They kept sinking.
There was no end—just water and darkness. The cold existed all around them. Pressing in on their skin, their lungs, their thoughts.
Then it started.
A subtle flow—the water entered their bodies.
Slivers of it didn't just brush against them… they passed through them. Thin currents of fluid slipped past muscle and skin as if their bodies were porous, like a sieve. Riven jerked slightly in panic, bubbles escaping his mouth—
—but the water didn't hurt him.
It didn't do anything. It just… flowed.
Through his arms.
His chest.
His veins.
As if inspecting.
And then, just as bizarrely, it left.
And suddenly the pull stopped.
Then —
everything shifted.
The downward drag vanished all at once, like a weight cut from a rope. The pressure lifted. The water no longer crushed in on him. He still couldn't see anything. But he could feel. His feet brushed something beneath him — soft like sand or silt.
The bottom.
He frantically turned around trying to make sense of the situation, until something caught his eyes. Which was surprising considering all the darkness around him.
In the stillness — weightless and endless — ahead, was a shimmer of light.
Faint. Distant.
But unmistakable.
With no other choice, Riven turned his body and tried walking.
The motion was sluggish, limbs barely responding. But he could move. Slowly. Unevenly. Each step brought him closer to that strange, pulsing glow.
On the way his hand brushed something soft.
It felt like a long strand of something alive, like underwater moss or grass. He pulled away, but the texture lingered on his skin. Not slimy. Not rotting. Almost… warm.
Weird.
It was way too cold in here for anything to be warm.
He shook it off and kept walking, steps dragging.
Soon his lungs were starting to ache.
That's when he realized —
The pressure might have been gone, but he was still surrounded by water.
There was no air.
He hadn't taken a breath since they'd jumped in.
He paused, eyes widening.
The panic came slowly at first. A creeping tightness in his chest. Then sharper — a burn that spread behind his ribs, twisting through his lungs like fire wrapped in ice.
He clenched his teeth.
No air. No bubbles. No way to get up.
The light ahead flickered, just barely closer. Still too far.
Riven started pushing faster. His limbs protested — sluggish and slow, like moving through glue — but he forced them. One step. Then another. Then another. His hand reached forward as if that could bring the light closer.
The burn in his chest became unbearable.
Just a little farther. Just a little more—
Spots danced at the edges of his vision, and the glow ahead blurred.
He reached — staggering forward, lungs screaming.
Please.
One final step, barely more than a collapse—
And suddenly—
The water was gone.
Riven fell forward onto solid stone, coughing violently, the air ripping into his chest like knives. He gasped again, again, the sensation raw and painful but real. Cold stone beneath his hand.
The light was no longer distant — it was everywhere now. Pale and steady, glowing from stones embedded in the walls and ceiling of the cavern. Soft white, with just the faintest blue tint.
He lay there for a few seconds, just breathing.
Alive.
Then his eyes widened.
Yue Lin!
He tried to get up.
But before he could, another figure burst through the veil behind him.
Yue Lin stumbled in — half-sinking to her knees the moment she passed through whatever invisible barrier separated this strange illuminated underwater cave from the lake's depths. She coughed hard, water trailing from her hair and robes, arms braced on the stone floor.
Riven slumped back down too in relief.
They both sat there for a moment — saying nothing.
Only the sound of their ragged breathing filled the cavern.
Yue Lin dropped fully to the stone, resting on her side as she wiped her face with one trembling hand. Riven leaned back, chest still rising and falling sharply, eyes half-closed.
Riven wanted to ask her why she'd come back for him, but he chose to stay quiet in the end.
A strange kind of silence settled.
Then—
"…We're alive," Yue Lin said, voice hoarse.
Riven let out a breath that might've been a laugh. "Somehow."
A weak chuckle escaped her, short and dry.
Another small silence passed — this one lighter. Then they looked around properly for the first time.
The cave was maybe ten meters wide and there was a path leading deeper into it.
It was surrounded in smooth stone, shaped almost unnaturally. Light pulsed gently from pale blue crystals embedded high in the ceiling — forming a soft, ambient glow. Water no longer touched the floor, and yet… it felt like they were still underwater somehow. The air was damp, heavy. Everything carried that strange echo.
But the most weird of them all was the weird boundary they'd come through.
Riven turned back.
Where the cave opened toward the lake, the water hung like a sheet of black glass. Perfectly still. No dripping. No current. Just a wall of water suspended unnaturally in place, held back by… something invisible.
Like a bubble under the lake that somehow hadn't collapsed.
And strangest of all — they could breathe.
The moment they'd crossed into this place, air had filled their lungs again, real and clean. Somehow, this chamber had its own atmosphere — sealed off, untouched.
"...How does this even work?" He muttered quietly.
Yue Lin slowly turned toward him. Then her expression shifted.
"…Wait."
Riven glanced over.
She stared at the part leading deeper into the cave. Her brows drew together — not in confusion, but recognition.
"There's something off about the air," she murmured. "I know this."
Riven straightened slightly. "What do you mean?"
Yue Lin didn't answer right away. She walked toward the mouth of the deeper tunnel — only a few steps — and then stopped.
"…Corpse qi," she said.
The words sat cold in the air.
Riven blinked. "Corpse qi?"
She nodded, gaze focused ahead. "It's faint. But there's corpse qi coming from deeper inside." She paused. "I've come in contact with it in Graveweaver Court before, but..." She looked back at Riven. "If I can sense it, that means it's quite potent... and that only happens when a lot of people die."
Riven exhaled slowly.
Of course we aren't safe here.
That would've been too easy.
He glanced toward the shimmering veil of water behind them.
He didn't want to go back through that. Not unless he had no other choice.
"Alright," he said finally, turning back to Yue Lin. "Let's be careful, then."
She nodded. Her fingers curled around the hilt of her knife — still miraculously strapped to her thigh. Ready to move deeper.
Clearly she also preferred exploring the cave over entering the water again.
Riven reached into his belt pocket and retrieved one of his needles, holding it lightly between his fingers. The polished steel shimmered faintly under the pale blue ceiling light.
Without much words, they both stepped forward.
Because really, what other choice did they have?
They moved slowly, carefully — the air growing heavier with every step. The tunnel narrowed slightly before widening again, the stone underfoot almost too smooth, unnaturally even, as if carved by something far more precise than time.
"The corpse qi is getting stronger." Yue Lin warned.
Then, after several dozen meters of tense silence, the tunnel opened up.
A larger chamber stretched before them — tall, round, like the hollowed-out center of some drowned cathedral.
And both of them froze.
The floor was littered with corpses — beast and human alike, many nothing more than pale, twisted skeletons coated in a faint layer of dust.
Closest to them lay the massive remains of a Gale Scorpion — as large as the Greater Feral they'd barely escaped.
Further in, the bodies grew more varied — a few collapsed animals, and then humans. Too many humans.
They were sprawled across the floor unevenly, some slumped against the walls, others face-down across the stone — robes faded, bones exposed.
But what froze the breath in Riven's chest wasn't just the number.
It was their bodies
Their... completeness.
None of them looked like they'd died fighting. No slashed ribs. No burned cloth. No signs of struggle.
They had simply… fallen.
Like puppets whose strings had been cut.
And yet — every single corpse faced the same direction.
Toward a massive black door carved into the far end of the chamber.
Its surface was smooth and featureless, save for two long, narrow grooves etched down either side — almost like something was meant to slide into them.
Just in front of it stood a single pale stone marker, upright and perfectly centered.
Something was written on it — but they'd have to be closer to read any of it.
Riven swallowed.
Suddenly, the corpse qi made a lot of sense.