One by one, the Vermillion Troupe vanished into the gaping fissure beneath the salt flats, leaving behind wagons, lives, and the thin promise of daylight. Saltblight Hollow cracked and betrayed them to the old scars of the world — narrow tunnels hewn by dead hands, damp with brine-laced air, the stone walls thick with the stink of ancient magic.
ProlixalParagon landed light-footed on the salt-slick floor, his silver fur clinging to his skin, the black whorls and curling patterns along his limbs shimmering faintly in the flickering witchlight Ralyria carried. The brine in the air stung his throat and eyes. Every breath felt thick, as though the earth itself resisted their intrusion.
Ahead, Kaelthari stalked forward — a sinuous figure in the gloom. Mulberry-hued scales shimmered darkly under the scattered light, and her spiraled markhor horns swept back from her brow like proud, ancient relics. She moved with that quiet predator’s grace ProlixalParagon envied, her scaled tail flicking a warning.
“These tunnels,” she murmured, voice low and dusky, “weren’t made for saving lives. They were built to claim them.”
Marx followed close, twin knives in hand, the olive-tan skin of his face streaked with salt and sweat. His mana-powered prosthetic leg hissed softly with every step, runes glowing faintly with each careful movement over the uneven ground.
ProlixalParagon led the way, his sharp eyes marking old sigils carved into the walls, half-swallowed by centuries of mineral. His pulse hammered in his ears, salt blisters aching, breath harsh with the weight of old, dead air.
Then came the sound.
A deep, steady pounding. Not hoofbeats. A pulse. Like a heartbeat left behind in the stone.
“Hold,” ProlixalParagon barked, raising a hand.
They froze.
From a narrow side tunnel, something lumbered forward — a siege automaton, ancient and half-rotted, its brass limbs corroded and pitted, mana core sputtering dimly in its cracked chest. Its single gemstone eye flared with vile, hungry light.
Kaelthari’s tail lashed. “Construct.”
It charged.
ProlixalParagon moved.
His body moved on instinct, his hands grabbing fluxsalt, copper wire, and a bent spike. He darted to a mana-scarred vent in the wall, his fur prickling as static danced along the black-marble swirls across his arms.
“Clear it!” he shouted.
Kaelthari dove aside. Marx pivoted with a hiss of his brace.
ProlixalParagon twisted the wire, poured fluxsalt over it, jammed it into a cracked seam, and slashed a crude breaker glyph into the stone with the spike. Mana flared. The fluxsalt ignited in a sharp burst of light.
A pulse of jagged energy tore through the air, the back half of the construct blasting apart in a gout of rusted metal and scorched brine vapor.
The tunnel shuddered.
And then the world stilled — save for the system message blinking before his eyes:
< You have successfully combined Tinkerer Crafting, Improvised Sabotage, and Combat Execution against an active siege-class construct.>
>New Specialization Options Available:<
>Choose your Path, Weaver of Broken Things.<
Three icons appeared.
> Hexwright Machinist<
> Brinepulse Engineer<
> Gravebinder Scavenger<
He barely hesitated.
His pulse slowed. His mind sharpened. The wire, the salt, the glyph — it had felt right. More than tinkering. It was threading magic through machine, forcing old relics to obey him.
He reached out and touched Hexwright Machinist.
The world flared white for a moment, and new text filled his vision:
> Specialization Selected: Hexwright Machinist<
>You have gained new abilities:<
>Null Rune Coil (Active)<
>Deploy a rune-infused device that nullifies active magic and enchantments within a small radius. Disables spell barriers, shields, and suppresses Revenant aura effects for 5 seconds.<
>Glyph-Spike (Active)<
>Imbue a physical spike or bolt with a disruptive glyph, dealing minor arcane damage and applying a “Flicker” effect, increasing the target’s susceptibility to sabotage.<
>Salvager’s Insight (Passive)<
>Increased detection range for volatile arcane anomalies, unstable mana cores, and hidden warding runes. Grants bonus information when examining old constructs or enchanted objects.<
>Machinebone Recall (Passive)<
>Gathers ambient animus from defeated constructs, storing up to 3 charges of temporary energy. Charges may be used to amplify your next trap, device, or overload effect.<
>You are now a Hexwright Machinist.<
The haze of the system message faded, but the heat in his blood remained. The marks in his fur shimmered faintly, the black swirls seeming to tighten and pulse in the gloom.
Lyra appeared through the smoke and steam, her sharp yellow eyes narrowing. “Keep pulling stunts like that, boy,” she rasped, “and you’ll be dead… or dangerous.”
ProlixalParagon grinned, the fine silver of his fur damp with sweat and soot, the sharp edge of his teeth gleaming.
“I’ll take dangerous,” he said.
And ahead, the tunnels yawned deeper, salt-choked and thick with ancient breath.
Waiting for him.
The air in the tunnels was worse now.
Thicker. More alive. Every step forward felt like a trespass. The walls wept with cold brine, crusting with delicate salt crystals that crunched underfoot. The witchlight hovering above Ralyria’s palm cast jagged shadows on the ancient stone, illuminating faded glyphs that seemed to twitch when touched by light.
ProlixalParagon moved at the front now, the blood in his veins humming with his new awareness. The black-marble swirls in his silver fur prickled faintly, reacting to the leftover magic in the stone — like static before a lightning strike.
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He didn’t need to look at the system interface still hanging ghost-pale in his peripheral vision to know something had changed inside him. The way the air thickened around old enchantments, the way his gaze snagged on certain cracks in the wall where mana residue clung like cobwebs — it was instinct now.
They hadn’t made it twenty paces beyond the shattered automaton before the first wardline appeared.
A faint shimmer across the narrow throat of the passage, like a ripple of oil-slick mist clinging to the salt-encrusted air.
“Stop,” ProlixalParagon hissed, raising a hand.
Kaelthari stilled mid-step, her spiraled horns barely brushing the low ceiling. Marx grunted behind her, flicking one of his knives in his hand.
“What now?” Marx muttered, his mana leg hissing softly.
ProlixalParagon approached the shimmered space, eyes narrowing.
A trip-glyph. Old Soohan make. Meant to ignite a corridor like a blast furnace, drawing in salt gas from side channels and releasing a pulse of heated brinefire.
It might have been dead for centuries — but the pulse in the stone told him otherwise.
He grinned. His claws flexed.
“Get back,” he murmured.
Without waiting for their agreement, ProlixalParagon pulled a slim, rune-scribed spike from his belt pouch — one of the old bone-hafted ones Lyra kept for warding markers — and etched a simple Flicker rune onto it. He pressed two fingers to his fur just below his throat, feeling the mana coil he hadn’t known how to touch before tonight.
The runes lit faintly. A static hum built in the air, making the tunnel feel tighter, smaller.
He drove the spike into a gap between salt-crusted bricks just above the wardline.
The air rippled.
A spark of bluish-white light flickered — and the shimmering ward’s glow collapsed inward like a dying breath.
The tripline faded.
A system ping hummed in his ear.
<+40 XP | Trap Neutralized>
Kaelthari let out a low, impressed growl. “You learned fast.”
“Not a habit I planned on,” ProlixalParagon muttered, his grin sharp.
A rumble shook the earth — faint, but enough to send fine dust and bits of salt crystal cascading from above.
They weren’t alone down here.
The Revenants might not follow quickly — but something else was awake in the deep tunnels.
Lyra appeared, stepping forward, staff in hand. The flicker of dying witchlight played over her silver fur.
“Two paths ahead,” she rasped. “One narrow. One wide enough for whatever that pulse was.”
ProlixalParagon’s ears flicked. He could feel it — like a pressure knotting at the base of his skull. The larger passage was heavy with ward residue. The smaller felt tight, but clean.
“Big one’s trapped,” he said immediately. “And something’s nested in it.”
“Of course it has,” Marx grunted.
“Take the narrow,” ProlixalParagon decided. “I can rig something behind us.”
He knelt by a cracked support strut where old mana runes still lingered in the stone. His fur bristled as he drew on his new gift.
A flicker of light bloomed at his palm — a fragile coil of suppressed mana bound by runed wire. He wedged it between the stones and carved a crude release glyph beside it. The tunnel’s lingering magic recoiled as it ignited softly, creating a faint dead zone in the air.
“If they come through here, their magic dies. Revenants, Draggor, doesn’t matter.”
Marx clapped him on the shoulder. “Remind me to stay on your good side.”
ProlixalParagon rose, brushing salt dust from his palms. “Stay close. No one touch the walls.”
The Troupe moved on, the narrow passage forcing them into single file. ProlixalParagon led, Kaelthari a silent shadow at his back, her tail flicking in careful rhythm. Marx followed with his knives drawn, and Ralyria brought up the rear, witchlight guttering against the clinging dark.
The earth groaned again.
Far ahead, beyond the curve of stone and salt, something heavy stirred in the dark.
And ProlixalParagon felt it now — the pulse of dead machines. A buried relic. A secret Soohan left behind in its wars.
He flexed his claws.
The tunnel narrowed, the ceiling pressing low, the salt-thick air scraping against ProlixalParagon’s throat with every breath. The marbled black swirls in his silver fur itched, tugged by the raw, old magic still clinging to the walls. Every step was a gamble between safety and catastrophe.
The pulse grew louder.
It wasn’t a sound, not exactly — it was pressure. A slow, throbbing force that made the very stones seem to twitch, and it was coming from ahead.
“Close now,” Kaelthari murmured, her dusk-honey voice low behind him. The Cataphractan’s horns scraped the arch once as they moved, a faint hiss of scale on stone.
Marx tightened his grip on his knives. “Feel that hum? That’s a siege heart.”
ProlixalParagon didn’t need to be told twice. He could taste it in the air. Like scorched copper and brine. Like old blood cooked in old fire.
They reached a breach in the tunnel — a chamber carved from the bones of the earth, ringed with old ward sigils that still flickered with spiteful life. The ceiling stretched high above them, lost in the haze of rising mist. The walls were slick with salt and old soot. ProlixalParagon’s breath caught as he stepped inside.
A battlefield frozen in a single, endless heartbeat.
Dozens of Revenants lingered in the chamber — the tattered remains of Draggor and Soohan soldiers, their flesh long burned away, leaving salt-bleached bones wrapped in tatters of rusted mail. Their empty eyes glowed faintly in the gloom, but none moved.
They were caught in warfire stasis — frozen by an ancient siege ward meant to trap enemy dead and keep them from rising, locked in a loop of unspent death.
And at the chamber’s heart… it stood.
An ancient siege construct. Easily three wagons high, shaped like a massive hound built of tarnished brass and rune-burned steel. Its limbs were a lattice of reinforced mana conductors, the core in its chest pulsing steadily. One cracked crimson gemstone eye still shone. From its massive shoulders jutted the skeletal remains of a howdah-like platform, half-destroyed but still bristling with old spell-shot mortars and bolt throwers.
A system prompt pinged softly at the edge of ProlixalParagon’s sight.
“We can’t go back,” Marx muttered. “Those mercenaries’ll be right behind us.”
Kaelthari’s scales rippled along her spine. “If we wake that thing, it’ll butcher us.”
“Correction,” ProlixalParagon murmured, stepping forward, eyes sharp. “If they wake it while chasing us, it’ll butcher everything.”
Lyra emerged from the shadows, her sharp eyes narrowing. “We don’t have time to circle back.”
ProlixalParagon licked his lips, the salt sting sharp on his tongue. His Hexwright instincts hummed like a wire under tension. The Gravehollow Mauler was tethered to the Revenants by old Soohan stasis wards. Break one link, and it might wake. But disrupt the loop, and it could be collapsed or redirected.
“I can rig the ward network,” ProlixalParagon said, pulse pounding. “Redirect it. Or break it. Either way, if we don’t, the mercenaries are going to storm this chamber, and then we’ll have a siege beast, an army of dead, and no way out.”
Marx cracked his knuckles. “Guess we better cover you then.”
Kaelthari’s hand slid to her sword hilt, her slitted eyes fixed on the Revenants. “If they move, we hold them.”
ProlixalParagon moved fast. He circled the chamber, his sharp eyes catching the glyph anchors in the stone — salt-rimed relics of a dead empire’s warcraft. He pulled a coil of runed copper wire from his satchel, thin tendrils of mana already flickering from it as he approached the first ward.
He drove a Glyph-Spike into its base, the disruptive sigil flaring and making the stone shudder.
The Revenants twitched.
Not much. Just a jerk of the head. A faint scrape of bone on stone.
One down. Two more.
A shout echoed from behind — the faint call of mercenary scouts.
“No time,” ProlixalParagon growled.
He hit the next anchor point, jamming a fluxsalt-wrapped breaker wire into a cracked seam. Static filled the air. The siege construct’s mana core flared, the chamber’s light pulsing in rhythm.
Two down.
The third glyph lay beneath a half-collapsed column, slick with brine.
Kaelthari barreled past him without a word, bracing her scaled shoulder against the rubble, her claws digging into the salt-crusted stone. With a guttural snarl, she heaved. The column shifted.
ProlixalParagon darted in, teeth gritted, and drove a Null Rune Coil into the base. Mana flared.
The ward network collapsed.
The Revenants screamed.
A soundless, soul-tearing shriek that poured into the air like a thousand dead throats calling out at once. Warfire stasis shattered like brittle glass.
The siege beast’s eye flared wide — full, malevolent crimson.
Its core roared to life.
System text exploded in ProlixalParagon’s vision.
Behind them, the first Draggor mercenaries stormed into the chamber.
And the construct turned toward them.
“MOVE!” ProlixalParagon shouted.
The Troupe broke for the far tunnel as the Siege Beast unleashed a pulse of concussive mana, its mortars firing bursts of saltfire bolts into the mercenary ranks. Revenants surged forward in a tide of rusted blades and desiccated bone.
ProlixalParagon was the last to leave the chamber — pausing just long enough to scrawl a crude Flicker rune on the threshold wall. It wasn’t elegant, but it would slow pursuit.
He bolted after the others, the screams of mercenaries and the howling of Revenants rising behind him.
The tunnels tightened ahead.
But it was better than what was behind.