04th July 2025 - A Dark Awakening

Darkness.

Not the peaceful, velvety sort that accompanied sleep. This was deeper. Denser. The kind of darkness that felt alive, coiling like smoke through the lungs, slick against the skin, and brimming with intent.

Aeli was the first to stir.

Her fingers skimmed stagnant water, her nose filled with the scent of mildew and rot. She blinked rapidly, adjusting to a ceiling so low and thick with mold that it felt like a second skin. The silence pressed in on her until she heard a breath, then another. Athun. Marcus.

They were alive.

But something was very, very wrong.

Their armor was gone. Their packs, weapons, tools, all vanished. In their place, they wore silken robes, embroidered with sigils she did not recognize. Noble garments, utterly impractical, scented faintly with lavender and something… older. Something that didn’t belong.

She shifted, wincing. Her body felt rested, fully, unnaturally so. Muscles that had ached for days felt mended, and Marcus’s breathing was calm, his posture unstrained.

Aeli swallowed. “Why would someone capture us, then heal us?”

Athun chuckled grimly. “So we’re strong enough to scream.”

Marcus, squinting into the blackness, muttered an incantation. A sudden burst of golden light bloomed from the first object his hand touched, revealing rusted iron bars, waterlogged stone, and horrors better left unseen.

The first cell they passed held a half-elf, dead, upside down, his face submerged. The water around his ears rippled softly, as if listening.

Another corpse, a robed man, hung slack from shackles.

Then the dwarf, his armor rusted, his beard long decayed, but his hands still gripped a corroded battleaxe. Athun respectfully claimed it, brushing moss from the haft.

Further down, in a cell untouched by time, lay a sword.

It gleamed, not in reflection, but from within. Aeli approached reverently, lifting it from the drowned stone. The blade sang as it moved, a soft hum like prayer. It whispered in her mind, it was a crusader’s blade once sworn to the Morninglord. It pulsed with purpose, holy and unyielding.

In the still water of the next cell, something shifted.

Aeli was the first to sense it, just before the gray mass surged upward. A silent predator. The fight was chaotic and cruel.

Athun’s borrowed axe sizzled and shrieked with each blow, its edge decaying in his hands.

Marcus unleashed flame, but it rebounded, a volatile burst of raw energy that sent him reeling.

Only Aeli, sword gleaming like sunrise, struck true. Hew new sword cleaved into the creature’s form, its radiance searing away the corruption.

When it dissolved into blackened sludge, the room fell still.

In the aftermath, they uncovered scattered coins, platinum, cold and gleaming. Marcus counted them silently.

Aeli only stared at the ooze, wondering what price would be paid for it.

The hallway widened into a chamber both grand and grotesque.

Chains dangled from the high ceiling like spider silk, swaying in a breeze that did not exist. Rusted torture devices jutted from the water, some still cradling bones warped by pain. Above them, a red velvet curtain veiled a balcony. Behind it, a silhouette flickered, light, perhaps candlelight, leaking through the fabric like blood through gauze.

The air here watched them.

Athun took a cautious step forward, and the water broke. Dead hands reached skyward. Rotten mouths snapped. Zombies, risen from their silent slumber, fell upon them in a frenzy of grasping limbs and gurgling hunger.

The fight was vicious.

Aeli moved like the wind, her blade a comet of holy fire. Athun swung his axe with precision. Marcus, regaining his focus, conjured bolts of force that sent rotting bodies flying.

When the last corpse fell, silence reclaimed the room.

The curtain still swayed, faintly. No sound came from beyond it.

Aeli stared at it, sweat mingling with the soot on her brow.

Marcus looked around, his voice quieter than usual. “Lars. Irena. Kasimir. They’re not here. We’re being separated.”

They stood at the base of the chamber, battered but alive. Uncomfortable staying in the one spot for too long, they headed for the stairs, water lapping at their knees, chains creaking above.

They were not just lost.

They were being studied.