Chapter 57
Lilith and Giles pushed deeper into the passage.
The wreckage of destroyed constructs grew thicker as they advanced. Broken gears and twisted metal littered the floor—silent testimony to the battle that had swept through the corridor not long before.
A faint scent of blood hung in the air, threaded with something ancient and rotten. Lilith's caution sharpened with every step.
"We're close," she murmured, her footfalls fading to almost nothing.
The nearer they drew to the native factions, the more careful they had to be. Every one of those leaders was Elite-ranked. If she and Giles were discovered before the fighting broke out, neither of them would walk away.
Even so, the silence struck her as strange.
Several hours had passed since the omen dragged them into the dungeon. She had expected the native factions to be at each other's throats by now. Ideally, she'd arrive after the worst of the bloodshed, claim an Elite-ranked corpse, and raise it as her own.
With an Elite-ranked Unit under her command, taking the treasure might still be a stretch—but keeping herself alive would no longer be a concern.
Her gaze drifted across the wreckage strewn over the floor, and a flicker of irritation ran through her.
Every one of those constructs had carried a Dragoncore Crystal.
Killing them, fine. But did the native factions really have to strip out every last crystal too?
She and Giles pressed on, yet the corridor stayed unnervingly quiet. No clash of weapons, no voices, no footsteps drifting back from ahead.
After several hundred yards, the passage opened without warning. A cold draft rolled over them, heavy with damp air and the stench of rot.
Lilith stopped at once and raised a hand, signaling Giles to stay silent.
Beyond the passage yawned an enormous vertical chamber.
The pit stretched several hundred yards across and plunged deep into the earth. Dark teal stone formed its walls, and countless draconic runes glowed across the surface, washing the chasm in pale-blue light.
Lilith crept to the edge and looked down.
At the bottom lay a vast circular plaza forged from smooth, dark-gray metal. Intricate channels and mechanical patterns covered its surface with such precision that the entire floor resembled one colossal runic mechanism.
And at the center of the plaza rested the skeleton of a true dragon.
The remains ran well over a hundred feet from skull to tail. Even after untold ages, the pressure rolling off the ancient creature was enough to tighten Lilith's chest.
Large patches of flesh still clung to the bones. Time had blackened them into a gray, rotting mass, yet somehow they had refused to decay completely. Their stench carried all the way to the top of the pit.
The dragon's skull was still raised, empty sockets surveying the plaza. Death had stripped away its life but none of its pride. Even as a corpse, it seemed to look down on every living thing beneath it.
A weathered stone monument stood directly beneath the dragon's ribs. Golden light spilled from the dense runes carved across its face, though the distance kept Lilith from reading them. Judging by their structure, they were almost certainly draconic.
Beside the monument lay a humanoid skeleton.
The remains wore a ruined black robe and still clutched the broken shaft of a staff.
A dragonblood?
Anyone who had died beside a true dragon in the heart of this dungeon was no ordinary figure. It might even be the scholar who had written the Draconic Codex now sitting in Lilith's inventory.
But the dragon and the robed skeleton were only part of what waited below.
Every native faction had gathered around the plaza.
Fenrir stood with fewer than ten Veteran-ranked Werewolves at his back. Across from them, the Vampires had brought more than a hundred followers.
Lilith immediately picked out her own Vampiric Undead among Lucian's forces. They stood quietly behind the Vampire leader, their true allegiance still hidden.
The Frost Sabertooths and Goblins were there as well, each with a substantial force in tow.
The omen had pulled every creature in the Frostlands into the dungeon.
All four factions shared one troubling trait.
Lilith couldn't gauge the strength of a single one of their leaders.
Fenrir, Lucian, the Frost Sabertooth Chieftain, and the massive Goblin Chieftain—all of them Elite-ranked.
What baffled her was the absence of fighting.
The factions had the dragon skeleton surrounded, yet no one had attacked. They stood in taut silence, clearly waiting for something.
For Lilith, it was the worst possible outcome.
Four hostile factions had gathered in one place and somehow managed not to kill each other. There was no Elite-ranked corpse waiting for her—not even a Veteran-ranked one.
Then she studied the plaza more closely and realized what the factions were watching.
The entire floor was one massive mechanical lock.
Countless gears, levers, bearings, and shafts meshed beneath the metal surface, turning with a slow, steady rhythm. The sound barely reached the top of the pit, which was why she hadn't noticed it at first.
At the center, an enormous gear advanced one tooth at a time, driving the rest of the mechanism.
Around the plaza's outer edge, a circular channel was gradually filling with pale-blue light. The glow crept along the ring like a dragon coiling around its own tail.
Each time the light advanced another inch, the central gear turned a little further.
And the rotting flesh on the dragon's skeleton trembled in answer.
Something was preparing to wake.
"So that's it."
Now Lilith understood why the factions were waiting.
Once the glowing channel closed the circle, the final seal would break—and whatever treasure had drawn every faction into the Frostlands would finally emerge.
Her perch at the rim of the pit gave her a perfect view of the entire plaza while keeping her high enough above the native leaders to avoid easy detection.
"Good thing we showed up last," she whispered. "This might be the best seat in the dungeon."
The situation wasn't as hopeless as it had first looked.
The factions might be holding to a fragile peace for now, but that truce would shatter the instant the treasure appeared. Once the mechanism finished its cycle, they would tear each other apart to claim it.
All Lilith had to do was stick to her original plan.
Wait until the native factions bled each other dry. The moment an Elite-ranked fighter fell, she would claim the corpse, raise it, and step into the battle with the strength to match.
She settled low against the edge of the pit and went still. Like a predator crouched above a watering hole, she watched the plaza for the first sign of weakness.
The circular channel was already more than ninety percent lit.
The dungeon's true treasure was about to reveal itself.