Arc II: Veins of Mourndusk
The descent began before dawn.
Mourndusk's gates did not creak when they opened — they hissed, as if the mountain itself disliked parting with its flesh. A dozen Kin, chosen by the council, waited by the ridge where the path into the Hollowed Tunnels began. Most were silent. A few whispered prayers. One wept, and no one stopped them.
Vrakon stood at the edge of the ledge, eyes narrowed at the sheer drop ahead. His soul-mark — that faint spiral beneath his collarbone — pulsed gently, almost inaudibly, like a warning heartbeat. Around him, Saelin adjusted her shoulder-pads in silence. Thren scanned his blade. Riven, already present, leaned against a fractured bone column, arms folded.
"Still time to run," Riven offered, voice low.
"No one's running," Saelin muttered.
From behind, Asha Voarn approached. Her silver-gray coat fluttered slightly in the morning's wind. She carried a lantern that didn't burn with firelight but with a slow, oscillating Pulse-glow — greenish and faintly blue. It looked like it breathed.
"These are Tier-3 Soul-Lanterns," she said, handing one to each of the five lead scouts — Vrakon included. "If they flicker red, do not proceed. If they die outright, turn back. If they scream—"
"Scream?" Thren blinked. "These things scream?"
"They scream," Asha confirmed.
With that, she stepped back, and a massive wheel-lock stone clicked open at the tunnel gate.
Darkness breathed out from the opening like a rotted exhale.
They entered.
---
The first layer was familiar — broken mining shafts, collapsed catwalks, and ancient scaffolding left over from the old Kin city that once tunneled too deep. It smelled of dust and dry mold, but not corruption. Not yet.
Yarri's mural still burned in Vrakon's mind.
A spiral. Teeth. A flower blooming black.
He said nothing, walking ahead with measured steps. His Spiral Instinct tingled, but didn't ignite — the way it sometimes did when Bonebeasts prowled. This time, it was quieter. As if whatever waited ahead didn't move, but watched.
Saelin stayed at his right flank. "You feel that too?"
"Yeah."
"Like something breathing through the rock."
Riven, slightly ahead, tapped one of the tunnel walls. "This place hums. Not like Pulse hum. More like…" He didn't finish.
Thren joined the rear of the group, keeping a tight hand on the scabbard across his back. "I fought a Pulse-Warped lizard once down here, two years ago. It melted when it died. This place doesn't obey clean death."
They reached the second layer two hours later — marked by a fractured obelisk half-sunken into the wall. Runes along it were cracked and reversed, reading like mirrored text. A scout named Lorna touched it with her bare fingers.
She screamed.
Not from pain — but from visions. Her eyes rolled back, her knees buckled, and the Pulse-Lanterns shuddered blue to violet.
"Pull her back!" Asha's voice echoed from above — she hadn't descended, but her voice still carried through thin soulwire.
Lorna was pulled away. Her breathing steadied, but she wouldn't speak again for the rest of the descent.
The group pressed on.
---
By the third layer, they found what had cracked the Dream-Mirrors.
The device — once a smooth disk of mirrored soulglass — lay shattered in pieces across the stone, as if struck by something from within. Its reflective surface had turned to obsidian.
And something had drawn around it — not with chalk, not with paint, but with some kind of ichor. A spiral. The exact shape Yarri had drawn. But here, it wasn't symbolic.
It was inviting.
"Nothing natural did this," Thren whispered.
"Something dreamed back at the mirror," Riven said grimly. "Mirrored us."
That was when Vrakon heard the first whisper.
Not a sound — a concept.
Open.
He froze.
The whisper wasn't heard by ears. It pressed directly into his core — into the Genesis Pulse within him. His mark warmed. The Spiral Instinct flared in his spine, like something deep and old had turned to look back.
Saelin reached for him. "Vrakon—?"
But then, before he could answer, the floor of the tunnel cracked.
And something bloomed.
---
The fracture tore open in a flower shape — five petals of earth folding away as if uprooted by an inverted blossom. Beneath it, a shaft of green-black light pulsed, like a vein freshly opened.
From within the fissure, a form rose.
Not a creature. Not exactly.
It was a mask — a massive, root-wrapped thing shaped like a human face, carved in bone and Pulse-stone. It had no eyes, but its teeth — dozens of them, broken and ancient — smiled wide and wide and wider still.
The Soul-Lanterns all screamed.
Not from their glass. From inside.
From someone's voice.
Lorna collapsed. Two scouts turned and fled. One was dragged back by their own shadow, screaming.
Vrakon didn't run.
He remembered.
Not a memory he had lived — a memory deeper.
Of another life, watching this exact mask descend from the heavens in a Pulse Storm and shatter a city made of fireglass.
Of the mask weeping before it devoured.
Of a word spoken in a dead tongue.
Urvoth.
It echoed now in his soul.
The Pulse around the group thickened. Saelin couldn't breathe. Thren was bleeding from his nose, gripping his head. Riven fell to one knee, face pale, teeth clenched.
But Vrakon stood.
His Spiral Instinct didn't just activate.
It bloomed.
---
A spiraling vortex of light snapped around him, not visible — but felt. A counter-resonance to the corruption, anchored in something older than Vrakon's own body.
He took one step forward.
The mask shuddered.
And cracked.
Just a single fracture.
But it noticed.
The mask retreated, folding back into the earth — not in fear, but in caution. As if it had found something unexpected.
The Pulse quieted.
Silence returned.
Riven staggered upright. "What… what was that?"
Saelin's hand trembled on her blade hilt. "You — you did something. The way it looked at you—"
"I don't know," Vrakon whispered. "But it knows me."
Behind them, Yarri's voice echoed from a comm-bead — she'd spoken from the upper camp:
"Don't let the spiral open all the way. If it opens, it won't close again."
Asha's voice followed, more urgent.
"Fall back. Now."
---
The group retreated.
They didn't speak on the ascent.
Not until the surface broke over their heads, and light — thin and gray as it was — met their faces again.
Only then did they breathe.
But the mark on Vrakon's chest still pulsed, slow and steady.
And deep beneath them…
The spiral waited.