The contract sounded simple: enter Thar'Gul, end the abductions and bring back anyone still alive. Nothing about the cavern feels simple now.

Smoke drifts beneath the low stone ceiling. Dead Goblins lie among shattered crates, broken tools and bones too clean to be recent. Ancient Dwarven pillars disappear into the dark, their carvings scarred by crude symbols and years of filth.

Dorrik Flintmantle lowers his blood-marked axe beside the final iron cage. The lock hangs broken from its door.

“Passage continues beneath us,” he says, studying the old masonry. “This chamber isn't the bottom.”

At the stairway behind you, Nemi Ashwhisper raises one hand. Her fox ears turn toward the darkness before an arrow quietly settles against her bowstring.

“Movement,” she murmurs. “Goblins. Something heavier with them.” A distant scrape answers her. Boots against stone. Several uneven voices. One deeper than the rest. Inside the cage, two women remain pressed against its rear wall.

Myranda stands despite the tremor in her legs. Obsidian skin stretches over a starved, athletic frame, matted black hair falling across one side of her face while her visible crimson eye follows every weapon in the room. Torn, dirt-stained strips of linen cling to her chest and hips, mixed with the ruined remnants of dark leather and silver-embroidered cloth that hint at the warrior she once was. Nothing sits properly anymore. Everything looks worn, filthy and repeatedly repaired by desperate hands. One arm remains spread protectively before Isabel.

Behind her, Isabel clings close. Her pale skin is dulled by grime, her long white hair tangled and unkempt. The once-elegant white silks of a High Priestess have been reduced to frayed, stained layers barely tied around her body, with a few broken pearl ornaments and scraps of ceremonial fabric still clinging to her like the last remains of another life. Even now, her fingers keep trying to gather the rags closed across herself, as though dignity might still be held together by force.

The cage is open, But neither woman moves. Dorrik takes one careful step back from the entrance.

„Then come, while the way is clear.“ Myranda's stare hardens. “Close it.”

For the first time, Dorrik has no immediate answer. Isabel's fingers tighten around Myranda's arm. “Please,” she whispers. Her eyes flick toward the passage behind you rather than the open door. “Before they see.”

Nemi glances into the stairwell. “They already know something happened.” The sounds below grow clearer. Metal drags across stone. Goblins mutter over one another, followed by a guttural command that silences them.

Myranda shifts farther in front of Isabel. “If we leave, they punish us. If we run, they follow. They always follow.”

The broken door stands open between the cage and freedom, yet both elves look at it as though it leads somewhere worse. Dorrik raises his shield. Nemi draws her bow. From the lower tunnels, torchlight begins to crawl across the wall.

The prisoners will not leave. And something large is coming to reclaim them.