29th August 2025 - Whispers of the Future

The air in the Amber Temple always seemed to watch.

Dust floated in lazy swirls through the stillness, glittering in the faint light of Marcus’s spell. The chamber felt more mausoleum than room, amber sarcophagi standing like patient sentinels, their smooth surfaces humming with a dark promise.

Marcus stood in their midst, one hand pressed to his cheek. The new eye blinked.

Aeli’s grip on her sword tightened as if expecting it to lunge from Marcus’s face and bite someone. “You’re… fine?”

“Fine is a word,” Marcus said, lowering his hand. “I am… still me.”

Lars leaned closer, his usual pragmatism shading into morbid fascination. “That thing is moving,” he said flatly. “And it’s not moving when you blink.”

“Future Marcus will deal with it.” He said it lightly. Aeli didn’t look reassured.

“Of course,” Athun murmured, dry as the dust around them.

And with that, Marcus touched the next sarcophagus.

The world fell away.

Marcus stood in a cave of mist and shadow, its walls dripping with unseen water. Something moved in the dark, robes first, then pale hands, and a face with no eyes, no mouth, only a faint hollow glow where features should have been.

“I am bound,” it whispered, voice like wind through a graveyard. “But I offer life. Power to drain it, power to command it. Free me.”

Marcus’s heart thudded in his chest, and he grinned with too many teeth, though the grin faltered as one came loose and clattered to the stone floor.

“Yes,” he said.

The cave vanished. Marcus staggered back into himself, the temple rushing into view. Teeth fell from his mouth, pattering on the stone like hailstones. He spat one out, wiped his chin, and shrugged.

“Adventure,” he mumbled, lips already shaping into something closer to a grimace than a smile.

Athun tilted his head. “Nothing bad ever happens in threes.”

Marcus’s hand was already reaching for the final sarcophagus.

This vision was different.

Moonlight spilled across cobblestones as Marcus found himself in a silent city, the wind carrying the scent of cold marble. A regal man stepped from the shadows, half his face and one arm sculpted from amber shot through with veins of light.

“I am Xantress,” the man said. His voice was a king’s voice, the kind that could silence a room with a single word. “Your presence is… forgettable. I will make you impossible to ignore.”

He held out his amber hand.

Marcus smiled, what remained of it, and took the bargain.

When he returned, he felt… more. His shadow seemed to stand straighter, his very presence demanding attention. The final sarcophagus cracked, spewing smoke into the chamber.

Lars backed away a step. “You feel… louder.”

“Good,” Marcus said, and smiled again.

The hall was waiting for them, as if it knew they would come back.

Green light flickered from the alcove, Flameskulls, their empty sockets burning like watchfires.

“They’re back,” Aeli said, raising her sword.

“They were never gone,” Lars muttered.

The first skull rose into view and spat fire, searing Lars and nearly felling him where he stood. Another darted down the hall.

Marcus snapped a word and threw a dome of ice across the corridor, encasing one skull in frozen blue. It shattered its prison seconds later, shrieking in anger.

Aeli hurled holy water, and missed entirely, splashing Athun’s boots.

“Now my shoe is consecrated,” Athun said without expression.

“Shut up,” Aeli growled, already uncorking another vial.

The tide turned in blood and light. Lars crushed one skull with his mace, Aeli’s sun blade cleaved another, and Marcus at last connected with his holy water, the skull sizzling to nothing.

They salted the stones with holy water, just to be sure. Marcus swore he saw a third skull watching from the darkness, but when they advanced, the hall was empty.

The double doors creaked open to reveal fur bedrolls, a ragged fissure letting in the mountain wind, and six barbarian berserkers, caught in the middle of preparing for something.

Their leader roared, spears already in hand. The direwolf at his side growled, low and deep.

The fight was chaos from the first heartbeat. Berserkers charged the hall, some forcing their way around to flank, their leader staying behind to hurl javelins with uncanny accuracy.

Marcus slammed the staff of frost to the floor, ice sweeping into a towering wall that split the room, blocking half the attackers and pelting the rest with frozen shards.

“Nice,” Lars grunted, cutting one down with a swing of his axe.

Aeli darted behind another, her blade punching through its spine.

Athun grew. Literally, his form swelling into a giant silhouette that filled the corridor, halberd striking through the doorway like the arm of a siege engine.

The wall of ice shattered as the berserker chief’s axe slammed into Marcus, dropping the wizard to one knee and breaking his concentration.

Marcus looked up, blood running from his mouth. Then he smiled that gap-toothed grin, raised a hand, and called down an Ice Storm that turned the room into a howling blizzard.

When the hail stopped falling, only one berserker stood. Aeli cut him down.

The direwolf whined once, then bolted into the fissure and out into the wilds.

The room stank of blood and iron. They stripped the fallen of their weapons, the weight of greataxes heavy in their hands. Somewhere in the mountains, the wolf howled its grief, long and lonely.

Lars wiped his blade clean. “They were living here. Guardians. Worshippers. Something.”

Athun said nothing.

Marcus stood amidst the corpses, the new eye on his cheek unblinking.

The Amber Temple had begun to name its price.

And it was far from done with them.