The Great Tomb of Nexus loomed out of the swamp mist like a black, jagged tooth of the world. The Heroic Coalition approached with a mixture of professional caution and treasure-fueled excitement.
"No guards on the outer walls," Kaelen Red-Blade noted, observing the ziggurat through a spyglass. "No patrols. The rumors were right. The place is on low alert."
"The air itself feels heavy," Lyra, the elven archer, murmured, her sensitive nostrils picking up the faint scent of ozone and ancient dust. "This place is saturated with old, powerful magic. Do not let your guard down."
Borin the dwarf spat on the ground. "Bah! Old magic is just another relic to be smashed! Let's get to the front door!"
The 'front door' was a pair of colossal stone gates, easily fifty feet high, carved with images of skeletal warriors and screaming specters. There was no visible lock, no handle.
"A magical seal," the rogue wizard of the group, a man named Jax, announced. He stepped forward, his hands crackling with arcane energy. "A simple one, meant to keep out wandering beasts. A child's puzzle." He began to chant, weaving a counter-spell.
In the throne room, Rose watched the scrying mirror with a prim smile. "The 'child's puzzle', as he calls it, is a Tier 3 Abjuration Ward. He is correct. It is meant to be simple." She had given orders for the outer defenses to be laughably weak.
On the screen, Jax completed his spell. The glowing runes on the great stone doors flickered and died. With a deep, grinding groan, the gates swung inward, revealing a vast, dark hall.
A cheer went up from the assembled adventurers. Their first obstacle was overcome with ease. Their confidence surged.
"See? Easy," Borin grunted, hefting his twin axes. "Now for the loot!"
The party entered the first floor of the Great Tomb. The hall was immense, the ceiling lost in shadow. The only light came from eerie, ever-burning torches that cast long, dancing shadows. In the center of the hall, a shambling horde of several hundred skeletons and zombies turned their vacant eyes towards the intruders. Their armor was rusted, their bones brittle. They were the most basic, low-tier undead.
"Cannon fodder," Kaelen scoffed. "Red Blades, form the vanguard! Clear a path!"
What followed was a display of platinum-ranked efficiency. Kaelen's holy greatsword, [Sun-Cleaver], swung in wide, brilliant arcs, the sacred light turning any undead it touched to ash. Borin became a whirlwind of steel, his axes shattering bones and cleaving through rotting flesh with gleeful abandon. Lyra's arrows, each one enchanted, flew with impossible speed, finding the weak points in the horde and felling three or four skeletons with every shot. Jax the wizard unleashed a [Chain Lightning] spell that arced through the undead, leaving trails of charred bone in its wake.
The rest of the coalition charged in behind them, their own skills adding to the cacophony of destruction. The horde of several hundred undead was wiped out in less than five minutes. The floor was littered with nothing but dust and scraps of rotting cloth.
"Hah! Is that all this 'god' has?" the disgraced Elysian knight shouted, high on the victory. "My grandmother could have fought her way through that!"
The party's morale was at an all-time high. The rumors were true. The tomb was practically empty. They were going to be rich. They were going to be legends.
They advanced to the second floor, which was much the same. More mindless undead, slightly stronger this time—armored skeletons and ghouls—but still no match for their combined might. They cut through them with practiced ease.
It was on the third floor that things began to change.
The third floor was different. It was not a grand hall, but a labyrinth of identical, winding corridors, all carved from the same featureless black stone. The ever-burning torches were spaced further apart here, casting vast pools of deep, impenetrable shadow. The air was unnaturally still and silent.
"A maze," Lyra noted, her elven eyes trying to pierce the gloom. "A classic delaying tactic. Stay close. Don't get separated."
They began to navigate the labyrinth, their footsteps echoing unnervingly in the silence. The initial bravado of the party began to fade, replaced by a tense, professional caution.
And then, Killer began his work.
The beastman shaman, at the rear of the party, suddenly stopped. "Did you hear that?" he whispered, his large ears twitching.
"Hear what? I hear nothing," Borin grunted.
"Exactly," the shaman said, his eyes wide. "For a moment... I couldn't even hear my own heartbeat."
He took another step, and then his foot came down on a patch of floor that wasn't there. It was a perfect illusion of solid stone, masking a deep, dark pit. He yelped as he fell, vanishing into the darkness below. They heard a single, wet crunch, and then silence.
"Shaman!" Kaelen yelled, rushing to the edge of the pit. He peered down, but could see nothing but absolute blackness.
"A pit trap," Jax said, his voice a little shaky. "A well-hidden one. We need to be more careful."
They moved on, their formation tighter, their nerves on edge. They turned a corner, and the disgraced Elysian knight suddenly let out a choked gasp. He pointed a trembling finger at the wall. "My... my shadow..."
They all looked. His shadow, cast by a distant torch, was behaving strangely. It was moving on its own. It raised a shadowy hand and waved at him, a mocking, silent gesture. As the knight stared in horror, his own shadow detached itself from his feet, formed into the shape of a wicked-looking dagger, and lunged at the shadow of the man next to him.
The knight screamed as his comrade fell to the ground, clutching his chest, a real, physical wound appearing on his body where his shadow had been stabbed. It was a high-level illusion spell, a curse that linked the shadow to the flesh.
Panic began to set in. "What is this sorcery?" the knight shrieked, scrambling away from his own shadow.
"Stay calm!" Kaelen commanded, his voice tight. "It's just illusions! Tricks to break our nerve!"
But the tricks became more insidious. A whisper in a language no one knew would echo from an empty corridor. The layout of the maze would seem to shift when no one was looking. A party member would glance at a reflection in a polished bit of stone only to see a gaunt, skeletal face staring back instead of their own.
Killer was not attacking them. He was dissecting them, psychologically. He moved through the shadows of the labyrinth, a ghost in his own home. He was a master of fear, using minor illusions, auditory hallucinations, and subtle spatial distortions to turn the adventurers' own minds against them. He was separating the coalition not physically, but mentally, eroding their confidence, nurturing their paranoia.
The final straw came at a four-way intersection. As the party paused to choose a path, the torches in all four corridors simultaneously extinguished, plunging them into absolute, suffocating darkness.
There were screams. The sound of steel being drawn.
"Hold your ground!" Kaelen roared into the blackness. "Light! Jax, give us light!"
"I... I can't!" the wizard stammered, his voice filled with panic. "My magic... it's being suppressed! Something is... eating the light!"
In the darkness, a single, dry, rasping whisper slithered through the air, seeming to come from every direction at once.
"Flee... or your souls will be my playthings..."
A sphere of magical light suddenly erupted from Jax's hand, but it was weak, sputtering, casting a dim, sickly glow. In that brief, flickering light, they saw it. For a fraction of a second, standing at the far end of the corridor, was a figure made of pure shadow, with only two glowing red runes on its hands visible. And surrounding it, writhing on the walls and ceiling, were the captured, screaming souls of the comrades they had already lost.
The light died again.
The disgraced Elysian knight broke. He let out a piercing shriek of pure terror. "I can't take this! I'm getting out!" He turned and ran blindly back the way they had come. They heard his receding screams, then a sudden, choked-off gurgle, and then silence.
The coalition, once a proud and boisterous band of heroes, was now a small, terrified huddle in the dark. Their confidence was shattered. Their numbers were dwindling. They were no longer brave adventurers. They were scared children, lost in a haunted house.
And they still hadn't even reached the true guardian of this floor.
From the darkness ahead, they heard a new sound. It was not a whisper. It was a sweet, gentle, feminine humming. And the faint, pleasant scent of blooming roses.
"Oh, dear," a lovely voice said, full of mock sympathy. "It sounds like you've had a bit of a fright. Don't worry. You're safe now. Welcome to my garden."