The chamber beyond the wall was suffocating in its silence.
The moment Duncan stepped inside, the torch in his hand flickered as if gasping. Roots, blackened with age and ash, wove through the stone walls like veins. Bones lined the alcoves—human, beast, and something else entirely. Things with too many joints. Skulls with twin eye sockets stacked one above the other.
At the center of the room sat the Throne.
It was massive, but not majestic. Its back was formed from petrified roots braided with the fangs of monstrous creatures. Charred symbols ran along its armrests—beast script, the same language etched into the medallion.
But what unnerved Duncan most wasn't the throne itself.
It was that it faced a mirror.
A tall, obsidian plate embedded in the opposite wall, polished so perfectly that when Duncan stepped forward, he saw not himself… but something else.
A man cloaked in smoke. Wearing antlers. His eyes gleamed like molten silver.
Duncan blinked. The figure was gone.
Whispers in the Stone
He ran his fingers along the armrest of the throne. Cold. Fused with something like iron, but older. Something alive once. The moment his hand brushed one of the carved glyphs, it pulsed—briefly—and a voice echoed in his skull:
"You are not the first. But you may be the last."
Duncan staggered back, drawing his sword out of instinct.
The throne did not move.
But a sliver of stone beneath it crumbled, revealing a spiral stair leading even deeper into the mountain.
He stared down into it. No light. No sound.
He should have turned back. Should have summoned Brannoc or Kael. Should have alerted the officers above.
But something in his blood—a drumbeat he'd begun to recognize as older than instinct—pulled him forward.
He descended.
Chamber of the Pact
The stairs spiraled for what felt like hours, but time warped underground. At the bottom, Duncan entered a vast cavern, lit not by fire—but by bioluminescent moss glowing pale green across the walls.
Here, stone tablets stood in a semi-circle, each engraved with a story in symbols. One tablet showed men and beasts shaking hands. Another showed warriors riding creatures that looked like wyverns with bark for wings.
But the final tablet was shattered.
Its pieces scattered near a half-buried skeleton—human-shaped, wearing a broken chestplate marked with a sigil Duncan didn't recognize.
Only one piece of the final tablet was intact.
He knelt beside it and read the script aloud.
"Steel was not the enemy. It was the arrogance behind it."
He didn't understand the full meaning, but it rang true.
Echoes of the Past
Suddenly, a gust of air stirred the moss. The torches on the stairs above snuffed out.
A deep, guttural growl came from the far end of the cavern.
Duncan stood, sword ready, eyes scanning the shadows.
Something was down there. Watching.
He crouched and listened.
Claws on stone. Breathing, ragged. Heavy.
Then it stepped into the faint mosslight.
A Direthorn Boar—but twisted, emaciated, its tusks fractured, its hide covered in patches of crystallized growths. Its eyes glowed red, but they were not wild.
They were… controlled.
Not summoned.
Corrupted.
The creature charged.
Trial of Flame and Blood
Duncan dodged to the side, blade whistling. He slashed the beast's flank, but the blade bounced off the hardened hide. The creature swung its head, nearly breaking his ribcage with a tusk.
He rolled under its charge, coming up behind it. The medallion at his waist flared again.
The boar hesitated.
Duncan hesitated too.
It wasn't afraid.
It was confused.
He looked deeper into its eyes and saw something behind them.
A glyph—burned onto the underside of its skull. A glyph of dominion.
Not natural. Not wild.
Designed.
Someone had done this.
Someone was making wild beasts into weapons.
Dominion Below
Duncan made his move.
He darted up the cavern wall using a crumbled shelf of stone, then leapt from the ledge, driving his sword down into the beast's spine.
It howled—screamed like a man.
The glyph pulsed, cracked, and then… the creature fell still.
Duncan crouched beside the body, breathing heavily.
He pried open the thick hide, searching the glyph.
It was the same style as the scripts in the crypt.
But newer.
Someone else had been down here—recently.
He turned to leave… and noticed fresh footprints in the moss.
Booted. Not his own.
Someone had been watching him.
And they had fled back up the stairs.
Rising Threats
By the time Duncan emerged from the crypt, it was dawn.
Kael was waiting for him at the top step, arms crossed. She looked him up and down, noting the blood, the cracked sword, the wild gleam in his eyes.
"You found something," she said.
He nodded.
"More questions," he murmured. "And something worse."
Kael narrowed her eyes. "What's worse than beast cults and inquisitors?"
Duncan looked back at the sealed crypt door.
"Someone is trying to build a new kind of army. One that's neither man nor beast. And I think…"
He clenched his fists.
"I think they want the Throne too."