I sat down like someone with no more urgency. The kind of sitting that comes after victory, but not celebration. There was no audience, no medal, no applause. Just me, the silence, and the quiet cracks of my own body reminding me something was out of place — maybe a rib, maybe my mind, maybe everything.
The stone beneath me was warm, still soaked in the magic that had burned the Whisperer from the inside out. What little smoke remained from its body drifted upward slowly, scentless, as if even it were too tired to keep going. For a while, I let the world breathe on its own.
Then I did what I always do when there's still some part of me left: assess the damage.
| TEMPORARY STATUS: DANTE |
→ Health: 14/70
→ Bleeding: light (clotted)
→ Exhaustion: moderate
→ Emotional state: functional, dangerously satisfied
Once my fingers started responding with more agility and my legs stopped feeling like termite-eaten beams, I stood. The body still protested, but now it did so with dignity — and that was enough.
I looked around.
The chamber felt different. As if, by killing the Whisperer, a layer of the environment had been peeled away. The pressure in the air had lessened. The fungi were glowing again. The walls, once opaque, now revealed details that had been hidden — fine engravings, almost sentimental, like the stone itself was trying to share a story it hadn't dared before.
With slow steps, I started walking.
I saw walls with semi-runic inscriptions. Some words I understood: "vigil," "silence," "return." It felt like this place had once been a chamber of waiting — or judgment. Maybe the Whisperer wasn't just a monster on the loose. Maybe he had been placed there as part of an ancient system, watching, reading, choosing who deserved to leave.
And apparently, I had passed the test.
Or at the very least... survived it.
I kept moving, slowly, eyes alert, mind not wandering too far.
Because even in exhaustion, I knew this wasn't the end yet.
I was looking for a way out.
The corridor narrowed with each step.
The airflow from above hinted that yes, I was still heading in the right direction — but the path grew more twisted, as if the ground itself wanted to hide the exit. The fungi thinned out. The stones took on a darker, almost glassy tone, and a faint scent of ancient dust began to fill the air.
That's when I saw the crack.
Small. Too low for someone with a working spine.But there.Etched into the middle of the side wall, its border adorned with something that wasn't normal stone — crude symbols, scratched by small, persistent hands. A pattern of claws, maybe nails. Disorganized, but rhythmic.
I knelt.
The wind didn't pass through there.
But something had.
When I gently pushed a loose stone at the base, it rotated — like it had been waiting for just the right touch.
A click. A shift.
And the wall... gave.
A small space revealed itself behind the stone — a natural chamber, tight, but deliberate. Made to hide, not to protect. A shelter carved in silence, with a low ceiling and walls lined with markings — different from anything I'd seen down here before.
More primitive.
More... personal.
The room was carved directly into the rock, but there were clear signs of intent. The walls were scratched with claws — or nails — forming repetitive patterns, broken spirals, runes that would only make sense to someone who had gone mad trying to decipher them.
But at the center, I knew where I was.
There was a throne. Not a royal one, but a raised stone, polished by time, covered with a piece of aged leather. Upon it, a symbol was carved with precision. The crest was ancient, nearly forgotten, but I recognized it from a book a certain maniacal librarian once tried to sell me years ago: the White Houses of Malderra.
Above the crest, three words etched in worn runes stared at me like eyes that remembered:
Elvian Tyrholt. The King Who Was.
Brelgrik lived here.
That's when it all connected.
The degenerated form. The broken laughter. The lapses in clarity. The cryptic words.He wasn't just a lunatic haunting the caves.
He was a king.A K'tharnian.A dark elf — or what was left of one.
On the walls, crude figures portrayed scenes from a past desperately holding on: a ruined throne, advisors with black eyes and bloodstained hands, and beneath it all... a spiral. The same spiral from the documents Brelgrik waved like bait.
At the back of the room, a bundle of dried roots rested atop what looked like an improvised bed. Beside it, a runic mirror shattered into four pieces. In the cracked reflection, for a moment, I saw something that wasn't me.
An elongated face. White hair falling to the shoulders. Deep, symmetrical eyes. Pride crushed into posture.
For a second, the mirror showed me the king that still existed inside the goblin.
And then it vanished.
I stepped carefully to a makeshift table in the corner of the room.Upon it were three objects:
A folded piece of crown.
A manuscript written in entwined runes — almost poetry.
A wax seal bearing the mark of the broken cycle.
I read what I could.
"If someone finds me here one day, let them carry my name back to the surface. Let them carry my mistake and my glory. Let them tell them the king did not die. He waits."
I thought:
Strange thing, locking up a king down here… Malderra, huh?
I left the chamber like someone carrying a stolen secret.
There was no sound, but the air was no longer the same.
It felt… more alert.
The corridor I had come through looked narrower. The stones rougher. And the wind, which once whispered hope, now sounded like a warning.
Only when I heard the first noise — a sudden, wet, rhythmic drag — did I realize I wasn't alone anymore.
I turned, every muscle tense, adrenaline reclaiming its rightful place in my bloodstream, and there he was.
Brelgrik.
Standing at the tunnel entrance.
Same hunched posture, same bulging eyes — but now there was a different focus.
No laughter.
No dancing.
Just his gaze, locked onto my pocket. My chest. The things I'd taken.
He stepped forward.
Dragging.
Grinding.
And said, with a voice deeper than I expected:
— You shouldn't have seen that.
His hand was outstretched.
But not to ask.
To strike.
Then, like a memory jolting down the spine, the runes on the wall flared. A thin line lit up from ceiling to floor, and for a moment, the reflection from the shattered mirror flashed in Brelgrik's eyes.
He stopped.
Froze.
Breathed like he'd swallowed his own name.
— You… saw.
I didn't respond. I just kept my hand near my waist, where I still carried a makeshift dagger — nothing that would take him down, but enough to show this conversation wouldn't be one-sided.
Brelgrik took two more steps, each one carrying a fragment of the past he'd been trying to forget.
— They erased it all, he said, low. Every part of me. Name, story, voice... it all turned into laughter.
His expression flickered between hatred and pleading.
— I didn't come to strike you down, creature.
— Then why did you steal my words?
"Because I want to turn your story into a massive corruption scandal and make a fortune off it," I thought. But I couldn't say that.
— Because someone up there needs to hear the truth.
He fell silent.
A heavy, ancient silence.
The kind of pause that comes before a decision that changes everything.
The tension held — a taut line between blade and memory.
Then he sat. Abruptly.
Like a king who gave up the throne for just one second.
— If you're going to carry my story, he said, not looking at me, then you should at least know the rest.
Political gossip?
Now we're talking.