The Silver Spears continued to descend into the heart of the dungeon. The spiral staircase seemed to stretch on forever, each step echoing in the oppressive silence. The smooth, black walls seemed to absorb their light and courage. The thief glanced anxiously at the shifting engravings that appeared and disappeared at the edge of her vision.
Suddenly, a laugh rang out, high-pitched and unstable, echoing in the darkness like a mad echo. The adventurers stopped dead in their tracks.
"What the..." whispered the warrior, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
From the corner of the shadows, a figure appeared. The man's body was trembling, his eyes wide and bloodshot. His clothes, torn and stained with ink, gave the impression that he had just gone through a thousand nightmares. It was Barnabas, the mushroom mage, lost in a hallucinatory trance.
"Who... who are you?" asked the group's mage timidly, but Barnabas did not answer immediately. He stared into space, incomprehensible murmurs slipping from his lips, as if invisible voices were assailing him.
Then, as if struck by a flash of lucidity, he turned to them.
"Follow... follow... the path..." he said in a trembling, almost strangled voice. "I... I can guide you... to the master... but..." He pointed a trembling finger toward the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. "But you must... go through what I went through..."
The group looked at each other, hesitant. Their instincts screamed that this man was not entirely sane, but the desire for glory and the promise of the heart of the dungeon spoke louder.
"All right," said the leader, clenching his jaw. "If this madman can lead us to the boss, we don't have time to refuse."
Barnabas guided them through winding corridors, rooms where the shadows seemed to breathe and the floor moved imperceptibly beneath their feet. Sometimes he would stop, stare at an invisible point, and shout incomprehensible warnings:
"Left! No... the wall is not what it seems!"
"Don't touch... the black... it sees!"
Each warning seemed half hallucination, half truth, and yet the group quickly realized that it was better to follow his instructions.
"This dungeon..." whispered the thief, wiping a drop of sweat from her forehead, "is not a simple maze. It's alive... and Barnaby... he's its memory, or its whip... I don't know."
After what seemed like an eternity, Barnabé finally stopped in front of a huge door engraved with golden runes, which pulsed with an ominous energy. He collapsed to the ground, panting and trembling.
"This is... here... the heart..." he whispered, his eyes lost in the void. "The master... Leo... you... will see..."
The warrior pushed open the door, and a dark light flooded the room. The Silver Spears stood facing what appeared to be the threshold of the final boss, still unaware of the true power that awaited them behind it.
And somewhere in the shadows, Leo watched. His dungeon had finally found its first intruders.