This time, the journey through the gate wasn’t a smooth transition; it could only be described as a drop.

  One moment, Elias was standing on the stone of the Crucible Gate; the next, gravity inverted, his stomach hit his throat, and the world slammed back into existence with a concussive thud.

  He hit the ground hard, his shoulder protesting as he rolled across polished stone. The air that rushed into his lungs was frigid, dead, and stale, tasting of electrical storms and crushed quartz.

  "Light," Elias hissed, fumbling for his bandolier.

  He uncorked the jar of Lumen-Paste he’d mixed and smeared a thick line of the glowing sludge across his left pauldron and another down the flat of his scabbard.

  Green-white radiance bloomed, harsh and chemical.

  It revealed a tunnel that appeared to have been chewed through the earth.

  There was nothing natural about the walls that presented themselves; they were hewn with brutal, industrial precision, dwarven geometry that disregarded the rock's natural grain. Huge iron support beams, rusted to the colour of dried blood, arched overhead like the splayed ribs of a leviathan.

  But it was what lay beyond the iron that made Elias stop.

  Beneath the dwarven construction, the walls were covered in something else: murals.

  Delicate, iridescent frescoes, painted in gold and azure, depicted tall, slender beings of light, singing to crystals that grew like flowers. The art was breath-taking.

  And it had been defaced.

  Chisel marks scarred the faces of the figures. Iron bolts had been driven directly through the painted eyes to anchor the support beams. The dwarven architecture wasn't just built here; it was an act of intentional desecration, a cage forcibly erected over a cathedral.

  "The Glistening Gate," Thorne whispered. Her staff was raised, the tip glowing to supplement his Lumen-Paste. Her voice echoed unnaturally loud in the cold silence. "The histories called it a mine. This... this looks like a tomb they forgot to seal."

  "It's both," Elias said, running a gloved hand over a bolt that had shattered a painted sunburst. "It feels like a necropolis."

  Cindersnarl whined. The Warg was pacing at the edge of the light, ears pinned back. The darkness seemed to irritate him—not fear, but a sensory itch he couldn't scratch. The fire in his fur cast long, nervous shadows.

  Fennroot, perched on Elias’s shoulder, was trembling. The sprout’s roots were dug deep into the padding of Elias's armour.

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  "What do you hear?" Elias asked the little plant.

  Fennroot didn't chirp. He pointed a root-finger down the tunnel, shivering against Elias's neck.

  Screaming.

  "Great," Elias muttered. "Just what we need in a mine."

  They moved forward. The path sloped downwards at a steep angle. Rails for mine carts ran down the centre, twisted and broken like metal spines.

  Every few metres, they passed a recess in the wall. A cluster of crystals jutted from the rock. They weren't quartz. They were Soul Gems, pulsing with a faint, erratic light—pale violet, soft blue.

  Elias approached one. It was fractured, a pickaxe scar running down its centre.

  He reached out.

  A wave of vertigo hit him. Not dizziness—emotion. A sudden, crushing sense of grief that wasn't his. He gasped, pulling his hand back.

  "Don't touch them," Elias warned, rubbing his chest. "They're active. Radioactive with memory."

  "They mined them," Thorne said, her voice disgusted. "They didn't just kill them. They harvested them."

  Clank.

  A sound from the dark. Heavy, metallic, rhythmic.

  Clank. Hiss. Clank.

  Elias froze. "Contact front."

  He drew Dawnfall. The sword didn't hum with anger this time; it shuddered with a low, mournful note, vibrating in sympathy with the crystals in the walls.

  From the gloom ahead, a shape emerged.

  It was shaped like a dwarf, but monstrously exaggerated: a suit of heavy, rivet-studded mining armour, bulky and broad. One arm ended in a massive pneumatic drill, the other in a gripping claw.

  But there was no dwarf inside.

  Through the grate of the helmet, Elias saw only a swirling, tormented light. A fractured Soul Gem, jammed into the suit’s power core, was pulsing violently.

  "It's a suit," Elias realised, "running on a ghost."

  The Hollowhand saw them, or sensed them. The drill-arm spun up with a shriek of gears.

  SCREEEEE.

  "It's rushing us!" Thorne yelled.

  The construct charged. It didn't run; it gathered momentum like a runaway train.

  "Scatter!"

  Elias dived left. Thorne went right. Cindersnarl scrambled up the wall, claws sparking on the stone.

  The Hollowhand slammed into the support beam where Elias had been standing. CRUNCH. The iron buckled, and dust rained down.

  It turned, the drill whirling, and focused on Elias.

  "Standard triage," Elias muttered, heart hammering. "Immobilise. Deconstruct."

  "Thorne! Flare it!"

  Thorne didn't hesitate. She slammed the butt of her staff against the ground.

  Flash.

  A burst of magnesium-bright fire exploded from her position.

  The Hollowhand shrieked—not a mechanical sound, but a psychic one. The light inside the helmet flared and scrambled. The suit locked up, joints seizing as the soul powering it recoiled from the brightness.

  "Cindersnarl, leg!"

  The Warg dropped from the ceiling, slamming into the construct’s knee joint. Heat flared—orange against grey steel. The metal groaned and bent, and the Hollowhand toppled.

  Elias moved in.

  He didn't swing for the armour plating, but aimed for the joints, for the neck seal.

  He drove the sword into the gap beneath the helmet.

  The blade bit deep. The green-gold filigree on the blade flared, reacting to the soul energy inside the suit.

  This wasn't rot, but it was a violation. The blade understood that. It severed the connection between the soul and the machine.

  The light inside the helmet flickered and died, and the suit went limp, becoming just a pile of scrap metal.

  A wisp of pale blue light drifted out of the broken seal. It lingered for a second—a vague shape of a tall, slender figure—before fading into the ceiling.

  Elias wrenched his sword free, breathing hard, the stale air burning his throat.

  "They used them as batteries," he said, staring in horror at the empty suit. "They put people in engines."

  "And they're still down here," Thorne said, walking over. She kicked the drill arm. "Waiting to be let out."

  Elias looked down the tunnel. The darkness stretched on, punctuated by the flickering lights of the tormented crystals. He could hear more clanking in the distance—dozens of them.

  "Then we have a lot of work to do," Elias said.

  He checked his gear. The Lumen-Paste was holding, and the Ashsworn armour felt solid.

  "Hollowdeep," he murmured. "Let's turn the lights on."