We cross a narrow bridge of stone, arching over a chasm of blackness. The wooden boards are rotten, twisting beneathweight. I steady Olivia’s hand. She doesn’t say anything—just looks ahead, wide-eyed.
A trap: I hear a whisper, a scuttle. A floorboard snaps under Booger’s foot. He stumbles; Burnout jerks him back. A whistle of spore sprays out—a cloud of choking spores. Peggy Sue coughs, waves her scarf over her face.
“Damn traps!” Booger gasps.
Olivia stumbles, the spores tickling her throat. I catch her arm. “Here—breathe through your sleeve.”
She nods, eyes watering. She tastes smoke, or spores, or regret—maybe all three.
We push deeper. Hallucinations begin. Voices, soft whispers: festival laughter; her mother’s voice calling her name. I hear it before she does. I glance at Olivia—the color drains from her face.
A bat swoops overhead. I draw my sword. The bat lands, small and wet, its wings torn. And then it speaks in her mother’s voice—sharp, broken: “Olivia… come home…”
Her knees buckle. Her fingers clutch at her ears.
“No,” she whispers, voice cracking. “No, not you too…”
I drop my spear and catch her. One arm around her waist, the other supporting her back. Her forehead presses into my chest. Heart pounding. Her breath comes in gasps.
“Shh,” I murmur. “I’m here. I got you.”
She trembles. Warm tears soaked into my tunic. The world distorts: fungus glow turning to shapes; walls bending, heat shimmering like a mirage.
I hold her, feel her tears soaking into my cloak, her weight heavy, heart breaking. The bat’s voice fades, the hallucination dissolves. But the mark it leaves… fragile, raw.
She pulls away just enough to look up at me, eyes hazy. I wipe a tear from her cheek, tasting salt. She tastes like earth and fear and love.
“Let’s go,” I whisper. Her nod is a shuttered quake.
We rise, together. My allies regroup—Booger rubs his throat; Burnout wipes spore dust from his jacket; Peggy Sue mutters against the edges of magic. We move onward, deeper into the cave, the unholy growth unyielding.
But in that moment, in that dark, I know: whatever we face next, we face it together.
My lungs burn with cave air—hot, humid, fermented decay. The walls sweat fungal ooze, and every breath tastes of rot and something acrid, like metal heated too long. Olivia’s beside me, silent, her boots crunching on shattered rune-stone. Booger, Burnout, Peggy Sue follow close, torches trembling in their hands and hope clenched tight in their throats.
We step into the inner sanctum. The hearth of this nightmare. The broken orcic seal on the ground is the first thing I see: colossal flat stone cracked in a thousand directions, etchings of my ancestors’ runes splintered. Light leaks from behind the fragments—pale green glow. Rot veins pulse in those cracks like the veins on a dying leaf. Bits of broken shards, ancient metal, bone: all desecrated, all rendered impotent.
I swallow. The sound echoes.
Then I see it.
The Vorfaluka stands beyond the seal, towered by rot. Dim, dripping flesh. Rotten sinew fused to muscle that still breathes. Two faces, one on the left cheek twisted and snarling, the other on the right with lips parted in eternal mockery. Whispering. Always whispering. One voice like betrayal, the other like longing.
“Ashes in bones…” one face hisses.
“Blood in the void…” the other murmurs.
It stretches a hand. Fingers queasy with decay, the skin peeling, dripping slime and spores. The stench is overwhelming—damp earth, fungal spores, decay, blood, fire. My vision swims.
“Power beyond death,” the beast offers, voice doubled. “Immortality. Your brother’s laughter again. His face returned.”
My grip on Spiritslayer tightens until my knuckles whiten. The shard in the blade hums hot, a pulse in my wrist. I taste copper, the tang of tears unshed.
Olivia’s voice cuts the air: “Kursk. Don’t listen.”
I glance at her. Her face is fierce. Eyes wet, but fierce. She is holding herself upright on faith and fear both.
The Vorfaluka tilts its grotesque heads. “Do you not want him back? Your blood remembers. Your heart bleeds.”
