The descent from the Moon Tower was not a walk, but a controlled fall. The spiral ledge, slick with the residual slime of the vanished horror, wound down into a thickening, heated gloom. The red glow from below resolved into a source, not of light, but of illumination cast by immense, subcutaneous veins of luminescent fungus that pulsed within the walls themselves. The air grew dense, hot, and wet, a physical presence that coated the lungs with every breath. The sweet, rotten smell was gone, replaced by a new olfactory horror, the stench of a vast, communal digestive tract, of bile and fermenting waste.
This was the Gutter. The intestines of the dungeon.
The ledge terminated at last, merging with a floor of soft, spongy matter that gave sickeningly under Cahara's weight. It was not stone. It was a compacted strata of decay, of bones rendered porous and soft, of leathery membranes, of substances he dared not identify. The ceiling was low, a tapestry of hanging, root like growths that dripped a warm, saline fluid. The sound here was a constant, low gurgle, the sound of a stomach working on a meal that never ended.
His burned leg throbbed with each step, a sharp reminder of the tower's cost. The salve had sealed the wound but could not erase the damage. He was diminished. The torch, his third, felt impossibly heavy. The letter from Nosramus was a cold square of parchment against his chest, a whisper that he was not just descending, but being delivered.
The Gutter was not a tunnel. It was an artery. It branched, not in geometric arches, but in organic, weeping splits. He followed the strongest pull of air, the deepest gurgle, knowing it led to the heart of the process, to the Gauntlet. The walls here were alive in a different way than the Tower's stone. They respired. They contracted in slow, peristaltic waves that made the footing treacherous.
He found the first marker of the others not by sight, but by smell. A scent of iron and clean sweat cutting through the biological miasma. Around a soft corner, the gutter widened into a small, blister like chamber. There, scored into a fleshy wall with the point of a knife, was a symbol. A crude, angry rune he did not know, but below it, words in a harsh, Northern script:
*"The Beast passed here. The trail is fresh. Its stink is in the stone."*
Ragnvaldr. The Outlander. He was close, moving with a predator's focus, a single minded hate cutting through the dungeon's chaos. Cahara stared at the gouged message. It felt alien, a declaration of purpose in a place that sought to unravel all purpose. For a moment, he felt a pathetic surge of camaraderie. He was not the only fool in the belly of the beast.
He pressed on. The gurgling grew louder, resolving into distinct sounds, the clash of metal, a bestial roar, the wet tear of flesh. A fight. Ahead.
Cahara extinguished his torch. The sudden darkness was absolute, but the pulsing, venous light from the walls provided a hellish, low definition vista. He crept forward, the soft floor swallowing his steps. The gutter opened into a larger space, a junction where several pulsing arteries met.
In the center of the junction, beneath a dripping canopy of viscid roots, was a circle of harder, packed earth. And in that circle, a figure fought.
Ragnvaldr was a storm of furs and rage. He wielded a notched hand and a half sword as if it were a hatchet, his movements economical, brutal, devoid of flourish. His opponent was a thing of the Gutter, a humanoid shape molded from the compacted filth and wired together with tough, cord like tendons. It had no face, only a smooth, eyeless mound where its head should be, and its arms ended in hardened, spade like clubs of bone. It was a sentinel of decay.
Ragnvaldr did not try to outmaneuver it. He met its sweeping blows with his own, each parry ringing with a shock that Cahara felt in his teeth. The Outlander was stronger, but the thing was relentless, drawing strength from the very walls. A club arm caught Ragnvaldr on the shoulder, spinning him. He grunted, a sound of pure fury, and surged back, his sword biting deep into the thing's torso. Black, tar like fluid spurted. It did not slow.
Cahara watched, hidden in the shadow of an arterial split. This was not his fight. The mercenary code was clear, interfere only for profit or survival. But the letter's words echoed, *different meats can clog the teeth*. And Ragnvaldr was a potential ally. A weapon.
As he hesitated, the calculus changed. From a crevice high on the wall, a second form detached. It was smaller, faster, a skittering thing of chitin and needle teeth, drawn by the violence. It scuttled down, aiming not for Ragnvaldr, but for his blind spot as he wrestled with the greater foe.
Profit. Survival. The equation tipped.
Cahara moved. He did not relight the torch. He drew his sword and closed the distance in a silent, pained sprint. The skittering thing leapt, a glint of needle teeth in the venous light. Cahara's blade met it in mid air, shearing through its carapace with a wet crack. It fell, twitching, at Ragnvaldr's feet.
The Outlander did not startle. He reacted. With a final, mighty heave, he threw the clubbed creature off balance. As it stumbled, he reversed his grip and drove his sword point first down through the smooth dome of its head. The thing shuddered and collapsed into a pile of inert muck.
Silence, save for the gurgling walls and Ragnvaldr's ragged breaths.
He turned, his eyes finding Cahara in the gloom. They were the colour of winter sky, and held no gratitude, only a sharp, instant assessment. He saw the mercenary's gear, the fresh burn, the exhaustion. He saw a tool, or a threat.
"You," Ragnvaldr said, his voice a gravel crunch. He pulled his sword from the muck with a sucking sound. "You are in my way."
"I just saved your back," Cahara replied, keeping his own blade low, non threatening.
"I did not need saving." The Outlander wiped his sword on his furs. "The small ones are irritants. The large ones are practice. You have cost me focus." He looked past Cahara, back down the gutter from which he'd come. "The Beast is ahead. Its stink is stronger. You will not delay me."
"The Beast," Cahara said, remembering the stories. "The Crow Mauler."
A flicker in the winter eyes, a banked fire of hatred so profound it was a physical heat. "You know the name."
"I know it is why you are here."
"Then you know it is all that is here. Step aside, mercenary. Your gold is not down this path. Only blood. My blood, or its."
Ragnvaldr moved to push past. Cahara stood his ground, the pain in his leg a bright, grounding spark. "Nosramus sent me a letter."
The Outlander stopped. That name meant something, even to him.
"It said our paths would cross. That we are all food. But that together, we might choke the god that eats us."
Ragnvaldr's laugh was short, bitter. "A pretty thought. I do not fight to choke a god. I fight to kill a beast. One thing. One death. Your philosopher's war is not mine." He looked Cahara up and down again, his gaze lingering on the merchant's scale. "You trade. I hunt. We are not the same."
He shouldered past, a wall of fur and muscle, and stalked down the leading artery, following the invisible trail of his hatred.
Cahara was alone again, amidst the cooling muck of the slain creatures. The choice was stark. Follow the single minded hunter towards the Crow Mauler, towards a battle that was not his own. Or find another path, perhaps the one D'arce or Enki walked, towards different horrors.
He looked at the skittering thing he had killed. Its broken body was already softening, being absorbed by the moist floor. The Gutter was cleaning its plate.
He had saved a man who did not want to be saved. He had gained nothing. He had lost time, and quiet, and confirmed his own expendability.
A glint caught his eye, half submerged in the muck where the larger creature had fallen. Not gold. Metal. He knelt, wincing, and pulled it free. It was a locket, silver, twisted and scarred but still on its chain. He pried it open with a dirty thumbnail.
Inside was a tiny, painted portrait, faded and stained. A woman with kind eyes and dark hair. On the opposite side, a lock of fine, blonde hair, carefully tied.
It was not his treasure. It was a ghost of someone else's life, digested and expelled by the dungeon. A keepsake from a previous meal.
He closed the locket and hung it around his own neck. It was cold against his skin. A reminder. Not of what he sought, but of what this place consumed.
With a final glance down the artery where Ragnvaldr had vanished, Cahara turned and chose a different, pulsing path. The path he hoped might lead away from beasts, and towards the cursed gold that was, now more than ever, the only ghost of a future he had left.
The path Cahara chose did not lead to gold. It led to silence.
The pulsing, gurgling life of the Gutter faded behind him, replaced by a stillness so profound it felt like a physical pressure on his eardrums. The spongy floor firmed into damp, compacted clay. The walls shed their glistening membranes and became ancient, water scored brick, the kind found in the deepest foundations of forgotten cities. The air lost its fever heat, settling into a dank, bone deep chill. The only light came from his torch, its flame barely stirring in the dead air.
This was not an artery. It was a catacomb. A place of interment.
His leg burned with a persistent, gnawing ache. Each step was a negotiation. The locket around his neck felt heavier than it should, a cold pendant against his sternum. He tried to focus on the fantasy of gold, of Ma habre, of a sunlit room, but the images were smoke. The Yellow King s truth had poisoned his capacity for delusion. You are already food. The memory of Ragnvaldr s dismissive winter eyes. Your philosopher s war is not mine.
He was not a philosopher. He was a merchant. And a merchant needed a product to sell. What did he have left? His sword arm. His dwindling torch. A body that was accruing damage like a ledger of bad debts.
The brick corridor ended at a heavy oak door, banded in black iron. It was ajar. From within, a different quality of darkness spilled out, a blackness that seemed to swallow even the idea of light. And with it, a smell. Not decay. Not fungus. The smell of old paper, of dry ink, of leather bindings, and beneath it, a faint, sweet scent like incense burned over something unspeakable.
A library.
Enki s domain. The mage starving for blasphemous truth.
Cahara stood at the threshold. This was not his path. His business was with tangible things. Yet, the door was open. An invitation, or a warning. His torch was halfway gone. In a library, there might be other light sources. Maps. Knowledge that could be traded. The Mage communes with the Dark in the Library of Skin. Nosramus s words. Could Enki s knowledge be a currency more valuable than gold in this place?
He pushed the door open.
The Library of Skin was not a grand hall. It was a oppressive labyrinth of shelves that stretched up into impenetrable blackness. The shelves were not wood. They were made of long, slender bones, lashed together with sinew. The books upon them were bound in a uniform, pale, supple leather that bore no grain, only the faint, tragic topography of pores and hair follicles.
He understood the name.
A deep, resonant silence ruled here, broken only by the soft, almost imperceptible crackle of aging parchment. The air was static, charged with a latent energy that made the fine hairs on his arms stand erect. Far off, in the depths of the stacks, a faint, blue glow flickered, like corpse fire.
Cahara moved slowly, his torch held high. The titles on the spines were not printed, but branded into the leather in strange, angular scripts. He saw symbols that hurt his eyes, diagrams of impossible anatomy, treatises on the screams of particular stars. He did not touch a single volume.
He found the reader in a small, circular clearing among the stacks.
Enki sat cross legged on the bare stone floor, a book open on his knees. He was gaunt, his skin the colour of old milk, stretched tight over a hawkish skull. His head was shaved, and intricate black tattoos, like circuitry or sealing spells, crawled from his scalp down his neck and vanished beneath his dark robes. He was not reading by torchlight. The pages of his book glowed with their own sickly, internal radiance, casting his face in ghastly, shifting shadows.
He did not look up as Cahara approached.
Cahara stopped ten feet away. The silence stretched, becoming aggressive. He cleared his throat. The sound was a desecration.
"You are lost, mercenary." Enki s voice was dry, paper thin, devoid of any human warmth. It was the voice of a thing that had long ago traded its breath for whispers from the void.
"I am seeking a path," Cahara said.
"There are no paths here. Only symmetries and correspondences. You are a discordant note." Enki turned a page. The light from the book pulsed. "You smell of blood, and fear, and petty desire. It is vulgar."
Cahara s grip tightened on his sword. "Nosramus said our paths would cross."
At that, Enki looked up. His eyes were the colour of tarnished silver, and they held no pupils, only a sheen like liquid metal. They saw Cahara, but they seemed to see through him, to the equations of his suffering.
"Nosramus is a sentimentalist. He believes in the alchemy of souls, in the transmutation of base pain into something higher. He is a fool. Pain is an end in itself. The purest state of being."
"Then why seek truth?" Cahara challenged, gesturing at the library. "If pain is all there is."
"Truth is pain," Enki said, a faint, cruel smile touching his lips. "To know the universe is to know its infinite, exquisite capacity for agony. I do not seek to escape it. I seek to understand its grammar. To become a fluent speaker." His metallic eyes narrowed. "You, however, seek to bargain with it. You gave a silver coin to a madman. You parleyed with the Yellow King. You trade in the currency of a world that does not exist here. You are a child trying to buy bread with seashells."
The accuracy of the indictment was a blow. "What currency works, then?"
"Flesh," Enki said simply. "Sanity. Memory. The components of self. This is the only economy. You have already begun spending. I can see the empty spaces in you. The places where hope used to be."
Cahara felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air. "Can you see a way to the gold of Ma habre?"
Enki laughed, a sound like pages tearing. "Gold? You cling to that fairy tale like a drowning man to a splinter. There is no city of gold. There is only Ma habre, the City of the Gods. And its gold is Sulfur, the residue of ascension. It is not wealth. It is a state of being. To possess it is to be utterly, irrevocably changed. It would burn the simple merchant from your soul and leave a gaping, luminous wound. Is that what you want? To become a screaming monument to a failed transcendence?"
The words stripped the last of the fantasy bare. Cahara stood exposed, his foolish dream shriveling under the mage s pitiless gaze. He had nothing. No goal. No hope. Only the forward momentum of survival.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you amuse me. You are a perfect specimen of the dungeon s efficacy. A man of simple greed, being slowly unraveled into a complex tapestry of suffering. I am documenting the process. Consider this a moment of free consultation." Enki looked back at his book. "The path you want is not here. The Knight descends through the Blood Pits. Follow the scent of iron and devotion. Perhaps her simple, violent faith will be a comfort to you. Now leave. Your mortal stench is disrupting the resonance."
Dismissed. Like an insect.
Cahara turned, humiliation and despair warring in his chest. As he walked back toward the door, his torchlight fell upon a small, open volume on a low shelf. Unlike the others, its text was in a common script. A diary entry.
"Day of Silence. The prayers have ceased. The Blood Pits are quiet. The Master is pleased. He says her suffering is a particularly sweet note in the chorus. She still calls his name. Legarde. Even as the hooks take her weight. Faith is the last organ to die. It makes the meat stringy."
D arce. The knight. In the Blood Pits. Alive, but being prepared as an offering.
He stumbled out of the Library of Skin, back into the chill of the catacombs. The door swung shut behind him, muting the terrible, glowing silence within.
He leaned against the damp brick, his breath coming in short gasps. No gold. Only Sulfur and screaming monuments. A hunter consumed by a private vendetta. A mage who saw him as a laboratory sample. A knight being butchered for the sweetness of her faith.
And him. A merchant with nothing left to sell.
The locket felt like an anchor around his neck. He pulled it out, looked at the tiny portrait in the flickering light. The kind eyes of a woman whose world was dust. A lock of hair from a child who was likely ash.
This was the only treasure the dungeon offered. Relics of the consumed.
He had a choice. Press on toward the fictional gold, following the path of a fool s hope. Or turn toward the Blood Pits, toward the sound of hooks and a dying woman s faith.
He was not a hero. He was a victim. But perhaps, in the economy of suffering, there was a value in witnessing another s payment. Perhaps he could see what price the dungeon demanded for devotion, and in seeing, learn the cost of his own greed.
With a final, weary sigh, Cahara pushed himself from the wall. He sniffed the air, searching for the scent Enki had mentioned. Iron. And beneath it, the cloying, burnt sugar smell of sanctified blood.
He chose the scent. He chose the Blood Pits.
He moved forward, a coin spent, a ledger open, a ghost of gold finally dead in his heart. The only currency left was the next step, and the step after that, into the deepening dark where the only truths were written in flesh and delivered in pain.