Chapter 26 This Stays Between Us

Chapter 26 This Stays Between Us
The door opened sharp and violently. An overstuffed satchel cleared the frame before the man did.

"I knew it," he said, his breath catching slightly as he stepped inside. "You're here too."

The trio of the Ironwind Triage turned in unison.

He stopped when he saw the paper laid flat across their table, one gloved finger tracing the inked symbols.

"Good," he breathed. Not panic. Relief. "You can read it, it appears."

One of the Triage looked up. "You're familiar with this script?"

"I identified the rods," he replied, adjusting the weight of the satchel against his shoulder. "Or tried to." He stepped closer without asking permission, eyes already scanning the markings. "This isn't isolated," he said quietly. "It's systemic."

"Systemic?" Jax asked, already with his notebook out, ready to write at the speed of light.

The researcher nodded, tapping a specific symbol near the center of the page.

"The rods aren't random artifacts," he said. "They're anchors. Conduits. Something is feeding through them, stabilizing the corruption so it doesn't collapse on itself." He traced a faint line of script that branched outward. "See this pattern? It repeats. Different floors. Different zones. The mana flow isn't just tainted. It's being redirected."

He looked up at them, eyes sharp despite the exhaustion.

"That means the dungeon isn't simply corrupted."

"It's being maintained."

"By that turtle," Mira said quietly, her gaze drifting upward toward the ceiling crested in gold and emerald hues, lost in thought.

With that, everyone jolted toward her.

"Turtle?" they said in unison, excitement flashing across their faces. "Explain!"

Jax cleared his throat and quickly summarized everything for the room. The warped gate. The black clouds hanging unnaturally over the dungeon entrance. The misplaced hobgoblin on an early floor. The rods embedded where they should not have been. He kept it tight and factual, stripping out the panic and leaving only the sequence.

By the time he finished, the weight of it sat plainly on the table beside the paper.

"The guild hall wasn't much help this time. It was like they didn't believe us," Jax finished, putting his notebook away in his satchel. "What do you think we should do?"

"On the next dive day, we go in as a full team. Lead us to the warp gate, and we'll take it from there," Clouse said, his normal smug tone reentering the conversation.

"What about the black clouds?" Mira asked. "They seem to be coming more and more frequently. That has to mean something."

The smaller woman replied, "I don't think I introduced myself the last time we spoke. You ran off before I could. I'm Ana." She held out her hand. "You're Mira, right?"

Mira took it and shook. "Yes. I'm sorry for running off like that. You gave me an idea and I had to try it out."

"How did it go?"

"It was rough at first, but then Jax bought me these boots and they've helped loads. It's still not perfect and I can't fly, but I'm way deadlier now," Mira explained, point at her boots.

"Jax, he's your boyfriend, right?" Ana asked, her eyes showing no sign of malice or ill will. "I asked him last time, but he didn't answer me."

Mira glanced toward Jax before looking back at Ana. "He wasn't when you asked," she said, her voice gentler than usual. "He is now."

"So what do we do?" Alex asked. "How do we get the guild to work with us?"

"We don't. This stays between us," a voice from behind growled. "The guild turns a blind eye to things they don't understand. It's our job to make sure their oversights don't cause harm."

The room shifted from discussion to motion almost instantly.

Clouse pulled a clean sheet across the table and began sketching a rough layout of the lower floors from memory. Ana marked areas where the dark aura had been reported in the past month, small circles forming a pattern that tightened the closer they moved toward the center of the dungeon. The researcher unpacked a roll of parchment from his satchel, overlaying it with thin strands of charcoal lines that connected each known rod location.

"It's not random," he muttered. "The anchors form a lattice. Break enough of them and whatever's sustaining the corruption weakens."

"Then we don't wander," Clouse said. "We move with intent."

They mapped an approach to the warp gate Mira had described. Entry point. Extraction routes. Signal flares if mana destabilized. Two members forward. Two flanking. No heroics. No splitting up.

Jax copied everything down, cross-referencing it with his own notes from the first dive. Mira watched the lines intersect, her jaw tightening as the pattern became clearer.

"We hit the gate first," Ana said. "If the turtle is tied to the anchor system, that's our nexus."

"And if it isn't?" Alex asked.

"Then we adapt quickly," Clouse replied evenly. "That's what we're good at."

The researcher rolled his parchment closed. "If you're right about the resonance increasing, you won't have long before the dungeon reacts."

"Reacts, how?" Jax asked.

"Stronger spawns. Denser mana. Environmental instability."

Silence settled, but it wasn't fear, it was readiness.

Clouse secured his gauntlets with a firm pull. "Next dive day. We move before the guild rotates patrol. No announcements. No reports."

Mira met Jax's eyes. No hesitation.

"Next dive day," she agreed.

Outside, somewhere beyond the stone walls of the city, a distant rumble rolled low across the earth.

Not thunder.

The sound did not crack, it stayed present in their minds. A pressure wave followed it, subtle but undeniable. Tankards rattled on hooks along the far wall. A thin line of dust sifted down from the ceiling beams and drifted across the table, settling over the inked lattice like ash.

No one spoke.

They had all felt it.

The mana in the room tightened, humming faintly in the air between them, as if the dungeon itself had drawn breath.

Far beyond the terraces, the black clouds above the dungeon thickened.

Not spreading.

Converging.

Another rumble followed.

Closer this time.

The researcher slowly set his satchel down. "Uh-oh! It heard us," he said playfully, trying to lower the heated moment.

Clouse did not smile.

"Good."

He tightened the strap on his gauntlet and looked to each of them in turn.

"Let it."

Mira's pulse steadied. Jax closed his notebook.

Outside, the rumble did not fade.

It answered.