Before they continued, Ivarr asked Catherine for a moment. He wanted to carve the scorpion for its exoskeleton.

  “Give me a minute,” he said, already kneeling beside the scorpion’s corpse. “This thing’s shell is worth more than the trouble it gave us.”

  Catherine didn’t argue. She stood watch instead, polearm angled toward the corridor they’d come from, listening for any stray scraping in the dark. The temple had gone quiet again, but she didn’t trust silence down here. She whistled for Barrel to finally approach.

  Ivarr pressed the edge of his axe into the scorpion’s exoskeleton and worked carefully, carving loose a few thick plates from the joints where the armor had cracked. The chitin was dense and ridged, its surface still faintly warm in places, and it resisted his blade with an unpleasant grind.

  After that, he summoned his staff, and the red stone at its tip pulsed once. He drew in a slow breath, focusing. A faint shimmer rose from the scorpion’s ruined body, subtle as heat haze, and then curled toward him. Life energy, thin and fading, left the creature the way steam leaves cooling metal. He gathered it quickly, replenishing his own.

  “You’ve got to teach me how to do that before you leave,” Catherine muttered.

  Ivarr responded in an uncharacteristically low voice. “Uh… sure. We can try… before… I leave.”

  Catherine was too preoccupied checking on Barrel to notice the hesitation in Ivarr’s words.

  It didn’t take long for him to finish harvesting the scorpion’s energy. He tucked the carved pieces away and rose to his feet, brushing dust from his knees. “Done,” he said, voice steadier now. “Let’s keep moving.”

  Together, they turned to the sealed door at the end of the chamber. Catherine pushed it open, and the hinges complained like old bones. Beyond lay another corridor, narrower than the last, its floor uneven and littered with fragments of stone. The air was thicker here, tainted with a sour, living scent. They hadn’t taken two full steps before something moved ahead.

  Monsters clung to the walls, tucked into cracks, half hidden in shadow. Some were smaller scorpions, skittering things with too many legs. Others were larger and heavier reptiles, dragging themselves forward. The corridor filled with the sound of claws on stone.

  Catherine went first. Her conjured weapon flashed, and her ring answered her will, lighting the polearm in a burst of heat. Ivarr followed close, swinging his axe in tight arcs and using his ring’s spells to freeze and crack what Catherine couldn’t immediately break.

  The narrow space forced them into a brutal rhythm. Strike, step, then strike again. Always moving, always refusing to be boxed in. When a creature tried to slip around Catherine’s flank, Ivarr’s fired an icicle lance, sharp and fast, piercing the monster and pinning it on the floor.

  When the last of the monsters went still, the corridor fell quiet again, broken only by their breathing. They pressed on, boots crunching over debris, until the passage opened onto a canal.

  The water cut across their path, filling the width of the chamber. The far side was visible, but too far for a clean jump. The stone edges were damp and slick, and the drop looked deep enough that falling in would not be a small inconvenience.

  Catherine leaned forward, peering into the water. She couldn’t see the bottom.

  “Of course,” she muttered before lifting her wrist. “Thalia. Which way?”

  The main stone of the bracelet flickered, then brightened. Purple mist seeped out from it, coiling into the air like smoke. It condensed into a shape that made Catherine’s skin prickle—a hand formed from haze. The fingers flexed once, almost annoyed at being summoned, then the pointer finger extended.

  “Straight,” Thalia confirmed, her voice muffled but firm, as if the answer should have been obvious.

  Ivarr exhaled through his nose and reached into his backpack. He pulled out a book, its pages worn and marked, the corners bent from use. He flipped it open quickly, scanning like he already knew what he was looking for.

  “These temples,” he said, tapping a passage with his finger, “were built with hidden panels and false routes. The whole point was to stop intruders from finding the artefact, or at least make it miserable to reach.”

  Catherine glanced from the canal to the darkness beyond, then back to him. “Does it say how to reach the other side?”

  “Sadly, no,” Ivarr said, shutting the book with a soft thump. “We’ll have to explore what we can reach, find the panels, find the mechanism, and then move on.”

  Catherine nodded once, eyes narrowing as she studied the stonework around the canal, looking for anything that didn’t belong. They checked the canal’s flow too, watching how the water tugged at itself, how debris drifted and vanished beneath the surface. It wasn’t hard to tell which way it had come from. The current pulled from the left, fed by something that sounded like a waterfall.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  They decided to take the right path, boots scraping over damp stone.

  It didn’t take long before the tunnel and the air turned even more stale. Shapes shifted ahead, low to the ground, claws clicking against the rock. Monsters poured from cracks in the walls and from the shadows between pillars.

  Catherine went in first, polearm sweeping wide, the head of it catching a creature mid-lunge and smashing it back into stone. Ivarr stayed close, axe moving in tight, efficient arcs, his ring pulsing as he flashed ice across the floor to slow the ones trying to rush them. They fought forward step by step, never letting the swarm surround them, until the last skittering body lay still.

  Continuing, the corridor opened into a small room. There was nothing grand about it. No altar, no ornate carvings. Just a low pedestal in the center, worn at the corners. Resting on it was a shard, pale and triangular, catching what little light they had.

  Ivarr approached first, cautious, watching for traps. Catherine watched the ceiling, the corners, the seams in the stone. When nothing sprang, she stepped forward and took the shard. It felt cold in her hand, unnaturally so.

  With nowhere else to go from there, they backtracked, the silence on the way out feeling heavier than the fighting had.

  When they reached the canal again, they kept going on the opposite path, toward the water’s source. The sound of falling water grew louder as they went, and soon the tunnel revealed a low waterfall spilling into the canal, foaming white where it struck the surface. Beside it, a mural spread across the wall, its carvings softened by moisture and time.

  Catherine stepped closer, squinting at the shapes. Something was missing. The design wasn’t broken, it was unfinished. Her gaze dropped to a clean gap in the stone, a space that matched the shard almost perfectly. She looked down at what she was holding, then back at the mural.

  “I think this goes here,” she said.

  Carefully, she pressed the shard into place.

  A low groan rolled through the stone beneath their feet. At first it sounded like distant thunder, then it sharpened into something mechanical. Water trembled in the canal. Dust sifted from the ceiling.

  Behind them, the water shifted.

  A section of the floor on their side sank a fraction, then rose. A platform emerged from the water with a slow, grinding climb, droplets streaming off its edges. It locked into place with a heavy click, forming a bridge to the opposite bank.

  Ivarr let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “So that’s how we cross.”

  The stone was slick, but solid. They walked with caution, careful not to slip. Barrel stayed behind the cracked lip of the doorway, watching them with tense focus until Catherine signaled him forward. They crossed, and on the far side the passage continued straight into another hallway.

  The architecture changed subtly here. The walls were cleaner, the corners sharper, and everything looked strangely well preserved. Their footsteps echoed longer, and the air carried a faint damp chill from the canal behind them.

  At the end of the hall, the route split. A corridor ran to either side, and set into the wall between them was a closed door. There were no handles or obvious seams. Just stone carved with shallow sea motifs, worn down by time.

  Catherine slowed, studying it. “How do we open it?”

  Seeing no means of opening it, Ivarr suggested they explore again, taking the right corridor first.

  The passage narrowed as it bent. It was empty at first, with none of the monsters they had encountered earlier.

  Then something scraped ahead, followed by a slow, wet breath. The smell hit them. Not chitin this time, but musk, damp scales, and old blood.

  A reptile.

  Catherine tightened her grip on her polearm. A shape shifted in the darkness, and a massive lizard hauled itself into view. It was twice longer than those that roamed the temple, with a thick, powerful body and limbs built for sudden bursts of speed. Its scales were the color of ash and stone, mottled in patches that helped it vanish against the walls.

  When it lifted its head, its jaw unhinged wider than it should have, teeth like broken glass lining the inside.

  Its eyes locked onto them. It hissed, low and vibrating, and then it charged.

  Catherine met it before it could build speed, slamming the hammerhead of her polearm into its snout. The impact echoed down the corridor, and the lizard’s head snapped sideways, but it didn’t fall. It snapped at her weapon instead, jaws clamping hard enough that Catherine felt the shock up her arms.

  Ivarr moved to the side, axe raised, ring pulsing. He fired a burst of ice at the lizard’s foreleg. Frost crawled over the scales, whitening the joints, and the creature’s stride faltered for half a heartbeat.

  Catherine used that moment to wrench her weapon free and drive the rear beak down into its shoulder. The beak bit between scales, and dark blood welled.

  The lizard shrieked and whipped its tail. The corridor saved them from being flanked, but it also made dodging brutal. Catherine threw herself back as the tail slammed stone where she’d been standing, leaving a smear of dust and a deep crack in the floor.

  “Distract it!” Catherine snapped.

  Ivarr understood immediately. He darted closer, then struck the lizard’s side with lightning. The bolt cracked through the air and hit like a whip. The creature convulsed, muscles locking, head snapping toward him with sudden fury.

  It lunged for Ivarr. He stumbled back, boots skidding, and barely avoided the jaws as they snapped shut in front of his chest. He swung his axe instinctively, the blade scraping across scales with a harsh screech.

  Catherine surged in from the opposite side. Fire coiled along her hammerhead, the glow reflecting off the lizard’s wet teeth. She brought it down on the creature’s ribs, sizzling its scales. Heat drove into the plating, softening the surface.

  “Now!” Catherine shouted.

  Ivarr didn’t hesitate. He blasted frozen mist at the same heated spot, forcing a rapid, violent change. The scales cracked. Then he followed with lightning, and the current punched through the weakened section, making the lizard jerk and collapse onto one elbow.

  Catherine stepped in close and drove the pike-tip up under its jaw, where the scales were thinner. The lizard’s body thrashed, claws scraping stone, tail whipping once more. Catherine held her ground, teeth clenched, shoving harder until the movement slowed.

  Finally, the giant lizard went still.

  For a second, only their breathing filled the corridor.

  Then the wall beside them shuddered. A section of stone slid aside with a grinding rasp, revealing a hollow space hidden behind it. Cradled inside was another shard.

  Catherine reached in and took it carefully. It carried the same faint, unnatural cold as the first.

  Ivarr wiped his face with the back of his sleeve, still staring at the dead thing. “So where do we put this one?”

  Catherine’s eyes were already tracking the corridor that led back toward the sealed door. She let out a tired exhale. “We’ll have to turn back, I guess. Again.”