. It felt different from the stairway—heavier, ancient.

Every cell we passed was a silent, gaping mouth, lined with the teeth of rusted iron bars. Being invisible here was a chilling transformation; less a disguise, and more like becoming a ghost haunting the scenes of my own memory.

“It’s empty,” Cassius’s disembodied whisper materialized at my ear. “Completely barren.”

“They never kept anyone else here… did they?” I murmured, my words seeming to freeze and fall to the floor. I focused on the faint scuff of his boots to track his position.

“Explains the sleeping jailer,” he replied, his voice a dry rustle.

The air beside me grew still, and the soft shuffle of his steps ceased. We were here. His cell. I could almost feel the weight of his unseen gaze upon it, the phantom chill of magic-dampening iron, the memory of chains like cold serpents on the skin. I didn’t need to see his face to know the same memories were replaying in his mind. He was a free man now, a phantom at my side, but free. I pushed the thought away before it could fester.

Further on, the passage became a solid, suffocating tunnel of stone, broken only by a series of heavy, iron-banded doors. I ran my hand along the cool, weeping wall until my fingers brushed the splintered wood of the first one. I pressed my ear against it. Nothing. The stone was utterly dead to the world.

With a deep groan of rusted hinges, the door next to me swung inward on its own. “In here,” Cassius’s voice beckoned from the darkness within. I navigated by the sound of his quiet breathing, stepping into a stark, empty room. The stench of old straw and despair was a physical presence. Against the far wall, I could just make out the shape of manacles, their chains hanging like dead vines.

“Nothing,” Cassius stated, his voice tight with focus. “Not a single life-core in this entire dungeon.”

I blew out a sharp breath, watching a small, silver cloud of it appear and vanish. “Then what is this place for? Blair hid something down here. I know it.”

“Thalia,” Cassius’s voice was strained, cutting through the silence. “I don’t understand. I should be able to detect something. The only core I can feel is the guard’s, and his is fading as we move deeper. It’s like this level is… shielded. Warded against my kind of sight.”

Frustration clawed at me. I started pacing, the scuff of my boots the only sound. “What if we go to the very end? If there’s nothing, could you… I don’t know, unleash a pulse of your mana? Force a reaction from whatever is hidden?”

A heavy moment passed. “I can,” Cassius finally agreed.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words catching in my throat. “I just can’t let this go.”

He opened the cell door, and I followed the faint sound of his movements back into the hall. He stopped, and I sensed him turn to face me, his invisible presence a sudden weight in the air.

“I trust you, Thalia,” his voice was soft but firm, an anchor in the dark. “My senses are just one tool. Your instincts are another. Never doubt them. If you say something is here, then we will find it.”

I nodded, a useless gesture I knew he couldn’t see. A more companionable silence settled between us as we continued down the stone corridor.

Suddenly, his disembodied voice hissed, “Hold. Stop.” A hand I couldn’t see closed around my arm, its grip firm, halting me in place. “Listen.”

I strained my ears, hearing only the drip and the blood roaring in my head. I don’t hear anything.

“Get low,” Cassius urged, his whisper sharp. “Listen to the floor.”

I lowered myself carefully, the grit of the stone pressing into my cheek as I laid my ear against it. For a long moment, there was only the dull thrum of my own pulse. Then, it came. A faint, dry rustling. Not the sound of a single thing, but of… many. The high-pitched, frantic skittering of countless tiny claws on rock. It was followed by a sharp, grating scrape, and a thin screech that vibrated through my teeth, almost too high for the human ear.

My head snapped up, my eyes wide.

Cassius’s voice was grim, a blade in the darkness. “They’re below us. There has to be a hidden entrance. Something shielded.”

My own magic answered the call. Pressing my palms flat against the stone, I sent my mana flowing outward. It was the only part of me with substance here: a visible tide of shimmering amethyst light that bled from my hands, sinking through the floor like water through sand. It pushed past emptiness, a probe, a question sent into the stone, until it brushed against… a barrier. A room. And a presence within it.

I scrambled to my feet. “Cassius! Farther down, the last door on the right. There’s something inside.”

I led the way, tracking the connection in my mind until I stopped before a final, heavy door. “It’s this one. Follow the sound of my—” A solid, invisible form collided with me, and I stumbled back with a grunt.

“Apologies,” Cassius’s voice came from right in front of me. “Literally didn’t see you there.”

“It’s fine,” I managed, regaining my balance. He had the door unlocked and groaning open in seconds. It revealed a chamber identical to the others, empty save for a thick carpet of dust on its cobblestone floor. But my mana hummed, pulling me irresistibly toward the center. I knelt again, placing my hands on the ground.

This time, the reaction was immediate, electric. I could feel the intricate lacework of a hidden magic circle thrumming with dormant power just beneath the stone. I gently prodded its edges with my magic, not breaking the ward, but asking for entry. A thread of my amethyst power found a connection and latched on.

A deep vibration shook the floor beneath me. I scrambled back as lines of sickening, blackish-red light blazed to life, forming a complex, glowing sigil on the ground. With a groan of grinding stone and a plume of ancient dust, the circle descended, revealing a dark, winding staircase leading down into a new, deeper blackness.

My breath caught in my throat. “This is it.”

“I’ll go first,” Cassius’s voice came from the edge of the new abyss. I heard the scuff of his boots shift from dusty floor to solid stone. A moment later, his voice echoed up, “It’s clear. Come on.”

The descent was long. With every step, the air grew colder, and a cloying stench of rot and warped magic washed over us, so potent it made my stomach turn. As we reached the bottom, the faint skittering we’d heard from above became a cacophony—a wall of sound made of frantic chittering, the scrape of claws, and high-pitched screeches that crawled over my skin.

My boots finally touched a level floor. The darkness was total.

“Cassius?” I whispered, my voice swallowed by the din.

“Right here.” His voice was close. A soft, white and gold glow bloomed beside me, not from a spell, but from the skin of his hand itself. “Hold on,” he said. I reached for the light, my trembling fingers finding his. He laced them firmly with my own, and the glow vanished, leaving us anchored to each other in the oppressive gloom. “Alright,” he said, his voice steadier. “Let’s see what’s making all this noise.”

We moved as one. The first cell we passed pulsed with a sickening magical energy. Inside, several Shadowveils thrashed wildly, their smoky tendrils slamming against the confines of an invisible barrier. We moved on, our horror mounting with each cell. One held a beast of shifting, groaning rock; another contained a creature of pure, screaming light, its brilliance a torment in the dark. The farther we went, the more nightmarish the menagerie became. These weren’t just captured beasts; they were caged nightmares, towering abominations crammed into spaces far too small, their twisted limbs scraping raw against the stone in a ceaseless agony.

“This is an abomination,” Cassius said, his voice a low growl of fury. “It needs to be burned from the world.”

I squeezed his hand tight. “We will. But not yet.” He started to protest, but I cut him off. “If we kill them now, Blair will know. The element of surprise is all we have. We need to bring the elves. We have to do this right.”

He was silent for a long moment, the sounds of the creatures filling the void between us. “You’re right,” he finally conceded, his voice tight with restrained violence. “We’ve confirmed it. Let’s go. For now.” We turned to leave, but even as the shadows swallowed the cages behind us, I couldn’t shake the sense that something unseen was watching, silent among the screams.