"Sera," Eleanor said, walking towards them. "You’re the one going with him, right? Just wanted to confirm before you’re halfway there and he realizes he dragged the wrong person along."
"Unless someone else volunteered while I wasn’t looking, yes," Sera said, checking her blade. "Still me."
Eleanor leaned against the wall, arms crossed and a faint, teasing smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Take care of him. Try to bring him back in one piece."
"No promises," Sera said.
"Rude," Mark said, clutching his chest in mock offense. "Both of you. I am a capable adult who can take care of himself."
"You turned a sword to dust fighting a river beast," Eleanor said.
"That was STRATEGY."
"Sure it was." She said with a smile, though she knew what actually happened; she figured that there was no harm in teasing him a bit about it. The memory of the river beast still sat fresh in everyone’s minds—the way the water had boiled, the way Mark’s blade had simply... ceased to exist mid-swing. Strategy or not, it had nearly cost him an arm.
They set off down the road not long after, the morning light breaking through scattered clouds. The fortress gates closed behind them with a heavy, final thud that echoed longer than it should have. Sera fell into step beside him, glancing over after a moment of comfortable silence.
"Why’d you actually pick me for this," she asked. "Bertram’s steadier in a straight fight. Kai’s eager to prove himself. You could’ve picked either of them."
Mark considered the question for a bit before he replied. "Honestly? No specific reason. I just wanted company, I guess. And figured getting out of the fortress for a while might do me some good... clear my head a bit."
"Clear your head of what?"
"Things," Mark said, deliberately vague.
Sera studied him for a moment, something knowing settling into her expression. "You don’t have to dance around it. It’s obvious you miss him."
Mark let a smile spread across his face before replying, "I wasn’t trying to hide it."
"Could’ve fooled me."
"I just—" He exhaled, some of the humor falling away entirely. "I know he’s fine. Probably. Lucas has this annoying habit of surviving things that should’ve ended anyone else a dozen times over. But yeah. I worry. Four years, Sera. We’ve been roommates, best friends, whatever you want to call it, for four years now. You don’t just dismiss it because he’s on the other side of a Gateway we can’t reopen."
"Didn’t say you could," Sera said, gentler now. "Just said you don’t have to hide it."
He didn’t reply to that. They just walked the rest of the way in comfortable silence, the road curving gradually through terrain that had grown steadily wilder the further they traveled from the fortress. Grass gave way to scrub, scrub to thickets, and the air grew heavier with the scent of damp earth and something faintly metallic that neither of them could place.
By midafternoon, the map led them off the road entirely, cutting through a stretch of dense, overgrown bush on the other side of the park and toward a location near a lake marked only by a faint, glowing dot and nothing more on their screen. Branches snagged at their clothes. Thorns caught on leather. The further they pushed, the closer they came to their destination.
They pushed through a final wall of overgrown brush, and both of them stopped dead.
Ahead, where the map had promised nothing more than a water relic waiting quietly for retrieval, an enormous lake stretched out instead. At the center, a cave loomed—its mouth dark and wide, the stone around it slick and black as if recently risen from the depths. The lake itself held no reflection at all, dark and glassy despite the bright afternoon sun overhead. Faint, pale light pulsed somewhere beneath its depths in slow waves, illuminating something moving below the surface that neither of them could properly identify from this distance.
The water rippled once, and the shape moving inside the water disappeared.
The water rippled again and the cave ahead of them rumbled—parts of the upper side falling into the water and the path behind them disappearing. Stone and earth rose with a grinding roar, sealing the way they had come. A sheer wall of rock now stood where the trail had been, as if the land itself had decided they were not permitted to leave.
"Mark."
Mark turned to where Sera looked and his eyes widened, confused. His gaze trailed upwards along the erected wall that stood in front of them like it had always been there.
"This," Mark said slowly, "is not what I expected."
Sera’s hand was already on her blade. "This was supposed to be a quiet retrieval. Small relic. No hostiles. Nothing about a living lake or spontaneous mountain eruptions."
Mark stepped closer to the water’s edge, careful not to let his boots touch the glassy surface. The pale light beneath pulsed again, slower this time, like a heartbeat. Whatever had been moving down there was gone—or waiting. The air tasted of ozone and old stone.
"Lucas would love this," he muttered under his breath.
The cave mouth exhaled a low, resonant sound—half breath, half stone shifting. More debris tumbled into the water, sending concentric rings outward that never quite reached the shore. The wall behind them remained solid, unyielding. No path back. Only forward.
Sera moved up beside him. "We go in, find the relic, get out. Fast. Whatever’s under that water already knows we’re here."
Mark nodded, walking towards the cave. He rolled his shoulders and his hands flickered as he was preparing himself for whatever waited for them inside the dark cave
Sera followed, blade drawn, eyes scanning the water and the rising walls and the deep, lightless throat of the cave ahead.
Behind them, the lake’s surface remained perfectly still once more ecept for one slow, ripple that moved toward the place where they had stood.
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