Kaelen's immediate reaction was not belief, but a deeper, more dangerous form of anger. It was the fury of a commander whose battlefield had just been redrawn without his consent.
"The heart of the nest?" he echoed, his voice a low snarl. "You speak in riddles and portents. I deal in stone and steel. The enemy is outside. The walls are our defense."
"The walls are our tomb," Lilith countered, her voice unwavering. She did not flinch from his intimidating presence. The discovery had given her a strange, cold clarity. "Your stone and steel cannot fight a sickness that seeps up from the ground. Can't you feel it?"
She took a step closer to him, her gaze intense. "Forget your soldier's senses for a moment, Commander. Forget what you see and hear. Just... feel. The air here is dead. It has no life, no warmth. It is being devoured from below."
For a long moment, Kaelen simply stared at her, his jaw tight. He was a man who trusted only his own strength and the evidence of his eyes. To trust this strange woman's ethereal senses went against every instinct he had honed in a lifetime of war. But he was also pragmatic. His current strategy—waiting to be overrun—was a slow death. Her theory, however insane, offered a different path.
He gave a curt, almost imperceptible nod. "Prove it."
Lilith turned and walked back to the grand fireplace. The chittering horde outside seemed to fade into a dull background noise. She knelt, her bare palm hovering inches above the cold, soot-stained flagstones of the hearth.
"Here," she said. "The cold is a lie. It is not the absence of heat. It is an active presence. A hunger."
Kaelen strode to her side, his skepticism still a palpable aura. He knelt, mirroring her posture, and placed his own gauntleted hand over the stones. He felt nothing but the deep, natural chill of the manor's foundation. He was about to rise, to dismiss her claims, when Anya's voice cut through the hall.
"Commander, the child... she's shivering, but she says she is not cold."
Kaelen looked over. Anya was wrapping a thick woolen blanket around the little girl, who was indeed trembling, her teeth chattering. But her eyes were fixed on the fireplace with a primal fear.
"It's... it's like the bad dream," the girl whispered, her voice barely audible. "The floor is hungry."
The words of a traumatized child should have meant nothing. But coming at this exact moment, they struck Kaelen with the force of a physical blow. He turned his gaze back to the hearth, to the stones beneath his hand. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to do as Lilith had asked—to feel.
And then, he felt it. Not a cold, but a subtle, draining sensation. A faint, almost imperceptible vibration that seemed to pull at the warmth in his own body. It was the same feeling his curse gave him in its quietest moments—the feeling of life being slowly, methodically unmade.
He snatched his hand back as if burned.
"The stones," Lilith said, her voice low. "They are not original to the manor's construction. Look at the mortar. It's newer. This hearth was rebuilt. This is not a fireplace. It is a seal."
Kaelen's eyes, now sharp with focus, scanned the stonework. She was right. The craftsmanship was subtly different, the mortar a shade lighter. Someone had sealed something away down here.
He rose to his feet and began to examine the ornate carvings on the fireplace's mantle—a hunting scene depicting the old lords of the manor. His fingers traced the lines of a carved spear, a running stag, a swooping hawk. His thumb pressed into the hawk's eye.
There was a low grinding sound, and one of the massive hearthstones sank an inch into the floor. A dark, musty gust of air, smelling of damp earth and something far older and fouler, puffed up from the seams.
He had found the mechanism.
Anya gasped, her hand flying to the dagger at her belt. "Commander, it could be a trap."
"The entire manor is a trap," Kaelen retorted, his eyes locked on the new, dark opening. "The only question is whether we die waiting in the snare, or face the hunter who set it."
He looked at Lilith, and for the first time, his gaze held something other than scorn or calculation. It was the grudging respect of one professional for another. She had been right. His tool had just redrawn the map, and in doing so, had offered them their only chance.
He wedged his fingers into the gap and, with a grunt of effort, heaved the heavy stone slab aside.
It revealed a set of steep, narrow stairs carved from the raw earth, descending into absolute blackness. The foul wind gusted stronger, carrying with it the faint, unmistakable echo of the chittering from outside.
This was not just the heart of the nest. It was the throat of the beast.
"We go down," Kaelen said, his voice leaving no room for argument.