The next day, they crossed through the threshold of the second floor portal for the first time in silence, having never arrived this way before. The light bloomed outward, revealing a space far larger than the first floor entrance. The cavern ceiling soared high above them, lost in shadow and a faint blue glow, its surface tangled with long, curtain-like vines that descended in slow arcs. Each vine emitted a soft, steady luminescence, blue tinged with silver, like moonlight trapped in living veins. They swayed almost imperceptibly, though there was no wind.

  "It’s... beautiful," Brett whispered, the tip of his staff glowing faintly in response to the ambient magic.

  "Smell it," Perberos murmured, his nose twitching.

  The air smelled different here compared to the first floor. There was a faint metallic tang to it, like rain on stone or blood on steel, mixed with something unfamiliar and faintly sweet. It filled Josh’s lungs and left a cold clarity behind his eyes.

  The floor beneath their feet was uneven, sloping gently away from the portal like the bed of a long-dried river. Furrows ran through the stone, some narrow enough to catch a boot heel, others wide and deep, disappearing into shadowed channels that hinted at hidden depths. The stone itself felt dense and cold underfoot, almost too smooth in places, as if polished by something that flowed rather than walked.

  Scattered throughout the cavern, stone pillars rose from the ground like petrified trees. They twisted as they climbed, cracked and spiralled with patterns that looked grown rather than carved. Some leaned at odd angles, others stood straight and proud, their surfaces etched with faint lines that caught the blue light and reflected it back in fractured patterns.

  "Watch the mushrooms," Carcan warned softly, pointing with her staff.

  Clusters of mushrooms dotted the area deeper into the cavern between the pillars. They were tall and thin, their stalks pale and fibrous, caps a deep violet scattered with pearly spots. Those spots pulsed softly, brightening and dimming in a slow rhythm that made Josh think of breathing lungs or a resting heartbeat. When Brett’s light passed over them, the colours shifted subtly, violet bleeding into indigo and back again.

  "It feels alive," Josh said, gripping his shield tighter. The tension here wasn't the frantic, skittering energy of the upper warrens. It was heavier. Slower.

  "The shadows," Bhel grumbled, shifting his axes uneasily. "Look at them. They aren't right."

  Shadows clung to everything here, but they did not behave properly. They stretched too far, bending away from the light instead of shrinking beneath it. Some seemed to lag behind their owners, as though reluctant to move, while others reached out across the stone in thin, grasping lines.

  "Eyes forward," Perberos said, his voice dropping to a combat rasp. "Movement. Two o'clock. By the leaning pillar."

  They didn't scramble. They didn't shout. They simply shifted, forming a defensive line as the threat revealed itself.

  It wasn't a swarm. There were no screeching runts or frantic skirmishers.

  Three figures stepped out from behind the twisted stone.

  They were kobolds, but they were monstrously thick compared to the ones above. They wore heavy, overlapping plates of iron armour that looked scavenged and beaten into shape, covering them from neck to tail. In their hands, they carried tall, rectangular tower shields and heavy, flanged maces.

  "Bulwarks," Brett identified, his voice tight. "High defence. Heavy impact."

  The kobolds didn't charge. They locked their shields together with a deafening clang, forming a solid wall of iron, and began to march forward. Thud. Thud. Thud.

  "Bhel, flank right," Josh ordered, his voice steady but tightening with anticipation. "I'll take the centre. Brett, soften them up!"

  "On it," Bhel growled, peeling away into the shadows.

  The shield wall accelerated, a wall of wood and iron rushing to crush them. But Josh didn't plant his feet this time. He roared, lowering his shoulder and sprinting headlong into the teeth of their formation.

  Just strides before the collision, Brett screamed a word of power. A Flamechain erupted from his staff, a jagged lash of fire that struck the centre Kobold and instantly ricocheted to the next, and the next. The front line faltered, shields lowering as the creatures screeched, batting at the magical fire leaping between them.

  That split-second of chaos was all Josh needed.

  CRUNCH.

  He didn't hit a wall; he hit a panic. Josh slammed into the centre Bulwark with the force of a runaway carriage. The distracted kobolds crumpled under his momentum. With a savage twist of his body, he ripped through their broken line, sending two Bulwarks sprawling and shattering their formation from the inside out.

  The momentum of the charge carried Josh past the shattered line. Only one Bulwark had managed to keep its footing, spinning instantly to lash out. The Kobold swung its mace in a vicious arc aimed at Josh’s head. Josh twisted, catching the blow on the reinforced rim of his shield. The vibration rattled his teeth, but he didn't buckle.

  "Behind you!" Carcan screamed.

  The two Bulwarks Josh had trampled were already scrambling up. They weren't stunned; they were furious. They lunged at Josh’s exposed back, their heavy armor clattering as they tried to close the net around him.

  "Hold them!" Carcan shouted again. A beam of golden light struck Josh, reinforcing his armour with a magic shield, aiding his guard against three sides.

  But the Kobolds' focus on Josh was their undoing. They had turned their shields inward, exposing their flanks to the rest of the room.

  Perberos didn't need to be told. An arrow hissed through the air, burying itself deep in the soft tissue of the right-hand Kobold’s neck before it could even raise its weapon. It jerked, choking, its shield dropping low.

  That was the opening Bhel had been waiting for.

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  "Timber!" the dwarf roared, leaping from the shadows of a rock outcrop. He didn't aim for flesh; he aimed for the faltering guard. His axe came down with an overhead smash that sparked violently against the iron rim of the dying Kobold's shield, driving the creature face-first into the stone.

  "Now!" Josh surged forward. With the pressure relieved on his right, he stopped defending and slammed the edge of his shield into the center Kobold’s faceplate. As the creature staggered, Josh drove his sword into the gap under its arm.

  Even broken and flanked, they refused to die easily. It became a slow, grinding execution. Every kill took maximum effort; every blow had to be precise. When the last Bulwark finally stopped twitching, the room fell silent save for heavy breathing. Bhel was panting, and Josh’s shield arm was numb to the elbow.

  "Tough bastards," Bhel wheezed, kicking a dented tower shield. "Like hitting a rock with another rock."

  "We can't speed-run this can we?" Josh said, grimacing as he rolled his screaming shoulder. "Every fight is going to be a brawl."

  They pushed deeper into the cavern. The path wound through a forest of the petrified pillars, the terrain forcing them into choke points.

  They encountered another patrol ten minutes later. This time, it was a pair of Bulwarks guarding a spellcaster, a Kobold Geomancer standing atop a raised dais of natural stone.

  "Josh, keep the heavies off me!" Brett shouted as the Geomancer began to chant, pulling jagged spikes of rock from the floor.

  "Go!" Josh didn't hesitate. He sprinted straight at the two Bulwarks.

  They saw him coming and braced, shields locking.

  Josh didn't stop. He threw his entire body weight into the collision, Shield Bash flaring white-hot. He hit them with enough force to stop his own heart, the impact booming through the cavern. He didn't break their line this time, but he staggered them, drawing their attention instantly.

  Both maces came down. Josh caught one on his shield and parried the other with his sword, the steel singing. He was outnumbered, two-to-one against heavy infantry, and he had nowhere to run.

  "Get the mage!" Josh yelled, ducking under a vicious backhand swing that would have taken his head off. He slammed his pommel into a kobold’s snout, buying himself a second of breathing room.

  Behind him, the rest of the party worked. Perberos suppressed the Geomancer with rapid fire, forcing it to cower behind a stone pillar, while Brett wove a stream of fire around Bhel’s weapons as he charged forward.

  Josh took a hit. A mace glanced off his pauldron, bruising the bone beneath. He grunted but didn't give ground. He hooked his foot behind the kobold’s ankle and shoved, toppling the heavy creature onto its back.

  "Stay down!" He drove his shield edge down onto its chest, pinning it, while simultaneously blocking a strike from the second enemy.

  It was brutal, close-quarters butchery. Bhel cornered the Geomancer, driving the mage against the wall before sinking his axes deep into its chest. He wrenched the blades free, splitting the monster open from shoulder to hip. Stepping over the steaming remains, Bhel turned his bloodied weapons back toward the Bulwarks, jumping down into the melee. Sweat stung Josh’s eyes and his muscles screamed, every jarring impact against his shield threatening to buckle his knees as he fought to stay standing.

  Without their mage’s support, the Bulwarks were nothing more than targets. Brett and Perberos shredded them from the wings while Bhel dismantled them from the rear. It wasn't a fight anymore, it was a slaughter. A succession of panicked bellows cut short as the monsters took a barrage of fatal strikes, their heavy bodies crumpling to the ground until only the silence of the chamber remained.

  Bhel started gathering the spoils from the dissipating corpses, casting a sidelong glance at his friend. "You okay, Josh?"

  "Fine," Josh replied, though the word felt hollow. He took a long, steadying breath, trying to hide the way his chest heaved. "Just a lot of weight to hold back."

  As he wiped a smear of dark blood onto his trousers, he stared at his trembling palms. He’d tanked monsters before, but these Bulwarks had nearly broken him somehow. The silence of the room felt heavy, and in that quiet, the old uncertainty crawled back into his mind, questioning if he truly belonged at the front of the line.

  —

  Their path eventually ended.

  Or rather, it was blocked.

  A massive slab of obsidian stood across the passage, smooth and seamless. There were no handles, no hinges, and no keyholes. The only feature was a series of deep, angular recesses carved into the face of the stone, shapes that looked like jagged runes or perhaps constellations.

  "A door," Carcan stated, examining the surface. "Magically sealed."

  "I can try to smash it?" Bhel suggested, hefting his axe.

  "It is obsidian, Bhel. You will shatter your weapon," Perberos noted, touching the cold stone. "Look at the floor."

  In front of the door, the floor was perfectly flat and polished to a mirror shine. In the centre of this polished area was a single, waist-high pedestal with a divot on top.

  "It’s a light puzzle," Brett said, stepping forward. "Look at the recesses on the door. They aren't carvings. They're silhouettes."

  "Shadows," Josh realized. He looked around at the strange, stretching shadows that clung to their feet. "We have to cast the right shadows into the recesses."

  "But the light source needs to be specific," Brett said. He summoned a ball of light into his hand and placed it into the divot on the pedestal.

  The light flared.

  Immediately, their shadows sprang out against the door. But true to the floor’s nature, they were wrong. They were elongated, twisting and lagging behind their movements by a full second.

  "Okay," Brett muttered, staring at the door. "Three recesses. One looks like a spear, one like a... crouched beast, and one like a circle."

  "I can do the spear," Perberos said. He stood in front of the light, raising his bow. His shadow stretched out, thin and warped. It didn't fit.

  "The lag," Josh noted. "The shadow moves after you do. You have to move past the shape and then freeze."

  It took them twenty minutes of trial and error.

  "Left! Move left!" Brett directed, standing back to view the alignment.

  Bhel was crouching, trying to make his shadow look like a rock (or a beast), grumbling the whole time. "I look ridiculous. I am a warrior, not a shadow-puppet master."

  "Hold it!" Brett shouted. "Josh, shield up! Higher!"

  Josh raised his shield, trying to match the circular recess. He had to stand on one leg and lean dangerously far to the right to account for the distortion.

  "Perberos, bow vertical!"

  The ranger snapped into position.

  For a moment, nothing happened. The shadows wavered, detached from reality. Then, slowly, they drifted into the carved grooves.

  The darkness of the shadows seemed to pour into the stone, filling the recesses like ink.

  CLICK.

  A deep, resonant thrum vibrated through the floor. The obsidian slab didn't slide open; it dissolved, fading away into mist like the shadows themselves.

  "That," Bhel said, straightening up and cracking his back, "was more annoying than the fight."

  "But it’s an effective test of teamwork," Carcan noted. "It filters out the mindless. Only those with coordination can pass."

  Beyond the door, the cavern narrowed into a natural arena.

  And it was occupied.

  A single kobold stood in the centre. But it was unlike any they had seen. It stood nearly seven feet tall, its scales a dark, burnished red. It held a greatsword in one hand, a human-sized weapon that looked pitted with age. As it moved towards them it dragged the tip of the weapon along the stone, a scraping noise rebounding around the caver.

  "Dragon-Blood," Carcan whispered, her face pale. "An elite duelist."

  The creature saw them. It didn't roar. It didn't summon guards. It simply lifted the greatsword, pointing the tip directly at Josh.

  Ugh.