Ethan's eyes open to see the same night sky as when he went to sleep. He looks to his side, where he finds Russ as he was, and back, but doesn't see Azriah.

Russ rises and stretches before prancing towards the stairs, probably going to the sandy arena below.

Turning on Predator's Sight, Ethan senses Azriah in the barracks. She appears to be changing while humming to herself. Ethan turns off his ability and moves to the balcony's opening. He disconnects the trip wires connected to the claymores before storing them.

Azriah enters the room. She exchanged her crimson duelist aesthetic for black steel armor. From afar, it could look like a robe with its calf-length cloak. But she is wearing a full chest plate, shoulder pads, vambraces, and greaves. A chainmail rattles slightly under her cloak-like outer layer. She turns around, showing off her armor. "What do you think?"

"Why don't you stash away your weapon if you have Inventory? It would make us faster," Ethan commented.

Azriah extends her gloved right hand for him to see a platinum ring on her index finger. "This is a storage ring. I can choose how I store things inside it, but time still flows and they interact. If I put Za… my weapon with my clothes, it will crush them."

Ethan glances at Azriah. The name she stopped herself from saying didn't sound Eldorian. He summons Dark Fate and begins to cut all the wires he laid.

Azriah presses her fingers on one of the wires and flicks it, causing the thin steel wire to thrum. "This is so precise. How did the blacksmith who made it keep it at a constant thickness?"

"A few rituals were involved. …I was getting drowsy when you talked about your family," Ethan deflects. As he finishes dismantling his traps, he steps onto the balcony. The fog lessened, uncovering the overrun remains of the city. Most of its buildings are covered with the dirt and dying growth of the forest. Seven towers, identical to the one they are in, jut out of the city's perimeter. And the central pyramid lies uncorrupted. "Did you mean everything you said?"

"Yes. And you?" Azriah asked. She walks onto the balcony to look at the landscape. A perfume reaches Ethan as she comes close, a faint hint of lavender.

"I gave my word," Ethan confirms as he triggers Predator's Sight. He turns his gaze to the central pyramid, but it remains silent. He looks at it for a long moment, hoping for a sign of life.

"Still nothing?" Azriah asks, leaning against the balcony.

"No," Ethan admits.

"I've never heard of a perception ability that makes your eyes look like that," Azriah comments. "Most of the ones that make you see far away turn them green."

Ethan doesn't answer.

Russ comes back and nudges Ethan's hand to get pets before sitting before Azriah, expecting the same.

"Can I?" Azriah asks.

"Yes," Ethan says. He smiles lightly as he scans the landscape. Russ has always been a good judge of character who appreciates honest people. But Ethan knows that she's still hiding a lot from him. Not that he cares to know, but it seems as though she revealed what she wanted to induce sympathy. 'If she lets go of her halberd, I need to identify it. That might tell me where she's from.'

Azriah startles as Russ stands up on his hind legs to get closer to her face.

'No jumping,' Ethan reprimands, getting Russ to come down. He orders him to go back to the shadows and walks away from the balcony. "Our best bet is still the main building."

Azriah pulls out a cloth to wipe off the small sweat and dust paw prints Russ left on her armor before following. "How long do you think they took to travel from Haven Under to here?"

"Three, four days. We didn't find a trail of monster corpses, and they must have taken some time every day to set up for the night. If they are all forced to sleep at the same time, it means hours of shelter search, fortification, and trapping."

"So at worst, given that they should have returned four days ago now, they might be another two hundred kilometers away," Azriah theorizes. She tears away the fortification she placed against the door leading outside.

"I don't think so," Ethan says. He pushes the doors open as Azriah finishes. "Their maps tell me they plan their excursions. A little detour to explore that imposing building I'd understand, but not going off on another long journey. Or they found directions to something that would be worth the risk. And if that's the case, we might find it in there too."

"Like what?" Azriah asks.

"A way to purify themselves of dark Ether, a remedy to forced sleep, a way out," Ethan lists. He flashes Predator's Sight and Prescience as they make their way into the overrun city, searching for enemies. He sees a few giant insects in their lairs, but nothing out of the ordinary. "Weapons, items, the preserved library of a mage school, a source of Ether crystals; could be anything."

A wave of dark Ether expands from the city center, shaking the surrounding threads and making the ground tremble.

Ethan spreads his Ether to form a tight shield around both of them, deflecting the wave. Another comes, stronger than the last, but it fails all the same.

"Thank you. Do you think it's because we entered the city?" Azriah asks. Her gaze snaps to the side as they both see movement.

A corpse tears itself from the ground to stand up, hunched and rotted. It looks like they died only weeks ago but wear no armor or clothes that would indicate they came from Haven Under. Another crawls out of a corrupted wall, seemingly forming itself from the mud.

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Through Predator's Sight, Ethan hears the groans and falling bits of flesh of countless undead. But like many creatures of this realm, he cannot see their presence or feel the echoes of their souls. He switches to Prescience in case they are faster than he thinks. "It's widespread. I'd say the entire city is birthing them."

Azriah hefts her halberd to the side, readying herself to swing at the first creature to come.

Beside the few next to them, the city's monsters begin to walk towards the center, like a movie horde. Those near to Azriah and Ethan growl at them and stagger closer, their failing bodies unable to run.

After waiting for a third of Ether long enough to conclude it won't come, Ethan drops his Ether shield. He raises his hand at the closest undead and makes it explode with a Lightning Bolt. He didn't expect his spell to be so effective, but even the sliver of Ether he used sufficed to boil the corpse's fluids and ignite his gases.

Azriah avoids a bit of flying flesh, an astonished look on her face. "You hate undeads or something?"

"They are extremely weak," Ethan denies. He plucks a pebble from the ground and flings it at the next monster. It tears through it, dragging enough flesh and bones to form a gaping hole and collapse the monster.

"I'd almost try to blow on one of them if they didn't stink so much," Azriah quips. She throws a rock and decapitates the last undead that spotted them. "Even Jarek could kill that."

'Let's say this city has a similar deal to the other one. Maybe they are going towards the center because there are invaders there,' Ethan thinks.

"I also think it might be a trap," Azriah says.

"Pretending there is no real threat to get us to continue might have been smart, but not as effective as not attacking until we are further inside." Ethan begins to walk towards the center, matching the horde's rhythm to not meet them. "I'm more interested in where they are going."

The central building is devoid of any corruption. A stone, wedge-like trench separates it from the rest, rendering it accessible by only four cardinal bridges. The horde pools on the bridges, forming a slow tide of decaying flesh. From afar, it seems as though an invisible commander directs them. Otherwise, many should have fallen into the trench.

"That'll be hard to follow them inside," Azriah comments as they stop at a street's exit. The horde walks through the avenue perpendicular to them, oblivious to their presence.

Amongst the undead are fuller-looking ones, without the gaping, slushing wounds of the others. They are faster, and their heads snap from right to left, watching.

"These are more dangerous," Ethan points out. He peers into the Ether to sense theirs but finds it as insignificant as in the other undead. He could use Insight; however, the wave of Ether it creates might be detected by the entire horde.

"Don't look like much either," Azriah comments.

Ethan turns off Prescience and triggers Predator's Sight. He ignores the growls of the horde to peer into the pyramid.

"Get more arrows over here!" a man orders in the thick, local accent. He doesn't appear through the walls of the pyramid but feels close to the entrance at the end of the closest bridge.

Lucian is here. Close. The certitude coils in Ethan's chest, making his breath catch. He forces his racing pulse to level out and summons Stormshard. Triggering Strengthening, he relays, "There are people inside. They are readying themselves to fight the horde."

Azriah boosts herself with the same ability, and they rush into the horde until they reach the trench's ledge and jump onto the bridge. They land past the approaching monsters and rush into the building. Disbelieving soldiers stare at them as they vault their makeshift fortifications.

The five men staring at them wear the armor that disappeared from the tower. Their blades are trained on Azriah and Ethan, but they look like they won't attack unless provoked. Their souls echo a cold professionalism that hides their fear.

'Leave it,' Ethan orders Russ as he senses him stirring at the surface.

"We come from Haven Under," Azriah says, holding her hands up. "We came here after Jarek told us you were three days late."

The blades come down, and the guards pick back up their bows. One of them, with his shoulder pads decorated with silver cloth stripes, comes to them. "If you want to help, you need to go downstairs. We are only keeping the escape route open; the other three bridges will pour into the altar room below."

"Is this where we'll find your leader?" Ethan asks.

Ethan's tone seems to trigger some automated response in the man, who straightens into a salute. "Yes, Sir."

Azriah puffs at the display.

"Can I leave the bridge to you?" Ethan asks Azriah, faking trust in her skills to get enough time to talk to Lucian alone.

"Sure," Azriah says.

Ethan dashes past the corridor and into a large room reminding him of Kaliathra's throne. The long, twenty-meter-heigh marble palace room ends on stairs leading to a stone throne. Mortuary rooms, with slab tables and embalming tools, edge the room. Stone doors lie on each side of the throne, and a staircase, at the center of the room, leads downstairs.

The sounds of battle – blade cutting flesh and grunts of exertion – echo from where Ethan left and soon from below. He jumps down the stairs, landing at their end, and bursts through the next corridor, breaking the sound barrier. It leads to a circular room almost identical to the vault below Opal. Black stone, pillars, and a center isolated from the wall by deep crevasses. Only four bridges, at the end of each corridor, permit reaching the center short of a superhuman leap.

Around the center of the platform, surrounding a man kneeling in meditation, four soldiers tear through undeads. The horde pours from the three other corridors. Amongst the men fighting stands a giant, two meters twenty, clad in thick black armor, making him a walking tank. His two-handed axe cleaves through the undeads like a hot knife through butter, sectioning them without losing any speed. His weight alone is enough to crush his enemies as he steps through them.

Ethan casts a Dermal Shield and throws himself into the melee. His blade, and the Weapon Aura he casts, decimates the horde, felling dozens with each strike. With his offhand, he casts arcs of lightning up one of the corridors, turning it into a microwave that detonates the undeads it holds.

Ethan moves through the horde with precision, but something tightens in his chest with each strike. Lucian is below that titanic armor; he can feel it. His soul is like a beacon of unyielding will and judgment. Ethan can feel Lucian gauging every strike, every parry, and every movement of everyone in the room, Ethan included.

A wave of dark Ether pulsates from below, going through the men, Ethan, and the undeads. It doesn't seem to affect the living, but the mounds of dismembered undeads shift. Limbs the size of a man jut out of the piles, dragging out an abomination of agglomerated corpses.

"Vlad! Take my position," the giant commands in disastrous Eldorian. His voice is accompanied by a wave of Ether that pierces one of his men. He breaks off their formation and rushes at the newly formed monster. Ether flows into him as he triggers Strengthening and cuts the abomination's front limbs.

Ethan offhands a piercing fireball at the abomination's lower half, tearing off legs and a large chunk of flesh. He rushes through the undeads, carving into their ranks, and cuts the abomination in half with Weapon Aura.

More dead flesh crawls into the abomination, replacing what it lost.

Ethan unsummons his blade and exchanges it for Gravecall. The war scythe cuts through the undeads and the abomination as Ethan spins it around his body. Their decaying flesh rots and falls to dust, the effect propagating from one undead to the next as they touch.

As the gangrene of Gravecall spreads, the men protecting their meditating comrade recoil. They stare in awe at the sickening display.

'That's good to know,' Ethan thinks. He unsummons Gravecall as the abomination breaks down into vanishing chunks. The decay climbs back up the corridors, giving them a moment of respite.

A warming sentiment of relief and pride echoes in Ethan's soul. He glances back at the giant, who stares at him through the meshed eye slits of his helmet. He slams his axe into a decaying corpse to stash it and brings his hands to his head. With a click, he unclamps the helmet and lifts the piece of metal to reveal the face of Lucian. "You took your sweet time."

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