Below, in the Hollowstone Rift
The dungeon exhaled.
The sound moved like breath through broken stone, winding around the new paths carved in the dark. Mist seeped through the walls. Old blood stained the floors. The air was thick with copper and silence.
The Revenant stood still.
Listening.
Five sets of boots struck stone above. Measured. Deliberate. These ones were no longer fools. They carried the scent of torch oil, steel, and bitter root. One of them even reeked of silver and ash anti-monster wards. Holy iron.
They were prepared.
He smiled anyway.
The dungeon had changed.
[Dungeon Map: Updated]
[New Traps Armed: Bone Spikes, Choke Vine, Collapsing Ceiling]
[Monsters Active: Wretch x4]
[Core Guardian: Level 2 – Experience 73%]
He moved between chambers like smoke. His claw brushed stone and the walls bent to his will. What was once unshaped was now purposeful. Funnels. Traps. Maze bends. No path through the dungeon was clean anymore.
He had learned.
They would not reach him easily.
Surface Descent: Adventurer Party "Iron Thorn"
The five descended into the dark in formation.
Grim – A knight in layered blackplate, shield etched with a dragon's fang.
Niselle – A fire-touched archer with red sigils tattooed into her skin.
Brother Tham – A silver-robed cleric, young and pale, holding a relic censer that glowed faintly.
Jorrin – A rogue, ex-mercenary, quiet eyes and a poisoned blade.
Marra – The scout.
Yes that Marra.
She moved like a shadow now. Thinner than before. Paler. But her eyes burned with something new. Not fear. But vengeance.
She had seen the thing in the dark and lived. That made her something more than the others. It made her dangerous.
"The air's wrong," she whispered.
Tham looked up. "You said it breathed."
She didn't answer. She just kept walking.
In the Bone Hall
A scream tore through the dark.
It was the rogue, Jorrin. His leg had vanished into the floor. A pit trap. Bone teeth clamped around his thigh, gnawing the flesh off with slow, grinding pressure. He screamed again. Grim yanked him free and the leg came with them barely still attached.
Too late.
Poison flooded the wound.
He died with a gurgle.
Not a minute later, the first Wretch leapt from the ceiling.
Niselle's arrow split it in two. Light magic erupted from Tham's censer and scorched the floor clean. But they were shaken. The first death came fast.
And then the second came faster.
From the wall this time.
The Wretch slithered through the stone like it wasn't there. Like the dungeon itself was a skin it could crawl beneath. It tore into the cleric's shoulder. He screamed, dropped the relic, and crumpled.
Fire. Steel. Smoke.
The dungeon roared.
Marra did not scream. She did not turn.
She looked down the hallway and saw him.
Waiting.
Not hiding.
The Revenant.
Eyes white as bone. Claws slick with rot. Taller than before. Stronger. Leaner.
Watching her.
As if he remembered her.
She froze.
He tilted his head.
Then he turned and vanished into the mist.
Farther Below
He let them flee.
The archer dragged the wounded knight, half-conscious, through the maze.
The girl Marra followed last. Her eyes never left the shadows. She knew he could kill them. She expected it.
He didn't.
He walked beside the wall and watched them pass.
The dungeon wanted blood. It screamed for it.
But he overrode it.
He had learned something far greater than violence.
Terror echoes.
He could kill one. Let another watch.
He could wound two. Let one survive.
They would go home and speak his name in whispers. They would tell stories of the thing that knew their names, that read their eyes, that let them live.
He was not a beast anymore.
He was a legend forming itself in the dark.
The Revenant walked back into the stone.
And began to plan.