The party stepped into the endless tunnel without knowing if it would ever end. Day bled into night in a place where neither truly existed, their only measure of time the rhythm of their own exhaustion. They pressed hard, harder than they should have, shaving a week of travel down to four relentless days. Each night they made camp in that suffocating cylinder of stone, resting under the weight of miles above them. By the third night, the strain began to show. Royce’s composure cracked as the walls seemed to close in, his claustrophobia tightening like a vise. Doubt crept in—quiet at first, then louder—whispers that they might die buried in that tunnel, unseen and forgotten.

Chronaur had nothing left to take the edge off, his drink long since gone. Tension hung thick between them. Still, they pushed forward.

Raha found another way to see the world beyond the stone. Through the Arcane Mark placed on Twitch, he reached out night after night, seeing through the ratfolk’s eyes. What he witnessed was grim—barricaded walls, firelight flickering from destruction outside, Twitch standing guard with crossbow in hand, protecting six survivors against horrors creeping through the keep. Raha shared what he saw, and the weight of it followed them deeper into the dark. While they marched through silence, a battle was unfolding above.

Far ahead, Morpho reached the end first.

His message came like a breath of cold air in a suffocating place—the tunnel had an end.

When the party finally arrived, they found it.

A beholder’s corpse lay sprawled across the stone, massive and unmistakable. Dead long enough to rot, but not long enough to be forgotten. The source of the tunnel. The truth beneath it all. The party’s spellcasters confirmed it, and in that moment, the unnatural perfection of the passage made sense.

They rested there, beside the fallen aberration.

Al claimed a trophy—a single jagged tooth pulled from the creature’s remains.

The party awakens and presses on, single file. Royce takes the lead.

Royce, Raha, and Morpho stepped forward to face it first.

With a reluctant hand, Al passed over one of his lightning javelins.

Raha bent space itself, using magic to bypass the worst of the mechanism, and together they reached the far side. A door waited there, leading into another chamber—worse than the first. More grinders. More death waiting to happen. And a trapdoor set into the floor.

They chose to go down.

Royce approached it.

He pressed a red button.

Nothing.

He pressed it again.

The machines roared louder. Faster.

Thinking quickly, he rushed to a nearby valve and twisted it tight. Steam screamed through the pipes as pressure built, heat rising dangerously. At the last second, he released it, avoiding something far worse.

Morpho bound himself to Royce with magic, linking their vitality.

Only then did Royce notice the grease.