Elara, Georg, Lyla and Roza were at it again with the bramble. “Today, we’ll probably get to the heart of it all. I hope there’s a main stalk, if not, I don’t know what we will need to do.” Georg spoke while slashing about. “Roza, remember when we had to burn a field of brambles ?” Lyla chimed. “They weren’t as thick and prickly as these, and those brambles seemed deader than the brambles here.”Roza replied, her answer resolute without leaving any space for more.

  As they approached inch by inch closer to their goal. Elara suddenly made a horizontal slash, her slash tinged with the void cut through layers of bramble, it struck a huge stalk which made a metallic pang sound. “Found it.” Elara whispered.

  The bramble writhed, its monstrous stalk thrashing like a beheaded serpent, thorns screeching against Georg’s shield as he drove forward. Black sap oozed from gashes in its sinewy flesh, hissing where it struck the parched earth. Georg’s muscles strained, his axe biting deeper with a wet crunch. "Lyla! Flank left—it’s knitting itself back together!"

  "Knitting?" Lyla spat, rolling beneath a whip-crack tendril. Her daggers flashed, severing the vine mid-lash. "This bastard’s got a whole damn sewing factory in there!" She pivoted, boots kicking up dust as she darted toward Roza, who was grappling with a thorned coil threatening to ensnare her legs.

  Roza’s glaive hooked the vine, her scarred face twisting as she anchored her weight. "Less chatter, more cutting!" With a grunt, she yanked the thrashing tendril taut, exposing its glistening underbelly. "Now, Ly!"

  Lyla didn’t hesitate. Her blades crossed in a scissor-strike, shearing through the vulnerable tissue. The severed vine spasmed, spraying acidic sap. Roza ducked, the corrosive droplets sizzling against her reinforced pauldron. "Took you long enough," she muttered, though the ghost of a smirk tugged at her lips.

  Above, Gonov’s rifle cracked—a sound like splitting stone. His round struck the bramble’s central stalk, punching through a pulsing knot of tendons. The plant shuddered, its shriek reverberating through the Greylands’ hollow bones. Myrtle’s shot followed, her bullet trailing a faint green mist. It struck just below Gonov’s mark, Melissa’s alchemical compound eating into the wound with a corrosive hiss.

  "Eyes on the core!" Elara’s voice cut through the chaos, cold and resonant, as if the Void itself shaped her words. She moved like smoke, her Void-charged dagger humming with static. The blade plunged into the stalk, violet tendrils erupting from the steel to burrow into the plant’s necrotic flesh. The bramble recoiled, its thorns retracting like a wounded beast guarding its heart.

  Georg slammed his shield into a lunging tendril, the impact rattling his teeth. "Roza—pin it! Lyla, blindside the roots!" His orders were sharp, battle-hardened instincts overriding the chaos.

  Roza lunged, glaive whirling in a silver arc. She drove the blade into the base of the stalk, anchoring it to the cracked earth. The bramble convulsed, thorned appendages lashing wildly. Lyla ducked and weaved, her daggers flickering as she severed smaller roots attempting to regenerate the main stalk. "Easier said than done, boss!"

  Gonov’s rifle barked again. His bullet struck a knotted joint where the stalk met the earth, splintering woody flesh. Myrtle adjusted her scope, exhaling slowly. "Switching to frost rounds. Slow its healing." Her shot exploded against the wound, icy shrapnel spreading a jagged frost across the bramble’s hide.

  The plant screamed—a sound like grinding gears and splintering bone.

  Elara closed her eyes, the Void’s whispers threading through her mind. Deeper. Burn its roots. Her dagger twisted, static arcing down the stalk’s length. The corrupted flesh blackened, veins of violet energy pulsing like parasitic lightning. "Georg—now!"

  He was already moving. With a roar, Georg brought his axe down in a brutal overhead strike, the blade shearing through the frost-weakened joint. Sap erupted in a geyser, drenching his armor. The bramble’s core shuddered, its movements sluggish, but still it fought—desperate, primal.

  Lyla hurled a smoke pellet at its base. The grenade erupted in a cloud of acrid gray haze, obscuring the stalk’s thrashing form. "Can’t regrow what it can’t see, right?"

  Roza yanked her glaive free, falling back. "Unless it doesn’t need eyes."

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  "It doesn’t," Elara said, stepping into the smoke. Her pupils became like the void, the haze meaningless to her otherworldly sight. She pressed a hand to the ravaged stalk, her fingers digging into pulsing, rotten flesh. The Void surged through her, a torrent of cold fire. "Ashes to echoes."

  The command tore from her throat, raw and resonant. The bramble’s core imploded, violet energy devouring it from within. Tendrils withered, crumbling to ash. The stalk collapsed, its death rattle a hollow groan that echoed across the wastes.

  For a heartbeat, there was silence.

  Then the earth moved.

  Georg staggered as the ground heaved, fissures spiderwebbing outward. "Fall back! To the ruins—now!"

  Lyla grabbed Roza’s arm, hauling her clear of a collapsing sinkhole. Myrtle scrambled down from her perch, Gonov covering her retreat with precise shots at falling debris. Elara stood motionless, her hand still pressed to the disintegrating stalk, Void energy flickering around her like a shroud.

  "Elara! Move!" Georg’s bellow snapped her from the trance. She lurched backward as the earth beneath her feet crumbled, the aquifer’s dark maw yawning open.

  Inside the Void, Devon was busy trying to understand the void more, his mind keeps reminding him that he was just an apprentice when it comes to the Void, then the Void opened a rupture by itself and showed the camp. His void-eye traced the seismic ripples to the seminary’s foundation, where the petrified Apostates wept black tears. "Anchors," he murmured, understanding dawning. "You were martyred to hide one of your biggest resources, for the second coming of the Void."

  He plunged his spectral hand into the stone. The second quake was no accident.

  The ground ceased trembling as abruptly as it began. The rebels regrouped in the seminary’s shadow, breathless and bloodied. Melissa crouched beside the aquifer’s exposed edge, her scanner chirping. "This isn’t just water, it’s clean, like you can drink it immediately.Filters through the statues—purified by whatever the hell they’re made of."

  The aquifer’s waters shimmered faintly as Devon’s form coalesced beside Elara, static prickling the air like a gathering storm. He hovered a translucent hand over one of the weeping statues, its stone tears now mingling with the pool below. "Not just carvings," he murmured, voice echoing with the Void’s dissonant harmonics. "Anchors. They poured their defiance into the earth to cage what the Monarch couldn’t destroy."

  Elara’s dagger paused mid-clean, void-touched sap sliding off the blade in iridescent streaks. "Cages rust. Dungeons crumble." Her gaze drifted to the fissure in the seminary floor, where darkness yawned hungrily. "But the Capital’s vaults are still guarded by Seraphim. Why bury this one?"

  "Because some locks *want* to be opened." Devon’s void-eye pulsed as he turned to Claire, her buckler still dented from the bramble’s thrashing. "We’ll need your quietest knives. And brighter torches."

  Georg hefted his axe, dried sap crackling on the haft. "Elara scouts ahead. That Void-sight cuts deeper than lumen-light."

  "*Fantastic,*" Lyla drawled, twirling a dagger with mock grace. "Ex-Archon leads us into the murder hole. Next you’ll suggest we hold hands and sing hymns."

  Roza snorted, thumbing the fresh scorch marks on her glaive. "You’d faint before the first verse, Lyn."

  "Enough." Claire’s voice sheared through the banter. "Myrtle—secure the aquifer. The rest of you, blades and rope. Now."

  As the others dispersed, Elara lingered at the tunnel’s edge. The Void’s whispers sharpened here, serrated edges of memory clawing at her resolve. *What did you hide here, sisters? What price did you pay?*

  Devon descended first, his form fraying into tendrils of smoke to navigate the rubble. The others followed in wary silence—Claire’s buckler angled to catch stray light, Georg’s axe scraping the narrow walls, Melissa muttering equations under her breath.

  The obsidian gate rose abruptly, its surface etched with angular runes that *twisted* under direct gaze. Devon pressed a spectral palm to the stone.

  —the siege had lasted 47 days.

  Apostate Captain Irris knelt in the seminary’s central chamber, her once-fine robes now rags. Through the cracks in the barricaded windows, she watched the Monarch’s Elites - Godbreakers, Novas, Omega Sights, Genesis Prime, an army of TIER 6 elites, circling like carrion birds. Her fighters—starving, hollow-eyed—sharpened blades forged from pews and prayer bells.

  “It’s time,” croaked the scholar Tovan, his hands blackened from etching runes into the floorstones. “The Second Coming will benefit from our sacrifice, it’s a shame we cannot witness it.”

  Irris closed her eyes. Somewhere below, children wept.

  “The Void will free us all, breaker of chains, of bondage, of inequality. Someday we, the folks of the World will unite, for we have only our chains to break, tyranny will be no more.”

  Devon recoiled, static screaming in his skull. The gate’s runes now glowed faintly, their light revealing what the vision had etched into his bones: hundreds of petrified forms embedded in the seminary’s foundations, hands fused to stone in final defiance.

  “Well?” Georg’s voice grated behind him. “Can you crack it?”

  Devon flexed his fingers, the Void’s anger humming in his chest. “It’s already open. They *let* us in, this is a present from the past.”

  The gate dissolved into ash, revealing a staircase spiraling into impossible blackness.

  Elara stepped forward, her dagger’s edge trembling. “They didn’t just hide a dungeon here.”

  “No,” Devon said, drifting downward. “They left us a means, this will change our predicament quite a bit.”

  The Obsidian gate opened, “Are you ready to be the first to enter this Dungeon?” Devon smiled “There is a reason Nikolas monopolized and erased the history of Dungeons.”

  Claire ignited her lumen-stick. “Eyes sharp. And Lyla?”

  “Yeah?”

  “No singing.”