The darkness in the tunnel didn't reflect the green glow-stone.
It devoured it.
Daniel stood at the edge, the ink-stained journal heavy in his pack, the weight of the mountain pressing against his skull.
"We need a moment," Lily said.
She wasn't looking at the tunnel. She was staring at her blade, tracing the new black veins etched into the steel. They looked like capillaries, pulsing faintly in the dim green light.
"The steel changed," she whispered.
"The mountain didn't just let us pass," Daniel said without turning around. "It left a mark."
He reached down and retrieved his own weapon from the floor. The black frost had melted, leaving the same dark, vein-like discoloration along the edge of the blade.
When he gripped the hilt, the metal felt different.
It didn't feel cold anymore.
It felt like an extension of his own skin.
They stepped into the deep tunnel.
The silence here was absolute, different from the cavern behind them. The air was dry, devoid of the sulfur smell, carrying only the scent of ancient, undisturbed stone.
Every step echoed twice—once from their boots, and once from the dark ahead.
Like someone was walking just out of sight, matching their pace.
Daniel kept his eyes forward, his thumb resting against the guard of his sword.
"The journal said the badges were a guide," Lily said, her voice dropping to a low murmur to keep it from carrying. "If Finn used them to hunt the Third Expeditionary Unit... why did he leave Vance on that throne?"
"A warning," Daniel replied. "Not for us. For the academy."
The tunnel began to slope downward, the walls narrowing until their shoulders brushed against the jagged rock.
Then, the ground leveled out.
The narrow path opened into a massive, subterranean vault.
Daniel stopped, raising the glow-stone high.
The light caught the edge of something massive in the center of the vault.
It wasn't a creature.
It was a structure.
A perfectly square, black iron monolith, three times the height of a man, driven straight into the stone floor like a spike.
The surface of the iron was covered in thousands of small, neat tallies.
Daniel walked closer, the green light illuminating the marks. They weren't random scratches. They were grouped in fives.
A body count. Or days.
"Daniel," Lily called out, her voice tight.
She was standing on the other side of the monolith.
Piled neatly at the base of the iron structure were weapons.
Dozens of them. Standard-issue academy blades, short swords, and daggers, all arranged in a perfect, mocking circle.
And in the very center of the circle sat a single, fresh piece of white parchment.
Written on it, in clean, steady ink, was a single line:
You are late.