The silence inside the Hollowed Ziggurat was heavy, possessing a physical weight that pressed against the eardrums. It was not the absence of sound, but rather a predatory stillness, as if the very walls were holding their breath, waiting for the intruders to venture deeper into its gullet.
Kaelen stepped over a threshold of obsidian-flecked stone, his iron staff held low. Behind him, the massive slab of the entrance had sealed with a finality that sent a shiver through the mercenaries.
"Don't look back," Kaelen whispered, his voice cutting through the gloom like a cold blade. "The door is gone. In the architecture of the Old Orders, a closed path doesn't just block you—it ceases to exist in this dimension of the maze."
Valia grunted, her hand white-knuckled around the hilt of her greatsword. "Focus on the path ahead, Mage. Jarek, light it up."
The cleric, Jarek, raised a silver censer. A pale, sickly yellow light bloomed from within, struggling against the pervasive shadows. In this place, light didn't radiate; it felt huddled, as if the darkness were actively trying to drown the flame.
The corridors were unnervingly symmetrical. The walls were etched with thousands of microscopic inscriptions—names of the dead, or perhaps ingredients for a ritual long forgotten. Kaelen's eyes traced the flow of mana. It was jagged here, pulsing like a failing heart.
"Three paces to the left," Kaelen commanded as they reached a wide junction.
"The right looks clearer," Elara, the rogue, countered. She was crouched low, her daggers drawn. "The floor on the left is uneven, covered in that... black sludge."
Kaelen didn't even turn his head. "The right is a 'Larynx Hall.' If you step there, the vibrations of your boots will trigger a sonic resonance that will liquify your internal organs before you can scream. The sludge on the left is merely decomposed history. Step in it and keep moving."
Valia gestured for them to follow Kaelen's lead. They waded through the viscous, ink-like substance. It felt cold—colder than ice—and as it touched Kaelen's boots, he felt a faint tugging at his mind, a chorus of distant, weeping voices. He tightened the mental barriers he had spent a decade building. This was the 'Tinta'—the residual essence of the Grimoire's power, leaking through the ley lines of the Ziggurat.
They had been walking for what felt like hours, though the lack of sun made time an abstract concept. The air grew warmer, smelling of sulfur and something metallic.
"Stop," Elara hissed, freezing in place.
From the darkness ahead came a sound—a wet, skittering noise, like hundreds of needles tapping on glass. Then, a low, guttural chattering that sounded like a mockery of human speech.
"Contact," Valia breathed, stepping to the front.
Out of the shadows crawled the first of them. They were small, no larger than a human child, but their proportions were horrific. Their skin was the color of bruised plums, stretched tight over emaciated ribs. They had no noses, only vertical slits, and their eyes were oversized globes of milky white that reflected Jarek's holy light with a predatory hunger.
"Dark Goblins," the tank, a man named Boros, spat, raising his heavy shield.
"Not goblins," Kaelen corrected, his voice devoid of emotion. "Ink-Eaters. They are the scavengers of this place. They don't want your gold, Boros. They want the marrow in your bones to ink their nests."
The creatures screeched—a sound that felt like a needle being driven into the brain—and lunged.
The battle was a frantic, claustrophobic blur. Boros took the first wave, his shield ringing as the creatures slammed into it with unnatural strength. Their claws, long and jagged like obsidian shards, left deep gouges in the metal.
Valia moved like a whirlwind of steel. Her greatsword cleaved through the air, bisectional three of the creatures in a single arc. Black, viscous fluid—not blood, but something thicker—sprayed against the walls. It hissed where it touched the stone.
"Keep them off the Mage!" Valia roared.
Kaelen wasn't idle. He didn't throw fireballs; such crude magic was beneath a scholar of the High Orders. Instead, he slammed the butt of his iron staff into the floor. He tapped into the local mana flow, redirecting a ripple of the Ziggurat's own oppressive weight.
—"Gravitas... Nihil..."—
The air around the approaching Ink-Eaters suddenly thickened. The creatures let out a wet 'crunch' as their hollow bones collapsed under a localized spike in gravity. They were flattened into the black sludge, twitching feebly as Kaelen's magic crushed the life out of them.
Despite the carnage, more kept coming from the vents in the ceiling. They were endless.
"We need to move!" Jarek shouted, his light flickering dangerously. A creature had leaped onto his back, biting into the leather of his gorget. Elara was a blur of motion, her daggers finding the soft spots in the creatures' throats, but her breathing was becoming ragged.
"The archway! Ten meters ahead!" Kaelen pointed his staff toward a door framed by pulsing violet runes. "It's a transition chamber. They won't follow us through a sanctified seal!"
The group broke into a desperate sprint. Boros acted as the rearguard, his armor covered in the black ichor of the creatures. They tumbled into the chamber, Valia kicking the last Ink-Eater square in its featureless face before it could cross the threshold.
The moment they entered, the screeching stopped. It was as if a vacuum had been turned on, sucking all sound from the hallway behind them.
The mercenaries collapsed, panting, their faces pale and slick with sweat.
"Is everyone... alive?" Valia gasped, checking her limbs.
"I'm bleeding," Jarek groaned, clutching his shoulder. "The bite... it burns."
Kaelen stood in the center of the room, his eyes wide. He wasn't looking at the mercenaries. He was looking at the floor. The floor wasn't stone. It was a massive, circular mosaic of translucent crystal, and beneath it, millions of tiny, glowing gears were turning in a silent, hypnotic rhythm.
"Kaelen?" Valia's voice was sharp, sensing his sudden tension. "What is this place?"
Kaelen's heart hammered against his ribs. He recognized this pattern from a forbidden diagram he had seen in the tower's basement. It wasn't a sanctified seal.
"Get off the glass," Kaelen whispered, his voice trembling for the first time. "Get off now!"
"What are you—"
It happened instantly. The violet runes on the door didn't just glow; they ignited. The gears beneath their feet accelerated until they were a blur of golden light.
"It's a Displacement Nexus!" Kaelen shouted over the rising roar of magical energy. "It's a trap meant to scatter intruders across the lower levels!"
"Grab my hand!" Valia lunged for Elara, her fingers inches away from the rogue's sleeve.
But the Ziggurat was faster. The air inside the chamber turned into a violent vortex of spatial energy. Kaelen felt a sensation like his soul being pulled through a straw. His vision fractured—he saw Valia's screaming face, Jarek's flickering light, and Boros's reaching hand, all stretching out into infinite, glowing lines.
The "tinta" in the air reacted to the teleportation, turning the light from gold to a bruised, sickly purple.
Kaelen tried to reach for his staff, but his weight disappeared. The ground beneath him vanished. He felt the cold touch of the void, a silent scream caught in his throat as the group was torn apart by the spatial tide.
«Fool», he thought as the darkness swallowed his consciousness. «I was so focused on the shadows behind us that I didn't see the light beneath our feet.»
The roar reached a crescendo, then snapped into a terrifying, absolute silence.
When Kaelen's boots finally hit solid ground, the impact sent a jolt of pain up his spine. He collapsed to his knees, retching, the metallic taste of teleportation sickness coating his tongue.
He looked up, his breath hitching.
He was alone.
The air was freezing, and the walls here were made of a strange, translucent, bone-white stone. There was no sign of Valia, the mercenaries, or the door they had just entered. He was deep—far deeper than his maps had ever reached.
In the distance, through the winding, bone-white tunnels, a soft, rhythmic thumping sound began.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Like a giant heart beating in the dark.
Kaelen gripped his iron staff, his knuckles white. He was a scholar, a man of logic and books. But as he stared into the yawning mouth of the lower levels, he realized that logic was a poor shield against a god that had died and left its nightmares behind.