Chapter 643: The Dead Company (3)
Mikhailis steadied his breathing, letting the slow inhale push the tang of sap and dust deeper into his lungs while the muted exhale misted against the wood. Up close the arch felt less like timber and more like skin-warm stone, its grain shifting under his fingertips in soft throbs that answered the thumping behind his ribs. It’s listening to us, he realized, thumb grazing a shallow knot that pulsed twice in acknowledgment, as though the tree wished him luck—or warned him to turn back.
Beside him, Thalatha held her posture with warrior poise, yet small tells betrayed tension: the faint flutter of pulse at her neck, the way her shoulders stayed too square, too still, like a statue waiting for a sculptor’s next strike. Her braid, normally neat as parade regalia, had loosened; stray gold strands framed her cheekbones where sweat had melted them free. The spellthread lacing each braid-sleeve shimmered like frost under moonlight, catching flashes from the drifting spores that bobbed in the air between them.
The spores themselves moved oddly, not meandering on random currents but swaying in tiny schools that circled a center neither of them could see. The swarm rotated once, then scattered, as if some invisible breath had exhaled through the corridor’s throat. Cold air brushed his face a heartbeat later.
"This is... unsettling," Thalatha muttered, voice barely above the hush, yet it still felt too loud in the oppressive dark.
"Unsettling is our new hobby." Mikhailis forced a grin that felt paper-thin. "We keep collecting dark hallways like rare trading cards. Maybe if we leave a tip they’ll upgrade the ambiance—candles, maybe a small band?"
She exhaled through her nose, a silent concession to his joke, though the humor did nothing to soften the hard focus in her gaze. Those green-gold eyes flicked down the corridor—one, two, three pulses of surveillance—before returning to him.
<Analyzing spatial data... Hostile life-form detected. Estimated category: Colossus-tier. Location: 92 meters directly below. Movement: minimal. Possibly dormant.> Rodion’s cool narration hummed through his skull interface like distant machinery.
Love how you drop that in the casual tone of a weather report, Mikhailis thought, flexing his fingers. Next you’ll tell me there’s a sixty-percent chance of limb loss with light showers of screaming.
He stepped over the threshold first, boots pressing into mossstones whose once-springy surface had dried and cracked. The crunch beneath heel sounded embarrassingly loud. Shards of something brittle—calcified sap or old bone—slid aside in gritty murmurs. He crouched automatically, the scientist winning over the survivor for a moment.
"Bones." His fingertip traced a fragment half-embedded in the moss-stone, its edges charred yet fused into greenish mineral like sugar burned to glass. "They didn’t just die here. Something smelted them into the floor."