Groan. The sound scraped, impossibly dry, from the husk’s throat, echoing like dragging stones in the humming chamber. Its head swiveled, brittle neck tendons creaking. Empty sockets, lit from within by faint, pulsing blue phosphorescence mirroring the great crystal, locked onto me. Shimmering threads of energy, barely visible distortions in the air, snaked from the massive floating crystal, tethering the dead guard like a grotesque marionette.

  It lurched forward. Jerky. Unnatural. A purely mechanical semblance of motion driven by that cold, alien energy. One step. Two. Mummified feet scraped dustily on the stone.

  Behind it, more groans. Rattling, dry echoes. The other two guard husks stirred, limbs twitching, pushing themselves upright with the same nightmarish, shambling gait. More blue energy tendrils latched onto them, puppet strings pulling them into animation. Three. Three shambling horrors between me and… anywhere else.

  Trapped. The massive stone door I’d entered through was sealed tight. Ahead, the advancing dead. All around, the relentless, pulsing drain of the central crystal, leaching warmth and strength, making my limbs feel like lead, my thoughts swim through thick syrup. Inside me, The Hunger wasn’t just afraid; it was screaming. A constant, high-pitched thrum of pure terror and revulsion, battering against my consciousness. OUT! FLEE! WRONG! THIS PLACE UNMAKES! LEAVE! Its primal urge was to abandon this shell, this host, anything to escape the energy field that felt like poison, like anti-life.

  But there was no out. Not easily. Fight the husks? Hacking them apart seemed useless as long as the crystal fueled them. Try to force the door? Unlikely, given its sheer mass and whatever alien mechanism sealed it. The only glimmer of a chance, the only thing that wasn’t certain death, was the long shot hinted at by the scroll’s crude diagrams: the damaged regulator node high on the wall. Stop the source. If I could reach it, break it, do something… maybe it would stop this nightmare.

  It felt less like a plan and more like choosing which cliff face to fall down. Grit hardening in my gut, pushing down the bile rising from The Hunger’s panic, I tightened my grip on my sword.

  The first husk lunged, arms outstretched, bony fingers grasping. Clumsy, yes, but driven by the crystal’s energy, it possessed surprising strength. I sidestepped, the movement feeling sluggish, delayed, like moving through deep water. My sword flashed out, slicing through its arm below the shoulder. The limb thumped to the floor, dry and dusty.

  The husk didn’t react. Didn’t slow. It kept coming, remaining arm swinging, glowing sockets fixed. It felt no pain, registered no damage. Just relentless, animated purpose.

  Fuck. This was worse than I thought.

  I ducked under a clumsy swing, driving my other sword into its chest. The blade punched through brittle ribs, grating on spine. Nothing. It reached for me, ignoring the weapon buried in its torso. Direct damage was pointless. I needed distance. I needed to get up.

  The other two were closer now, shambling with that unnerving, silent relentlessness. Their empty sockets glowed, jaws slack. Fighting things that should be still, animated by energy that felt fundamentally wrong – cold, empty, sterile – was deeply unsettling. The air itself felt heavy, suffocating, thick with the draining lethargy.

  Forcing my leaden limbs, I danced back, evading grasping hands. The Hunger shrieked for escape, a raw wave of panic washing over me. I had to fight it, wrestle its terror into fuel for desperate speed, weaving between the shambling figures. My swords became tools to parry, to push, creating fractions of seconds, slivers of space. Not to destroy, just to navigate.

  Get to the wall. Get up.

  Every second stretched, thick and agonizing. The draining field was a physical weight, settling deeper into my bones, slowing my heart, fogging my brain. My movements grew heavier, my reactions duller. It wasn’t just fatigue; it was erasure, a slow unmaking.

  The Hunger writhed, a knot of pure terror fighting my control. LET GO! FLEE! DANGER! It didn’t just fear the crystal; it felt actively repelled by the energy, like trying to force two opposing magnets together. Drawing on its power now felt like trying to grab live eels slicked with ice. It required immense concentration, a conscious forcing of the bond against the symbiote’s frantic, instinctual resistance. Every surge of enhanced speed, every flicker of heightened reflex, cost me doubly – fighting the external drain and the internal panic.

  “Stay… with me… damn you,” I gasped, the words ragged, barely audible over the incessant hum. “Just… longer…”

  A husk lunged from my periphery, faster than I anticipated in my sluggish state. Its desiccated hand – fingers like dried twigs, cracked nails sharp as claws – clamped onto my left forearm.

  A jolt, cold and sharp, shot up my arm. Not pain, exactly, but an intense focal point of the draining sensation, far stronger than the ambient field. Where it touched me, my own vitality felt like it was being violently sucked out, feeding the blue energy animating the dead thing.

  The Hunger shrieked – a pure, visceral reaction of violation, of its life source being directly tapped by the antithetical energy. And in that moment, something shifted. Its own primal survival instinct, momentarily stronger even than its terror of the ambient field, surged defensively. A pulse of raw, symbiotic life force – our energy – flared outwards from the point of contact. Not consuming, not attacking, but… repelling.

  Where my energy met the cold blue animating the husk, there was a violent sputter. A visible ripple, like heat haze over ice. The blue light in the husk’s sockets flickered wildly. It stumbled back, grip breaking, its movements becoming chaotic, disjointed, as if the two fundamentally incompatible energies were causing a system crash.

  An idea – fragmented, desperate – pierced the fog. My energy, our energy, was poison to theirs. Opposite forces. I couldn’t destroy them with steel, but maybe… maybe I could disrupt their animation? Short-circuit the connection?

  It wasn’t elegant, but it was something. A potential weapon.

  Changing tactics, I met the next husk’s lunge defensively, letting my forearm, deliberately charged with a small, strained pulse of symbiotic energy, connect with its chest. Another violent flicker, another stutter in its shambling gait. It bought me the opening I needed.

  Weaving past the momentarily disrupted husk, dodging the third, my eyes frantically scanned the circular wall, tracing the glowing conduits upwards. Searching for the damaged node from the scroll’s diagrams. There. High above, near the domed ceiling. Directly below it, the wall seemed etched with slightly deeper grooves in the geometric pattern – potential handholds, maybe? Precarious. Insane.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The wall was sheer, slick, easily twenty-five feet. How the hells was I supposed to get up there? Scanning wildly, my gaze snagged on a section of the wall conduits further along the curve. A chunk had broken away, leaving a jagged edge protruding slightly. Maybe six feet up? A start?

  It was madness. A fall meant landing amongst the husks, weakened beyond recovery. But staying here meant slowly fading into nothingness while being torn apart by puppets. Certain death versus a sliver of a chance.

  Taking a ragged breath, focusing every scrap of remaining will, I sprinted towards the damaged conduit. The husks turned, shambling after me, their jerky speed unnerving. I leaped, fingers barely snagging the sharp, cold edge of the protruding material. Pain flared in my shoulders, pulling against the sockets.

  My boots scraped against the wall, desperate for purchase on the faint ridges of the geometric patterns. Hand over agonizing hand, foot finding infinitesimal purchase, I started to climb. It was like scaling sheer, slick obsidian while wading through invisible treacle. The draining effect intensified dramatically with height, bringing me closer to the level of the floating crystal. My muscles burned, seized, heavy with profound lethargy. Nausea churned. The Hunger pulsed weakly, a fading siren of fear drowned out by my own exhaustion and the sheer effort of will. Every upward inch was a victory against gravity and the encroaching void. My vision tunnelled.

  Just… a little… further…

  Finally, clinging precariously, muscles screaming, breath sawing in my lungs, I reached the level of the damaged regulator node.

  I was maybe ten feet horizontally from the node housing, the wall offering only the faintest texture for grip. Below, the massive crystal pulsed, each wave of blue light washing over me, deepening the lethargy, making my head swim. Inside the recessed housing, I could see the glittering shards of the broken regulator crystal, embedded in some kind of mounting. Blue energy sparked and spat erratically around them, feeding back into the main crystal in unstable surges.

  I couldn’t reach inside. Couldn’t repair it. Couldn’t understand it. But the diagram… broken piece equals chaos. Remove the broken piece? Stop the feedback? It was pure guesswork, a desperate stab in the dark based on a child’s drawing.

  Ignoring the screaming protests of my muscles, ignoring the weak, frantic pulse of The Hunger’s terror, I focused. I drew on the symbiotic energy, wrenching it against the entity’s resistance, forcing it down my right arm, into my hand. My fist tingled, felt strangely hot against the cold wall, alive with an energy utterly opposed to the chamber’s stillness.

  Taking a shaky breath, bracing myself, I struck the damaged node housing. Not finesse. Brute force. My bare fist slammed into the ancient material, pouring that disruptive, life-based energy into the blow.

  CRACK! The stone around the housing fractured. The hum from the main crystal spiked, whining shrilly, painfully.

  Not enough. Dammit.

  I drew back, gathering more energy, feeling the tearing strain of the internal conflict, the sheer metabolic cost. Then I struck again, harder, a full-body blow fueled by pure desperation, channeling every last ounce of will and borrowed symbiotic power into that single point.

  SCREEEEEECH!

  The sound was horrific – metal tearing, crystal shattering, a high-frequency agony resonating through the stone, through my bones. The node housing exploded outwards in a shower of dark fragments and glittering crystal shards. The blue light in the chamber flickered violently – plunging the room into absolute darkness for a heart-stopping moment, then flaring blindingly bright, searing my retinas even through closed eyelids.

  A wave of raw, uncontrolled energy washed over me – not the drain, but something else, chaotic, untamed, like a ruptured power conduit. It slammed me against the wall, nearly ripping my failing grip free.

  Then, as abruptly as it flared, the light dimmed. Significantly. The oppressive, high-pitched hum dropped octaves, settling into a low, steady thrum, almost calm. The suffocating draining sensation lessened dramatically, receding like a phantom limb, leaving only a faint background static.

  Below, the three guard husks collapsed. Instantly. No stagger, no fall. They just… stopped. The blue light in their sockets extinguished. They crumpled into lifeless piles of bone and brittle cloth, the energy tendrils vanishing like severed threads.

  Silence. Heavy. Profound. Shocking. The central crystal still floated, still glowed faintly blue, but its overwhelming, malevolent presence was… gone. Reduced. It felt stable, contained. Or at least, no longer actively hostile.

  It had worked. The gamble. The desperate, blind strike. It had fucking worked.

  My strength utterly failed. Fingers slipping, I dropped the last fifteen feet, landing in a heap, agony shooting through my knees and jarring my spine. Exhaustion, profound and absolute, crashed over me. The forced use of symbiotic energy against The Hunger’s will, combined with the climb and the drain, left me shaking, nauseous, utterly spent.

  I lay there for a long moment, gasping the blessedly thinner air, listening to the quiet. Proof. Flicker needed proof. Groaning, I pushed myself up. Retrieved the metallic cylinder scroll. Then, steeling myself, went to the attendant’s corpse. The grey orb in its hand was cool now, the internal pulse gone. Prying it free, I pocketed it. Proof.

  Now, escape. The massive stone door. I stumbled towards it, examining the frame near where the attendant sat. Complex geometric shapes recessed into the wall – the lock mechanism I couldn’t decipher. Useless. But below it, half-hidden by the dais, something I hadn’t noticed before in my panic – a simple, heavy-looking lever, made of the same dark material, flush against the wall. Almost missed it. Maybe the attendant used this? Maybe it was a manual override? Or maybe the energy surge from shattering the node had released some internal locking mechanism connected to it? No way to know. Just try the damn lever.

  Gritting my teeth, using the last dregs of strength, I threw my weight against the lever. It resisted for a moment, then moved with a low, grinding groan and a shower of ancient dust.

  With a deep, resonating scrape, the heavy stone door began to edge slowly open, revealing the familiar, welcome darkness of the main crypt beyond.

  Freedom. Or the next step towards it.

  I stumbled out, back into the larger chamber. The giant construct lay inert, its red eye dark. Shattering the node must have cut its power too. Thank the gods for small mercies.

  Ignoring the desiccated husk near its feet, I hurried down the main passage, lantern beam weak but steady, cutting through the gloom. The air felt clearer, cleaner, the oppressive weight lifted.

  Finally, the archway. A rectangle of grey daylight. Hope surged, a weak but welcome ember. I practically staggered the last few yards, bursting out into the cool, damp air of the Jagged Fringe valley.

  Gasping, taking deep lungfuls of real air, momentarily blinded. The silence here was natural, broken only by the wind. I’d made it. Alive.

  Leaning against the cold stone of the crypt entrance, catching my breath, I glanced back into the darkness. A shudder traced its way down my spine. Ancient horrors. Broken machines. Silent consumption. Get away. Now.

  Turning, ready to flee, my enhanced hearing, blessedly free from the crypt’s overwhelming hum, caught it. Faint. Close. From the sparse woods bordering the valley, fifty yards away.

  The sharp snap of a dry twig under a heavy boot.

  Followed by the low murmur of hushed voices. Human.

  Instinct slammed down. Flat against the rock face, then ducking behind a jagged outcrop, peering through a gap towards the treeline.

  My blood turned to ice water.

  Two figures. Moving with practiced stealth through the trees, scanning the crypt entrance. Heavy cloaks, but beneath them, glimpses of white tunics, silvered armour shining dully in the grey light. And emblazoned on their vambraces, unmistakable: the mailed fist crushing a serpent.

  The Argent Hand.

  They hadn’t just been watching in Stonehaven. They hadn’t lost the trail. They had followed me. All the way out here. Shit. How? How could they track me so relentlessly?

  One hunter, tall, hood low, raised a gloved hand, pointing towards the disturbed earth near the crypt entrance – my footprints. Their voice, low but carrying with chilling clarity in the valley’s quiet, reached me.

  “Signs of passage. Recent.” A beat of silence. Then, the words that drove a spike of ice into my heart. “The abomination entered the tainted ground. It is here.”