Heart of the Wrongness (Rigg's POV)

As the last of the first three living root things finally crashed down, splintered wood sprayed across the damp floor. For maybe half a second, the only sound was the echo of the crash and the frantic thumping of my own heart against my ribs.

Then the quiet ripped apart.

From deeper in the cavern, from all around us, came wet, tearing sounds. A horrible symphony that made my stomach twist into knots.

I watched, frozen, as pairs of sickly, pale lights ignited in the oppressive darkness clinging to the walls. Not just a few. Dozens. Maybe more. Hungry eyes staring out of the shadows.

And then the shapes started pulling themselves free.

Oh, Gods. More of them. Crude figures made of knotted, dark wood bound with those thick, pulsing, fleshy roots. They looked like nightmares pulled from a compost heap. They groaned, a low, rattling chorus that seemed to crawl right under my skin, vibrating up through the soles of my boots.

They shambled forward, a tide of walking deadwood and grasping roots, spilling out from the walls, blocking the way forward. Blocking our only way out.

No... no, please, no! Too many! We're trapped!

The thought screamed through my head, raw panic finally breaking my paralysis. I stumbled back, my heel catching on a thick root snaking across the floor, almost sending me sprawling.

"RIGG!"

Bobby's roar ripped through the awful groaning, so loud it made me jump. I saw him move – a blur of dented metal and grim determination planting himself right in front of me, between me and the closest wave of those shambling horrors.

THUD!

The impact shuddered through the air as the first Thrall slammed into the shield. I flinched, seeing splintered wood fly. Bobby just grunted, a low, animal sound, and shoved forward with his whole body.

Then his sword flashed out. It hacked deep into a thick, root-limb with a wet, sickening CRUNCH.

He was fighting like something cornered, savage and brutal. His shield bashed, his sword chopped, carving out a small, violent space around us. But I could see it wasn't enough. For every one he knocked back or cut down, two more seemed to shamble forward, their empty, glowing eyes fixed on us. The tide kept pushing in.

The air was foul. Thick with the stench of rot and damp earth, so heavy I felt like I was breathing mud. The groaning echoed relentlessly, mixed with the heavy CLANG of Bobby's shield and the awful, wet tearing sounds of his sword biting into the root-things.

Do something! Don't just stand here!

My legs finally obeyed. I scrambled back towards that chunk of twisted metal I'd used before. My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped my knife, but I gripped the hilt tight and started banging it against the metal again.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The sharp noise felt small against the groaning, but maybe… maybe it would help. I saw a few of the nearest Thralls hesitate, their blank faces turning towards the sound. It wasn't drawing many away from Bobby, but it was something.

I snatched up a loose rock from the floor, it felt cold and gritty in my palm, and hurled it with all my might. It hit one of the distracted Thralls square in the knee. I heard a dull crack, saw it stumble.

Another one lunged at me from the side. I saw thorny tendrils whip through the air, reaching for me. I yelped, throwing myself backward, swinging my knife arm wildly. Pure luck, pure terror.

I felt a sharp sting as thorns tore through my sleeve, scraping my skin, but the grasping root whipped past my face. I landed hard on my backside, the impact jarring my teeth, the foul-smelling dirt cold beneath me.

Bobby roared again, a sound of pure, boiling rage. I looked up just in time to see him slam his shield into two Thralls trying to flank him, sending them staggering back into the pulsating roots lining the passage.

And right then, for just a second, I saw it. Through the chaos, past Bobby's shoulder – a gap. A place where the churning tide of root-things seemed thinner. A darker opening in the wall ahead, where the passage seemed to widen slightly.

"Bobby!" I pointed with my knife, my hand still trembling. "There! An opening!"

He saw it too. His eyes flicked towards it, then back to the path. No hesitation. He brought the shield down again in a wide, brutal sweep, clearing the space right in front of him.

"NOW, RIGG! MOVE!"

His hand clamped onto my arm like a vice. The strength was shocking; he hauled me to my feet and pulled me forward, shoving me towards the gap. We plunged into the press of bodies.

Roots lashed out, feeling like thorny whips against my clothes, my skin. I stumbled, my feet tangling, but Bobby was a wedge, shoving forward relentlessly, shield leading the way, dragging me along in his wake. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, just trying to keep my feet moving, pulled through the nightmare.

Then, suddenly, the pressure was gone. We burst free, stumbling out of the grasping tide and onto a wide, open ledge. The crushing chaos vanished, replaced by a vast, echoing emptiness that made my ears ring.

I collapsed onto my hands and knees, gasping, my lungs burning. I could feel tremors running through my whole body. Beside me, Bobby leaned heavily on his shield, his breath coming in harsh, ragged rasps that echoed in the sudden quiet.

I pushed myself up, looking back. The passage mouth was still choked with them, a sea of groaning, shambling figures, their faint lights bobbing. But they weren't coming out onto the ledge. They just milled there, like cattle penned in the darkness.

Safe? Are we safe? Just for a moment?

I finally turned, shaky and reeling, to face the new space. My eyes went wide. We were on a broad stone shelf overlooking an immense cavern, far bigger than anything I'd seen yet. The air felt… heavy. Charged. Like the moments before a lightning strike.

It tasted metallic on my tongue, coppery, and I could smell that sharp, wrong scent again, stronger here. Down below, bathing everything in long, dancing shadows, a huge, intricate symbol pulsed with a sickly red light.

Gods above... What is this place?

My eyes, still wide from the desperate scramble through the root passage, dropped down. Down into the vast, open space below the stone shelf we stood on.

It was huge. Immense. And the floor… the floor was dominated by a giant symbol etched into the stone itself. Intricate lines and sharp angles looped and twisted across the entire cavern floor, glowing with a sickly, pulsing red light.

It seemed to beat, slow and steady, like some monstrous heart laid bare. I felt a faint echo of that pulse deep in my own chest, a strange, unsettling rhythm that felt deeply wrong.

Thick, fleshy roots snaked across the floor from every direction, like dark veins converging on the glowing red sigil. They writhed slowly, pulsing faintly with that same inner light I'd seen in the passage, all crawling towards the center of the glowing pattern.

The air here felt strange, heavy and still. It carried a sharp, coppery taste that coated the inside of my mouth. Not like blood, exactly, but metallic. Wrong. There was a low hum in the air, almost too low to hear, but I could feel it vibrating up through the stone beneath my boots.

This isn't right. Nothing in the scout manuals, nothing in the warnings about Fractures, mentioned anything like this. Fractures were chaos, wild tears in the world. This is built. Deliberate. That thought sent a fresh wave of fear washing through me, colder than the panic from the fight.

I felt tiny standing on that ledge, like a speck of dust about to be swallowed by whatever power pulsed in the red heart of this chamber. The fear was still there, gripping my gut, but now it was mixed with something else. A dreadful awe. Whatever this place was, it was ancient, powerful, and utterly alien to anything I knew.

My fingers, still trembling slightly, fumbled inside my worn leather pouch. The fear hadn't gone away, not really. It sat cold and heavy in my stomach. But something else stirred within me, older, deeper – the instinct drilled into me since I was old enough to hold charcoal. See it. Record it. Understand it.

I pulled out the small, battered sketchbook and the stub of charcoal. Keeping low on the ledge, my eyes darting nervously back towards the passage where the root-things still groaned and shuffled, then down at the immense chamber below, I found a relatively flat spot on the stone and crouched.

My breath still came a little fast, but my hand steadied as I touched the charcoal to the rough paper. I started sketching, quick, hurried lines trying to capture the shape of the massive sigil on the floor. The main loops, the sharp angles where the lines met, the points where those thick, pulsing roots seemed to merge right into the glowing red lines of the symbol itself.

Not a fighter. The thought felt bitter, familiar. Just bait that learned how to see. Maybe… maybe this drawing will matter somehow. Maybe someone, somewhere, needs to know what this looks like.

I focused, trying to block out the fear, the humming vibration in the stone, the coppery taste in the air. Just the lines. Just the shape.

The roots weren't all the same. Most were thick and dark brown, almost black, but near the very center of the sigil, one root seemed thicker, darker, pulsing with a slightly stronger light than the others. It looked… important. Like the main artery feeding this terrible heart. I leaned forward, trying to capture that detail, the way it seemed to burrow right into the central point of the glowing red lines…

"Found it, sugar!"

I flinched violently, sucking in a sharp breath, the charcoal tumbling from my fingers and skittering across the stone ledge.

"The interference is strongest here," betsy continued, sounding pleased. "This sigil... it's the control nexus. And I'm detecting one hell of a power signature coalescing right above it. Get ready, Bobby Joe – the big boss is coming to the party."

Above?

I hastily shoved the sketchbook back into my pouch, my heart suddenly hammering against my ribs again, harder than before. My head snapped up, eyes wide, searching the tangled mass of roots coating the distant cavern ceiling, far, far above the pulsing red heart of the sigil below.

Darkness clung thick up there, shadows woven between the heavy, ancient roots. But… something moved. A deep shadow shifted amongst the roots. Something large. Something heavy.

Down below, the pulsing red light of the sigil seemed to beat faster, brighter, staining the cavern walls a deeper, more menacing crimson.

Panic, absolute and overwhelming, seized me. Run! We have to run!

But where? Trapped between the horde of root-things clogging the passage behind us and… whatever nightmare was waking up in the darkness above us. There was nowhere to go.