Chapter 24

The echoes of battle had faded, leaving only the low creak of settling stone and the ragged breathing of the survivors. The Hollow was still—a yawning cavern of destruction and death—but we were alive. That counted for something.

Karvek sat against a cracked column, his head tilted back, his chest rising and falling in uneven bursts. Blood streaked his temple, half-masked by grime and sweat, but he wasn't dead. That put him ahead of one of his men.

Torv lay motionless near the ruin of the altar, his body twisted at an unnatural angle. I had seen enough dead men to know he wasn't getting back up.

Bren was alive, but barely. His left arm was limp at his side, a deep gash running from his shoulder to his wrist. Even in the dim torchlight, I could see the pallor of his skin, the way his fingers twitched involuntarily. The wound would fester if it wasn't seen to.

Orrin was worse off. He knelt in the dirt, his face empty. He wasn't injured—at least, not in a way I could see—but he stared blankly at the chasm where the Hollow had opened and then closed again. He didn't blink. Didn't speak. He just knelt there, eyes locked on nothing, like he was listening to something I couldn't hear.

Lisett wiped sweat from her brow, her hands shaking as she packed away the remnants of her bandages and vials. She had pushed herself too far with that last spell, and it showed.

And me? My ribs ached. My knuckles were split open. The forge-wrought armor I'd so carefully crafted bore deep scrapes where I'd taken blows I should have dodged. But I was standing. That was enough.

Now came the part I was good at—figuring out what we had left.

I pushed myself up, scanning the ruins of the Path's encampment. Scattered among the wreckage were supply crates, bedrolls, and half-burned parchments pinned to what remained of a shattered worktable. A few torches still flickered in rusted sconces, their light casting long, twisted shadows against the cavern walls.

And there, near the remnants of the altar, half-buried beneath debris, was the chest.

My stomach tightened.

Karvek saw it the same moment I did. He dragged himself upright, his expression unreadable. "That's it," he muttered. "The one from the caravan."

Lisett, who had just been tending to Bren's wounds, looked up sharply. "Are you sure?"

Karvek wiped at his face, smearing blood across his cheek. "I'd bet my damn life on it."

I frowned, stepping closer. The chest was reinforced ironwood, banded with black steel. Its surface was scratched, dented from its rough handling, but the runes carved into the bands were still visible. They weren't decorative—they were a form of old dwarven warding script.

And they had been broken.

I knelt, tracing my fingers over the shattered marks. The Path hadn't just stolen this. They'd forced it open.

Lisett crouched beside me. "You recognize the script?"

I exhaled, trying to piece it together. "Old dwarven. Not forge markings, though—this is something else. A containment glyph, maybe?" I looked up at her. "Whatever was in here wasn't meant to be taken out."

Karvek took a slow, measured step forward. "Then we need to find out what it was."

I nodded and reached for the lid. It opened easily now, the hinges slightly warped from misuse. Inside, lined with black velvet, was a single iron-bound book.

I stared at it.

It wasn't what I expected. Gold, weapons, relics—those were the things men stole and killed for. Not books.

Lisett reached out hesitantly, then stopped. "There's no magic on it. Not anymore."

"How do you know?" I asked.

She gave me a tired, knowing look. "Because if there was, we'd already be dead."

Fair enough.

I picked up the book carefully. The leather was cracked and worn, the iron bindings rusted in places. The cover bore no title, no author, just a single, deep engraving of a spiral within a circle—a symbol I didn't recognize.

Karvek crossed his arms. "Any idea what it says?"

I ran my thumb along the edge of the pages. "Not yet. But I'll figure it out."

"We don't have time for riddles," Karvek growled. "If the Path wanted that thing badly enough to protect it with a ruin master, then whatever's inside is worth more than we know."

"Which means we don't burn it," I snapped. "We learn from it. Otherwise, we're fighting blind."

Karvek scowled but didn't argue.

I tucked the book into my pack, securing it between layers of cloth to keep it from getting jostled. Then I turned my attention back to the Path's remaining supplies.

Weapons—mostly standard issue. Crude iron swords, daggers, a few crossbows with spent bolts. Not much worth salvaging.

Rations—moldy bread, dried meat, and a few bags of grain. Better than nothing.

Alchemy supplies—Lisett picked through the shattered glass and spilled powders, salvaging what she could. Some of it might still be useful.

Then I found something different.

Beneath one of the overturned tables was a small, metal container, its surface smooth and unmarked. Unlike the other objects, this one wasn't damaged—as if the Hollow's collapse hadn't touched it at all.

I held it up. "What do you make of this?"

Lisett took it carefully, turning it in her hands. "It's…warm?"

That made me frown. The air was still ice-cold.

She set it down and tapped at the latch. With a faint click, the container opened, revealing its contents.

Inside was a single piece of obsidian, polished to a mirror sheen, with veins of silver threading through it like trapped lightning.

None of us spoke.

Finally, Karvek broke the silence. "I don't like that thing."

Lisett, however, looked fascinated. "I've seen something like this before. In a ruin far to the south—an artifact tied to some old magic." She glanced at me. "You ever work with a material like this?"

I shook my head. "No. But I know someone who might have."

Karvek exhaled sharply. "Then we take it and get the hell out of here before more Path reinforcements show up."

I agreed.

But as I lifted the obsidian piece to examine it, something shifted in its reflection.

Not my face.

Something else.

Something watching.

I clenched my teeth and snapped the container shut.

I'd figure it out later.

For now, we had too many questions and not enough answers.

And the only way forward was through.

The air in Brugath's Hollow was still thick with the metallic scent of old blood and damp stone as we made our way out of the ruined Path encampment. The obsidian artifact rested in my pack, wrapped tightly in cloth, but I could still feel it—like a coal left smoldering in the dark. The broken iron-bound book sat beside it, its pages still unread. Too many unknowns, too many questions hanging over us like a blade waiting to drop.

Karvek's men were battered but alive. Torv was dead, and they had nothing left but the rags on their backs and the weapons in their hands. They wouldn't last long if we didn't find a real safe place to recover.

Lisett was quiet, her sharp eyes flicking to me more than once. She had felt it too—the wrongness of that obsidian stone, the way its reflection had moved when it shouldn't have. But we didn't speak about it. Not yet.

We climbed carefully back up through the collapsed tunnels, retracing our steps toward the surface. Every few moments, I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting something to follow. Nothing did.

For now.

Elsewhere, in the City of Varngard. The rain fell in steady sheets, hissing against the rooftops and turning the narrow streets into sluggish rivers of filth. The city of Varngard never slept, not truly. It lived in the corners of shadows, in the flickering lamplight outside brothels and gambling dens, in the hushed conversations that took place over half-empty mugs.

And in a quiet, candlelit chamber, a man known only as Tavren Coil turned the pages of an old, weathered journal.

He read with the patience of a man who had spent years hunting answers. His dark, calloused fingers traced over the ink-stained pages, lips pressed into a thin line. The handwriting was old, rushed in places, controlled in others. A mixture of dwarven and common, the entries scrawled by hands that had long since turned to dust.

But it wasn't the words that interested him.

It was the symbol that had been carefully inked into the margins of every third page.

A spiral within a circle.

Tavren had seen it before—on ruined tablets pried from the wreckage of long-forgotten vaults, on the rings of dead men who had delved too deep into knowledge best left buried.

And now, it was in this book.

A book that had disappeared months ago, stolen from the hands of a ruin scholar whose throat had been slit in an alley not far from here. A book that was supposed to be lost forever.

But it wasn't.

It had reappeared. And with it, so had the hunt.

Tavren leaned back in his chair, the candlelight casting jagged shadows across his scarred features. He was no scholar—he was a tracker, a man who dealt in secrets the same way merchants dealt in coin.

And someone had this book now.

Someone who didn't understand what they held.

His mind flicked through the names of those who could have stolen it, but none of them fit. This wasn't the work of some lowly smuggler or black-market peddler. This was something else. Something bigger.

Tavren exhaled slowly, the flickering candle throwing uneasy light across the damp walls of his room. The rain outside grew heavier, hammering against the shutters like impatient fingers drumming on a table.

Whoever had stolen the book from the Path's caravan, whoever had dug their hands into this mess, they had no idea what they'd uncovered.

But they would soon.

And when they did, he would be there to claim it.

Tavren Coil didn't believe in destiny.

But he did believe in tracking things to the end.

The climb back to the surface was slow, exhausting. Every step felt like pulling against a tide, the weight of battle still pressing on my limbs. My hands ached from gripping Skarnvalk too tight, and my ribs throbbed with every breath.

Karvek's men were near their breaking point.

Bren barely spoke, his wound still wrapped in a makeshift bandage that Lisett had tightened again just before we started moving. Orrin walked, but his mind was still in that Hollow, his gaze distant, his movements sluggish. Karvek didn't push them. He knew they were running on fumes.

Neither of us said it, but we both knew it—they wouldn't make another battle. Not like this.

We reached the tunnel's entrance just before dawn. Pale light filtered through the jagged rocks above, and the cold mountain wind hit us like a hammer. The air was crisp, clean, untouched by the Hollow's stagnant rot. I breathed it in deeply, trying to chase away the lingering weight of what we'd seen below.

But something was wrong.

The moment I stepped out, I felt it—a stillness that didn't belong. The way the wind didn't quite carry sound the way it should.

Lisett must have felt it too, because she stopped beside me, her hand drifting toward her staff.

Karvek caught my eye. "We're not alone."

I slowly shifted Skarnvalk into a ready grip.

Then I saw them.

Figures at the edge of the ridge, half-shrouded in the mist of morning. Five of them. Cloaked, armored, standing in silence.

Watching.

My gut tightened.

I had seen enough killers in my life to know when I was looking at one. And these men—they weren't just scouts. They weren't lost travelers.

They were here for a reason.

Lisett exhaled sharply. "Path?"

"No," I said quietly. "Not this time."

Because if they were Path, they would have attacked already.

Karvek's grip tightened on his sword. "Then who the hell are they?"

The lead figure stepped forward, slow and deliberate. His hood was down, revealing a face lined with age but hard as forged steel.

His eyes locked onto mine.

And when he spoke, his voice was like gravel grinding over stone.

"Doran Thargrimm."

He knew my name.

That was never good.

I didn't lower my hammer.

"That's me," I said. "What's it to you?"

The man didn't smile. "You have something that does not belong to you."

His eyes flicked to my pack.

The book. The obsidian artifact.

I clenched my jaw.

"So do a lot of people," I said. "You'll have to be more specific."

The man exhaled, slow and measured. Then he reached into his cloak and dropped something into the dirt at my feet.

A black iron ring, engraved with a spiral within a circle.

My blood went cold.

Because that was the same symbol on the book.

And whatever this was, whoever this man was—I had just stepped into something far bigger than I was ready for.

The rain came down in sheets, turning the coastline into a restless, churning mess of black waves and jagged rock. The wind howled through the gnarled remains of ancient shipwrecks, their broken ribs jutting from the surf like the bones of forgotten leviathans.

Tavren Coil stood at the water's edge, wrapped in a tattered ash-grey cloak, the hood pulled low over his face. His fingers curled absently around the silver sigil at his throat—a spiral-within-a-circle, the same symbol that had marked the book now in Doran Thargrimm's hands, though neither of them knew it yet.

His boots sank into the cold, sucking mud, but he didn't move. He was watching the water.

Waiting.

Behind him, three men stood nervously, shifting their weight from foot to foot. Mercenaries, though not the kind that made names for themselves. They had the look of deserters—armor that didn't match, weapons scavenged rather than bought. One of them, a wiry man with a deep scar along his jaw, finally worked up the courage to speak.

"You're sure he's coming?"

Tavren didn't look away from the horizon. "He's late."

The mercenary exhaled through his nose, annoyed. "This job is getting worse by the day. You said the Path would—"

A low horn echoed across the water, cutting him off.

The mercenaries tensed, hands drifting to the hilts of their mismatched weapons. But Tavren remained still, his gaze locked on the dark mass now emerging from the fog.

A ship.

No sails. No flags. Only a hulking shadow, silent against the storm.

The hull was black iron, reinforced with strange silver plating that seemed to drink the light. There were no torches aboard, no lanterns—only the faint, pulsing glow of something beneath the deck, something that sent ripples through the water like a second heartbeat.

The mercenary with the scar swallowed hard. "That's… not a normal ship."

Tavren finally turned, his sharp, lined features illuminated by the first flicker of unnatural light from the vessel's hull. His expression was unreadable, but something in his cold, calculating eyes made the mercenary step back.

"It's not a ship," Tavren said. "Not in the way you'd understand."

The mercenary shifted uneasily. "Then what in the hells is it?"

Tavren smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.

"Payment."

The mercenaries exchanged glances. They had been hired for simple work—escorting Tavren Coil through Path-controlled territory, ensuring that his cargo reached the right hands. But none of them had asked who he truly worked for. None of them had asked why the Path wanted him alive so badly.

And now, it was too late to run.

The ship came to a stop just off the shallows, the water beneath it unnaturally still. A single figure stepped onto the deck, clad in blackened steel, a helm covering his face. He carried no weapon. He didn't need one.

Tavren's grip on the sigil at his throat tightened.

The mercenary with the scar took another step back. "Coil… what the fuck did you get us into?"

Tavren didn't answer.

Because the figure on the deck had just lifted one hand, palm facing skyward.

And the sea itself began to rise.