The sword's arc flashed like a pale comet. Daren's blade cut clean through fabric and leather, and a broad seam opened along Elias's cloak where the steel had struck. For a second the only sound was the sigh of torn cloth. Then Elias, still shaking from the night's terror and the rawness at his calf, lurched forward and snatched the torn edge, pulling the garment aside to reveal the dark bite wound that had bled through his trousers.
"Hold still," Daren said, steady and blunt as ever. He reached into his satchel with calm fingers that belying the chaos that had been the last few hours. Elias clamped his teeth and allowed the other man's practiced hands to bundle the torn cloth into a bandage. The metal smell of blood was sharp and real; it brought him back from the edge of himself in a way no reassurance could have.
"Thanks," Elias rasped once the bandage was secure, the cloth pressed tight against the wound. He flexed his toes, testing the ache. "What now?"
Lyra's eyes were already on something else—on promises of coin and power and a future in a forest that ate tomorrow for breakfast. Her voice carried the greedy, hungry tilt it had borne since the chest was first mentioned. "You remember his Dianol chest, don't you?" she said, the word like a bell. Her fingers flexed. "That crate of green stones he kept boxed near the altar. We should take it. We should take everything."
Daren set his jaw. "We check it, and take what we can without getting trapped."
Elias found himself nodding despite the tremor in his hands. The bandage tightened when he moved, but it was bearable. The idea of actual wealth—of something that could buy them weapons or favors or a way out—made his shoulders sink into a more human posture. "All right. We move quick. We don't dawdle."
They threaded back toward the room where Veran had kept his valuables, moving like ghosts through the tower's quiet corridors. Steps creaked underfoot. Every shadow had teeth. Yet each footfall was a small, steady assertion: they were still alive, and they were still deciding what to do.
When they reached the alcove where the chest had been set, Elias stopped short at the sight of it again. The lid was intact; the banded wood was heavy and ancient. He could smell varnish and something sweeter—like sap or a mineral scent he'd learned to associate with Dianol. He felt a cold, small thrill of hope.
Elias moved to the front of the chest. "I'll open it," he said, because he felt like he owed them bravery right then, and because doing anything was better than replaying a dozen death-frames in his head. He put both palms on the lid and levered it up.
Light spilled out like a small, living thing.
Green light: not neon, not common gemluster, but a glow like trapped dawn. A clatter of stones flashed—a thousand facets winked in the firelight, and for a breath Lyra looked as though she might break. Her hands flew out, eager to sweep the treasure into her pack.
"Oh—" she breathed, eyes wide. "If only we could haul the whole chest away. Imagine it— a chest of Dianol. We'd never need to work again."
Daren grunted mutely in agreement, but his brow was knit with caution; he kept one hand near his sword.
Elias's gaze brushed the load of jewels. Then he looked deeper down into the chest's dark. Among the small, polished stones and gilded trinkets there was something that did not glitter.
A length of coarse rope, coiled and knotted in the very base of the chest, like a discarded breath. It lay pale against the Dianol, so ordinary that at first Elias almost missed it. He bent and touched it, feeling a dry, papery abrasion on the fibers. There was a finality to the rope, like a noose folded small.
His skin prickled.
He shoved his hand forward and caught Lyra's sleeve just as she dropped another handful of jade-green stones into her satchel. "Stop," he said sharply, voice low.
Lyra looked up, half-laughing with hunger. "What? There's—"
"Look." Elias pointed down into the chest.
She blinked, flicked her gaze to the rope, then looked back at Elias. "It's just a—"
But Elias had already stepped back fast, ten steps, then five more until he felt the shoulder of old stone at his back. He stared at the rope as if it might twitch.
Daren let out a breath as he came around the chest and read the room in the same moment Daren's senses screamed alarm. "What's wrong?" he asked, more blunt than afraid.
"There's a rope," Elias answered, and the single syllable carried the conviction of someone whose gut had just saved him from falling into another death.
Lyra's patience thinned. "A rope does not mean—"
Elias cut her off. "It could mean a trigger. A snare. A tripwire tied to a shard, to powder, to a latch. I don't know. But I feel wrong about it. Step back."
The temptation in her face warred with the steel that was part of her. She was the sort who could see treasure and run a dozen possibilities for how to lug it home while the rest of the world still slept. But she trusted the tremble in Elias's voice because she had seen, in the last hours, how his fear had turned to precise action. She had seen him burn the book with hands that shook but would not drop.
"That rope's probably a guard," Daren said finally, more practical than prophetic. "If it is, then tripping it could set off some mechanism." He crouched, eyes narrowing to examine the fibers. "Could be a weight-release. Could be a cable. Could be… something. Stay back."
Lyra snarled, then she did something small and human—she snapped a twig and tossed it lightly toward the far side of the chest, to test. The twig skittered and bounced with no effect except to send a couple of loose stones rattling.
For a breathless second everything was still.
Then—without warning—the chest detonated.
It was not a roar so much as the snapping of the world. A sudden, violent rip of sound and wood. The lid shivered, then exploded outward in a fan of flame and splinters. The Dianol inside hurled like green lightning—tiny pieces of glowing stone chittered through the air and smashed against the walls. A cloud of dust and ancient varnish smoke rocketed across the room, and the stink of singed cloth and something chemically sharp filled their throats.
Elias's instinct was cruelly exact: he threw himself to the floor, curling, his hand flung over his head instinctively to keep his face safe. Shrapnel slashed across his sleeve, and somewhere a hot sting seared his forearm. For the briefest instant he expected to find himself falling into the scene he knew—Veran's face over him, an axe's weight—but there was only chaos, and not the same ending.
Smoke still hung heavy in the air, a gray veil that made every breath taste like ash. The scattered gleam of shattered Dianol caught the firelight here and there, little green flashes like wounded fireflies among the ruin. Elias braced himself against the cold stone wall, feeling the pressure of the bandage on his calf and the faint, sticky warmth of his own blood through the cloth. He watched the chest lie open and gutted—its lid split, its contents thrown like stars across the floor—and his chest tightened.
"That… that's exactly what my gut said," Elias murmured. His voice was thin, a thread pulled taut. "It felt wrong. I told you—there was something in there."
Lyra wiped dust and soot from her face, lips pressed into a bruised line. She had scooped a few shards into her pack without greed now—more out of habit than desire—but whatever thrill she'd felt before the blast had curdled into a shaken, brittle focus. Daren, his sword still strapped, stood and wiped grit from his knuckles, expression drawn.
"Lucky," Daren said simply. "Lucky and alive. That's what matters."
Their luck felt fragile. Elias flexed his toes. Pain lanced through the bite-bandage at his calf and a new sting where splinters had nicked his forearm when he dived for cover. He forced a breath in and out, trying to push away the flickers of memory—of things he had seen when death had been close enough to taste.
"We need to move," he said, voice steadier than he felt. "Get out of the tower. Now."
Daren gave a curt nod. "Agreed. I don't want to stand in one place for long. There might be secondary traps, or others watching."
Lyra rose, checking the little haul she'd salvaged. "We grab what we can and go. No dawdling."
They made for the spiral stair—narrow, stone, worn smooth by centuries of fools and soldiers. The tower seemed to breathe around them: wood sighed, mortar whispered, and somewhere far above, a gull or some ruined bird called once and fell silent. Their footsteps were effectively loud in such a close place, so they moved with the cautious, low tension of people who knew every sound could be a thread.
Elias let Lyra lead this time. She moved with a restless, practical urgency—hands ready at her belt, eyes skimming the stone for anything out of place. Daren went in the middle, the reliable weight between Elias and danger. Elias kept to the rear, not because he was weak but because he felt every step like a test. His leg ached, but it was the tremor in his gut that made each pace feel like crossing a bridge.
"Mind the steps," Daren muttered. He tapped the edge of each stair with his sword pommel as they descended. The metallic sound was a quick diagnostic; an old, hollow-sounding step might hide a pit or a pressure plate. The rhythm—tap, step, tap—kept them focused.
At the third landing Lyra paused, nostrils flaring. "Do you smell that?" she asked softly.
Elias inhaled. The air carried the tang of singed varnish and the faint copper of blood, but underneath it all—something like iron and wet earth, a trace of something ancient. He shook his head. "Just the wreck, I think." But his hand drifted to the cloth wrapped on his calf anyway.
Halfway down, a loose stone hummed under Daren's foot. He knelt, running his fingers along the mortar, watching for hairline cuts or a hidden seam. "I don't like this," he said. "Whoever set that chest did not trust anyone to take it. They expected intruders. They expected us."
"You think Veran would do something like that to his own reward?" Lyra asked, jaw tight.
Elias thought of the man's face—shifting between the pleasant, civil man who'd welcomed them in the daylight and the snarling animal he'd revealed at the altar. "I think he'd do anything to stop it falling into someone else's hands," Elias said. "And maybe he expects the ritual to demand that the Dianol stay intact until its moment."
A shadow of silence followed them down the spiral. At the bottom a heavy wooden door waited: the main entrance that had banged shut when they first fled inside. The iron ring handle hung, dull and familiar. As they approached, each of them slowed. The door was a threshold more than wood and iron; it separated the tower from the world.
"Check it," Elias said. "Look for traps on the frame, the hinges."
Daren squinted at the door and then ran a hand across the threshold. He listened, pressed his ear to the wood, the way soldiers did to hear the other side of a wall. "Feels natural," he said after a heartbeat. "No trip pins on the edge, no wires. Whoever set the chest—either it was a crude fail-safe, or they didn't expect plunderers to come this deep."
Lyra leaned down and peered at the casement. "We can't go in the clear," she said. "We should move as if someone might be watching the way out." She straightened and adjusted a small pack strap on her shoulder. "I'll go first and keep my eyes open."
Elias's mouth was dry. He had predicted danger and his prediction had been right so far; the fact tightened his chest into a wary rhythm. Still, the smell of outside air—sharp and cold and carrying the scent of pines—was a small mercy. He wanted it like a promise.
Daren pushed the heavy door. It groaned, a long, complaining sound, and swung inward.
Fresh air hit them like a slap: chill, alive, not smelling of old blood. The forest outside was muted in the predawn light, trees standing like dark teeth against a gray sky. Fallen leaves crinkled underfoot, and a wind stirred, lifting fog in thin, silver ribbons among trunks.
Lyra let out a sound of relief that might have been a laugh. She crouched on the threshold for a breath, letting the world wash over her. "Finally," she said. "I thought my bones would calcify inside that place."
Elias stepped out last, feeling the cold press against his face, and then he closed his eyes for a long second, letting the normality of the air anchor him. The ache in his leg was distant for the moment; his entire body hungered for the steadiness of open sky.
Daren shut the door behind them and set a wedge of stone against it. He didn't tarry, but the simple act of setting that rock seemed to cut a line between what had happened inside and what they would choose to do now.
They stood in silence for a long minute, each wrapped in private thought. Then, almost as if a new necessity had arrived, Elias spoke.
"We can't go back in," he said. "We won't sleep there again. We've all seen what it does when you leave something intact for it to work on. We have to move, put distance between us and that place, and then plan. Better armor, better supplies, and a real plan to find whoever or whatever else is behind Veran."
Daren nodded, eyes narrowing. "We need to understand what the ritual was meant to do and who would benefit. The Dianol—those stones—there's value there beyond money. They could be leverage, they could be components. We can't just treat them like treasure."
Lyra shoved a small handful of green shards into her pack—more out of avarice than calculation, but even she was sober now. "There's no use pretending we're saints," she said. "But I agree. Burn what we don't need. Learn the rest."
Elias drew a slow, steadying breath. The night had stripped him down to the bones, shown him how thin his courage could be, and how quickly death could come. Yet every time the world had folded back on him—each rewind—he'd come back with a sliver more understanding, and a burning refusal to be passive.
"Let's go," he said finally. "We find a place to rest where it's safe, and we go through that book again—slow, careful. If the ritual names anything else, if it mentions places or other people, we track them before they can gather more power."
Daren ran a hand across his jaw. "We should also find a way to treat your leg. That bite will not heal if we push it."
Elias glanced down at the bandage, the dark bloom at the edge. "I'll manage," he said. He sounded weary but steady. "We'll go until we can set a proper camp."
Lyra pushed a few small shards into a hidden pocket, then slung her pack over her shoulder. "We move. Now. The sooner we get away from that tower the better."
They stepped into the wood together, boots sinking into the damp leaf litter. Wind threaded through the branches overhead, carrying the faint, ordinary noises of the forest waking: a twig, a distant call of a bird, the rustle of something small running through underbrush. In that normalcy, the terror of the tower felt like a wound slowly beginning to scab.
As they walked, Elias kept his eyes forward but his mind catalogued everything—odd leaning trunks, places that might be ambushes, scents that didn't belong. The forest was still not friendly, but it was honest in a way the tower was not.
And as the watchtower receded behind them—its silhouette a jagged tooth against the sky—Elias felt something like resolve harden beneath his ribs. Whatever plan had been set in motion inside its walls, however many threads of that old ritual still existed, they would meet it. They would not be surprised again.
Their footsteps swallowed the echo of their near-dead past, and the three of them moved deeper into the wood: tired, wounded, but alive—and determined, in their own battered way, to take the next step.