The second flight of stairs was just as uneventful as the first. No creatures leaped out from coffins, no traps were triggered. Only sheer silence greeted them as they descended. They had been walking for so long that Emily almost wished they would be attacked—anything to break the monotony. At this point, she would have welcomed even a giant boulder rolling down the stairs, old temple style, or a swarm of specters—anything to dull the edge of the silence.

“Alright, why in the hell is this place so deep?!” Emily said shattering the silence.

The others almost seemed to flinch as they glared at her.

Kael turned with a raised brow.

“How else would one get to the currents of source churning through the earth?”

Emily pinched the front of her shirt and rapidly moved it to suck in some cooler air. As they began descending into the tomb Emily noticed the cold they had originally encountered was gradually having to contest with the warming environment. At this point, she was pretty certain everyone was sweating and yet no one mentioned it.

Glancing back she saw Nox still unconscious in the saddle but he looked slightly better than before. The kid had saved her, so Emily would do her best to return the favor as long as it didn’t hinder her ability to survive. Cupcake looked to be weathering the heat well, even with her coat as thick as it was.

“Source is most active near the core of the world where it has yet to separate into its colors. If I’m right, we should be reaching the third level any minute now.” Alex muttered.

They walked for another ten minutes, and true to his word, they arrived on the third level. Unfortunately, there was a problem right away.

Throughout this entire tomb, there had been a great number of sconces on the walls powered by some unknown source providing ample light to the rooms.

There were even two at the base of the stairs here. The problem was that beyond this point there were none. As they looked through the entrance to the next room they saw a long dark passage stretching into shadow. Near the edges, they could make out what looked like four grey stone columns continuing in deeper.

Alex moved to the front and looked around for more wards engraved into the stone but when he found none he returned.

“I don’t like this. I haven't read anything about his room and I can’t find any runes that would denote this as a trap.”

Emily took that to mean the other tomb he’d been in hadn’t had this kind of room in it.

Oscar grunted but looked serious.

“Couldn’t it just be a fault of time? I mean, who knows how long this place has existed down here? If there were earth tremors perhaps the room is damaged.”

Alex cocked his head.

“It’s possible, but if that's the case then things just got a whole lot harder. How many lanterns and torches do we have between us?”

They all began rummaging through their supplies. They could probably access more supplies if Nox were awake, but even if he was. It was unlikely that he would be able to draw on any source.

Pooling their resources they had four torches and one lantern.

“We have enough oil to last us around sixteen hours and the torches ‘burn’ for about ten. I can't imagine the room is long but it's better to be prepared. We should only use two at a time.”

Everyone seemed to agree and Oscar cracked the torch while Alex lit their lantern. The torches were pretty interesting to Emily. They were lightweight metal that held fuel in the handle and pushed it up towards the top of the torch to burn. Like this, the flame produced would always be constant, and when you were in the dark an unreliable light source could mean the difference between life and death.

“Emily, take this,” Alex said handing over a small, thin disk of stone. It reminded Emily of a compact mirror but inside it was similar to a chalkboard. There was even a ward freshly drawn on it.

“That’s a ‘flare’ rune. Don’t waste your energy unless you need to but use it in an emergency.”

Emily nodded, and as a precaution moved a couple of drops of her blood onto the surface of the rune to make sure it was ready before closing it up.

Emily had seen Alex buying this before they left, she didn’t expect it to be a tool used to teach her runes.

“Alright, let’s go. Make sure to stay on the wolves, they have much better vision than you.” Kael said as he walked beside Mist. The Rime wolf that Oscar was riding moved beside them and Emily had Cupcake take up the rear of their formation.

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With everyone ready they took their first steps into the room. When nothing happened Emily let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Marching forward they were surrounded by darkness in no time. It wasn’t long before Emily watched the entrance they had come through disappear behind them.

The long corridor continued for a while, but when they got to another fork in the road Alex looked miffed.

“Dammit, this section is bigger than I first thought. We need to-” Alex started but before he could continue a chilling howl shook the darkness.

Everyone went on guard at once, Emily saw Cupcake's ears press to her skull as she turned her large head behind them.

Emily followed her gaze and saw several glowing sets of eyes staring at them from the shadows. There was no mistaking it. Emily had been with the Rime wolves long enough now to recognize their tall stature and intimidating presence.

Snarls of several creatures went up from the darkness, but Cupcake remained fixed on one in particular. Stepping tenderly into the light. A chocolate brown coat revealed itself and Emily recognized the leader of the pack where Cupcake had come from.

“Everyone group up. Nothing could have survived down here, it's an illusion. It can’t hurt us. Just keep the wolves under control.”

Emily wanted to agree but being stared down at a beast that large made her reflexively raise her guard.

It was a lucky thing she did because the leader suddenly broke rank and made a break for Cupcake.

Emily could feel the Rime wolf’s fear bleeding through their link and so she reacted without thinking.

Slashing out with a crescent blade. The blood traveled forward and cut the beast almost in half. Emily felt the resistance as the thing died but she couldn’t feel any Life force join with her. That thing had been physical but not alive.

Cupcake shook herself, she did not want to be here, she wanted to run in the opposite direction, but Emily leaned in and whispered in her ear to steady her. More wolves were moving in and Emily cursed and shouted to everyone else.

“We have to move! And don’t get hit I think they're real…sort of.”

They began to back off down one of the other corridors but the wolves shifted in the dark. They weren't attacking but they certainly weren’t giving up.

Kael was looking behind them but turned to the front as he spoke.

“This is high-ranked illusion magic, I can feel there’s a lot of blue source mixed in, we need to move steadily. Do not run off!”

Emily did not take her eyes off the forms shifting in the shadows, but she had Cupcake retreat with them. By the sound of it, there were no wolves in front of them, only the ones chasing behind them. They kept moving like this for a good while, stretching Emily’s nerves tighter and tighter.

As time passed, the number of wolves changed—sometimes many pairs of eyes watched them, and other times only a single set stared from the darkness.

That’s when their progress halted and Emily heard something happening up ahead.

“What’s going on guys!” She called, resisting the urge to look back.

“... it can’t be…” Oscar's voice came out horse.

“Oscar, do you know this woman?” Kael called but got no response.

Emily couldn’t resist any longer and glanced back for just a second. In front of Mist and Oscar's mount sat a fair-skinned woman. She was just at the edge of the light but Emily could see she was in her late thirties with the same golden locks as Oscar. The difference was that even through her simple dress Emily could make out veins of black, like poison were spreading through her veins.

“Why didn’t you control it, Oscar?” She said. “You killed me because you couldn’t control that darkness in you.”

All the while her body was rotting, causing flesh to dissolve and expose bleach bones.

“You killed your own blood, and for what? You should have left to protect me.”

Emily glanced at Oscar and she could see he was shaken. He looked about ready to murder someone but maintained his reason as he stared at the illusion.

Alex was the one to shatter the spell cast over them.

“Listen to me we are dealing with a powerful title here. It is somehow able to glean things from our memories. No matter what you see it's not real, but don’t let your guard down. There's something very real in here with us.”

The woman continued to scream at Oscar as her body dissolved entirely, collapsing into a pile of bone and going silent.

Emily glanced back to the wolves in time to see another one lunging at Oscar’s mount. The Rime wolf freaked out with a whimper and broke away from the group.

Oscar tried to get it under control but the beast was beyond reason and he was too shaken to command it.

Cutting his own cord tying him to the mount, Oscar fell off the mount with a heavy crash. The Rime wolf bolted into the shadows in front of them and its ragged pants faded almost entirely.

“Come back you mutt!” Oscar called from the ground, slowly climbing to his feet. The wolf that had lunged at Oscar’s mount turned on him now and sank its fangs into his shoulder.

Oscar grunted but stabbed the thing with a dagger. Its face became a mass of black flesh and slogged off it. Rapidly decaying its jaw and spreading to the rest of its skull, leaving a pristine body without a head.

“Gods be woken, what is this?” Oscar limped back towards the group while popping the wax seal in a tonic.

Another wolf followed at his heels but Kael stepped in causing the thing to retreat back into the shadows.

They were all panting harshly as they kept moving. Emily saw the wolves were no longer only at their backs, they had narrowed in around them, ducking behind pillars and shadows.

Their group kept moving but that was when they noticed a grand-sized monument in front of them. At first, Emily thought it was a house of sorts but as the light crept closer, details became clearer. It was a finely decorated mausoleum of sorts with its doors standing wide open. Emily could see a coffin inside, and as they got closer she could make out the plaque. This one was a little longer than the others, similar to an eulogy.

“Howiter, Denith’regar - In life, he carried the weight of our inquisition; in death, he will bring a peace so absolute that none shall escape the empire’s final judgment.

Cause of death: Struck down by the Southern factions.

Title: Fearmonger”

Emily was only halfway through the sentence when Alex's eyes narrowed.

“Blast it all. That title is blacklisted. And by the look of things the specter has already woken up”

The suffocatingly warm room suddenly felt just that much cooler as a chill coiled down their spines.

Emily stared at the coffin's open lid to reveal an empty hollow.

Alex was right, something was in this chamber with them and it had been watching them since they got here.