I’ve walked into dark rooms before. Alleyways in Cyre, interrogation basements, memories you don’t come back from. But this place? This place was watching us.
We’d barely started poking around when he showed up—MODMOS. Warforged. Quiet. Spider-clingy. Had Bowmore’s song rattling around in his metal skull like a bad tune you can’t forget. Turns out the Trust wound him up and pointed him at us like a bloodhound with a lute. Gig was over. He kept following anyway. Hate it when the help doesn’t know when to clock out.
Then there was the mark. Same Dragonmark as ours. That’s when my scales started itching. Coincidences don’t survive long in my line of work.
Smoke rolled in thick enough to chew, but MODMOS just skittered ahead, upside down on the ceiling, seeing things we couldn’t. That’s when we found it—an ancient draconic outpost. Old. Too old. Thousands of years old, and way too far out to make sense. Dragons don’t misfile real estate. They plan.
Light ahead. We sent MODMOS forward again—because of course we did. Big chamber. Eight orbs. Two pedestals with what looked like equipment, but smelled like trouble. And a door at the far end that screamed final mistake.
Lori—sweet, grandmotherly Lori—decided it was a control panel and started pushing buttons like she was tuning a radio. Door slammed shut behind us. Two orbs lit up. Light focused on something in the middle. Then came the sound.
Not noise. Judgment.
It hit us hard enough to rattle bone and bolt alike. Hurt in places I didn’t know I still had. Then—darkness. Silence. Like the room had taken a breath and decided whether we were worth keeping.
I don’t know what that place is yet. But I know one thing.
Whatever built it? It remembers us.
And next time, it might not turn the lights back on.
