Seth's face hovered over the open box.
Not close enough to touch—close enough to listen.
The settlement around him was dead in every sense of the word. No breath. No movement. Just the cooling remains of fifty-one bodies scattered across dirt, timber, and broken stone. Blood had already begun to thicken where it pooled, the sharp edge of violence dulled by time.
The box did not resist him.
Whatever lay inside pressed outward with quiet insistence, a contained presence that disturbed the air just enough to be noticed. Seth lowered his hand into the open space, fingers brushing the object within.
Edges.
Clean. Precise.
His thumb traced etched lines, each groove deliberate, each interruption too intentional to be damage. The plate was artificial—made, not grown—and unfinished. Portions of the pattern simply… stopped.
Missing.
He turned it once between his fingers.
The aura it carried did not react to him. It neither flared nor withdrew. It simply remained, compressed inward, aware of its own incompleteness.
Seth paused.
Not in hesitation—but in assessment.
Then he returned the fragment to the box.
The moment his hand withdrew, the pressure vanished. The night reclaimed its stillness. Seth closed the lid and set the box aside among the salvaged goods.
Only then did he return to the rest of the work.
He moved through the bandit settlement without ceremony. Weapons were gathered first—tested by balance, weight, and maintenance rather than sharpness alone. Anything warped or poorly kept was discarded. Armor was stripped, checked, and stacked. Bows were unstrung. Quivers emptied.
Gold followed.
Coins were sorted by sound as they struck cloth, separated by metal and density. A few rang wrong—too light, too clean.
Counterfeit.
Those went aside.
The bodies themselves were checked last. Hands. Collars. Boot seams. One bandit had hidden a small wooden charm beneath his shirt, tied close to the skin.
Seth crushed it in his palm.
The enchantment broke weakly, dispersing into the night like a sigh.
So they had been shielded.
Poorly.
He stood and oriented himself, reconstructing the settlement's layout in his mind. Bad sightlines. Worse patrol habits. No discipline. No escape planning.
Fifty-one bandits did not gather by accident.
Someone had allowed them to exist.
Seth retrieved the wooden box again, this time without opening it. Whatever it was, it was patient.
That made it dangerous.
He secured it among the salvaged goods and adjusted the weight across his belt. The night wind shifted as he turned to leave—not enough to carry scent, just enough to disturb the silence.
Seth listened.
Then moved on, unhurried, leaving behind corpses, broken protections, and a place that would soon attract the wrong kind of attention.
The fragment in the box remained quiet.
Waiting.
Seth moved before the night could cool completely.
The settlement fell away behind him, its silence already beginning to rot. He did not hurry, but his pace never slowed. The terrain shifted beneath his feet—packed dirt to broken stone to root-snared ground—and Seth adjusted without conscious thought. He did not need sight for paths he had already mapped by sound, slope, and resistance.
The weight at his side was familiar now.
Gold.
Steel.
And the wooden box.
It did not interfere with his movement. It did not press against him. If anything, it felt content to be carried, as though relocation itself was part of its unfinished design.
The land thinned as he approached the boundaries.
Sound changed first. The insects grew fewer. Wind moved differently, no longer interrupted by careless structures or shouting men. Even the ground felt older here—less disturbed, less claimed.
Seth slowed only once, listening.
Nothing followed.
Satisfied, he continued.
The Door at the Boundaries
The entrance did not announce itself.
There was no arch, no marker, no path leading cleanly to it. Just stone folded into stone, interrupted by a section that did not quite belong. Seth stopped before it and knelt, placing his hand against the surface.
Cold.
Uniform.
Wrong.
His fingers traced shallow grooves hidden along the seam. He pressed once, paused, then rotated his hand slightly and pressed again—out of sequence, deliberately incorrect.
The stone resisted.
Good.
He corrected the pattern, tapping the surface in a rhythm that mirrored the structure beneath. Internal mechanisms shifted—barely audible, but present.
The lock disengaged.
Seth rose and pushed.
Stone slid against stone with a low, grinding sound, the opening narrow but sufficient. He stepped through without hesitation.
He did not close the door behind him.
The stone remained ajar, breathing night air into the passage.
Descent
The stairs welcomed him like memory.
Each step was measured. Each turn familiar. The walls absorbed sound rather than reflected it, guiding him downward into controlled quiet. The deeper he went, the more the world above thinned, replaced by a steadier rhythm.
Metal.
Movement.
Work.
The construction bots were active.
Their motions were precise, repetitive, purposeful. Tools struck stone and alloy with regulated force, shaping the second floor within a dug tunnel at the center end of the chamber. Frameworks extended outward like ribs, incomplete but growing.
Seth did not stop to observe.
He turned away from the central construction and followed the least-used pathway—narrower, less trafficked, quieter. The air here carried the faint scent of oil and stored metal.
Storage.
The Loot Pathway
He entered without ceremony.
Seth unloaded the weapons first, placing them where they belonged by category and condition. Blades aligned. Armor stacked. Bows unstrung and set aside. Gold followed—sacks set down, contents to be sorted later.
Only when the rest was finished did he lift the wooden box again.
Its presence felt unchanged.
He moved deeper into the compartment, past common storage, past materials meant for later use, until he reached the furthest section. A door waited there, older than the rest, reinforced, layered with mechanical locks rather than magical ones.
Seth unlocked it.
Once.
Twice.
Then a final, deliberate turn.
The compartment opened.
He stepped inside and placed the wooden box within, setting it alone on a reinforced shelf. He did not open it. He did not test it again.
Some things required distance before understanding.
He closed the compartment and locked it, reversing the sequence with the same care he had used to open it.
When he stepped back into the passage, the box was sealed away—removed from the world, but not forgotten.
Seth paused only long enough to confirm the locks had settled.
Then he turned back toward the active levels of the cave, the night above already irrelevant.
The fragment would wait.
So would he.
Seth stepped out of the storage pathway and returned to the first floor.
The construction bots worked in regulated cycles at the center of the cavern—metal arms extending, retracting, cutting, reinforcing. Sparks flared and died in measured rhythm. Nothing wasted. Nothing rushed.
Satisfied, Seth turned toward the ascent.
He climbed the stairs steadily, stretching his arms as he went, letting tension ease from muscle and joint. The air grew cooler the higher he went, closer to the surface. When he reached the top of the passageway, he stopped short—head still below the threshold.
Voices.
Two of them.
Leather shifted. Boots scraped stone.
Seth remained still.
One man was taller than the other by nearly a foot. Both wore travel-stained leather and carried themselves with the loose confidence of scavengers. The taller one dropped what he had been carrying.
A body hit the ground.
Seth's expression did not change.
The scent, however, did.
It wasn't human.
Different oils. Different blood. A faint sharpness beneath exhaustion.
Another species, he noted.
The two men looked down at the figure between them.
"So," Seth thought, listening, "that explains it."
"I say we sell her," the taller one said. "She'll fetch a good price. Young elf like that."
"True," the shorter one replied, eyeing her. "But those slave merchants are stingy buffoons. Might cheat us on the payout."
He glanced down at her again, lips curling. "Why don't we make use of her first?"
The taller man smacked the back of his head.
"If you damage the goods, the price drops, Bud."
"Ah, you just killed the mood," Bud groaned.
Seth closed the distance without sound.
He stepped in beside them, looking down at the unconscious elf as if he'd always been there.
The taller man sneezed.
"Bless you," Seth said calmly.
"Thank you, brother," the man replied—then caught sight of Seth and froze, a snort escaping his nose in surprise.
Seth produced a handkerchief and handed it to him.
"Thank you, brother," the man said again, confused.
"You're welcome."
Bud, meanwhile, fixed a roll of tobacco between his lips, patting his pockets for a match.
Seth struck one from nowhere and held it up.
Bud leaned in, lit it, inhaled.
"Thanks," he muttered—then finally looked at Seth.
Both men stiffened at the same time.
Recognition hit.
Too late.
Seth moved.
Steel flashed.
The karambit crushed into Ed's throat with brutal precision, collapsing cartilage and muscle in one fluid motion. Blood erupted as he fell, hands clawing uselessly at the ruin of his neck.
Seth pivoted.
The blade carved upward through Bud's face, splitting bone and flesh cleanly apart. The man collapsed without a sound, his body twitching once before going still.
Silence reclaimed the cave mouth.
Seth knelt briefly, checking the elf. Unconscious. Alive. He left her where she was.
He dragged the bodies outside, one by one, and locked the entrance behind him.
Then he walked west.
Miles passed beneath his feet before he disposed of them, deep enough that nothing would surface again.
As he turned away, something shifted.
A presence.
Distant—but moving.
Focused.
Seth climbed.
He took to the trees, leaping branch to branch with controlled momentum, letting foliage swallow his passage. From above, he caught sight of her.
A woman ran through the forest below.
Silver flashed behind her—holy armor. Knights of the Church.
She was injured. Exhausted. Still dangerous.
Agatha.
A grand witch. A hunted threat.
She broke line of sight, disrupted tracking, and vanished into concealment. Moments later, the knights passed without realizing they'd lost her.
Agatha reached a massive tree and collapsed against it, seated, breathing hard. She cast layered spells—recovery, regeneration, stabilization—violet light threading briefly through the air before fading.
When she rose and took several steps forward, she stopped.
A chill crawled up her spine.
She was being watched.
Did they get ahead of me? she thought. If so… I won't hesitate.
Her left hand rose.
A purple magic circle formed instantly, dense and precise. Violent light condensed within it, then snapped toward a point to her right.
A dark lance erupted.
It struck—
And missed.
The attack was dodged.
Footsteps emerged from the shadows.
A figure stepped forward calmly, as though the spell had never been meant for him.
Seth revealed himself.
Their gazes locked.
The forest held its breath.
The pressure, stillness, restraint between them sharpened—two predators recognizing one another in the dark.
Neither moved.