The tunnel beyond the shrine sloped downward, narrow and cracked, its stones seamed with old heat fractures. The air grew dry again, the kind of dryness that scraped the inside of your throat and made your tongue stick to your teeth. The scent of scorched stone permeated everything.
Nick walked in silence for a while, absently rotating one shoulder.
After about a minute, he sighed and retrieved a mana potion from the satchel attached to his belt.
He downed the vial. It went down thick and metallic, like hot syrup laced with iron fillings. His stomach turned, but the effects were instant. Mana flooded his veins with a burning chill, and the pounding behind his eyes began to fade.
Nick wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Disgusting.”
Ray eyed the empty bottle with interest. “What’s it taste like?”
“Like syrupy medicinal alcohol.”
“That’s kinda hard to imagine.”
“Must be nice.”
The passage opened into a wider room. It had the look of a trap gauntlet, though only the tail end of the challenge was visible from this angle—a final row of retracting spikes lining a shallow trench, most of them already triggered. One still hissed steam from a recent discharge.
Nick studied the room from a distance. “Looks like something activated the traps ahead of us.”
“You think the other party—”
A scream cut through the stillness.
Nick and Ray crept forward to the chamber’s threshold and peeked inside.
The world lit up like a magical crime scene. Nick’s vision tinted slightly, overlays of color flaring across the room.
Crimson lines marked the edges of pressure plates. Orange outlines shimmered where blades retracted into the ceiling and floor. A series of tripwires crisscrossed the upper half of the room in invisible arcs of glowing yellow. Blue glyphs pulsed on the stone pillars.
Nick tilted his head and looked up, finding a white-glowing sigil etched into the ceiling.
=Level up! Trap Perception is now Rank 4/100=
=Level up! Trap Perception is now Rank 5/100=
…
=Level up! Trap Perception is now Rank 9/100=
There were so many traps that his Trap Perception skill leveled up six times just by looking around the room. The trap room was clearly designed to test timing, precision, and pain tolerance.
What they saw was… not that.
The adventuring party ahead of them was somehow still alive.
As they watched, the rogue snagged a tripwire and narrowly avoided decapitation when he tripped over his own foot and slammed into the wall, the blade slicing the air where his head had been a moment before.
Another adventurer stepped onto a pressure plate and kept walking without realizing what she’d done. A spike fired upward and narrowly missed her back by inches.
The leader charged forward confidently when a chunk of the ceiling gave out above him. A falling rock should’ve crushed his skull. Instead, he didn’t even notice it. He pivoted to flash a thumbs-up back at his teammates.
“See, easy?”
The rock slammed into the ground behind him, cracking the stone where he would’ve been if he hadn’t stopped.
Ray blinked. “Are they… winning?”
Nick shook his head slowly. “They’re doing something, but I dunno if I would call it ‘winning’.”
Another one of them dodged a flame trap by sneezing and doubling over at the exact moment it ignited. The fireball passed over him harmlessly, and he blinked up at it, eyes watering.
Nick watched in stunned silence as the final trap—a swinging pendulum blade—activated behind the last adventurer just as he stopped to adjust his bootstraps. The blade skimmed his back harmlessly and wedged into the wall beside him with a clang.
The man didn’t even look up.
“What did I just watch?” Nick muttered.
Ray’s eyes sparkled. “I kind of respect it.”
“It’s like watching a drunken toddler juggle knives and somehow come out with more fingers than they started with.”
They waited until the group cleared the final pressure plate, then stepped into the trap room themselves. Most of the mechanisms were already spent. The room stank of overused enchantments and embarrassment.
Ray stepped over a tripwire that had clearly snapped already. “I thought dungeons were supposed to be smart.”
Nick glanced down at the spent traps. “If the dungeon has intelligence, it’s probably malding right now.”
They reached the far side of the chamber and paused. The walls here were less scorched and more cracked, like something massive had slammed through them in the past. One wall in particular was bowed outward, bricks held together only by some miracle of dungeon geometry.
Another hallway stretched ahead, long, narrow, and ribbed with stone support columns. At the end of it, a faint blue glow pulsed like a heartbeat.
“Another trap?” Nick muttered to himself.
They proceeded cautiously, but the corridor was quiet.
As they neared the glow, the hall opened up into a circular chamber, not unlike the others, with one key difference:
It was cold.
It was a deathly stillness, the kind of cold that hurt the lungs. A soft mist drifted just above the floor, swirling around their boots like hesitant, ghostly fingers. Tiny frost-veins spread from the far wall, where a broken archway shimmered faintly with magic. A gate, or what used to be one. Something had shattered it from the inside.
The room was partially collapsed on one side, but still intact enough to see what it had been once.
Stone cradles lined the far wall, some still intact, others toppled or broken in half. The crumbled remnants of toys were scattered among them—carved animals, little figurines of warriors and monsters. Ash was piled thick in the corners as if the fire hadn’t touched this room directly, only brushed past on its way elsewhere. Scorch marks adorned the ceiling in spirals and arcs. The symbols on the walls were smaller here, more intricate.
Ray slowed, brushing her fingers over the edge of one of the cradles. The stone was smoother than it had any right to be, polished not by time but by small hands. She paused when her hand reached a tiny doll resting in the corner. The fabric had long since turned to ash, but the shape still remained—a hollow husk of something once loved.
It crumbled under her touch.
“This was a place for kids?” she asked quietly.
Nick nodded. “A nursery, I think.”
A long silence passed between them.
Ray’s voice dropped to a murmur. “Was this part of the temple?”
“Maybe,” Nick said. “Or maybe this was what the temple was protecting.”
He moved deeper into the room, letting his hand trail across the wall. Beneath the frost, faint carvings were still visible. They depicted a group of orcs, kneeling in a circle around a flame cradled in stone. Above them, a tall, four-armed figure loomed, arms stretched in blessing. The crown of fire on its head was the only symbol still sharp.
Ray followed his gaze. “They worshiped fire, right? Do you think the fire cried when they burned?”
Nick didn’t answer at first.
He was staring at one of the glyphs near the broken archway. It was etched in a tighter circle, layered with what looked like elemental sigils. He wasn’t educated in magic, but the shapes of the sigils reminded him of the elements.
Fire. Water. Wind. Earth.
“They worshiped fire,” he said slowly. “But maybe they didn’t rely on it alone.”
Ray tilted her head. “You think they used other elements?”
He nodded. “This room was sealed. It wasn’t just cold because the fire didn’t reach it. Something kept the flames out.”
Ray looked back at the cradles. “To protect the kids?”
“Maybe.”
He crouched and brushed aside a patch of ash. Beneath it, a faint symbol was carved into the floor.
“This place is called the Siege Vault, right? Maybe this wasn’t just a nursery. There has to be something to it.”
Ray gave him a confused look. “You think there’s still something here?”
Nick shook his head. “If there was, it’s gone now. Based on what we’ve seen of this place and the Goblin Den, dungeons seem to replicate the moments before a great tragedy.”
He glanced back at the shattered archway. The frost-veins stretched outward from it, not toward it.
Ray folded her arms, staring at the walls. “So what happened?”
Nick stood and stared at the cold mist curling around their feet.
“I think,” he said, “someone broke the rules. Whatever lived here—whatever this place was—-someone came in and ended it.”
She reached down a plucked a pebble from the frost. It was smooth, cold. She turned it over in her fingers.
“They killed the children.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
They stood in silence for a moment longer—long enough for the frost to bite just a little deeper as if the room was trying to hold onto them too.
Ray let the pebble drop. It clinked softly against the stone, then rolled to a stop beside the remnants of a shattered cradle.
Neither of them spoke.
There was nothing more to say—only questions without answers, memories they didn’t own, grief that didn’t belong to them but still settled like dust in their lungs.
Nick exhaled slowly, the breath visible in the lingering chill.
“We should go,” he said at last, his voice quiet.
She nodded, but she hesitated before following. Her gaze lingered on one of the cradles—one that hadn’t been broken, but left empty.
“I’ll remember this place,” she said.
They turned toward the far exit, where frost gave way once more to scorched stone and rising heat.
A guttural roar echoed in the distance.
Ray tensed. “Sounds like they’re fighting something.”
Nick turned toward the opposite archway, where the frost ended and the heat began again. Faint light flickered beyond, like dull torchlight fighting through smoke.
“If this is what they were protecting, then the boss room’s probably close,” he said.
They pressed on, the quiet weight of the nursery following them like a second shadow.
The next hall sloped downward again, this time more sharply, and the scorch marks along the walls grew darker.
Nick pressed his hand to the wall as they moved, letting his fingers trace the burnt stone.
“It’s getting hotter again.”
Ray scanned ahead, fingers drumming absently on the haft of her bat. “I can deal with a little pain, but I don’t like sweating this much. We’re stopping to take a bath after this.”
They paused when they came across some melted weapons fused to the floor. A broken helm was pressed into the wall as if someone had been flung against it hard enough to embed the metal. Charred bones littered the edges of the corridor, some still bearing scraps of armor or seared cloth.
Nick stopped at one corpse, crouching beside it.
The skeleton had been crushed, bones splintering inward. “This one didn’t burn to death,” he murmured. “He was crushed.”
“Shield’s broken,” Ray added, toeing the cracked remnants of a tower shield. “So is the armor.”
They exchanged a look before continuing, this time moving with a little more caution.
The tunnel ended at a broad set of scorched stone steps leading down into a massive chamber. The heat was palpable, rising in waves like an open kiln. A flickering orange glow danced along the high ceiling.
Nick and Ray stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down.
The final chamber was vast. Blackened pillars rose like giant ribs from a scorched floor, curving toward a central altar surrounded by char. The walls were jagged with cracks, and molten rivulets of stone dripped from the ceiling in lazy, glowing trails. A wide platform loomed at the center.
And standing in its heart—
A large figure.
Taller than the Ashbound Orc, with shoulders as broad as a wagon. His skin was ashen-grey, etched with scars that shimmered with heat. Armor fused to his body in places, and a massive two-handed hammer rested beside him, glowing with internal heat.
He didn’t move.
He didn’t need to.
Even from here, Nick could feel the weight of his presence.
Ray tilted her head. “That’s the boss?”
“I’d put money on it,” Nick confirmed quietly.
“Why’s he not moving?”
“Not sure.”
Down below, the adventuring party had gathered near the platform. The confident leader from before was gesturing excitedly, rallying his group with a pep talk too far away to hear.
Nick crouched and activated Stealth before moving closer, but he still couldn’t hear them.
The one in the back—the weary young man with the staff—was saying something with an urgent look on his face, likely pleading for the party to step back.
The leader clapped him on the back and waved him off with a big laugh.
“They’re going to die,” Nick sighed.
Ray glanced down. “You want to stop them?”
“No,” he said. “I feel kinda bad for the guy with the staff, but the others need a hard lesson about the risks of stupidity.”
She grinned. “I think I’m a bad influence on you.”
He shrugged. “That’s because you’re traveling with Nick, not Cain.”
The adventurers fanned out, preparing for the fight. One began to draw a circle on the floor, while another positioned glyph-inscribed talismans on the pillars. The leader unhooked a glowing crystal from his belt and held it high.
“What’s that?” Ray asked, curious.
“No idea.”
“Think it’ll work?”
He watched the crystal pulse once, then settle into a soft, steady glow. “If it does, it’ll probably just piss off the boss.”
The final boss moved.
Just a step. One slow, deliberate step forward, and the ground cracked beneath him.
The adventurers froze.
Nick leaned forward.
The leader raised a hand, shouting something triumphantly, and the crystal flared.
Nothing happened.
The leader seemed confused for a moment. He tapped the crystal and shook it. The crystal started to glow brighter.
And brighter.
And even brighter.
Then it imploded in a flash of sickly red light. The enchantments on the pillars caught fire. The sigils scrawled in chalk ignited, melting into nothing. The room shifted like reality flinching.
The boss turned away as if he were uninterested.
The air shimmered around him, distorting, boiling. Heat rolled off his skin like waves from a dying star. The molten lines carved into his chest flared white-hot, pulsing with deep, rhythmic surges.
Nick’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
His ears started to vibrate. It was a deep, low hum, so soft it might have been imagined, like the world remembering a trauma it tried to forget. The adventurers staggered as the heat sharpened. One dropped her staff, clutching her chest. Another whimpered, skin blistering in real time.
Ray leaned over the ledge. “Nick…”
“I know.”
The youngest member of the party turned to flee—too late. Flames bloomed along his legs, licking up his torso like creeping ivy. His scream lasted half a second before it choked into smoke.
The others followed, one by one.
Their skin peeled. Armor melted. Hair turned to ash in an instant. A woman tried to cast a water spell; it evaporated before it left her fingers. Another crawled for the stairs, only for his eyes to rupture from the pressure of the heat.
The boss didn’t lift a single finger.
No hammer fell.
No blade was drawn.
No fire magic was cast.
Just aura.
By the time silence returned, all that remained were shadows burned into the stone, like fragile memories scorched into permanence.
Ray stared, her voice unusually soft. “…He didn’t even move.”
Nick’s eyes stayed locked on the figure standing silently in the center of the platform.
“Now that,” he said, “is a dungeon boss.”
Then, almost absently, he reached into his satchel and pulled out another mana potion. He popped the cork and drank.
He wiped his mouth.
And stepped forward.
Project Knightfall 