Chapter 8

  If I’m being honest, I didn’t know what we were doing down there.

  The tunnel was breathtaking—far beyond anything I had expected to find beneath an old roadside inn—and yet with every step, uncertainty gnawed at me like a silent shadow clinging to my thoughts. I had no idea what lay ahead, no strategy, no map. And that scared me more than I cared to admit.

  The others? They still followed my lead.

  Maira, stoic as ever, watched me with quiet trust. Vin, clearly shaken but still marching forward, mirrored my pace. And Simon… well, Simon would probably follow me into hell itself, even if I gave the order to turn back. Whether it was loyalty, curiosity, or friendship—I wasn’t sure. But I knew he would stay.

  This hidden world beneath the earth was magnificent, yes—but it also frayed the edges of my nerves. It was too silent, too well-preserved, too… intentional. Still, part of me longed to lose myself in the murals. I could have spent hours tracing the carved lines, decoding the forgotten legends painted across the stone.

  But that wasn’t an option.

  Sooner or later, we would have to choose: return to the warmth and false security of the inn—or push forward into the mysteries waiting below.

  In the end, I chose the latter.

  I just hoped none of us were secretly claustrophobic. The tunnel, thankfully, remained wide—about three meters across—and the ceiling comfortably high, supported by ancient archwork that had somehow stood the test of time. It didn’t feel like it was closing in, at least not yet.

  Still, the farther we went, the more I wondered: How far are we from the inn now? It could have been three hundred meters. It could have been three kilometers. There was no way to tell. But one thing was certain—we were no longer under the storeroom. No longer under the inn. No longer under anything familiar.

  And with each step, it became clearer that this place—this tunnel, this hidden complex—had never belonged to the inn at all. Not originally.

  The thought chilled me.

  Maybe we were just unlucky. Maybe all the guests, all the people trapped above in that snowbound inn… were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ourselves included.

  But it didn’t matter now.

  Whatever this was—whoever built it, whatever purpose it once served—I was going to find out.

  Eventually, the murals began to fade. Their vivid battles and portraits gave way to something older. Stranger. Glyphs.

  They replaced the murals slowly at first—carved between them, tucked into the borders. Then, eventually, the murals disappeared entirely, and the glyphs took over. Rows and spirals of symbols I didn’t recognize lined the walls like some forgotten language humming beneath the stone.

  And then the tunnel ended.

  It opened, without warning, into a vast chamber.

  And what a chamber it was.

  Perfectly circular—at least twenty meters in diameter—with a domed ceiling that arched high above our heads like the inside of a cathedral. But there was no glass, no skylight, no windows. Only stone.

  And yet… the room glowed.

  Not with torches. Not with lanterns or candles.

  The light came from the walls themselves.

  Runes.

  Dozens—no, hundreds—of them. Etched into the walls and ceiling, flowing in perfect concentric circles. They pulsed gently, a soft, cold blue, casting a spectral glow across the chamber that felt both serene and unsettling. It wasn't harsh, but it revealed everything. Every detail. Every crack. Every line of ancient, impossible script.

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  The light of knowledge.

  Or warning.

  We stepped inside slowly, boots echoing against the polished floor, and I felt it: something here was wrong. Everything here should not be here. We should not be here.

  This chamber exceeded everything I had expected—everything I thought possible.

  Up until now, ever since Simon had spoken about Ice Wraiths, I’d clung to a fairly straightforward theory: a crytomancer was hiding among the inn’s guests, someone powerful enough to twist an innocent soul into a creature of frost and malice. That, I had assumed, explained the murder. A dark ritual. An isolated act of corruption.

  But this?

  This place?

  It shattered that simple explanation into a thousand pieces.

  The runes, the scale of the architecture, the strange heatless glow—it all suggested something older, deeper, and far more orchestrated. Either the murder was just a symptom of a far larger, more ancient force... or we had stumbled into something completely unrelated. Something buried beneath centuries of snow and silence, only now beginning to stir again.

  Dozens of theories bloomed and tangled in my mind, each one wilder than the last. I shoved them all into the back corner of my thoughts, locking them there for later. We didn’t have time for speculation now. Right now, I had to act like what the others believed I was—their leader.

  "Simon. Maira," I said, stepping forward and letting my voice carry clearly through the rune-lit space, "figure out what these runes mean. All of them. What they say, what they do. Anything that’ll tell us what the hell’s going on down here."

  They nodded without hesitation. The warlock and the cleric split apart, moving along opposite arcs of the circular wall, eyes wide, fingers brushing against the glowing glyphs. There was a flicker of excitement in both of them—curiosity overtaking fear, at least for now.

  I turned to Vin. “You’re with me. Let’s see if there’s anything in the center worth finding.”

  She gave a small nod and fell into step beside me. Her expression was unreadable—tension hidden beneath a composed mask. I kept her close, not just for tactical reasons, but because… if I’m honest, I wasn’t sure how she’d handle this. The tunnel earlier had rattled her, and while she’d managed to recover, this place was something else entirely. It hummed with pressure, like the room itself had lungs, and we were breathing its breath.

  Still, I wasn’t about to treat her like a child.

  Even if some part of me—some older, more cynical part—still saw her as fragile, untested.

  But maybe I was wrong.

  Maybe there was more strength in her than I realized.

  And if it came down to facing a wraith—or a crytomancer—I’d find out soon enough.

  Together, we stepped into the heart of the room.

  And there it stood.

  An altar.

  It rose from the polished stone like the crown of a buried giant—simple, smooth, and eerily unblemished. Not large by any measure—perhaps long enough to lay a calf across, or a person if they curled slightly—but its proportions carried a quiet gravity. The kind of gravity that said: sacrifices were meant for this.

  But it was empty.

  Completely empty.

  No blood. No bones. No knife marks. No wax drippings from ceremonial candles. No scorched edges from fire, no lingering scents of incense or ash. No sigils. No chains. Not even dust. Just perfectly smooth stone, polished to a shine, as if the altar had never been used at all.

  And somehow… that made it even more disturbing.

  “Anything natural?” I asked, my voice lowered to a whisper, more out of instinct than necessity. “Any trace of nature magic?”

  Vin leaned forward, placing her hand gently against the surface. She closed her eyes briefly, as if listening for something.

  “No, nothing, Boss,” she said quietly. “And honestly, I wouldn’t even know what to look for. It’s so... pure. Too pure. Even wind magic just bounces off. It’s like it rejects everything.”

  I heard her words—but my mind snagged on something else.

  Boss.

  She kept calling me that.

  I hadn’t minded it at first. It was harmless. Maybe even respectful. But now, here in this strange place where our lives might depend on more than just roles and titles, it felt... off. Wrong, somehow.

  And more than that—it bothered me.

  Not because it was disrespectful, but because it wasn’t.

  It placed distance between us. Authority where there should have been trust. Command where there needed to be belief.

  She kept talking—something about energy and residual patterns—but I wasn’t listening anymore. The word Boss still echoed in my head.

  I turned toward her and softened my voice.

  “Hey, Vin,” I said gently. “Don’t call me that.”

  She blinked, confused.

  “‘Boss’,” I clarified. “You don’t need to say it. Just... call me Luken. That’s enough.”

  She stared at me for a long second, as if I’d just spoken in a different language. Her face twitched slightly with unease. It was clear the idea went against something deeply ingrained—respect, hierarchy, habit, maybe even fear of overstepping.

  But then, slowly, she nodded.

  “…Okay,” she said. And then, a little quieter, “Okay, Luken.”

  I gave her a small smile and placed a hand on the altar’s edge. Cold. Still untouched.

  Before either of us could say another word, footsteps echoed from across the chamber. Simon and Maira were approaching—Simon in the lead, and moving fast.

  His eyes gleamed with excitement, the way a scholar might look upon a forbidden page finally translated. He nearly stumbled in his haste to reach us.

  Something in his expression told me—

  Whatever he’d found in those runes…

  It wasn’t just important.

  It was urgent.