Omen of a Bluebell

For a long moment, nobody speaks.

The image of the sleeping figure stubbornly remains the center of my attention, those carved tears somehow making it worse than if the mural had simply shown murder.

Because this doesn’t look like murder. It looks like duty. Necessary, hated duty.

Nyx slowly turns in place, gaze moving over the rows of stone tables again.

“Whatever frightened them, it frightened them more than death.”

Bella folds her arms, scarlet eyes lingering on the silver channels carved into the nearest slab.

“Or they believed death preferable to whatever followed sleep, which is as ridiculous as it sounds.”

That gives me a moment of pause. “Are there any monsters we know of that can… I don’t know, possess someone in their sleep?”

Each of them grow thoughtful, but only Bella responds.

“Night Maws, I suppose, though none could survive this close to the surface. And they don’t possess a person, but put them into a coma of never ending nightmares,” she says, then continues after a moment, pointing at the mural. “But that person isn’t in a coma.”

A simple glance at the mural shows that the man strapped to the table was struggling even while seemingly asleep, proving her point.

When I look down again, mostly because I don’t love the direction my imagination is trying to run with that, and that’s when something catches my eye.

A faint glimmer.

Weak enough that I almost miss it beneath Bella’s drifting flare.

“Wait.”

I step toward the nearest table and crouch beside it, brushing a thin film of dust aside with my fingers until the silver threading along one groove becomes clearer.

Most of it looks dead like the others—except for one section near the head of the slab that still glows faintly beneath the grime of age.

“Look,” I gasp, “it’s still working!”

All three of them shift closer immediately.

I place my hand against the groove and activate Relic Whisperer.

A feeling similar to what I endured when trying to use Relic Whisperer on the Archives nearly bowls me over as all of the mana from my tail, and another two thirds of my pool, is drained in an instant.

When it’s done, I’m left panting from the drain.

But I get some answers.

Bed of Vigil

Epic

Enchantments:

Experimental False Rest

This enchantment allows any who lay upon it to experience bodily recovery without natural sleep.

Note: This is experimental. Extended or repetitive use may leave deeper cognitive functions unstable or improperly restored.

Experimental Drain Sleep

This enchantment draws accumulated fatigue from the mind and spirit from any who lay upon it.

Note: This is experimental. Extended or repetitive use may cause memory degradation or emotional instability.

Experimental Emergency Forced Waking

This enchantment forcibly awakens any who fall asleep while laying upon it.

Note: This is experimental. May sunder the soul from the body if interrupted.

“Hells!” I yank my hand back as if I’d been burned and quickly step away from the thing.

Everyone quickly joins me in backing away from it, though they seem more curious than cautious.

I stare at the words a moment longer than I probably need to, then share the System Notice.

Seraphine grimaces first. “That seems… wrong.”

“Because it is wrong,” Bella says quietly.

She rises, eyes narrowing at the table as though offended by its existence.

“No sane enchanter would bind uncertain effects this closely.”

Her gaze shifts toward the mural again—to the sleeping figure pinned beneath blades.

“If one layer misfired while another compensated…” she says, slower now, thinking through it aloud, “...they may never have known whether he truly slept, or whether the table simply failed him.”

A silence follows that lands heavier than before.

Nyx looks from the mural to the slab.

“And they killed him anyway.”

Bella’s mouth tightens.

“If they believed sleep itself endangered everyone here, hesitation may have ceased to matter.”

I look down at the faintly glowing runes again, suddenly far less eager to touch anything in this room.

“Well, even while sleeping, it shows the man struggling to free themselves from the table. Something else must be going on aside from just falling sleep,” I say.

Seraphine nods along. “Last I checked, having your soul ripped from your body kills you. They wouldn’t need friends and family to do that.”

They mixed medicine to stay awake.

Crafted tables to fake sleep.

Invented enchantments to drag tiredness out of themselves by force.

And even then, it still wasn’t enough.

“Gods,” I mutter. “How terrified do you have to be for this to start sounding reasonable?”

Seraphine glances at the mural once more and shudders. “I understand less the more we see.”

“That makes two of us,” Nyx mutters, still staring at the mural. “They go so far to stay awake, and kill those that fail. It’s pretty clear they’re terrified of something, but… if not a Night Maw, then what?”

Nobody answers, because none of us know the answer.

I let out a tense puff of air as I feel my tail refilling with mana. “Let’s just keep going. Not much else here for us to learn from. Nyx, mind scouting ahead again?”

He nods quickly and vanishes into the shadows once more.

We don’t linger long after that.

Rows upon rows of stone slabs stretch around us like orderly graves, silver channels faintly catching Bella’s light as we move back toward the corridor. I avoid looking too long at the mural of the sleeping figure as we leave, though the carved tears remain lodged stubbornly behind my eyes.

The corridor beyond greets us with the same ancient stone and narrowing walls as before, but something about it feels different almost immediately.

Our footsteps carry strangely here, each sound stretching farther than it should before fading into the dark ahead.

Even Bella’s drifting flare seems wrong. Its blue light flickers once, then steadies, as though some unseen current had disturbed it. Then again.

That’s when I notice something. Mana.

In the rooms and corridors before, there was nearly none of it as most was used to power the enchanted torches. Wisps of ambient mana would be seen, then quickly absorbed as it had nowhere else to be and no other use to serve.

But now, it seems to almost flow. It’s similar to how the trains drew mana along their surfaces like great rivers of power, but less… focused. Tiny eddies of flowing mana phase in and out of existence, as if getting absorbed halfway through their travels, and all leading into the depths of the dungeon.

There are silver veins carved into the corridor walls, hidden in seams that had looked like decoration before. Faint lines branch outward beneath centuries of dust, so dim I would have sworn them dead if not for the occasional weak shimmer buried deep inside them.

And they guide the flow, albeit feebly.

Nyx returns once more, pulling me from the distraction, emerging from a shadow with less confidence than usual.

He says nothing at first, only glances back toward us. His eyes catch on me as I watch the space between the ceiling and us.

“No traps or hidden undead,” he says, then returns to looking deeper into the corridor. “But listen closely.”

We do.

At first, I hear nothing but our own breathing and the faint scrape of our boots on stone as we shift into more defensible stances.

Then I hear it.

A sound so faint I almost mistake it as my imagination. But it’s slow, and constant. A distant, soft padding of boots on the ground. , almost like a heartbeat—but too even.

A low hum, followed by a pause. Then again.

It feels almost like the Dungeon itself is breathing, but combined with what I can see, I understand what it is.

Bella beats me to it.

“Mana,” she whispers.

Then another sound joins the mix. Heavy, measured footfalls.

A long figure rounds the next corner at the end of the corridor, and we all ready ourselves for a fight.

It doesn’t move to charge, though—just approaches in its slow, steady gait. When it enters the light, it reveals an undead a head taller than any of those we’ve encountered so far, and I give it a quick scan.

Undead Attendant

Level 84

It’s the first non-combat undead we’ve seen, though it’s also the highest leveled one.

It’s broad shouldered, despite the way age has hollowed the creature out, without a scrap of armor. Instead, old layered cloth hangs from it in faded strips, time staining everything the same tired shade of ruin.

Combined with the long coat it wears over it all, it might have been an ensemble fine enough to suggest rank or status.

But it carries no weapons that I can see.

It stops several paces away.

Though both its eyes are clouded with age, it stares at us. Then its jaw shifts.

The sound it makes is rough enough that for a moment I think it simply tried to breath… but then words force themselves free.

“Come.”

The single word scrapes out like stone on stone. Ancient, dry, and painfully deliberate.

Nobody moves, and the undead slowly lifts one hand. Its fingers are stiff, but it manages a rough, jerky motion that’s clearly intended to gesture we follow it down the corridor.

It speaks again, voice somehow even thinner.

“He… waits.”

Then, just as it had arrived, it turns to leave without another word. It pauses at the end of the corridor and turns to us, as if waiting for us to follow.

I glance at the others, but each seem just as perplexed as I feel.

“Nyx, did you see anything else up there?”

He nods slowly. “Undead. Lots of them. They line the corridors end to end, but I didn’t get to close due to the possibility their Rogues or Rangers would spot me.”

My tail lashes behind me, exposing my agitation with the situation.

“Well, regardless of what lies ahead, we need to keep moving forward to complete the quest,” I say, and at their nods of assent, we step forward.

The moment we’re close enough to peer around the corner into the next stretch of corridor, the plans are promptly thrown out the window.

My ears flatten before I can even think to stop it as my hands go up, claws extended to face our newest challenge.

Ahead, the corridor widens into a long stone hall, and every bit of it is lined with undead.

Hundreds upon hundreds of them stand shoulder to shoulder in perfect stillness, armor rusted into dark plates, old weapons held upright in hands stripped nearly to bone with decay.

Their gazes—some milky white with blindness, others hollow and glowing a faint green—are all fixed directly on us.

But none move. None even twitch.

They just stand there, silent enough that I actually hear Seraphine’s grip tighten around her spear as the leather protests.

Then, as one, the front rank moves, and I lower myself into a simple ready stance out of instinct.

Metal scrapes against metal in one long, grating sound as each weapon angles inward until the shafts cross overhead, forming a narrow arch down the center of the hall.

A path.

No one speaks for several breaths.

Suddenly, steady footfalls break the silence once more as the undead who spoke earlier begins to move again, walking under the arch, deeper into the Dungeon.

“So this is definitely a trap, right?” I ask.

“If this is a trap,” Nyx murmurs, barely audible, “it’s an elaborate one.”

“If they wanted us dead, I believe this many would have managed to get at least one of us,” Bella says, her tone clipped.

Seraphine simply exhales slowly through her nose, her eyes never leaving the closes undead.

I sigh. “Then… we walk. Seraphine, you’re at the rear.”

No one argues. Whether its because there isn’t exactly many other choices before us, or because they agree with the decision, I don’t know.

And though I don’t see Nyx as he joins our formation, I feel the moment he gives my shoulder a gentle tap to let me know he’s there.

Gods, at least one of us might surprise them this way…

Still, I keep myself prepared just in case. Every bit of available mana goes into All For One, and I ready my Blood Burst Skill to go off in a split second.

The moment we cross the threshold into this new section, things start to feel wrong in a way I can’t explain. But the deeper we go, the more my hackles rise.

Every step we take echoes a bit too cleanly. Every hollow gaze follows us as we move.

The air itself even begins to feel warmer with every step. Bella’s flare flickers more chaotically, its light bending strangely before steadying again.

The murals persist beside us, though they no longer reveal anything new. Morena and Fylem glare down upon us once more, as if daring us to step out of line.

But after several more turns, even that changes.

The gods vanish. Instead, the walls lay bare.

No murals. No inscriptions. Just smooth stone worked with such precision that it almost gleams beneath Bella’s light.

And unlike the corridors before, there is almost no dust here at all—much less the wear and tear of time.

As we approach a final threshold, a massive arching doorway, the undead stop.

Even the one who spoke to us simply steps aside, refusing to go further. Stranger still, it holds its hand out as if beckoning us onward, like the butlers at that fancy Inn Bella took me to did.

An undead with manners. Right. Sure.

I don’t have much time to gawk at the evolving strangeness of this Dungeon, though.

The same wrongness that prickles whenever the System reaches to understand my Faen Oathstone tickles at the core of my being.

Like it’s trying to warn me.

Then the doors slowly swing open. At the sight beyond, my breath catches for a moment before my mind catches up.

The chamber beyond is vast, Bella’s flare spilling blue light across silver channels worked so densely into the floor thathey resemble roots spreading toward a single point at the center.

For a moment, my mind struggles to make sense of what I’m seeing there.

At first, it looks like a throne.

Then my eyes adjust, and I realize it only resembles one if I were to ignore everything attached to it.

The seat itself is carved from pale stone, raised upon a short dais etched so heavily with enchantments that half the surface glows beneath layers of old silver and gold threading.

Tall supports rise behind it, chains and strange metallic tubes stretching from them to the throne and the figure within it, every surface etched just as, if not more densely than the dais itself.

Bound within it all is a man.

Or something close enough that my mind latches onto that first.

Ancient robes hange from a body so thin it barely seems capable of holding itself upright. Silver needles pierce long fingers resting against the arms of the chair, feeding into enchantments beneath him.

More silver runs across his throat, chest, and beneath robes that must have once been magnificent.

For half a breath, I only stare.

Because I recognize that face.

It is older than the murals ever showed, but unmistakable all the same.

The same hollow cheeks. The same long beard falling across his chest.

It’s the old man from every mural before.

Without thinking, I check his tag.

Nothing appears.

For a breath, I almost dismiss it—until the wrongness of that simple discovery catches up to me.

I check again.

Nothing.

The same strange resistance I felt with my Faen Oathstone prickles down my spine, sharper this time, like the System is reaching for him—only to find nothing to grab onto.

The old man twitches, then lifts his head slowly, clouded eyes settling over us one by one before stopping on me.

When he speaks, the voice is dry as old parchment.

“You’re late.”

I just stare, utterly confused by the fact that he’s somehow still here.

Nobody answers, and I know the rest of my party are equally surprised.

His gaze lingers a moment longer before drifting upward towards Bella’s flare.

“I had expected Gods first,” he says conversationally. “Or the Fae again.”

He pauses for a moment too look at me once more.

“Though… I suppose you’d count. If only just.”

Then he continues, one corner of his mouth twitching beneath the beard.

“Did they stop teaching punctuality on the surface,” he asks, “or did civilization collapse again while I was occupied?”

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