The descent was not part of the mission. Not officially.
Cass had found the half-collapsed stairwell hidden beneath a merchant's stall, sealed behind rusted iron and a lattice of dead sigils. But the moment they'd pried it open, the air shifted—dry and heavy with something ancient.
> "We report this, right?" Velira asked, holding her lantern high.
> "After we look," Silas said, already heading down.
He didn't wait for agreement. Neither did Cass.
The steps creaked and curved. Walls bore fragments of murals—shapes half-erased by time. The deeper they went, the warmer the air became. Like they were sinking into the belly of something that once lived.
At the base was a chamber. Massive, circular, and faintly glowing.
Its floor was a ring of chalky sigils, now inert, but still humming faintly under their boots. Around the edges, metal shelving had collapsed into piles. Amid the debris: jars of glowing sand, broken wands, carved effigy cores, and dozens of sealed containers filled with powdered Path materials.
> "This wasn't a storehouse," Cass muttered. "It was a preparation site. Maybe for rituals."
Velira moved carefully, collecting anything labeled or intact, storing them in marked cathedral satchels.
> "We send this up," she said, "categorize it properly. We're not equipped to handle unknown materials."
> "Agreed," Cass added. "No touching anything unsealed."
Silas was quiet.
His gaze had already locked onto one thing: a container tucked under a rusted table, dusty and overlooked. The label had flaked off, but he could smell it. That iron-rich scent like copper coins and old rot.
He knelt and pulled it gently into his lap. Cracked the seal.
Inside: Blood Path marrowdust, preserved in red crystal flakes.
Just enough for one experiment. One spell. One choice.
His fingers itched.
> I shouldn't...
He pocketed it anyway, slipping it beneath his cloak while the others catalogued more openly.
---
By the time they climbed back to the surface, each of them carried one or two authorized containers. The rest were flagged for extraction by a full team later. But they had done what the church asked: secured ancient magic, recovered resources, and mapped part of the underground.
Cass logged the location and encoded it into his cathedral cipher.
Velira made sure the rarer items were marked under her name for contribution point credit.
Silas didn't ask for credit.
His thoughts were elsewhere—on the red dust still warming against his ribs.
---
That night, back at their camp, no one questioned the silence.
Velira curled up near the fire, quietly sorting her notes.
Cass cleaned his twin blades and tested a few sparring stances against his effigy, still light-sheathed and vigilant.
And Silas sat with his back to the ruins, fingering the edge of the container he hadn't declared. The blood-tinged powder was still inside. He could feel it throb faintly, like it remembered a pulse.
He whispered, not to anyone but himself:
"Just one step. One more layer. That's all."
His effigy, a few feet away, shuddered faintly in the shadows.