Gray's voice cracked as he whispered, "What… what is this place?"
Beside him, Renn hugged his arms close against the cold, his face pale. "How the hell did we end up in here?" His voice shook, not just from the chill but from disbelief.
Gray did not answer right away. His body still remembered the fall. The split of ice beneath their feet, the titanic weight of the giant crashing down, and the river that swallowed them whole. He could almost feel the current still dragging him into the dark, lungs burning, the pressure of the water pressing against his skull. The memory of suffocation lingered like a phantom ache, and for a terrible moment he had thought death had finally claimed him. Yet here he was, alive, standing on solid ground again.
He shook his head slowly and turned to Renn, his voice rough. "What happened after? How did we survive that?"
Renn's jaw tightened. His eyes scanned the abyss below, darting from chain to bridge as though something might move in the shadows. "We didn't climb here. We were dragged. I stayed awake long enough to feel it—something pulled us down. Below the surface. That's how we got here."
The words sank into Gray like ice. He instantly remembered the feeling of mulitple hands grabbing onto him as he sunk deeper into the darkness.
Something had brought them here deliberately. The idea that this place was not an accident but the design of something unseen made his chest tighten.
At the edge of the ledge, Aurelle knelt silently. His expression was unreadable in the fractured light. He picked up a loose rock, turning it once in his palm before letting it drop into the abyss. Gray and Renn leaned forward together, their eyes following the tiny speck of stone as it tumbled. It fell, spinning into the void, down and down and down. No sound came back. No crack of impact, no echo. The silence that swallowed it was worse than any noise could have been.
Gray's spine prickled.
He forced his voice to steady as he asked, "What did you mean earlier? The 'real Cryostead.' What's that supposed to mean?"
Aurelle hesitated before speaking, his eyes tracing the abyss as if he were remembering something rather than seeing it. Finally, he said, "The Cryostead you came from was a false one. A surface tomb. Impossible to navigate, not because of the cold alone, but because of what hunts it."
Gray's throat tightened. "The ice giants…"
Aurelle gave the faintest nod. "The ancients feared them aswell. Most feared the frost itself. So they built these. Interconnected caves, chambers, stairs. Places carved into the mountain's heart. This is where they truly lived."
Gray's eyes roamed across the staircases winding downward. They looked impossibly fragile, so thin it seemed they might crumble beneath the weight of a single step. The endless dark beneath them felt alive, waiting to consume. He remembered the settlement of the Kaan, where few outsiders ever walked. He had never seen them himself, but now, staring into this abyss, he realized Aurelle was right. There had always been something more hidden here, ancient and buried, something the surface world had forgotten. And perhaps not everything that had once hunted these people was truly gone.
He pulled his gaze away before it could swallow him whole. "So what do we do now?"
Aurelle's eyes flicked toward him, cold and unyielding. "We?" he repeated, voice flat. Then he turned to the stairs on his left which streched endlessly. "You can search for your friends. I'll be going deeper."
Gray blinked, the words hitting harder than expected. "What? Why?"
"I have no business with them or you." Aurelle adjusted the strap at his side, where the strange book hung at his hip. His steps shifted toward the downward stairwell, steady and resolute.
Gray hurried forward, catching up before he could leave. "You're serious? You're just going to walk away? What if it was your group?"
Aurelle froze mid-step. When he spoke again, his words were empty of all feeling, as hollow as the abyss beneath them. "My group died."
Gray's breath caught. The truth sank heavy in his chest. Suddenly the cold silence that clung to Aurelle's presence made sense. But even then...something about him seemed off.
For a moment Gray had no words. Then, quietly, they slipped out anyway. "I can't do this alone. I don't even know where they are. You can walk through this cold like it's nothing. I…" His throat clenched, but he steadied himself. "We need your help."
Aurelle stood motionless. The silence stretched long enough that Gray thought he would refuse. Then Aurelle exhaled sharply, a sound like resignation.
"Fine," he said at last. "But only this once."
Before Gray could reply, Renn grinned despite the tension. "Really? You'll help us? That's awesome!" His voice echoed far too loudly across the cavern, bouncing off the walls.
Aurelle did not so much as look back. He resumed walking, boots crunching faintly against the frost. If anything, the stiffness in his shoulders suggested he already regretted agreeing.
The three of them descended together. The stairs twisted endlessly into the abyss, slick with a thin sheen of ice. At times the chains above rattled faintly, though no wind touched them. Every creak seemed to echo forever, rolling through the cavern like the growl of something unseen.
Gray stayed close, shivering as they moved. It was cold, undoubtedly. But not to the point of where he felt the need to activate Frozen Veins.
After a long silence, he turned to Renn. "How did you even find Aurelle? Back up there?"
Renn rubbed the back of his neck, chuckling nervously. "That's the thing, I didn't. He found me. I managed to stay awake when we were dragged down, you and me were pulled out by the current first and sunk down in the same place, that's how I knew you were nearby. When Aurelle found me, I begged him to find you too. Guess he listened."
'How kind,'
Gray's eyes slid to Aurelle's back. "And how did you save me?"
"None of your business," Aurelle replied without turning, his voice clipped and final.
Gray's jaw tightened, but he let it go.
'Nevermind.'
They passed countless openings on the way down—caves that wound into darkness, chambers collapsed under their own weight, crystalline hollows that glowed faintly from within as if lit by unseen fire. Other passages were nothing but black voids, and from some of them came faint whispers, sounds that might have been water or wind, but carried a strange cadence that unsettled Gray's heart.
At last Aurelle stopped before the mouth of a larger chamber. The ceiling arched high above, rimmed with jagged crystals that shimmered faintly. Strange grooves marred the floor, long lines carved deep into the ice like claw marks.
"This one," Aurelle said. He turned to Gray, sapphire eyes sharp. "We'll practice here. You don't know how monsters down here work. Without that knowledge, you'll die before we can save the others, and I will not save you twice."
Gray nodded, swallowing the knot in his throat. Renn lingered near the threshold, arms crossed. "I'll wait out here. Just in case."
Aurelle inclined his head once, then stepped inside. Gray followed.
The chamber was colder than the stairwell. Faint sounds touched his ears: the drip of water, a distant thump, and, softer still, something that sounded almost like whispering. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the sound clung stubbornly to the edges of his hearing.
Then Aurelle crouched suddenly, pulling Gray down with him. A finger pressed firmly to his lips.
Gray's eyes followed his gaze, and his blood froze.
From the ceiling hung dozens of threads, thin as hair, pale and translucent. They swayed gently as if alive, but at the end of each thread dangled a frozen hand. Each hand was clawed, its palm pierced by a single unblinking eye that rolled slowly in its socket, scanning the chamber.
'It's...the same thing i seen when I woke up... could they have dragged us down here?' Gray's stomach lurched at the thought. The sight alone was grotesque, unnatural and every instinct in him screaming to look away.
Aurelle's whisper was razor-thin. "Those are Cryovigils. Their weakness is the eye in the palm. Hit it and they die. But if you look into their gaze… you will become paralyzed, temporarily."
Gray forced himself to stare only at the floor. Reflections of the eyes glimmered in the ice like small, cold stars.
'Paralysis...scary.' He had never encountered such a thing. The closest thing was the mental cue he had broken through. But it didn't reassure him in any way that the paralysis was temporary. A few moments was more than enough for him to die.
Suddenly he heard a sound scraping from the far side of the chamber.
Something lurched forward into the dim light. A man, or what had once been a man, its skin a frozen gray-blue, torn and cracked around wounds that should have ended it long ago. Its head lolled unnaturally to the side, neck half-snapped, yet its legs dragged it forward with jerking, unnatural force.
Gray's breath caught. "That's…"
"A Drowned," Aurelle finished. His eyes never left the creature. "Do not bother with the head. It won't work. Tear it apart. Scatter the pieces. That is the only way to keep it down."
Gray's voice tightened. "Why?"
"Because nothing here makes sense," Aurelle said, flat and certain.
Gray's chest tightened further. "Wait...how do you even know all this anyway?"
Aurelle's gaze flicked toward him briefly, almost mocking, before he drew the small book from his waist. Its binding was worn, etched with faint runes.
"My catalogue," he said. "Everything you and I seen is in here.."
Before Gray could speak again, Aurelle rose to his feet. His boots cracked the frost as he stepped forward into the open.
Gray's heart leapt into his throat. "Wait—you're not sneaking up?"
Before he could say more, the Drowned's head snapped upright, twisting until its frozen eyes locked on them.
Above, the Cryovigils stirred. Threads pulled taut, swaying as their unblinking eyes rolled in their direction.
Gray's pulse thundered in his ears.
"Ahh, shit."