Catherine brought her polearm down one last time, the blow cracking bone with dull finality. The last lizard went still, smoke curling from its scorched hide as the cavern’s echo slowly died.

  For a moment, only their breathing remained. Catherine was steady, Barrel low and watchful, and Ivarr… was quietly rearranging everything he thought he knew.

  He stepped closer, careful not to startle her, eyes drawn again to the weapon in her hands and the ease with which she held it.

  “Who taught you how to fight?” he asked, unable to keep the curiosity out of his voice.

  “My parents,” Catherine replied without looking at him. She adjusted her grip and began walking, as if crushing monsters was merely an inconvenience on the way to something more important. “My father is skilled with weapons. My mother was a combat mage. They both taught me how to fight.”

  A bat, one of the few stubborn stragglers, peeled off the ceiling and dove toward them, squealing.

  Catherine didn’t even break stride. She snapped her polearm upward in a clean, compact arc. The bat met the flat of the hammer and was flung back the way it came, smacking into the ceiling with a pathetic thud before scrambling away into a crack of darkness.

  “They wanted to make sure I could defend myself,” Catherine continued, voice calm as she led them across the cavern. “Our family has always trained its children early. There was a plague, centuries ago. It forced people to learn how to fight before they could even talk.”

  Ivarr frowned, jogging a step to keep up. “Why would a plague force you to learn to fight?”

  Catherine glanced up. The remaining bats were shifting again. An agitated cluster, gathering in the light shafts. Their wings rustled like dry leaves.

  “Because,” she said, lifting her free hand, “the plague raised the dead back to life,” she finished, almost casually.

  A small sphere of flame formed above her palm. She held it there for a heartbeat, letting it grow and tighten. Then she flicked her wrist. The fireball launched into the swarm. It burst among them in a sudden flare, scattering the bats in a screeching storm of wings and panic.

  Catherine lowered her hand as embers rained harmlessly to the stone.

  Ivarr slowed. For the first time since entering the cave, the grin was completely gone from his face.

  “…Raised the dead?” he repeated, quieter now.

  “Scary, right?” Catherine said, half-proud, half-teasing. Then she caught the way Ivarr’s face had shifted. The color hadn’t left him, but the lightness had. His eyes looked… busy.

  Catherine slowed a fraction. “Something wrong?”

  “I, um—” Ivarr stammered, and for once it didn’t sound like dramatics. He glanced away, jaw tightening as if he’d nearly said something he shouldn’t. “You know what. I’ll tell you later.”

  Catherine studied him for a beat, then shrugged like it wasn’t her problem. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

  They pushed on. At the far end of the cavern, they reached a sheer rock wall. It looked solid, with no cracks, no gaps, no obvious path forward. Yet when Catherine’s bracelet pulsed and the thin needle of light unfurled again, it turned once… and pointed straight ahead, unwavering. Unlike the rocks by the cave’s entrance, this wall didn’t dissolve to give way.

  “That’s… helpful,” Catherine muttered.

  They searched the wall anyway, sweeping the chamber with their eyes, then their hands. Minutes passed before Catherine spotted it. Far to the left, tucked behind a curtain of rock, was an opening.

  “There,” she said, and didn’t wait.

  Ivarr asked if they could stop before moving ahead. He raised his staff, and the red crystal at its head began to glow. Faint at first, then steadier. Tiny motes of light drifted up from the fallen creatures behind them in pale, threadlike wisps that peeled away from scorched scale and brittle wing. They floated toward the staff as if drawn by gravity, gathering into the crystal until its ember-red hue brightened.

  “And what are you doing?” Catherine asked.

  “Since my mana is weak,” Ivarr explained, “I can’t produce enough ether to use magic. I have to gather it from dying creatures, or ether crystals if I find any.”

  “Never heard of anyone doing that before,” Catherine muttered.

  “It’s kind of a Hraevnar thing, so maybe that’s why.”

  After Ivarr had finished collecting what he could, the three proceeded.

  The passage beyond was different. The air felt older, but less wild. The stone underfoot smoothed into worn steps, and the walls straightened in subtle, deliberate lines. The light remained soft and even. Where it was coming from was still a mystery to both of them.

  Columns flanked the corridor on both sides, their surfaces carved with weathered patterns—symbols, waves, spirals, shapes that hinted at hands and minds, not erosion and chance.

  Catherine ran her fingers over one of the carvings. “This part is definitely manmade,” she murmured.

  Ivarr nodded, eyes bright again, but in a different way, almost reverent. “Possibly the Emberkind,” he said. “When they chose this place to hide the artefact.”

  Catherine kept walking, gaze sliding along the engravings as if tallying their value. “What kind of artefact is in here, anyway?”

  Ivarr glanced at the bracelet’s gems, remembering the earlier glow. “Based on which crystal lit up… it should be Elyndra’s conch shell.”

  Catherine blinked. “Whose conch shell?”

  Ivarr looked at her like she’d just asked what the sun was. “Elyndra,” he said, voice dropping with a hint of awe. “Primal Goddess of the Seas.”

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  “Why a conch shell?” Catherine asked, eyeing the carvings as if they might answer her.

  Ivarr shrugged. “No one truly knows. We don’t even know why the Saint had the artefacts, or why the gods chose her to receive them.”

  Catherine opened her mouth as if to press further, then shut it again. Whatever curiosity she had took second place to the steady pull of the needle and the promise of something valuable ahead.

  They left the narrow passage and emerged into another corridor, wider this time, the ceiling higher, the air carrying that same ancient damp. Larger columns lined both sides, and the walls were dense with more engravings. Most notably, figures kneeling before a woman whose face had been worn smooth by time.

  Then something skittered, and they all stopped.

  Movement rippled in the shadows ahead. Lizards again, and bats clinging to the upper stone. Some were larger than what they’d fought earlier, their bodies thicker, their claws longer, their backs plated like layered shields. Catherine tightened her grip on the polearm. Flames crawled along its edge with a soft, obedient hiss.

  “Stay close,” she told Barrel, though her voice carried the opposite of fear. It sounded like anticipation.

  The nearest lizard lifted its head, tasted the air, and began to charge.

  Catherine acted first. She raised her polearm forward, and a wall of fire surged into existence—tall, roaring, and forceful enough to push heat back against their faces. It charged down the corridor like a living tide, swallowing anything caught in its path. Lizards shrieked as the flames hit them, scales blackening, bodies collapsing into smoldering heaps.

  The bats reacted faster, screeching and shooting upward to avoid the blaze, only to meet Catherine as she stepped beneath them and swung. Her polearm cut through the air in broad arcs, striking wings and bodies cleanly, batting them away from her and into the stone. One fell, stunned. Another tumbled straight into the lingering heat and ignited mid-fall.

  Two lizards, burned but not dead, burst through the thinning edge of the firewall, jaws snapping, eyes glazed with instinct. Barrel finally launched, meeting one head-on. He slammed into its shoulder and dragged it sideways, forcing it away from Catherine with a snarl that echoed off the carved walls.

  Ivarr, surprisingly, didn’t freeze. He rushed in with a sharp inhale and used his staff like a club, swinging it down onto a lizard’s skull with a solid crack, then twisting and striking again. When a bat swooped low, he swung upward and clipped it, sending it spiraling away in a shriek.

  Catherine moved through the chaos like she owned the corridor. She raised her hand and summoned flame arrows again, but this time the conjured bolts were visibly smaller, their light less intense. The strain showed not in her face, but in the tighter control of her breathing, the way she didn’t waste motion.

  Even so, the arrows hit true. One slammed into a larger lizard’s forehead. Another struck the jaw hinge. The creature recoiled, stunned just long enough.

  Catherine surged forward, ending it by bringing the polearm down like a hammer twice, the second blow caving bone with final, brutal certainty.

  The next lizard lunged. Catherine pivoted, let it overshoot, and drove the butt of her weapon into its ribs. It stumbled, and Barrel snapped at its flank, yanking it off balance. Catherine stepped in and finished it with a downward strike that echoed through the corridor.

  When the last bat fled upward into darkness and the final lizard lay smoking on the stone, the passage fell quiet again, save for the soft crackle of dying flame and the scrape of Ivarr dragging his staff back into his grip.

  Catherine straightened, breathing slightly harder this time. Her flame arrows had been smaller, yes, but the result was the same.

  Her gaze turned forward, toward where the needle still pulled. “Come on,” she said, voice bright with stubborn satisfaction. “We’re close.”

  Ivarr asked to collect energy from the dying creatures first. Catherine allowed it and waited. Better to have him ready to fight, she thought.

  Like before, the red crystal flared faintly, and motes of pale light drifted toward it. They gathered in the crystal like fireflies drawn to a lantern, feeding it until the glow steadied.

  After gathering all the energy he could, Ivarr hurried after Catherine, who was already standing in front of the massive door at the end of the large hall. Once Ivarr confirmed he was ready, Catherine placed her hand against the seam.

  The bracelet on her wrist pulsed. With a low groan, the door yielded and swung inward.

  They were greeted by an empty hall. At least, that’s what it looked like at first.

  The chamber beyond was vast, its ceiling disappearing into darkness. Their footsteps echoed too loudly, too cleanly. Up ahead, another door stood half-swallowed by shadow, and the needle of light from Catherine’s bracelet pointed straight toward it.

  Catherine took one step in, and something shifted above. Ivarr’s eyes snapped upward first.

  A shape clung to the top of the far door, curled and still, like a nightmare pretending to be part of the stone. Then it unfolded, legs too many. A tail arched high, and a stinger glinted at its tip. It crawled down with slow certainty, its chitin catching the light in dull, oily flashes.

  A scorpion. Not a cave-sized insect, but one the size of a horse.

  “What in Twins’ name is that?” Catherine breathed, more impressed than frightened, though her grip tightened on the polearm.

  “Maybe something the Emberkind left behind,” Ivarr murmured. “A guardian.”

  The scorpion’s pincers opened and closed once, testing the air. Its body lowered, ready to battle them.

  Ivarr glanced at Catherine. “Do you think you can take it?”

  “I still have energy,” Catherine replied, eyes fixed on the creature, “but I don’t know if it’s enough to take this down… and whatever lies past that door.”

  “Should we turn back, then?” Ivarr said immediately. No teasing this time, only pragmatism. “Even if you kill it, if there are more ahead, or if we have to fight on the way out, we’re done for once you run dry.”

  Catherine stared at the scorpion a moment longer, measuring. It was huge, armored, and evidently deadly. Barrel could harry it, maybe… but not stop it. Ivarr could only swing a staff, and Catherine’s flames had already started shrinking.

  Finally, she exhaled through her nose. “Fine,” she said, like it tasted bitter. “We come back another time.”

  The scorpion clicked its pincers again, as if offended they weren’t offering themselves.

  Catherine stepped back, and the group retreated, closing the great door behind them. Only when the stone groaned shut did she let her shoulders loosen.

  On their way back, Ivarr slowed and nodded toward the fallen lizards.

  “Can we stop for a moment?” he asked. “I want the hide.”

  Catherine eyed him. “For what?”

  “The skin’s tough,” he said, already crouching beside one of the less-incinerated corpses. “It’ll make a durable coat. Or boots. The ones you didn’t roast to ash, of course.”

  Catherine agreed and leaned her polearm against a column, watching him work. While he carved, her gaze drifted around the hallway again. The craftsmanship still held her attention: the columns, the engravings, the deliberate way every surface seemed to tell a story.

  Then she noticed it, a brief glint on the wall to their right, catching the flicker of flame from one of the still-burning bodies. Catherine’s eyes narrowed.

  She stepped closer, and half-hidden in a shallow niche, she found a small silver chest, no larger than a loaf of bread. Dust coated it, but it hadn’t tarnished. It looked… untouched.

  Catherine opened it, finding a single pearl resting inside, smooth and pale, almost luminous in the dim cavern light. She stared at it, baffled. “Why would anyone leave a pearl in here?”

  Her fingers hovered over it. She lifted it carefully, feeling its cool weight, turning it once in the light.

  Before she could think further, Ivarr called out, “Done!”

  Catherine closed the chest quietly, slipped the pearl into her satchel, and walked back as if she’d found nothing at all.

  Ivarr stood, wiping his hands, and Catherine’s eyes flicked over the remains. “Where’s the hide?” she asked.

  Ivarr tapped his backpack twice. “In here.”

  Catherine blinked. “How did it fit?”

  “Oh, this is no ordinary backpack,” he said, as if that was obvious. “It’s enchanted. Bigger on the inside.”

  Catherine stared at the pack, eyes narrowing with a new kind of interest.

  Ivarr’s expression hardened instantly. “Oh no, you won’t.”

  Catherine tilted her head, all innocence. “What?”

  “If you’re thinking of stealing this too… no,” he said, hugging the strap closer. “Absolutely not.”

  Catherine giggled and raised both hands. “Relax. I’m tired.”

  “So maybe not today,” she added, her smile sharpening.

  Ivarr tried to ignore that and groaned. “Let’s head back,” he muttered. “I’m starving.”