Old Bristle was heading home.

  Lia saw him on the road below, walking at his usual pace, steady and unhurried, ears relaxed. From that height he looked normal. Content, even. Like he was returning from any other supply run, taking his time. Nothing about his movement suggested panic or fear.

  But there was no rider.

  "Leon." Her voice cracked.

  The griffin circled lower. Bristle glanced up at the shadow passing overhead, then returned his attention to the road. His coat showed signs of hard travel, sweat marks and dust, but his manner was calm.

  Nothing followed. The road behind him was quiet and empty. Just a well-trained mule plodding steadily toward familiar stables while his rider remained behind in the dark.

  Lia's chest constricted. The dungeon could have overflowed again. Another Mother. Another swarm.

  "He might have sent Bristle ahead," Leon said, his hand finding her shoulder. "As a warning."

  She wanted to believe that. But all she could see was John standing before that black arch, stubborn and reckless and far too brave.

  The griffin followed the winding road until she spotted the burnt tree, half-blackened and twisted. "There."

  The ravine was invisible from up high. Leon spiraled the griffin down, the other two riders following. Lia leaned forward, almost standing in the stirrups, eyes raking the path for any sign. Blood, cloth, footprints, anything.

  Nothing.

  The griffin landed hard enough to rattle her teeth. The dungeon entrance sat twenty yards ahead, and Lia had never seen anything so hungry. The arch was wrong, darker than the shadows around it, like it was drinking the light. Threads of mana crawled across its surface.

  And the pressure. It had tripled since yesterday. The air tasted like copper and old meat. Something inside her skull was screaming.

  Leon dismounted smoothly. The other two riders spread wide, weapons already drawn. Their griffins wouldn't go near the arch. Backing away. Hissing.

  Lia's legs nearly gave out when she dropped from the saddle. The mana pouring from that entrance wasn't just corrupt, it was painful.

  Leon studied the ground. The earth was torn up, gouged, burned in places. "There was a fight."

  "He went in," Lia whispered.

  "Then he kept this from spreading." Leon faced the arch and lifted one hand. Golden light bloomed, spreading across the entrance.

  The pressure broke.

  Lia gasped, doubling over. It was like someone had pulled a knife out of her skull. Leon stood in the center of his own radiance, utterly calm, and the mana bent around him. The crawling threads on the arch slowed, stuttered, and died.

  For a moment, Lia saw her brother as others must have seen him. A Paladin of the Light, Rank 3, bearer of the Storm's Blessing.

  The light faded.

  "With me," Leon said.

  He walked through the arch.

  The riders fell in behind him.

  Lia followed, staff white-knuckled in both hands.

  Inside, the dungeon breathed.

  Lia felt it in her bones, the slow inhale and exhale of stone that shouldn't move. Her staff threw pale light that died six feet from her face. The walls glistened with something wet.

  Leon moved with purpose, blade out, every step precise. The floor sloped down, uneven and slick.

  "Bodies," the rider behind said.

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  A spawn corpse, split crown to tail. Then more.

  They pushed deeper. The tunnel narrowed until they were single-file, shoulders brushing the walls. Then the walls fell away.

  The chamber beyond was vast and cold. Lia's light didn't reach the walls, the ceiling, anything. Just darkness pressing in from all sides.

  Leon stopped and raised a hand. Everyone froze.

  Lia peered around him, and her stomach dropped.

  A Gluttonous Brood lay sprawled across the floor. She had been gutted, hollowed out, her ribcage collapsed inward. What was left was crawling with her own children, feeding, burrowing, making nests in their mother's corpse. The floor was no longer floor but a carpet of larvae, writhing over each other in wet, clicking masses.

  Lia tasted bile.

  "No magic," Leon murmured. "No fire. Just steel."

  John had done this. Alone.

  The larvae noticed the light and charged in a wave. Hundreds of them, bodies slick and translucent, mandibles spreading wide. The sound was like rain, but wetter, hungrier.

  Leon raised his hand.

  Lightning bloomed, branching out in perfect fractals that filled the chamber edge to edge. Every bolt found a target. Every spark killed. The thunder was so loud Lia felt it in her teeth, her ribs, the base of her spine.

  When the light died, the larvae were gone. Just smoke and the smell of cooked meat.

  Leon turned to the woman with silver threading her black braid. "Erin. Scout for us."

  Light gathered above Erin's hand, then split into a dozen spectral eyes that spun once before scattering into the dark like fireflies.

  "Three branches. Down, left, right. The side paths are full. The center descends."

  "Split up," Leon said. "Clear as you go. Converge at the bottom."

  Erin broke left, frost already crackling around her fingers. The other rider, tall, burnished armor, hammer wreathed in flame, went right. Leon gestured for Lia to follow him down.

  The walls pulsed faintly, light seeping through cracks like infected veins. The air hummed, not sound but mana vibrating at the edge of hearing. Everything smelled like blood and lightning.

  Broodlings skittered from the dark, low, fast, more teeth than body. Leon's lightning cut them apart before Lia even saw them clearly.

  Through side passages she caught glimpses of the others. Erin gestured, and a dozen spawn froze mid-leap, ice spreading through their bodies before they shattered like glass. The armored man swung once, and fire consumed everything in a ten-foot radius.

  They made it look easy.

  Lia gripped her staff tighter and tried not to feel useless.

  The sound changed. Less clicking. More roaring. Something big shifted below, and the floor trembled.

  They rounded the corner and found John.

  For a heartbeat, Lia couldn't process what she was seeing.

  He moved like something feral, all instinct and violence. Moonfang carved through the air in arcs that left trails of pale light. His footwork was wrong. Not trained, not formal, but brutally effective. He rolled under a spawn's lunge, came up slashing, pivoted without looking and caught another mid-leap.

  The spawn were everywhere. Pouring from cracks in the walls, dropping from the ceiling. Massive ones, fast ones, ones with wings and too many limbs. The floor was black with their blood.

  John's sleeve was torn half off. Gore covered him so completely Lia couldn't tell what was his blood and what wasn't. But he was still moving. Still fighting.

  A spawn twice his size charged from the left. He saw it in his peripheral vision, adjusted his stance, and drove Moonfang through its skull without breaking rhythm.

  Lia's staff trembled in her grip. This wasn't survival. This was something else. Something that shouldn't be possible.

  Leon didn't wait. His hand snapped forward and lightning flooded the room. Branching, weaving, finding every spawn that wasn't John and cooking them from the inside.

  John spun, blade up, eyes wild.

  Leon appeared beside him in a flash of gold, blade already swinging. The last spawn, massive, with mandibles wide enough to bite John in half, split down the middle and crashed to the floor.

  Silence.

  John stood there, chest heaving, Moonfang dripping. He looked at them and almost laughed. "Oh. Hey. Thanks for the save."

  Lia stared. No words came.

  He was alive. Standing. Moving. But wrong in ways she couldn't immediately name. His pupils were blown wide, his breath coming in shallow gasps. The way he held Moonfang wasn't a guard stance, it was like he'd forgotten how to let go.

  "John." She stepped forward, and he flinched.

  "How long?" Leon asked.

  John blinked. The question took a moment to register. "How long since...?" He looked around the chamber like he was seeing it for the first time. The corpses. The blood. "I don't know. Hours?"

  Leon stepped close, eyes moving to Moonfang. "That blade is the only reason you're alive."

  "I know." John's laugh was sharp and brittle. "Still seemed like a good idea at the time." He looked down at himself, at the ruin of his clothes, the ichor coating him shoulder to ankle. "I should probably stop making decisions."

  She wanted to yell at him. To shake him until he understood how stupid he'd been, how close he'd come to dying. But the words wouldn't come. Because he had made it. Somehow.

  Lia found her voice. "You could have died."

  "Yeah." He met her eyes. "But I didn't."