Chapter 42
The Icy Void and the Cleaved Trench
Year 1 of the Gloom, Morning of the Fourth Day
Left behind at the groaning barricade, Bram braced his shoulder against the timber crossbeam as the weight of the assault threatened to buckle the iron hinges, while the stone-paved floor gave way beneath their feet, fracturing the party in the dark.
Leaving Bram behind to wedge the groaning iron hatch against the blind, swarming predators, Oren slipped through the newly opened mortar breach. His clothes, already torn and caked in dried mud from crawling through service chutes, caught briefly on jagged fragments of old masonry before he pulled himself entirely through. The air on the other side was sharply colder, carrying a clean, metallic tang of uncirculated cave wind rather than the foul musk of the tunnel beasts scratching furiously at the timber on the other side.
Dropping down into the unmapped vertical shaft, Oren's boots touched down on ancient, damp stone flags that stretched out into absolute, swallowing gloom. As he descended further into the icy bedrock void, his boots found uncertain purchase on slick stone while the muffled, chaotic roars of the blind predators faded to a distant, thumping bassline far above. The damp chill down here carried a strange acoustic clarity, bouncing off unseen, cavernous walls that hinted at an expansive subterranean network entirely divorced from the mapped routes of the upper complex.