“You smell that?” Pos grunted, scratching his beard. The rest of the party froze, noses twitching because they had just caught wind of the awful smell.

  It hit them like a tidal wave—the smell of rotten eggs and spoiled meat. The kind of stink that seeps out of a locked cellar after weeks of rot. Pos tightened his grip on his axe. They’d barely stepped onto the fourth floor and, already, he hated the place.

  The dwarven [Warrior] looked out at the mist covering the floor. The mist on the ground wasn’t just hiding things, it was clinging to his skin, cold and sticky, almost like a dead thing’s breath. Pos felt it, and he didn’t like it one bit.

  Next to him, Fabiana sucked air through her teeth. “This isn’t natural,” she muttered, squeezing her staff until her knuckles went white. “It’s magical.” And right then, the mist curled around her ankles, almost like it heard her, twisting up her boots with thin, searching tendrils.

  Pos spat into the fog. The spit vanished before it even hit the ground. “We’re in a dungeon,” he growled. “Of course the mist isn’t natural.” He rolled his shoulders, letting the weight of his armor settle around him. Anything to take his mind off that smell, which, impossibly, was getting worse. Now it wasn’t just rot—he caught the sharp tang of blood. Fresh enough to make his stomach clench.

  Umder crouched and pressed a hand to the wet ground. His fingers came up slick and dark. “Soil. Marshy,” he said quietly. “This floor smells like death. Think there’s undead?” His words echoed weirdly in the mist, too loud like it was bouncing back at them.

  Pos felt the hairs on his neck stand up. “Stay sharp,” he muttered, stepping forward. His boot squished down into something soft. He didn’t bother to look.

  The party crept through the marsh, trying to be as silent as possible. It did not take long before the whispering started. Not voices, but something worse. It was a thin, broken melody, drifting through the fog like the strands of a broken song. It sounded almost like music, but in a musical style Pos had never heard before.

  Bazel nocked an arrow. Fabiana readied a spell. The rest of them gripped their weapons tighter. The whispering was everywhere and nowhere, buzzing in Pos’s teeth, rising up from the ground itself.

  “Careful. They’re close,” Fabiana breathed.

  Pos got it. The whispering was getting louder; whatever was making the sound was getting close. Then shapes took form in the mist—tall, willowy figures gliding through the mist with incredible grace. Their skin shimmered, not gray and rotting like the undead, but pearl-bright, moonlight on milk. Pos blinked and lowered his axe, caught off guard. The shapes drifted, their feet barely skimming the ground, their gowns so sheer you could see the shadows of ribs. One turned, her neck bending too far, eyes on him. She smiled; lips dark and wet like rose petals after rain.

  Then, came the music.

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  It was no gentle whisper. No drumbeat, no calming flute—just a voice. High and crystalline, sharp and pure. It cut through everything and hooked Pos in a tight and unrelenting grasp. It squeezed his thoughts until everything else faded. His head spun. His vision swam. The axe slipped from his grip and hit the ground. For a second, even the earth under his boots seemed to throb with the voice. Pos tried rage, he tried to curse, but his tongue felt thick, heavy, and useless.

  Then, someone roared.

  Not words—just a raw, furious bellow that blasted through the fog like an avalanche. An aura exploded outward, invisible but blazing hot and stubborn. The shock tore through Pos, clearing the thick haze in his head. The world snapped back into place just as the nearest monster drew back, her lips peeling away to show sharp needle-thin teeth.

  He turned. It was Umdar. The [Knight] was the one who had saved them.

  The monsters didn’t attack. They didn’t scream. They didn’t make a sound. They just stepped back, smooth and silent, and faded into the mist—gone in an instant, like salt vanishing in water. It was so quick Pos almost questioned if they’re even there. Only the song told him that they were.

  The song lingered, twisting around Umdar’s aura as it fractured into dissonant echoes as the creatures went further away. It did not take long before it died away but the party did not relax, they stayed within the Umdar’s lingering aura. Even the mist seemed to shrink from it, pulling back from the aura until the party stood alone in a little bubble of clean air, each one gasping hard for breath.

  Pos wiped sweat from his eyes. His axe was back in his hands, though he didn't remember bending to retrieve it. The ground was solid and dry again, no trace of the slick rot from before. The smell was gone too, replaced by damp earth, fresh and green, like ferns crushed underfoot after rain. Pos wondered how long Umdar’s aura would last.

  The floor was silent once more, only now the silence felt even heavier than the song. It filled his ears, thick and physical. Barwin exhaled, slow and shaky, the sound almost loud in the stillness. “They’re gone,” he whispered, voice brittle.

  Pos scanned the mist as it pulled away. His heart was still hammering. Dwarves weren’t meant for this, he thought—not for misty things that just melted away, untouchable by steel. Give him a boulder to smash, a monster swarm to cut through. Something solid. Something he could hit. But the mist kept thinning, slipping back to reveal black stone arches, jagged and wet, looming up ahead. The fourth floor opened up before them, wide and shadowed, the ceiling somewhere far above in the gloom.

  Barwin’s voice broke the quiet. “This is new. Do we keep going, or report to the Guild?” He sounded rough and worn down. Pos noticed Barwin clutching his side, blood drying stiff on his clothes. The [Swordsman] was badly hurt on the previous floor, but he wouldn’t quit. Pride and duty would not allow the human to abandon the delve halfway.

  “Report what?” Ferdinand said, grinning. “That we met a bunch of singing ghosts who tucked us in?” He sounded cheerful, but his knuckles were white on his daggers. Pos knew that look. People said halflings had nerves of steel, but that was a lie—the species as a whole just hid their fear under jokes or sarcasm.

  “They weren’t ghosts,” Fabiana whispered, her voice barely carried on the silent floor. “And I don’t think they’re undead either. They’re... different.”

  Bazel’s frown got deeper. In a dungeon, anything new usually spelled trouble. He stared at Fabiana, half worried, half doubting.

  “Different how?” Bazel asked.

  Fabiana’s eyes unfocused, like she was trying to chase down a half-remembered dream. “Didn’t you feel it? It was like they weren’t really here. Like I was half asleep, in a dream or somewhere else entirely.”

  Pos, who’d been hanging back, spat on the ground again. The sound echoed. “So what in the name of Rock and Stone did we see?” His rough and loud voice boomed, a stark contrast to Fabiana’s quiet mumbling.