The rain outside the "Iron Root" tavern didn't wash things clean; it only made the grime stick harder. It was a heavy, oily downpour, typical of the outskirts of the Black Citadels. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of wet wool, cheap tobacco, and the copper tang of dried blood that seemed to cling to every patron.
Kaelen sat in the furthest booth, nursing a cup of lukewarm water. He didn't drink alcohol. Not when his mind needed to be sharper than a razor.
He adjusted the cuffs of his robe. It was made of high-quality weave, the kind worn by scholars of the Obsidian Tower, but he had deliberately stained it with mud and soot. To the untrained eye, he looked like a disgraced academic or a hedge wizard down on his luck.
Perfect.
—Are you the Navigator?
The voice was rough, like stones grinding together. Kaelen didn't look up immediately. He slowly traced the rim of his wooden cup, letting the silence stretch just long enough to establish dominance, before lifting his gaze.
Standing before him was a mountain of a man clad in plate armor that had seen too many battles. Behind him, three others waited. A rogue with restless hands, a cleric clutching a symbol of a forgotten deity, and a woman—the leader, judging by how the others gravitated around her—who stared at him with eyes as cold as the rain outside.
—That depends—Kaelen said, his voice calm, lacking the tremors of fear most civilians showed in the presence of mercenaries. Are you the group that thinks they can walk into the Hollowed Ziggurat and walk out with their sanity intact?
The leader stepped forward. She placed a heavy bag on the table. The clink of gold coins was unmistakable, but Kaelen didn't even blink.
—I am Valia, she said. Her hand rested on the pommel of a greatsword wrapped in enchanted leather. We don't pay you to worry about our sanity, mage. We pay you to read the seals. We heard you are the only one in this miserable town who can decipher the Pre-Epoch script.
Kaelen finally looked at the gold. It was enough to fund his research for a year. But gold was useless if you were dead.
—The script is the easy part, Valia—Kaelen replied, standing up. He was tall, thin, and pale, a stark contrast to the battle-hardened warriors. The hard part is knowing which shadows not to step on.
He grabbed his staff—a simple rod of blackened iron with no visible gemstones—and walked past them.
—Let's go. The Ziggurat is hungriest at night. I'd prefer to be inside before the moon rises.
The journey to the dungeon took three hours of trekking through the Sinking Marsh.
The world here was silent. Not the peaceful silence of a library, but the predatory silence of a hunter holding its breath. The twisted trees, with bark like flayed skin, loomed over the muddy path.
Kaelen walked in the middle of the formation. He wasn't a warrior, and he had no intention of pretending to be one. His eyes, however, were constantly scanning the flow of mana in the air. To a normal person, the fog was just fog. To Kaelen, it was a soup of residual magical radiation.
—You're quiet for a scholar—Valia said, falling back to walk beside him. She was testing him.
—Talking wastes breath. Breath sustains concentration—Kaelen answered without looking at her.
—You don't look like the type who raids dungeons. You seem like you belong behind a desk, dusting off old scrolls.
Kaelen tightened his grip on his staff. She wasn't wrong. He did belong in the tower, surrounded by the safety of stone walls and candle wax. But the Tower didn't have the Grimoire of Aethelgard. The High Magisters had declared the book a myth, a bedtime story for apprentices.
Kaelen knew better. He had spent ten years decoding fragments of history that others ignored. The Grimoire was real. It contained the logic of the world before the Cataclysm. And if his calculations were correct, it was resting at the bottom of the ziggurat these mercenaries were so eager to plunder.
They were looking for gold and artifacts. He was looking for the Truth.
—I am here because knowledge has a price, Valia—Kaelen said softly. Sometimes that price is gold. Sometimes it's walking into a tomb with four strangers.
The rogue at the front raised a fist. The group halted instantly.
—We're here, the rogue whispered.
Ahead of them, the swamp abruptly ended. The vegetation died away, replaced by a circle of grey, cracked earth. In the center of that dead zone stood the entrance to the Hollowed Ziggurat.
It wasn't a door. It was a wound in reality.
The stone structure jutted out of the ground at an impossible angle, covered in moss that looked suspiciously like dried veins. The entrance was a triangular maw, pitch black, breathing out a draft of air that smelled of ozone and ancient dust.
Kaelen felt a shiver run down his spine. It wasn't fear—it was recognition. The mana leaking from the entrance tasted familiar. It tasted like the ink of the books he had studied for a decade.
It's here, he thought. It's actually here.
—The seals—Valia commanded, pointing to the archway covered in glowing, jagged runes.
Kaelen approached the structure. He could feel the weight of the magic pressing against his mind, a headache beginning to form behind his eyes. He raised his iron staff. The tip didn't glow with fire or lightning; instead, it seemed to absorb the ambient light, creating a small void.
He began to chant, not in the common tongue, but in the harsh, guttural language of the Old Orders.
—Oth... Vae... Null...
The runes on the stone flared red, then slowly turned a calm, rhythmic blue. The heavy stone slab blocking the way groaned, the sound of rock grinding against rock echoing through the silent marsh like a beast waking up.
Slowly, the darkness of the dungeon opened up to them.
—It's open, Kaelen said, stepping back. He hid his trembling hand inside his sleeve. The energy required just to open the door was immense. Whatever was inside was far more powerful than the reports suggested.
Valia drew her greatsword. The metal sang as it left the scabbard.
—Form up. Tank in front. Mage in the middle. If anything moves, kill it. If it doesn't move, hit it anyway just to be sure.
Kaelen watched them file into the darkness. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the damp, rotten air, and followed them.
As he crossed the threshold, he felt the heavy stone door begin to slide shut behind them, sealing them in. He didn't look back. There was no point.
In the darkness of the Ziggurat, the only way out was down.