Faith is Earned 1, page 27
The crater split again, a low groan shaking every stone in their bodies and suddenly the edge beneath them wasn’t edge, it was air. The ground gave out like parchment beneath a hammer. A vast net of fractures spidered outward from the hole, then snapped all at once.
There was no time to shout, no time to scramble or pray.
They were falling.
Chapter 29
[Sanctified Fighter – Level 6]
[New Skill: Lesser Dexterity]
A Level Up and a New Skill were usually good things, but now they were overshadowed by their newly acquired scenery, where the air was dust and silence and the sharp bite of pain.
Luke stirred first, breath shallow. He tasted grit on his tongue and metal at the back of his throat. When he opened his eyes, the sky was gone, replaced by black stone hanging far above like a broken ceiling. The crater they had stood in was now inverted overhead, collapsed and gone, the rock around him unfamiliar.
His body ached in a dozen places. His armor had taken the worst of the fall, but even with its padding, there were fresh bruises blooming across his ribs, thighs, and arms. His left knee screamed as he tried to move. Someone groaned nearby.
He sat up slowly, every motion careful. Around him was a hollow too vast to be natural. The cavern stretched out in every direction, the shapes of fallen rubble and fractured stone silhouetted against a dim ambient glow. He activated [Minor Blessing: Radiance] with the thinnest whisper of will. The Skill sparked, flickered, then dimmed to a low halo around him. Not enough to light their way, but enough to make him visible.
"Anyone awake?"
The words fell flat. No echo, only stillness.
Movement to his left. A slow, pained cough, then a shape unfolded from behind a crumbled outcrop. Suth, dragging herself upright, one arm tucked tight against her chest.
Luke pushed to his feet and stumbled over. Her shoulder was clearly out of joint.
"Hold still."
"I'm fockin holding."
He pressed his hand lightly to her temple, steadied his breath, and activated [Lesser Heal – Mental]. The panic faded from her eyes almost instantly. The pain didn’t vanish, but her breathing slowed.
"Better?"
“I’ll be better when you can heal my body too.”
“Should have thought of that before signing me on.”
"You're lucky I can't punch right now."
They gathered the others slowly. Jerri’s helmet had cracked and Brag’s left temple was bloodied and his steps uneven. One dwarf had a fractured arm. They’d survived, but only barely. Luckily, they still had a few Basic Healing Potions, which spoke to the dwarves’ deep pockets, but fractures weren’t an easy thing to heal, even with those. Two torches had somehow remained in Suth’s satchel, wrapped in cloth and once lit they cast long, flickering shadows that danced over the cavern’s vast walls.
The light revealed strange things.
The ground beneath their feet wasn’t wholly natural. Cracks and heaves showed raw stone, yes, but here and there the texture changed, lines too straight, corners too deliberate, as if some ancient thing had once tried to carve corridors into the bedrock and then left them to decay.
Brag limped over to Luke while the others checked their packs and wounds.
"You alright?"
"Mostly."
Brag’s gaze lingered, not just on Luke’s stance but on his eyes.
"You were the first on your feet."
"So were you."
"You’re too young to sound like that."
"And you're too old to charge headfirst into slimes, but here we are."
They said nothing else for a moment. Brag turned away, slow, like the breath had gone out of him.
They began walking.
Luke kept his senses open, eyes flicking between the walls and the others. The air was dry, but it carried a scent he didn’t trust, old stone, minerals, dust, all good, but underneath it… something else. Something faintly organic, like dried blood, like rot buried deep beneath centuries of denial.
[Sense Sin] stirred. A flicker. It was less present and less immediate than before, more like an impression. A scent of decay long past, too faded to trace. There had been something here. A wrong done and buried, like everything else.
They moved slowly through the broken floor of the cavern, stepping over fractured slabs and fallen supports. Every so often, Luke caught a glimpse of something shaped, arches half-collapsed, stonework twisted into unnatural angles. A memory of purpose, long erased.
Then, they saw it.
A jagged rise in the floor gave way to a hollowed basin filled with crushed wood, shards of iron, and remnants of something that had once been a camp. Half-melted lanterns, splinters of crates, rusted tools scattered like they’d been thrown by a storm. One wall of the basin bore a blackened smear like something had been burned into it, though no sign of corpses, no bones, no ash. Just the dust of long-forgotten labor and the absence of its end.
Luke stepped carefully over a snapped pole and bent low beside a patch of something fragile.
Torn pages, curled with age, lay caught beneath a stone shard. He lifted it, gently. The ink was mostly ruined by damp and time, but a few lines survived.
“…rations gone. Lost three in the night. It moves when we sleep.”
“…cannot leave. The tunnels fold behind us…”
“…a voice in the stone. Not echo. A… listening.”
He folded the page and slipped it into a side pocket.
Suth stood beside him, looking over the ruin with her better arm hanging loose at her side.
"Whatever they were… they didn’t make it."
Brag crouched nearby, touching the burned smear on the stone wall.
"This wasn’t a fight. This was a vanishing."
Behind them, someone muttered a prayer and no one mocked it. They stood together in silence, breathing dust and memory, while somewhere deep beneath that silence the stone trembled slightly.
They moved on from the ruined encampment in a hush, no one eager to speak of what they’d seen. The echoes of the vanished expedition clung to their thoughts. No blood, no bodies, just the suggestion of disappearance. It wasn't a battlefield. It was a memory scraped raw.
The floor of the cavern sloped downward, then rose again in sharp ribs of broken stone. Dust settled on their shoulders like the breath of the place itself. The torchlight reached less far now and it wasn’t because the flames had dimmed, but because the dark pressed thicker. Still, they searched, circling wide arcs through the debris until one of the dwarves, still limping, called out with a hoarse shout.
A hollow had opened near one of the shattered pillars, a tunnel wide enough for three to walk abreast. Carved different from dwarven halls, no symmetry or formal pattern in sight, yet clearly not natural. It spiraled gently, the stone too smooth in places, unnaturally so, as though something had worn the rock down from the inside over a very long time.
They approached slowly, weapons drawn but loose at their sides. The air within was warmer. Faint streaks of color ran like veins through the walls, silver, copper, threads of blue and green. Gemlight pulsed in one place, like the afterglow of something not quite extinguished.
Brag peered in, brow furrowed. He looked down, then up. The tunnel continued both ways. The downward path slipped into blackness almost immediately. The upward one curved slowly, its slope long and steady.
Suth pressed a hand to the wall. Her fingers came away dusted with mineral flakes.
“This isn’t right. This tunnel’s too smooth… it wasn’t made by tools.”
Brag grunted.
“Don’t like it either.”
“We should move on, then. This place… it’s wrong. We stay too long, something’s bound to notice.”
Brag turned. His face was tight, one hand still resting on his hip.
“We’ve been hit too hard, Suth. Tavrik died, Bora died, Jerri’s ribs are likely cracked and I’m not far behind. You want to climb through a mountain’s worth of stone while bleeding out?”
Suth folded her arms, then winced, her shoulder still half-healed.
“Staying down here’s worse and you know it. There’s nothing natural about this place. The longer we linger, the more we risk.”
“I say we rest. One hour, maybe two. Then climb.”
“We don’t have hours. If that thing comes back—”
“It won’t. It fled.”
“You know that for sure?”
Their voices were low, but tense. Kiln and Gorrik stepped back instinctively and even the walls seemed to listen.
Luke moved forward, slowly. He didn’t raise his voice, but when he spoke, the silence around them softened.
“We came here to reach the summit.”
The others turned.
“Not to mine or fight and not even to survive. That was the Vow.”
Brag frowned, saying nothing.
Luke glanced around the circle of weary, battered forms. Faces streaked with blood and dust, eyes hollowed by exhaustion. They weren’t soldiers anymore, just remnants. But they had chosen this path. Chosen to rise.
“We survive by moving. And we honor the ones who fell by finishing what they died for.”
No command. No sermon, since even with a preaching Skill, Luke felt this was not the time, nor place. Just the truth.
Suth gave a slow nod.
“I’ll take the front with you.”
“Fine, lad. We climb, then. For them.”
One by one, the others joined behind.
They stepped into the tunnel, torches lifted high. The light caught against the mineral veins, sending a faint shimmer along the walls. The ground was smooth but firm enough. There was traction, natural ridges like tread worn by a long passage of time or use.
So they climbed.
The tunnel curved steadily, always sloping upward. No branches, no doors inside, just pure stone, all the way. And the higher they went, the richer the walls became. Raw veins of metal ran through the stone like arteries, iron, gold, silver, even flashes of something pale and blue like true mithril.
“This hill could fund a kingdom.”
“Aye. We just have to survive long enough to dig it.”
But no one stopped to mine, no one even paused to take samples.
The more they climbed, the warmer the air became. Only a bit hot, but… enclosed. Like breath. Like being inside something that hadn’t fully realized it had guests.
Luke slowed, running his fingers along the wall. The stone here was too smooth. A natural tunnel this long would have breaks, shifts, but this one was... seamless.
[Sense Sin] stirred.
A flicker. Stronger than before and more focused. Still no shape or image, but a tension now. Like someone watching through a one-way mirror, like memory pressed into walls. He breathed slower, reaching for the sensation.
Nothing he could name. Just… echo.
He looked to Brag, whose eyes were scanning ahead. Then to Suth, her jaw set hard.
No one said anything for a long stretch. They climbed in silence, just the rhythm of boots on stone and the slow pull of breath. The tunnel continued to rise, curving slowly, steadily, with no break in the pattern.
Light. Ore. Heat. And waiting.
Luke couldn’t shake the feeling that something had made this tunnel. That something had walked it before.
They climbed for nearly an hour before the incline began to feel strange.
The slope never broke, never shifted angle, never jagged or twisted like a natural cavern should. The spiral just kept going, too perfect, too steady, its curve smooth as a potter’s wheel. It didn’t widen or narrow. The ceiling never changed height. Even the walls kept the same rounded shape. It was a chimney without smoke, a hallway without flaw.
And beneath the illusion of stone, something else.
The air had grown thick in weight. A heaviness that pressed into lungs and collarbones. The mineral veins in the walls pulsed slightly now. Not visibly, but you could feel it when you touched them, an echo, like holding your hand against someone’s throat and feeling them swallow.
Luke ran his fingers over a patch of dark, gleaming quartz. It was damp, humid, just enough to make the stone shine.
Kiln, walking just ahead, tried a joke.
“This place feels like a worm made it. Spent its whole life chewing up a staircase.”
No one laughed, but Brag did cuff him on the back of the head.
Then came the first tremor.
It was nothing more than a shudder in the floor. Barely enough to be noticed, yet every boot paused at once. The group stood still, waiting. Luke’s [Radiance] dimmed, as though the light itself hesitated.
A second tremor came, stronger this time, a ripple they could feel in their legs.
Suth raised a hand and they halted in silence. Torchlight flickered across the mineral-lined walls, but there was still no sound and no movement. Even the heat seemed to recoil.
A few more paces, then Suth stopped again. Her voice came slow, flat.
“Wait.”
They turned to her.
She stared at the wall beside her, then reached out and laid her palm against the stone. Her fingers didn’t sink or slide. But something shifted minutely.
Luke stepped forward, reaching the wall, pressing gently with the flat of his hand.
Did the wall… twitch?!
It wasn’t a trick of the light, as far as he could tell or a tremor either. The wall of the tunnel flexed beneath his touch, recoiling ever so slightly. And that was not the behavior of rock or earth. It moved a bit like skin. Like pressure against a throat.
He turned to the others.
“This… isn’t a tunnel.”
Then it began.
The floor beneath their feet rippled like something had taken a breath with a soft pull downward, too weak to throw them, but enough to stagger every step. The walls began to contract. It wasn’t stone giving way, it was movement, constriction, the tunnel growing tighter, not by debris falling, but by muscle closing.
“Back!”
Suth shouted. Brag didn’t shout, he roared instead.
They turned, running down the way they came. The spiral that had once been gentle now curved against them, steeper than it should’ve been. Luke ran with them, shouting for calm, but no one listened. The torches whipped in the air, their flames bending from sudden movement.
Then the walls liquified.
Stone lost its grain. It softened, curved inward and the floor turned tacky. Their boots started to stick enough to slow every motion. The air shifted from dry to moist almost instantly. And not humid either, but saliva-thick. They weren’t in stone anymore, though were in something.
A living tunnel.
Gorrik screamed and slammed his axe into the nearest wall. It bit in shallow, but when he wrenched it out, the wall closed again, sealing behind the wound with a squelch.
“Cut through!”
“No exit! It’s sealing!”
Suth threw a torch behind them. It hit the wall and vanished, absorbed instead of extinguished. The flame didn’t hiss, it was just directly swallowed.
Brag drew in a breath like a bellows and slammed his gauntleted fists against the wall.
“[Hammer Cascade]!”
He struck again and again. Cracks formed, and stone bulged, but no opening formed. The tunnel flexed around him, as if bracing, as if clenching.
Luke raised his axe. Activated [Holy Strike].
It flashed once, divine power seared the tunnel wall and something recoiled, a pulse running through the floor. So he struck again. But it wasn’t enough. He was knee-deep in resistance. Every step forward dragged his leg like climbing through throat-mud. His Skill fizzled and his axe sank an inch, no more. Then came the worst of it.
The tunnel began to rise.
It moved, the entire structure around them shifting downwards, with the precision of muscle instead of the shake of a mountain. They weren’t walking anymore. They were being carried, like food through a throat.
Suth shouted something, unintelligible, her voice choked. Jerri slammed a torch into the floor and saw it flare, then flicker, then extinguish.
Luke tried to speak as well, but the pressure made it impossible. They weren’t just being held, they were being gripped. The walls had become soft stone, the floor an undulating path. It was a small miracle they hadn’t been absorbed yet.
He looked up and noticed that the light was almost gone now. Only faint outlines of the group remained. He saw that someone had fallen behind and someone else had dropped their pack.
Luke turned to Brag, whose fists were still pounding, useless.
“We can’t get out!”
“Then we break it from inside!”
He swung again.
Luke tried to breathe and thought about illuminating others, using his Skills, appealing to Xelreth, yet he had no time for anything. Stone flowed, as fluid intent and he realized instantly that they were now inside a pseudopod, a massive, living extension of something buried deep below and now it had them.
Like a slime… but God, how big must it be?
Luke looked at Suth, at Brag and at the others, faces lit only by fading Skills and what memory of fire remained. They were not climbing toward the summit anymore, they were being carried away from it.
The living tunnel finally collapsed and swallowed them whole.
Chapter 30
It began without struggle.
There was no violence to it, no sense of force. Luke simply slipped. One moment he had form, body, shape, skin brushing against damp stone, breath ragged in his chest and the next, that form dispersed, stretched across some membrane of awareness he could no longer define.
He was sinking, but not down. Drifting, but not away. There was warmth on his skin and pressure around his ribs, gentle and total, like a cocoon or the embrace of thick liquid. Viscous layers cradled him in absolute darkness. There was no light to see by, yet he could see or rather, sense, the others suspended near him. Faint outlines of dwarven limbs, Brag’s bulk curled inward like a sleeping bear, Suth’s smaller frame slack but intact. They were caught, all of them, floating in some pulsing pseudopod of the slime, held in stasis between flesh and stone.
