A Vow of Vengeance and Silk

The silence between them thickened like clotting blood. Seraphine flexed her fingers, watching the black veins pulse in time with Kaelan's fading scars. The crypt's stale air clung to her skin, heavy with the scent of damp earth and something fouler, something alive and hungry. Every breath tasted like rust and spoiled meat, making her throat constrict. Rook kicked aside a shattered ribcage, the bones crumbling to dust beneath his boot. "If we're going, we go now. Before…"

A deep, resonant rumble cut him off, vibrating through the stone beneath their feet. Dust and debris rained from the ceiling as the entire chamber shuddered. Seraphine's boots slid on the ichor-slick floor as she struggled to keep her balance. Somewhere in the distance, stone ground against stone with a sound like a giant's teeth gnashing together.

Brick's knuckles whitened around his axe handle. "They're coming," he growled, his dark eyes scanning the shadowed archways that led deeper into the crypt. "And they're close." Kaelan finally moved, wiping a streak of blood from his split lip with the back of his hand. His eyes, when they met Seraphine's, were hollow pits of exhaustion and something worse, resignation. "You shouldn't have followed me," he said, his voice raw. The words landed like a physical blow, carrying the weight of a thousand unspoken warnings.

Before she could respond, he turned toward a crumbling archway where the ancient stones wept black moss. The tendrils pulsed as if breathing, curling away from Kaelan's approach like living things recoiling from flame. "This way," he said without looking back. "The vault entrance is here." Seraphine lunged forward and caught his arm. Beneath the torn fabric of his sleeve, his skin burned fever-hot. "What did Eldrin mean about the vaults? About what the crown does to its heirs?" Kaelan's entire body tensed. For a heartbeat, she thought he might actually answer. Then he shook her off with a violence that startled her. "Later," he bit out. "If we live."

The passage beyond the archway swallowed them whole, its walls glistening with viscous fluid that caught their torchlight in sickly amber reflections. The air grew thicker with each step, until Seraphine felt she was wading through invisible sludge. The whispers started as soon as they crossed the threshold, not in their ears, but in their bones, vibrating up through the soles of their boots to rattle their teeth. Rook cursed as he nearly slipped on the slick stones. "What in the Black Realms is this place?" "The heart of the rot," Kaelan answered tonelessly. His scars had begun to glow again, pulsing in time with the strange luminescence of the moss around them. Seraphine's own scar burned white-hot as they reached the vault door, a massive slab of blackened iron etched with screaming faces that seemed to shift and writhe when viewed from the corner of the eye. The metal was ice-cold to the touch, yet it steamed where Kaelan pressed his bare palm against it. With a shriek of protesting metal, the door swung inward, revealing a chamber that stole the breath from Seraphine's lungs. The vault stretched before them, a cavernous maw of writhing shadows and pulsing veins that climbed the walls like serpents. The very air seemed to rot before their eyes, curdling into visible strands of corruption that coiled around their ankles. At the chamber's heart rose a grotesque throne of twisted roots, its surface glistening with the same black ichor that had coated Eldrin's claws. And upon that throne sat the source of the corruption. It wore Kaelan's face. "Welcome home, brother," it sighed, opening eyes the color of spoiled milk. Its voice was Kaelan's, but layered with something ancient and hungry. "I've been waiting so very long." Kaelan staggered as if struck. "No... that's impossible. You're dead. I watched you die." The thing that wore his face smiled, its mouth stretching too wide, revealing needle-thin teeth that glistened with black saliva. "Did you? Or did you watch what they wanted you to see?" It rose with liquid grace, its movements too smooth, too wrong to be human. Brick moved first, his axe a silver arc in the gloom. The blade bit deep into the creature's shoulder, and stuck fast. Black tendrils erupted from the wound, wrapping around the weapon with a sound like cracking bones. The creature didn't even flinch. Rook cursed, dragging Brick back as the roots beneath their feet began to twitch. "Don't let it touch you!" Seraphine grabbed Kaelan's arm, her fingers sinking into the fever-hot flesh of his bicep. "Kaelan, what is this?"

His voice was hollow. "The first heir."

The creature laughed, the sound like shattering glass. "The first failure, you mean." It spread its hands, and the chamber came alive around them. The battle was chaos. Seraphine danced between thrashing vines, her dagger flashing as she severed the ones that got too close. Each cut sprayed acidic sap that burned her skin, leaving angry red welts across her arms and face. Rook's arrows found their marks with uncanny precision, but the creature barely flinched—every wound sealed instantly, the flesh knitting itself back together with obscene speed. Kaelan fought like a man possessed, his glowing scars leaving trails of light in the dark. But with every strike, he weakened, his movements growing sluggish. The creature seemed to feed on his pain, growing stronger with each clash of their blades. "You can't win," it taunted, catching Kaelan by the throat with impossible speed. Its fingers elongated, sinking into his flesh like knives. "You're just like me. You always will be." Seraphine saw the moment Kaelan believed it. Saw the light in his eyes gutter like a dying candle. "No." The word tore from her throat as she lunged, driving her dagger between the creature's shoulder blades with all her strength. The scream that followed shook the chamber to its foundations. For the first time, the creature bled, not ichor, but something darker, something that smoked as it hit the ground. The roots recoiled as if burned. Kaelan's eyes met hers, wide with realization. "The vaults...they're not a prison for the monsters." His voice was raw with horror. "They're a prison for us." The ground heaved beneath them. The roots tore apart, revealing a yawning pit that exhaled air colder than winter's heart. The creature wailed as it was dragged toward the abyss, its perfect facade cracking like porcelain. Beneath the skin, something infinitely older and hungrier writhed. As the chamber collapsed around them, Seraphine reached for Kaelan. Their fingers brushed…

Then the world went black.