Calamity Awakens

Kelan knelt in the dirt, stone cracking as he drew it to himself. Shards splintered up from the ground, layering over his battered armor in jagged plates. Each breath he took dragged more of the dungeon's bones to his skin until he looked less like a man and more like a walking bulwark, a juggernaut carved from the cavern itself.

The pick in his hand glimmered faintly, its edge honed by blood and resolve. His jaw was tight, eyes burning beneath the shifting mask of stone.

Harold stepped close, voice low but carrying. "You lead. You break them open. Don't stop until you're through."

Kelan gave a single nod, the sound of stone grinding as he rose.

The platoon braced behind him—Daran sliding into place just at his shoulder, shield up and steady, the sergeants locking their squads into order. Behind them, the undead rattled forward under Lira's silent command, a grotesque second line with pale eyes fixed on their living kin.

Harold raised his hand. The storm above churned, lightning itching to be unleashed. His Brand seared, begging for release.

"Go," Harold said.

Kelan roared and surged forward, the mountain itself crashing into the line.

Kelan thundered forward, stone plates grinding, pick raised high.

Harold's Brand seared, light spilling from his hand as the words tore from his throat. [Brandflare Activated.]

The dungeon shuddered. A pulse of white fire rippled across the chamber, slamming into the kobold line. Their shamans shrieked as their chants faltered, spells guttering into silence, the breath of their magic ripped from their throats.

At the same instant, Rysa's firebombs arced through the gloom. They burst on either flank of the kobold formation, flames leaping high, searing fur and scale. Screams filled the tunnel, the neat shield line bowing inward as its edges burned.

Beneath their feet, Rynar's magic slick spread like oil. Kobold heels skidded, balance lost, shields slipping out of line just as Kelan hit.

He smashed into them like a boulder. His pickaxe caved a shield and the ribcage behind it in the same stroke. Stone plates cracked against spears, splinters flying. The weight of his charge broke the kobold center wide open.

Daran followed a heartbeat later, shield slamming into the gap, sword stabbing over the rim in brutal thrusts. Behind him, the sergeants bellowed, "Axes! Push!" The platoon surged as one, slamming into the faltering line, driving steel into the gap Kelan had opened.

For a moment, it was enough. The kobold wall crumpled under fire, oil, and fury.

Then, from behind the line, a smaller kobold stepped forward. Its frame wiry but coiled with muscle, eyes alight with grim focus. A chipped cleaver rested on its shoulder, and unlike the others, it did not falter.

It snarled, leapt, and slammed against Kelan with startling force. The two locked together, stone plates clashing against the cleaver's relentless strikes. Kelan had no choice—his pick rose and fell in desperate rhythm, his entire focus pulled into the duel.

The line behind him buckled.

The kobolds, snarling and burning, reformed as the recruits crashed into them. But the raw edge of green men against hardened killers was laid bare. The irregulars' spears bit, their axes swung—but not enough, not fast enough. The kobolds pressed back, their snarls rising, momentum bleeding away from the human side.

Arrows whistled from the wall—Ferin's bow thrumming, Auren's shafts finding marks. Kobolds jerked and dropped, one after another, but still too many pushed forward, teeth snapping, spears thrusting.

The two sergeants—Axe and Spear—were pressed harder than they could manage. The spear Sergeant braced against two berserkers at once, his arms trembling under the weight. The axe Sergeant barked commands as he stabbed, but his formation thinned, kobolds pushing around the edges.

The line was breaking again.

The front strained, the sergeants nearly buckling under the press.

Then a roar rose from the rear.

The irregulars surged forward, filling the gap like a flood. Brenn led them, his axe cutting a brutal arc that split a kobold from collarbone to gut. He bellowed with the fury of a man who'd had enough of walls and spears, and the sound lit the others like fire.

The axe-fighter brothers came in behind him, weapons whirling. One's axe crashed into a shield, splintering it in half, while the other's swung low, severing a kobold's legs out from under him. They fought like men who had found their element—not soldiers, not disciplined—but killers in the crush, feeding on each other's momentum.

The miners followed, their picks not forged for war but for stone. Yet each blow landed with the weight of men who had spent their lives breaking mountains. They swung low, tearing through shields, spiking into armor, punching through ribs and flesh as if the kobolds were nothing more than softer rock. They drove forward step by step, taking each kobold in a team of two, grim and efficient, used to tearing down what resisted them.

The effect was immediate.

The kobold line wavered, then cracked under the sudden ferocity. Their formation twisted, the edge of discipline unraveling into snarls and panic. One miner's pick punched straight through a kobold's chest, and he wrenched it free with a grunt, swinging again before the corpse even hit the ground.

Harold saw the shift—the balance tipping back. Where the sergeants had faltered, the irregulars slammed in with sheer brute force, widening the break Kelan had carved.

The recruits screamed as they pushed, emboldened, their spears stabbing faster, harder. Kobolds stumbled, slipping on Rynar's slick patches, only to be hacked apart by the axe brothers or crushed under Brenn's swing. Illga's warhammer pulped legs and shattered spines, the rare kobold who dared stand against her fury reduced to twitching ruin.

Above, arrows still fell, each one punching holes in the faltering enemy.

And slowly, brutally, the kobold line began to buckle for good.

But it was no clean victory. The losses to reach that point were severe. Men were dragged down in the press, spears piercing mail, bodies trampled under clawed feet. A recruit screamed as he disappeared beneath a crush of snarling kobolds; another fell to his knees with a bolt buried in his throat, only to be hauled back by his sergeant before he could drown in blood.

The monster line didn't go quietly. Every inch cost another wound, another body, another debt to the dungeon's hunger.

And over it all, the storm above growled, thunder rolling across stone where no sky should be. Each rumble vibrated through the cavern like a promise—the Calamity's presence pressing down, impatient, ready to be unleashed again.

The kobolds howled, fanatical even as their line frayed. The altar loomed just beyond, the shaman's chant rising over the clash of steel.

The boy cried out once, muffled and desperate, and Harold felt the weight of every eye in the chamber.

There could be no more faltering. No more hesitation.

It was the wall all over again—but this time, the dungeon would not take its prize.

The press finally broke. Kobolds stumbled back, their line torn and bloodied, the survivors clawing toward the altar in desperation.

The shaman rose from behind them, towering for his kind, his body painted in spirals of ash and blood. A bone headdress arched high, skulls clattering as he lifted his staff. The air thrummed with power, the chamber itself vibrating to the cadence of his chant.

The boy writhed on the altar, ropes burning his skin as the shaman pressed a clawed hand over his chest. Foul light gathered, a ritual to trade the boy's life for power.

And then Lira screamed.

It wasn't fear, not anymore. It was fury. Fury for the boy, for the men dying in the dirt, for every soul fed to this dungeon's hunger. Her voice cut through the din, raw and piercing.

Her Dao surged. Life and death twined in her veins, pulsing through every breath, every heartbeat in the cavern. She raised her hands, and the chant faltered as the shaman's power met hers.

"No," she roared. "Not yours."

The dungeon groaned as the ritual shuddered, threads of death-essence ripping from the shaman's grasp. The sickly glow recoiled, pulled toward Lira like a tide dragged back by a stronger moon. Around her, the fallen stirred—men who should have bled out gasped shallow breaths, wounds knitting just enough to drag them back to the world of the living.

The shaman's eyes widened. His ritual, his claim, was being stolen.

He bellowed, slamming his staff into the stone. Power cracked outward, rattling the altar, warping the air. This was no common priest—this was a Tier Three shaman, apex of his tribe, a thing meant to command death and wield curses.

But Lira stood against him, her hands glowing brighter with every pulse of blood spilled around her. The deaths of friend and foe alike did not weaken her—they fueled her. Every scream, every gasp, every cut that spilled life into the stone fed her Dao until her presence blazed like a sun.

The kobolds, once frenzied, faltered at the sight of her. Even the undead at her command paused, their pale eyes flicking toward her as if recognizing their true mistress.

The shaman staggered back a step, his chant breaking under the weight of her fury. For the first time, his howl carried something more than rage—fear.

Lira's voice carried through the chamber, steady now, cold as the grave:

"Life is mine. Death is mine. And I will not let you choose."

The cavern shook as their powers collided, the boy screaming on the altar as light and shadow tore through him. The battle of blades became the background, the true fight centered here—between a peak Tier Three master of ritual death and a woman who refused to let the dungeon decide the cost of life.

Harold felt the shift, the weight of the ritual pressing down on them all. The shaman's chant rose higher, the boy writhing on the altar as death-energy coiled thick and suffocating. Harold snapped his head toward the archers.

"Auren! Ferin! Bring him down!"

Auren loosed first. The arrow hissed across the chamber and sparked uselessly against a rippling shell of blue light—the shaman's mana shield.

"Again!" Harold barked.

Ferin's shaft struck next, the shield flaring, flickering but holding. The kobold didn't even flinch, his claws driving harder against the boy's chest.

Auren's second shot cracked through the shield, shattering it in a burst of sparks.

The shaman staggered, his chant faltering.

Ferin drew to his cheek and let fly. The arrow drove home with a wet thunk, burying itself deep in the shaman's shoulder. The kobold roared in pain, staff nearly slipping from his hand.

The ritual faltered.

And Lira seized it.

Her fury erupted, her Dao surging through her veins. She tore the threads of death away from the boy, rending them apart until the chamber shook with her defiance. The sacrifice shattered—its death-trade broken, the dungeon's hunger denied.

But beneath that unraveling she felt something else.

Not death. Not life. A weight, vast and alien, threaded into the ritual itself. Power that wasn't hers. Power that fought every attempt to bend it. She tried anyway, her will burning as she wrapped her life Dao around it, smothering, binding, twisting—

—and it refused.

The thing inside was stronger. Wilder. Not hers to command.

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"Too much," she gasped, her voice breaking as her arms shook. "I can't—"

It tore through her grip like floodwater. In the end she had only strength enough to strip away the death, the ritual's killing edge. The rest—whatever it was—she had no choice but to let it pour into the boy.

The altar blazed white. The boy arched, screaming as light ripped through him, his voice merging with the cavern's roar.

And then it was over.

The shaman collapsed in a heap, flesh splitting, body rotting from the backlash. The boy lay still, chest heaving, alive—but not untouched. Something burned inside him still, something Lira could neither name nor command.

Her hands shook. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She looked at Harold, eyes wide, voice raw.

"I saved him from death," she whispered. "But what I left him with… I don't know what it is."

The storm above rumbled low, as if answering her.

The altar's blaze faded to embers, leaving only the stink of blood and smoke. The shaman's corpse twitched once, then lay still, his staff rolling uselessly from his clawed hand.

At the front, the cleaver-wielding kobold still raged, his blade hammering against Kelan's stone-plated frame, every strike ringing like a bell. Kelan staggered, pick raised in a desperate block—when Daran barreled in beside him.

Their eyes met for an instant, and then they struck together. Kelan's pick smashed the cleaver aside, and Daran's sword drove home under its arm, punching through ribs and out the back. The kobold shrieked, blood spraying across the stone, before crumpling under their combined weight.

The last of the fight bled out from there.

Small knots of kobolds broke away, hissing and scrambling for shadows, only to be cut down. Brenn's axe split a skull with a wet crack. Illga's hammer crushed the life from another. The axe brothers moved side by side, hacking through the last resistors with grim precision. The miners swung low, their picks finding throats and spines until the cavern fell still.

Silence returned—broken only by the moans of the wounded.

Rysa dropped to her knees beside a bleeding spearman, pressing glowing hands against his side. "Stay with me. Don't you dare slip." Her voice trembled, but the light steadied, knitting flesh enough to hold.

Master Olrick crouched beside another, sweat beading down his brow as he traced runes of binding to staunch an artery. His voice was steady despite his pallor, coaxing the soldier back from the brink.

And Lira—her fury burned out, her hands shaking—moved among them with what strength remained. Her touch was weaker now, her energy nearly spent, but wounds closed at her command, men gasping in relief as the pain dulled. She saved who she could, even if it left her swaying on her feet.

The chamber that had been a slaughterhouse was quiet at last. The boy still lay on the altar, chest rising and falling in shallow gasps, alive but marked by something none of them yet understood.

The storm above faded, leaving only the iron stink of blood and the weight of what had been won—and what it had cost.

Harold moved slowly across the chamber, boots slipping on blood-slick stone. The stink of iron and burnt fur clung to the air, heavy as a shroud.

Everywhere he looked, the aftermath lay plain—bodies sprawled in heaps, kobold and man alike. The axe brothers dragged their weapons free of broken shields. Brenn leaned against a wall, chest heaving, his axe head dark with gore. Illga wiped her hammer clean with a scrap of ragged hide, her face unreadable.

The Shield Sergeant and her team closed in tight around Harold as he walked, shields raised still, eyes wary of shadows even in the aftermath. He caught her glance—stern, unyielding—and for once, he didn't challenge it. He let them keep their wall around him.

His steps carried him toward the heart of the chamber, where Kelan, Daran, and Lira stood. Kelan leaned on his pick, stone armor cracked and flaking, blood streaking his brow. Daran's shield arm hung heavy, his blade still dripping from the cleaver-wielder they'd finally felled.

And Lira… Lira swayed where she stood, her hands faintly glowing as she poured the last of her strength into a wounded recruit. Her face was pale, her lips pressed thin, but her eyes were bright with fury yet—refusing to yield, refusing to let death claim even one more.

Harold slowed as he approached them, surveying the ruin.

Victory. Hard-won and costly. And not without its price still to come.

The storm above had faded, but its echo lingered.

"Recover who we can," Harold ordered, his voice raw but steady.

The sergeants moved at once, rallying their squads. The living were dragged upright, the dying hauled to Rysa's light or Olrick's shaking hands. The Shield Sergeant's unit fanned wider around Harold, shields still up, as if the dungeon itself might strike again.

Master Olrick limped toward the altar, his staff scraping the stone. Lira was already there, brushing ash and blood from the boy's face, her hands trembling as she checked his breath. Relief flickered across her expression—he still lived, though his skin seemed marked by something that wasn't hers.

"Up," she whispered, voice low but fierce, as she lifted him with Olrick's help. The boy stirred weakly, bound no longer, his chest rising in shallow breaths. Together, they carried him away from the altar's shadow.

Daran's voice rose behind them, carrying across the chamber. "Form search teams. Check every body—ours and theirs. Drag the dead together. Strip what's useful. Nothing left for the dungeon to claim."

His armor was split in three places, blood matting his tunic beneath. Scars new and old ran across his arms and face, fresh lines of red already drying into his skin. He moved as though he didn't feel them, the weight of command forcing him upright.

Kelan leaned heavy on his pick, watching as the battlefield slowly shifted from chaos to grim order. The axe brothers and miners picked through the fallen, recovering what arms they could. Brenn staggered with two wounded men slung over his shoulders, refusing to stop until they were laid before Rysa.

Harold stood in the center of it all, silent, the storm in him quiet but not gone. His eyes tracked Olrick and Lira as they carried the boy out of the bloodied chamber, the faint glow of Lira's hands wrapped protectively around him.

The dungeon had been beaten back for now.

The order spread through the chamber like a tide.

Every man and woman who could still stand bent to the work. The wounded were hauled onto makeshift litters, weapons stripped from kobold corpses, and shattered armor scavenged for plates that might be patched later. Picks, spears, and broken blades were heaped in piles, while the miners pried loose stone from the altar's edges—anything that might fetch value or deny the dungeon its due.

"Don't leave it behind," Daran growled as he passed, his shield arm hanging heavy but his voice as unyielding as stone. "If it's metal, take it. If it's coin, take it. If it's nothing but hide and sinew, pile it for the tanners. The dungeon will feed on nothing but dust."

The Shield Sergeant barked names, her unit dragging the dead into ordered rows, cloaks spread over their faces. She kept her men steady with a hard tongue, but Harold could see the tightness in her jaw with every body she counted.

Rynar moved among the piles already, his ledger clutched in one hand, muttering as his quill scratched furiously. "21 axes, crude iron. 26 spears, wood splintered but usable. 7 staves, charms still faintly glowing. Armor—gods, half of it scrap, but scrap sells. Hide, teeth, claws—don't throw that, Brenn, tanners will pay for it—" His voice rattled on, relentless, the sound of coin already ringing in his ears even as the blood hadn't dried.

Master Olrick leaned heavily on his staff, guiding Lira as she carried the boy between them. The child was weak, eyes closed, his breath shallow but steady. He didn't stir as they passed, but the faint shimmer under his skin was impossible to ignore. Harold's eyes followed until they disappeared into the rear of the formation, shielded from sight.

At last, the platoon gathered what they could. The dead were carried on shoulders, the loot in sacks and satchels, the wounded dragged by their comrades step for step.

They turned from the altar chamber, their torches dim in the smoky air, and began the long march back toward the surface. Repeating the process with walled room they had beaten earlier.

At last, the platoon gathered what they could. The dead were carried on shoulders, the loot in sacks and satchels, the wounded dragged by their comrades step for step.

They turned from the altar chamber, torches guttering low in the smoky air, and began the long march back toward the surface—retracing every bloody footstep. When they reached the walled chamber they had broken through before, the work began again. Shields raised, teams set, each corner pried over for traps or lingering foes. The process repeated, grim and mechanical, as if the dungeon itself might reach back for them the moment they faltered.

No victory songs. No cheers. Only the steady scrape of boots, the weight of the dead, and the clink of scavenged arms rattling in their sacks as they carried it all out.

The dungeon spat them back into daylight.

The first breath of cold air stung their lungs, sharp and clean after the stifling press below. Smoke and blood clung to their clothes, but the sight of the sky above, the forest shrouded by darkness and snow, steadied hearts that had been clenched too long in the dark.

Harold stood just beyond the mouth of the dungeon, boots planted in the churned mud, and waited as the last of the platoon filed out. The wounded were lowered to the ground, cloaks spread for them to rest upon. The dead were laid in rows, their faces shrouded, their comrades' eyes refusing to leave them even as the tally grew.

"Council, with me." Harold's voice was steady, though the storm still flickered faintly in his veins.

Daran came first, his armor split, his shield dented, his body a map of fresh scars carved over old. He said nothing, simply stood at Harold's right, eyes already scanning for order in the mess.

Kelan followed, leaning on his pick, his stone armor cracked and crumbling. His jaw was tight, his eyes bloodshot but burning with stubborn fire.

Lira came next, pale and exhausted, the boy still resting against her side under Master Olrick's watchful eye. Her hands shook faintly as she brushed ash from her tunic, but her gaze was hard.

Ferin and Auren joined them, bows slung, hounds nosing at their heels. The Shield Sergeant and her unit closed in around Harold again, shields locked even outside the dungeon.

"Report," Harold said.

Daran's jaw worked once before he spoke. "Ten recruits dead, including the two from the wall. All the rest carry wounds—some worse than others. They fought like men, but the dungeon took its price."

"Two miners down," Kelan added, voice low. "They died pulling a berserker off my flank. Brave as any soldier."

The axe brothers stepped forward together, their weapons still stained, their faces drawn. One's cheek was split by a deep new scar, the wound stitched roughly shut, leaving him distinct from his twin at last. He said nothing, only nodded once when Harold's eyes lingered.

The silence stretched, heavy with names unspoken.

Harold's gaze swept the line of survivors—bloodied, limping, scarred, but alive. They had gone into the dungeon as a mix of recruits, irregulars, and outcasts. They had come out as something harder. Something proven.

He drew a breath, exhaled slow, and spoke so all could hear.

"We'll remember the fallen when we get back. We keep what we took from the dark."

For a moment, his own words brought him back—to the march into the dungeon, when he had told them that trials broke men or forged them. Then, it had been a promise. Now, looking at the scarred faces before him, it was truth.

The line straightened, the survivors meeting his gaze with weary nods.

The dungeon was behind them. The dead were carried with them. And the boy's strange fate waited ahead.

The march back was slow. Every man carried weight—on his shoulders, in his arms, or in his heart. The wounded groaned, the dead swayed on litters, and the sacks of scavenged loot rattled with each weary step.

Harold drifted toward Lira, who walked unsteady with the boy cradled against her chest. Her frame was slight, her strength nearly spent. Without a word, he slid an arm around her, steadying her gait. She didn't protest, only leaned into the support with a faint sigh.

"You shouldn't be carrying more than you can bear," Harold said softly, his tone edged with something more protective than commanding.

Her lips twitched in a weary smile. "And yet I do."

He huffed at that, half a laugh. "Was it alright? For me to ask this much of you?" The words slipped out rougher than he intended, as if he weren't the commander but some young man fumbling through concern.

She turned her head, studying him through sweat-matted hair. "You sound like you're barely into your twenties, worrying over me. You forget—you're Calamity."

Harold's eyes darkened with something she couldn't read. If only she knew. Seventy years weighed on him behind that question, another lifetime of failures and regrets. But here, in this place, he could only offer her the face of a man much younger, much more fragile.

Ahead, Master Olrick walked with the boy. The ropes were gone, but the weight on his shoulders was worse. Every man who passed threw glares sharp enough to cut. Some looked at him with open suspicion, others with barely masked hate. A boy who had nearly cost them all, who had been spared not by his own worth but by Lira's fury.

The boy kept his eyes down, stumbling every few paces, but Olrick's hand on his arm kept him upright. The gnome's face was pale, his stride uneven, yet his grip never wavered. He didn't allow the boy to fall.

System prompts filled Harold's vision.

He dismissed them all with a blink. Another came, then another. He shoved them away. Not now.

Behind him, the axe brothers trudged, one of them with his new scar raw across his cheek. His twin nudged him with an elbow. "Well, at least now we know which of us is the ugly one."

Brenn snorted, though it came out ragged. "Ugly's still better than dead and I bet miss Lira can pretty that up for you."

The miners walked in grim silence, their picks dark with blood. Every so often, one spat to the side, the sound sharp in the hush.

Daran moved along the column, checking wounds, checking pace, his voice calm but firm. He bore new scars himself, a fresh line down his jaw, crimson staining the edges of his armor. Still, he never let his stride falter.

The Shield Sergeant's team stayed locked around Harold, shields still prepared though the dungeon was behind them now. He caught the sergeant's glance once—stern, unyielding—and for the first time, he let it stand.

More notifications pulsed across his vision.

He brushed them away, focusing instead on the bent backs, the weary faces, the men and women who had followed him in and bled to come out again.

"Home," Harold muttered under his breath, quiet enough that no one else could hear. "Just get them home."

The valley opened before them at last, smoke curling from hearthfires, the sight of the settlement breaking the weight of the dungeon. The column staggered in, bloodied but alive, and the shout of children carried over the wind.

They came rushing down the slope barefoot, eyes wide, their small voices calling for fathers, brothers, sisters. Daran barely had time to brace before his four little ones barreled into his legs, clinging to him like they'd never let go. His scarred hand dropped to their hair, rough and gentle at once, his face unreadable beneath the weight of fresh wounds.

Brenn knelt as his children reached him, his wife Meala right behind them. She took one look at his blood-slick tunic and pressed her lips tight, eyes wet but steady. She didn't scold. She didn't speak. She simply touched his cheek, then turned to gather the children at her side.

Others ran not to their kin but to Master Olrick and Lira. The gnome leaned heavy on his staff, guiding the boy at his side. Lira looked pale, her hands still trembling, but her presence alone drew hands reaching, voices crying thanks.

Then a sharper voice cut through the din.

A girl on the cusp of sixteen stormed forward, eyes blazing. She pointed straight at the boy. "You idiot! Look what you caused! Ten dead—do you even understand? You think the dungeon is a game? You think we can afford your foolishness?"

The boy flinched, his shoulders curling in as the glares turned sharper.

Olrick lifted a hand, his voice quiet but firm. "Not now." The girl faltered, biting her lip. The weight of his words carried, and silence spread like a balm.

Meala's voice rose next, steady, the tone of a mother who had always been more than mother to her own. "Inside. All of you." She herded them toward the longhouse, children clutching their fathers' hands, men limping with the wounded, women supporting those too weak to stand. The smell of stew already clung to her clothes, and her presence was as grounding as stone.

The dead were laid outside the longhouse in ordered rows, cloaks covering their faces. A low fire was lit nearby, its smoke carrying to the sky in thin lines.

Loot and supplies were dropped in piles at the foot of Rynar's tent. He was already there, quill scratching, muttering to himself as he catalogued spears, armor, and coin even before the blood had dried.

The settlement folded around the survivors, grief and relief tangled into one. For tonight there would be food, and mourning, and the quiet miracle that more had returned than had not.