[Oliver’s POV]

  They were trapped. But for now, they were alive.

  Oliver pressed his back against the massive stone door, his breath slow and measured, listening. Beyond the thick slab, the dragonoids were still there. He could hear them, scraping claws against rock, guttural hisses, the dull thud of bodies slamming against the entrance. There were countless of them, but they lacked coordination. It was chaos, not strategy.

  “They’ll try to climb,” Six muttered, his gaze shifting upward.

  Oliver followed his eyes. The temple’s ceiling was broken. One of its towers had collapsed, leaving a jagged opening high above. A way in. Not immediate, but if the creatures outside were persistent, and Oliver knew they would be, they’d eventually find it.

  “No other way out?” Adrian asked, his tone clipped, impatient.

  “Not unless you’re eager to face a hundred of those things head-on,” Oliver replied, finally easing himself away from the door. He walked toward the center of the temple.

  Adrian scowled, glancing at the entrance as if considering it. Then stepped back with a frustrated exhale.

  “Thank you,” Katherine said softly, approaching Oliver. Her shoulder wound had closed. In its place was a blood crystal that she made using her boon.

  Oliver gave only a curt nod, stepping back a few paces to widen the space between them.

  Distance is safer. I need to keep my mask. He repeated in his mind.

  Alan inclined his head in silent acknowledgment. There were no words. Oliver understood why. Only days ago, they had slaughtered the Lot fleet, destroyed ships, and executed one of the commanders. For a general of the Republic, gratitude toward Atlas Blackwell could never be spoken aloud.

  One by one, they drifted to separate corners of the chamber, the silence between them thick with suspicion and unspoken tension. Each of them was alive, but none were allies.

  Adrian broke the stillness, his pride refusing to let him remain idle. He moved toward the pile of rubble where the tower had collapsed, his hands scraping against broken stone as he began to climb.

  Alan and Katherine moved along the walls, their hands brushing against the stone as they searched for weaknesses. Cracks that might allow them to break through into the adjacent houses.

  Oliver, however, found himself drawn to the far end of the chamber.

  The rear wall was fashioned from the same dark stone as the exterior of the city, but here it was different, cleaner, less weathered. The moss and dust that clung to the rest of the temple had not taken hold here. The stone seemed preserved, as though untouched by the centuries of decay.

  At the very back, nestled in shadow, stood a small altar. It was crude, built from stacked slabs of stone. Once, perhaps, it had been a place of worship, maybe to the Sovereign, or to some forgotten entity. Now it was nothing more than rubble, broken stones scattered across the floor.

  “What do we do now?” Six whispered, his voice low.

  “We find a way out,” Oliver replied, his tone clipped, obvious, his eyes still scanning the altar as his fingers pressed against the cold stone.

  Six frowned, glancing at him before his gaze swept the chamber. “Hmm.” His lips twitched, as though a thought had struck him. He raised a hand and tapped his fingers against the wall, listening to the faint echo.

  Oliver turned his head. “You found something?”

  “Not exactly,” Six admitted, his tone sharpening with interest. “But I think I can use my boon here. If I amplify the vibrations. The sound and resonance, I might be able to sense hollow spaces in the rock. Cavities. Passages. If there’s another chamber beyond these walls, I’ll know.”

  Oliver gave a short nod, then turned back to the altar, running his hands across its surface. He pushed at some of the loose stones, feeling for any give. The stone was heavy, stubborn, but something about it felt… deliberate.

  Then Adrian’s voice cut through the chamber, sharp and impatient. “You all better find something fast,” he called, his words echoing off the walls.

  Katherine’s head snapped up. “What is it?”

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  Oliver lifted his eyes from the altar, his gaze following upward. Adrian had climbed nearly to the top of the collapsed tower.

  For a moment Oliver wondered if Adrian had actually found a way out.

  “They’re almost at the top. There’s no way out up there,” Adrian said grimly, dropping back down from the crumbling tower. Dust trailed from his boots as he landed, his expression sharp with urgency. “Three minutes, at most.”

  The words struck like a countdown.

  At once, everyone scattered through the temple, desperation fueling their movements. Katherine pressed her hands against the weaker seams of the walls, Alan hammered at the stone with his shoulder, Adrian stalked back and forth like a caged animal. The scratching above grew louder, the ceiling groaning as dust rained down from the fissures.

  As he worked, Oliver felt a tug at his shoulder.

  “I think there’s something here,” Six said, his voice low but insistent. He pointed to the base of the altar, where the stones seemed uneven. “These stones, they’re hollow underneath.”

  Oliver crouched beside him, running his hands over the cracked surface. He pressed, then pulled. The stones resisted at first, sealed by some brittle adhesive. But when he applied more force, they shifted with a grinding crack. One by one, he tore them free.

  Beneath the altar, there was a passage.

  He leaned closer, squinting. It wasn’t an empty space, but a stairwell. The opening revealed the top of a narrow staircase descending into the darkness. Its steps smooth and worn, polished by centuries of use. The stale air rising from below smelled of dust and stone.

  “This really is a labyrinth,” Oliver muttered, his voice edged with awe and unease. He straightened, nodding to Six. “Activate your gauntlet.”

  Six raised his arm, and a pale glow spilled from the device, illuminating the first stretch of the stairwell. The light revealed how deep it truly went, far more than a simple hidden room. It plunged downward into the bowels of the temple.

  “Let’s go,” Six urged, already stepping onto the first worn stone. “We can get ahead of them if we move now.”

  Oliver hesitated. His gaze flicked back toward the others. Katherine and Alan, his closest friends, were still scouring the walls, unaware of what he and Six had uncovered. His chest tightened. Do I tell them? Or do I take the lead? I need to secure the artifact before anyone else even knows it exists.

  The sound of claws raked against the stone overhead. The dragonoids were nearly inside.

  “They’ve reached the top of the tower,” Adrian snapped, his voice taut with frustration. “Has anyone found anything?!”

  Oliver exhaled, the weight of decision pressing on him. He couldn’t leave them, not here, not like this.

  “I found it,” he said at last, his voice firm. “There’s a stairway. Here.”

  He stepped into the opening, following Six into the darkness below.

  It didn’t take long for Katherine, Alan, and Adrian to catch up, their footsteps echoing in the narrow stone passage.

  “Are you sure this is safe?” Adrian asked, his voice edged with suspicion. “This could be a dead end.”

  Oliver glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing. “How the hell would I know? If you want to go back, be my guest.”

  The sharpness of his tone caught Adrian off guard. For the briefest moment, the heir looked stunned, as though he had forgotten that Oliver was not a comrade but a rival, perhaps even an enemy.

  Still, the question lingered in Oliver’s mind. What if Adrian’s right?

  He closed his eyes and reached inward, letting his Energy spread out like invisible tendrils. The Flow rippled ahead of him, mapping the path. The corridor stretched on for at least five hundred meters, narrowing as it went. Yet even with his senses expanded, Oliver could not detect its end.

  They pressed on anyway, the air growing heavier as they descended. Their hands brushed against stone as they went, tracing the grooves and cracks of an ancient place that felt more like a tomb than a passage.

  Then Six stopped abruptly.

  “There’s something wrong,” he muttered, crouching slightly. He pressed a palm to the floor. “The ground—”

  Oliver felt it too. His instincts screamed. “Back!” he shouted in unison with Six.

  But the warning came too late.

  The floor gave way beneath them with a deafening crack.

  Stone and dust exploded upward as the ground collapsed, pulling all five of them into the abyss. They tumbled in a storm of shattered rock and grit, their bodies battered as they were dragged downward. The roar of falling debris drowned out their cries, the world spinning until Oliver no longer knew how far they had fallen or where they would land.

  Then, impact.

  They slammed into a hard surface. Oliver rolled, coughing, his body aching, his mind spinning. Dust filled the air, thick and suffocating, clinging to his skin.

  Six’s Gauntlet flickered faintly, its glow cutting through the haze. But it wasn’t enough.

  More lights flared one by one as Katherine, Alan, and Adrian activated their own Gauntlets. The beams cut through the dust, illuminating the vast chamber they had crashed into.

  And there, looming before them, was a statue.

  It was colossal, its shadow stretching across the entire hall. A man-scorpion, carved in detail, its humanoid torso rising proudly above the monstrous arachnid body.

  "It’s been quite a while since someone made it this far."