CHAPTER 13: B-RANK TASTE... OR WAS IT?
The B-rank party called themselves Ironvein. Five bodies, all C+ or better on paper. They met Kael's crew in the pre-dawn chill outside Branch 17, horses stamping, breath fogging.
Leader: Mara Ironvein, scar-throated woman from the night before, dual axes, earth affinity.
Second: Gavric, shield-bearer built like a barn door, B— badge.
Third: Seryn, ice mage, pale as winter, staff tipped with blue crystal.
Fourth: Tamsin, scout, twin daggers, eyes that never stopped moving.
Fifth: Corin, healer, young, nervous, kept touching the holy symbol at his throat.
Mara looked Kael up and down, lingered on the D+ band, the black glass disk at his belt, the crystal pulsing soft blue in his pack.
"You're the freak," she said. Not unkindly, at least that was the intention.
"Guilty," Kael replied.
Torven grinned. "He grows on you. Like mold."
Mara snorted. "Contract's a ruin delve. Old empire vault. B-rank seal. Something inside cracked the last party open like eggs. Pay's two thousand split. You walk away now, no shame."
Kael felt the weight of the crystal against his hip.
'Two thousand. Enough to buy a real sword. Enough to disappear for a while if the guild ever decides to stop asking nicely.'
He nodded.
They rode north.
The ruin sat in a hollow where the forest had given up. Stone arches older than the kingdom, half-sunk, covered in runes that crawled when you weren't looking. The air tasted of ozone and wet iron.
Mara drew a line in the dirt with her axe. "Seal's here. Seryn cracks it. Gavric and I take front. Tamsin flanks. Healer stays back. You four—" she glanced at Kael's crew "—do what you do. Try not to die loud."
Seryn stepped forward, staff glowing. She spoke words that hurt the ears. The seal, a slab of black stone etched with a screaming face shuddered, cracked, fell inward with a sound like breaking teeth.
Darkness breathed out.
They went in.
The first chamber was a cathedral of dust. Pillars carved with battles no one remembered. The floor was a mosaic of shattered mirrors.
Tamsin knelt, touched a shard. "Blood's fresh. Three days."
Corin whispered a prayer.
Kael felt the crystal in his pack hum, eager.
'Something down here likes sound. Good.'
They moved deeper.
Second chamber: a spiral stair descending into water. The steps were slick with something that glowed faint green. Gavric tested the first step; it held.
Halfway down, the water spoke.
It used Mara's voice. "Turn back. The vault eats light."
Mara's axes were out before the echo faded.
Kael listened. The pitch was off, too perfect, no breath. Echo wraith trick, but older. Meaner.
He pulled the black disk, pressed it to the wall.
The water went silent.
Seryn's ice staff flared. "Wards are failing. Something's rewriting them."
They reached the bottom.
Third chamber: the vault door. Twenty feet high, bronze gone green, sealed with a lock that looked like a mouth. In front of it lay the last party (six bodies, armor melted, faces frozen in screams). Their weapons were slag.
Gavric swore. "That's B-rank plate. Melted like butter."
Mara knelt by the leader's corpse, pried a journal from fused gauntlets. She read aloud:
[Day 4. The vault sings. It knows our names. It offered Gavric his brother back. He almost took it. We burned the body to stop him.]
She closed the journal.
"Trap's psychic," she said. "Offers what you want most. Take it and you feed it."
Corin went pale. "I can't shield six minds. Not down here."
Kael stepped forward. Offers, huh? Let's see what it thinks I want.
He touched the door.
The lock-mouth opened. A voice rolled out, his own, but older, tired, standing on a simlar that battlefield from the mirror.
"Kael. Come inside. She's waiting. The one who remembers Earth."
His heart stuttered.
'Well that's a trap if I've ever seen. Is this what I want? Kinda lukewarm if I'm being honest.'
But the voice kept talking, soft, intimate.
"Coffee. Real coffee. A message you never sent. One more chance to say sorry."
He felt the hook dig deep.
'That's kinda cheap, but well played.'
Torven grabbed his arm. "Don't listen."
Kael shook him off.
"Not listening," he said. "Learning."
He pressed the black disk to the door.
The voice screamed, his scream, Torven's, Lysa's, every voice it had stolen. The disk drank it, glowed white-hot, cracked down the middle.
The lock-mouth slammed shut.
The door swung open on silent hinges.
Inside: a single room. No treasure. No artifacts.
Just a mirror.
Full length, frame of black bone, surface rippling like liquid night.
The reflection showed all of them, older, broken, standing in a circle around a pit. Something huge rose from the pit, wings of fire, eyes of mirrors.
Mara's axes drooped. "That's us. That's how we die."
Seryn's staff trembled. Ice crawled up her arms.
Gavric took one step forward, shield forgotten.
Corin dropped to his knees, praying in tongues.
Kael felt the crystal in his pack burn.
'Mirror again. What's all this about mirrors?'
He stepped between the party and the glass.
"Eyes on me," he said.
They looked.
He pulled the crystal free, held it high.
The mirror rippled, hungry.
Kael crushed the crystal in his fist.
Sound exploded outward, pure, white, every scream the disk had ever eaten. The mirror shattered into a thousand flying shards.
The room screamed back.
The shards formed a shape, tall, winged, made of broken reflections. It opened a mouth that was every death they'd ever feared.
It spoke with one voice:
"YOU BROKE THE DEAL."
Kael smiled.
"What deal? Never made one."
He walked forward.
The thing hurled a shard like a spear. It punched through his chest, out his back, kept going.
Kael looked down at the hole. 'That's pretty big, something new?'
He let it bleed for five seconds.
The hole closed. The shard fell out, dull.
The thing hesitated.
Kael kept walking.
It tried fire, blue-white, hot enough to melt stone. He stepped through it, skin blistering, then not.
It tried ice. Same story.
It tried the battlefield death, the decapitation from the first mirror. A blade of light swung for his neck.
Kael caught it with both hands. The edge cut to bone. He twisted, snapped it, kept the pieces.
The thing shrieked, unraveling.
Kael reached it, grabbed a wing of broken glass, and pulled.
The mirror-thing came apart in his hands, screaming all the way down.
When it was done, the room was empty.
Just dust and silence.
Mara's axes clattered to the floor.
Gavric sat down hard.
Seryn stared at the place where the mirror had been, ice melting off her staff.
Corin was crying, but alive.
Kael wiped blood from his hands, not all his.
'I can't lie for a B-rank or for any rank quest for that matter, this was pretty anticlimactic. Lame even.'
Torven found his voice. "So. That happened."
Lysa kicked a shard. It didn't reflect anything.
Dren was already looting the melted armor for anything valuable.
Mara looked at Kael like he was a storm that had decided to wear a man's face.
"You just soloed a B-rank seal guardian," she said. "On a whim."
"Not a whim," Kael said. "Practice."
He picked up a piece of the broken wing, still warm, still trying to cut him. He tucked it into his belt.
'New toy.'
They left the ruin at dawn.
Ironvein walked out richer by zero coin and poorer by one worldview.
Kael's crew walked out with a story no one would believe and a reputation that would.
Back at Branch 17, Mara tried to pay him double. He took his share and nothing more.
Captain Rhen met them at the gate, took one look at the melted armor scraps, and handed Kael a new band without a word.
Deep blue. Four white stripes.
D++ provisional.
The guild was running out of colors.
Kael tied it on.
'Slow, didn't even know you could get more than one plus,' he thought. 'But good for now.'
That night he sat on the roof again, wing-shard in one hand, broken disk in the other.
'Earth... I wonder how everyone is doing?'