The moment they split, the chamber fractured into three separate fights.
Victor took his lizard head-on.
It charged, jaws wide, stone plates grinding as it built momentum. Victor didn't dodge. He stepped into it, shield raised, feet locking into place. The impact rang through the chamber, as bone, stone, and steel collided in a single brutal note. Midnight Lake held. Victor's knees bent slightly, absorbing the force, but he didn't give ground.
He shifted his weight and brought Midnight Thunder down in a tight arc, not at the head, but the shoulder joint. The hammer struck with a dull, crushing thud. Stone cracked. The lizard reeled, its balance ruined. Victor followed with another blow, then another, methodical, relentless. He wasn't fast, but every hit landed exactly where it should.
Raul's fight was the opposite.
His target barely understood what was happening before pain started arriving from everywhere at once. Raul didn't commit to a single angle. He moved, cut, vanished, reappeared. Flowstep carried him past claws and snapping jaws, his daggers biting into soft seams, tendons, and the underside of the neck. He wasn't trying to overpower it. He was dismantling it.
The lizard spun wildly, tail smashing stone, but it never caught him. Raul slipped under a swing, carved deep, then leapt back as blood splashed against the wall.
"Too slow," he muttered, already moving again.
Arin kept his distance.
His lizard was aggressive, smarter than the others, feinting lunges and pulling back, testing him. Arin let it. He cut shallow, precise strikes, hamstring, side, neck, enough to bleed, sufficient to anger, never enough to end it. When it charged, he used Timed Step, slipping just out of reach, blade flashing across its flank as it passed.
His grip didn't tighten. His breathing didn't change.
He just moved when he needed to.
When Victor's opponent finally collapsed in a heap of cracked stone and shattered bone, Victor turned immediately, scanning. Raul's lizard went down seconds later, throat opened in a clean, final strike.
Arin disengaged, drawing his wounded lizard toward them.
Victor slammed his shield into its side, knocking it off balance. Raul darted in and finished it with a single, precise motion.
The chamber fell quiet except for their breathing.
They didn't celebrate.
They worked.
Hides came off clean, packed efficiently. Blood was wiped from blades. Water was shared without comment. They sat with their backs to the wall for a while, listening.
That was when Raul stiffened.
"…More," he said quietly.
More were coming, and not just one.
Three, no, four, maybe five Stoneback Lizards, drawn by the noise, their movements echoing through the tunnels.
The space ahead was wide. No choke points. No corners to abuse.
Victor stood, shield lifting. "Same plan?"
Raul shook his head. "Yes."
They moved as one.
The lizards burst into the chamber, spread out, roaring. One charged Victor; another went for Raul. The rest turned toward Arin.
Steel rang.
Victor absorbed the first impact, then another, shield battered from two sides. He pivoted, hammer swinging low, crushing a knee joint, then braced as claws scraped uselessly across his armor.
Raul leapt off a fallen rock, landed on a lizard's back, drove both daggers down, then rolled clear as it thrashed.
Arin cut and repositioned constantly, drawing attention, forcing bad angles, and keeping pressure off the others. When one lunged for Victor's exposed side, Arin intercepted, blade biting deep, redirecting it just enough.
Victor's hammer struck the wall instead of the lizard's skull, sending shards of black iron skittering across the tunnel. Raul slipped once when he moved back, boots catching on blood instead of stone, and Arin had to shift his stance to keep his balance while keeping his opponent from charging past him.
But they held.
One by one, the Stoneback lizards went down, but none of them dropped quietly. Each kill took effort, misjudged angles, blows that glanced off hardened plates, moments where someone had to step in because another was a heartbeat too slow.
The last one fought the hardest.
It was already bleeding from half a dozen wounds, its hide split along the flank, one eye useless and clouded. Still, it refused to collapse. It dragged itself forward on damaged limbs, jaws snapping wide enough to catch a leg if anyone got careless. Arin kept it pinned, forcing it to turn again and again, never letting it charge straight. His arms burned from holding the blade at the ready for so long, muscles trembling every time he adjusted his grip.
Victor ended it.
He didn't swing wildly. He waited until the lizard reared back, weight shifting just enough, then stepped in and drove Midnight Thunder down with both hands. The hammer struck the skull at an angle that cracked instead of bouncing. The sound echoed through the chamber, dull and final. The lizard's body twitched once, then collapsed in on itself, heavy enough to shake dust loose from the ceiling.
Silence followed. Real silence, not the tense kind before a fight, but the kind that comes after everything that could move has stopped.
None of them spoke right away.
Victor leaned on his hammer, the head resting against the stone as he caught his breath. Sweat ran down his face beneath the helmet, darkening the padding at his collar. His shoulders rose and fell slowly, each breath deeper than the last. He stayed like that for several seconds, making sure his legs weren't about to give out.
Raul straightened from where he'd been crouched, one hand braced against the wall. He rolled his shoulders, testing them, then shook out his wrists. His daggers were nicked, the black blades dulled in places where they'd met bone instead of flesh. He looked down at them, then let out a breath through his teeth.
"Yeah," he said finally, voice rough but satisfied. "That worked."
Victor huffed a short laugh. "Next time," he said, lifting the hammer just enough to rest it properly, "we should be more careful, and we won't pick a place like this, where they could surround us."
Arin didn't answer immediately. He wiped Midnight Howl clean on a strip of cloth, careful with the edge, movements slower than usual. His hands ached now that the adrenaline was fading, fingers stiff from gripping the hilt for so long. He looked around the chamber while he worked.
Broken stone littered the ground. Black iron shards were scattered everywhere, mixed with dark blood that soaked into the cracks between them. The air smelled sharp, metal, dust, something coppery that clung to the back of his throat. Every wall bore marks of the fight: gouges from claws, fractures from hammer blows, shallow cuts where blades had bitten and slid free.
They were bruised. Cuts smarted where armor hadn't quite been enough. Muscles complained loudly now that there was room to listen.
But they were still standing.
And in a place like this, that mattered more than anything else.