The group soon departed.
They went down.
The dungeon opened wider the deeper they pressed, the passages branching and folding the way Erix's amber eyes had warned. But they did not wander.
He kept the constellation spread out ahead, reading the dark a hundred paces on, and called the safe road back over his shoulder while the group moved through the murmuring black in tight order.
The Subterranean Rhapsody of the Dead had more than one warden loose in its halls. They learned that quickly.
The first wandering ghost came at them in a long gallery of broken pillars. A thing like a hound built all of grey bone-light, its hide crusted over with that glassy dark exo-skeleton, the strange tattoos crawling across it.
It was strong, Drifter-strong, and it was fast. But the group was not what it had been an hour ago.
The moment the hound-ghost lunged, Tenebria planted her staff and let her shadow pool wide across the floor. The creature charged straight into it.
