Kar'thessa did not vanish when she died.
Her body remained where it fell, half-buried in sand, massive enough to warp the landscape around it. The dunes sloped unnaturally toward her corpse, as if the land itself still acknowledged her weight. Dark blood soaked deep into the ground, staining the sand in wide arcs that the wind could not erase.
No one spoke at first.
Captain Edrin was the first to move, but not away from the corpse. He stood there for a long moment, sword lowered, shield cracked and useless at his side. His chest rose and fell in slow, controlled breaths, the kind used to keep a body from shaking apart after pushing beyond its limits.
Lyra sat down heavily several steps away, bow resting across her knees. Her fingers trembled now that there was no longer a reason to keep them steady. Tomas leaned against a rock, eyes closed, one hand pressed flat against his chest as if making sure his heart was still there.
I was lying on my back, staring at the sky.
The clouds drifted lazily overhead, pale and indifferent. They looked exactly the same as they had before the fight, before the screaming, before the blood and the deaths.
That bothered me more than it should have.
My body felt hollow. Not injured, not broken, just emptied. Death-Linked Burst always did that. It took everything that made a moment possible and left nothing behind but aftermath.
I slowly pushed myself upright, joints stiff, head pounding.
Edrin noticed immediately. He turned and walked toward me, boots crunching softly against the sand.
"You're awake," he said.
"Looks like it," I replied.
My voice sounded thin even to my own ears.
He studied me for a second longer than necessary, eyes sharp, searching for something he did not name. Then he nodded once and turned away, satisfied enough.
That was Edrin. He did not hover.
Tomas dragged himself over, dropping to a crouch beside me. "Before anyone tries to be heroic," he said hoarsely, "drink."
He held out a vial.
Clear liquid. No label. No glow. Just a small glass container that represented weeks of preparation.
I took it without argument and swallowed.
The effect was immediate.
Heat spread through my chest, then outward, sinking into muscles and joints. The ache dulled, then vanished. My breathing evened out. The crushing fatigue receded to a manageable echo.
Around us, Lyra and Edrin did the same. Tomas drank last, emptying two vials back to back before finally sitting down again, shoulders sagging as the strain left him.
Full health did not mean full strength.
But it meant we could move.
We gathered a short distance away from the corpse, far enough that its presence no longer loomed over us but close enough that none of us pretended it hadn't happened.
Lyra broke the silence first.
"If he hadn't been here," she said quietly, eyes fixed on the sand, "we'd be dead."
No one contradicted her.
She looked up, gaze moving from Edrin to Tomas, then finally to me. "I'm not guessing. I'm not exaggerating. I ran the angles in my head after the fact."
She exhaled slowly. "Less than one percent."
Tomas nodded. "That's generous."
Edrin crossed his arms. "Without Theo, we wouldn't have forced her instability. We wouldn't have broken her rhythm. We wouldn't have survived the first collapse."
Their words settled over me like weight.
I didn't respond immediately.
My mind was still replaying the moment Edrin had shoved me forward, the sudden loss of balance, the heat of Kar'thessa's breath as her mouth opened.
I remembered thinking, very calmly, that the choice made sense.
And that hadn't changed.
"I don't blame you," I said finally, looking at Edrin.
He stiffened, just slightly.
"For pushing me," I continued. "You did the right thing."
Edrin's gaze sharpened, then softened into something more complicated.
"I didn't know you would live," he said a little hesitatingly.
"I know."
"If I had known—"
"You still would have done it," I interrupted.
He didn't deny it.
"I would have," he admitted.
"And I would have made the same call," I said. "If I were you."
That surprised him.
I saw it in the way his brows lifted, just a fraction.
"There wasn't time to save everyone," I added. "There rarely is."
Tomas let out a short, humorless breath. "You say that like you've been on the other side of that choice."
I almost laughed.
"Enough times," I said.
Lyra watched me carefully then, eyes narrowing not with suspicion, but with focus. "Those things you did," she said. "The timing. The warnings. The way the ground collapsed everywhere except where we stood."
I met her gaze.
"I don't expect an explanation," she continued. "But I want to understand one thing."
I waited.
"Are you dangerous to stand near?"
It was a fair question.
I considered it honestly.
"Yes," I said. "Sometimes."
She nodded once. "Good to know."
Edrin spoke then, voice steady. "Whatever abilities you used today… they changed the outcome of a fight that should not have been winnable."
I felt his eyes on me again.
"I want to ask," he admitted. "I want to understand how to factor you into future decisions."
Then he shook his head. "But that information is yours."
He looked away, back toward the horizon. "If you choose not to share it, I will respect that."
Tomas nodded. "Same."
Lyra added, "And there's no reason anyone else needs to hear about it. Not the carrier. Not the capital."
"Especially not the capital," Tomas muttered.
I let out a slow breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
"Thank you," I said.
Lyra shakes her head, "No… we thank you. And that's the least we can do."
The carrier approached cautiously then, eyes wide, face pale as he took in the corpse of the Queen. He said nothing, and no one offered explanations. Edrin gave him a brief nod that sent him scurrying back to his task.
The rest of the day passed quietly.
We rested near the edge of the dunes, far from the corpse but close enough that nothing else dared approach. No scavengers came. No other worms surfaced.
Kar'thessa's death had left a silence in the land, heavy and absolute.
That night, I didn't sleep much.
Not because of fear.
Because my mind kept returning to the moment everything aligned perfectly, the instant where nothing could go wrong because nothing was left to chance.
Death-Linked Burst.
I could still feel the echo of it, like a phantom limb, reminding me of what it cost and what it offered.
Power, yes.
But never safely.
By morning, we packed up.
No ceremony. No lingering.
Edrin took one last look at the dunes, then turned his back on them.
"We move," he said.
Our pace was slower than before, but steadier. The road ahead felt different now. Not safer, but acknowledged, as if the land itself had taken note of us.
As we walked, I glanced at the horizon, thinking of what lay ahead.
We had killed a Queen. An area boss.
Not by strength.
Not by numbers.
But by failure, error, and the thin line between collapse and control.
And I knew, deep down, that whatever waited for us next would not underestimate us again.
Neither would I.
~~~
Four days later, we arrived.
Nothing marked the place as important.
No ruined pillars. No shattered ground. No lingering sense of power pressing against the skin. If I hadn't known what we were looking for, I would have walked past it without a second glance.
The land here was uneven, broken into low shelves of rock that jutted out of the sand like ribs half-buried by time. Wind had worn them smooth, rounding sharp edges into shapes that looked natural, almost careless. Sparse scrub clung to cracks where dust gathered, stubborn enough to survive but not enough to draw attention.
Captain Edrin raised a hand, and we stopped.
"This is it," he said.
I frowned and looked around again.
It didn't feel like an expedition site. It felt like nothing.
Lyra stepped ahead, boots quiet against stone. She crouched near one of the larger rock formations and brushed sand away with practiced motions. Her fingers traced along a seam so thin I would have mistaken it for a natural fracture.
"This wasn't carved," she said. "It was encouraged."
"Encouraged?" Tomas asked.
"Rock settles where you let it," she replied. "Someone knew how to guide the collapse."
I moved closer, squinting at the formation. Now that she pointed it out, I could see it. The rocks weren't stacked or arranged. They had fallen in a way that looked accidental, but the gaps between them were too consistent, too deliberate. Enough space for air. Enough for movement.
Enough to hide something.
Edrin circled the formation slowly, eyes scanning the ground. "The original team reported a sinkhole after minor seismic activity," he said. "Nothing that stayed open long."
"That tracks," Lyra replied. "This place doesn't want to be found twice."
Tomas adjusted the straps of his pack and let out a quiet breath. "I don't like places that pretend they're not there."
Neither did I.
As we approached, the temperature shifted subtly. Not colder, not warmer. Just… still. The wind that had followed us across the dunes died here, leaving the air strangely quiet. Even the distant sound of sand moving seemed muffled, as if the rocks absorbed more than light.
I felt it then.
Not fear. Recognition.
My Archivist sense stirred, faint but unmistakable. The same pressure I had felt near the crate, the same refusal of the world to fully explain itself.
"There," I said, pointing.
Between two slanted slabs of stone, there was a narrow opening. At first glance it looked like nothing more than a shadowed gap where rocks failed to meet. But when I stepped closer, I saw the angle was wrong. The darkness extended downward, not back.
A hole.
Not wide. Just enough for a person to slide through sideways if they knew how. The edges were worn smooth, not by time, but by passage. Not frequent. Not recent. But intentional.
The carrier swallowed audibly.
"This is where they went down?" he asked.
"Yes," Edrin said. "And where they stopped."
Lyra leaned in, peering into the darkness. She tossed a small stone in. We waited.
It didn't hit bottom.
Seconds passed.
Then a dull, distant sound echoed up, soft and hollow.
"Deep," Tomas muttered.
"Hidden," Lyra added. "From above, from the sides. Even from most scans. You'd need to know exactly what you were looking for."
Edrin glanced at me. "Does it match what you expected?"
I hesitated, choosing my words carefully.
"It matches something that didn't want attention," I said. "Not protection. Concealment."
I knelt near the opening, resting a hand against the stone. It was cool under my palm. Solid. Ordinary.
And yet.
My Failure Converter stirred, not flashing, not warning. Just acknowledging. This place wasn't wrong. It was deliberate.
Someone had gone to great lengths to make sure this site blended into the land so completely that even monsters passed it by. Even Kar'thessa, for all her size and authority, had not surfaced here directly.
She had guarded the approach, not the entrance.
That mattered.
Edrin gave a short nod. "We'll set camp here. Light only what we must. No signals. No unnecessary noise."
Tomas began unpacking, movements careful. Lyra took position on the higher rocks, scanning the horizon even though nothing moved out there now.
I stayed by the opening, staring down into the darkness.
The hole descended at a shallow angle at first, then dropped sharply out of sight. The stone around it bore faint marks, not tools, not claws. Pressure marks. As if something heavy had once been lowered through here and never brought back up.
Whatever was sealed below hadn't been imprisoned in a grand structure.
It had been buried.
Hidden carefully enough that the world forgot it was there.
I leaned back on my heels and exhaled slowly.
We had arrived and for the first time since leaving Hearthroot, the road did not stretch forward anymore.
It went down.
~~~
We did not go down that night.
Captain Edrin made the decision quickly, and I did not argue it. No one did. The descent was narrow, the opening deceptive in its simplicity, and whatever lay below had waited long enough to forget urgency. Rushing into the dark would only reward it.
We made camp among the rocks, far enough from the opening that its shadow didn't stretch into our resting space. No fire. Minimal light. Tomas distributed food quietly, movements practiced and economical. Lyra took first watch without comment, already climbing to a higher vantage point where the broken stone gave her a clear line of sight.
I stayed near the edge of the formation, close enough to the descent that I could feel it without staring directly into it.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow was the only option.
Not because of caution. Because without seeing the place where the relics were taken from, everything I knew remained incomplete. The crate had given me fragments, pieces stripped of context and intention. Enough to suggest, never enough to confirm.
An Archivist without origin was just guessing.
And I did not guess.
The site below was the anchor. The fixed point. The only place where I could cross-check the distortions my Failure Converter had flagged. The only place where pattern could turn into certainty.
I did not say any of this out loud.
Edrin walked the perimeter, checking positions, making sure the carrier was secure and distant from the opening. When he passed near me, he slowed slightly.
"We go down in the morning," he said. "Together. No splitting."
I nodded. "That's fine."
He studied me for a moment longer than necessary, eyes searching for something I made sure not to give him. Curiosity. Anticipation. Fear.
"You're sure this is worth the risk," he said.
I kept my voice neutral. "It's the only way to finish the work I was asked to do."
That was true.
It just wasn't the whole truth.
Edrin accepted the answer as it was given. He had already shown me he knew how to respect boundaries when answers were not his to demand.
"Rest," he said, then moved on.
I exhaled slowly once he was gone.
They didn't know.
And they couldn't know.
Trust was not a switch you flipped because you survived a battle together. Trust was leverage, and leverage had consequences. If word spread that something divine was sealed beneath this place, kingdoms would mobilize. Orders would be issued. Retrieval missions would follow. The sealed being would become an asset, a weapon, a bargaining chip.
I would lose access before I ever understood the truth.
The only reason I knew at all was because something in me broke the rules.
Failure Converter didn't just react to danger. It reacted to impossibility. To situations that shouldn't exist under normal causality. The sealed presence below was one of those impossibilities, buried so carefully that only failure itself noticed the seams.
Negative luck didn't just pull disaster toward me.
It stripped camouflage off things that wanted to stay hidden.
That was not knowledge I could afford to share.
I sat with my back against cool stone and closed my eyes, letting the sounds of camp settle into something steady. Tomas's breathing. The faint scrape of Lyra shifting position above. The wind threading through the rocks, never quite reaching the descent.
Tomorrow, I would go down.
Not as a messenger.
Not as a soldier.
Not as someone acting on behalf of anyone else.
I would go down as an Archivist.
And whatever waited beneath the stone, sealed and forgotten, would not stay that way much longer.