Page 172 of Warlord's Plaything

Something to rise.

We move through the ruins in silence.

Footsteps muffled.

Weapons drawn.

Each of us is a shadow in the dark, ghosts creeping toward something that should never have been disturbed.

The temple looms before us, its broken spires clawing at the sky.

It was once a shrine to something long forgotten, something that should have remained buried.

Now it is a wound in the earth.

And at its heart Kaelith waits.

The atmosphere is overflowing with rot, heavy with the scent of death long past.

But this isn’t the decay of time.

This is something else.

Something wrong.

Something hungry.

I glance at Xyron.

His face is carved from stone, but I see it—the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers tighten around the hilt of his blade.

He feels it too.

The way the magic here clings, whispers, calls.

His father warned him about this place.

Now, we walk straight into it.

"We move fast,"he murmurs, voice barely a breath of sound."Kill anything that gets in our way. We don’t give Kaelith time to finish what he started."

I nod.

There’s no room for hesitation now.

Not with what’s at stake.

Not when the air itself feels like it’s rotting around us.

The entrance to the temple is nothing but a gaping mouth of darkness, jagged stone framing it like teeth.

Shadows twist inside.

Moving.

Shifting.

I swallow hard.

---