The land was deep in darkness.
Midnight found Theron and Seris descending into the Dungeon of Malice's depths, their mystical signatures carefully suppressed to avoid alerting their target.
They moved with professional efficiency, bypassing the Tier 8 and Tier 7 entities that would challenge normal Searchers but posed no threat to their combined capabilities.
The ambient Chaos Energy intensified as they approached the coordinates where Seris had detected the corruption source during the investigation.
"Environmental corruption exceeds previous measurements," Seris observed, her holy detection techniques operating at maximum sensitivity. "The source has strengthened in the past twelve hours."
"Can you identify the classification?" Theron asked.
"Still analyzing..." Seris paused, her expression shifting to shock. "That's... that's not possible."
"What?"
"The mystical signature. It's not a corrupt entity's evolution. It's—"
They rounded a corner and stopped.
