The smell reached them before they saw anything on the ridge — wrong for the high plateau, sharp and sour. Loki’s ears flattened; Nibbles covered his nose.

“That’s not mushrooms,” he said.

They found the source just off the path: half a goblin, torn clean through the middle, lying in the grass as though dropped from a great height. No tracks led to or from it.

Dave looked up at the empty sky, where yesterday a black dragon had circled and something had fallen.

“That was what dropped,” Derek said quietly.

“I don’t think we’re the biggest thing up here,” Dave said.

Thorn checked his axe and led them over the rise.

Beyond the ridge, the ruined tower appeared before midday — a broken spire of ancient Ethium stonework on a low crest west of the great hill. Its upper floors were long gone, shattered into a crown of jagged stone, but the base remained stubbornly upright. Pale ashlar blocks, near-white and smooth as dressed marble, were hand-carved with faded Ethium runes along the lower courses, catching the sun in thin geometric grooves. At the front, the grand arched portal that had once formed the tower’s main gateway lay completely choked — the great keystone cracked through, the arch collapsed under an avalanche of heavy masonry and iron-hard mortar, leaving only a narrow breach near the buttress where a camp was tucked.

---

The camp was tucked against the tower’s northern wall, hidden by a fallen buttress and thornbushes. From a distance it looked like any bandit stop — rough tents, a cookfire, men in patched cloaks arguing over dice.

“Travellers,” Derek murmured. “Nothing more.”

“Travellers with excellent cover,” Nibbles said.

An arrow struck the ground at Thorn’s feet. Archers in the trees — two, then three — had them pinned from above. At the camp, the dice game ended; men grabbed clubs and short swords, spreading out with practised ease.

“Stand where you are!” one shouted. “Drop your coin and we’ll let you walk!”

Thorn looked at Derek. Derek looked at the trees.

“Now,” Thorn said.

They moved.

Loki went for the nearest thug. Thorn met two more head-on, shield up, axe swinging. Dave ducked behind a fallen block and began a spell. Nibbles vanished into the brush towards the archers — exactly where the trouble started, since one man by the fire was faster than he looked.

He wore a dark hood and moved like oil, slipping through the camp while Thorn held the line, and broke for the tower’s doorway.

“Stop him!” Derek shouted.

Nibbles threw his dagger; it missed by inches. The hooded man glanced back — cold eyes, a thin smile — and lunged for the stairwell.

Thorn was faster, catching the man at the threshold and driving him into the stone with his shield. Derek was on him in a heartbeat, wrenching his arms behind his back while Loki barked in his face.

The remaining fighters were Hammers in all but name — heavy boots, brutal swings, no discipline. The archers in the branches broke when Dave’s magic struck their roost; those on the ground were swiftly disarmed and driven back against the stone wall by Thorn’s axe and Loki’s fierce lunges.

Within minutes, the fight was over. Dispatched as a threat, the surviving thugs were bound securely with their own camp rope against the fallen buttress, their weapons confiscated and hurled far down the steep slope of the ridge so none could raise an alarm or follow from behind.

Derek rolled the hooded leader over and tugged open his collar: a small iron hammer on a leather cord.

“Hammers,” he said.

“Bandits with jewellery,” Nibbles said, retrieving his dagger. “How disappointing. I was hoping for treasure.”

Thorn searched the tents while Derek finished knotting the last prisoner fast: coiled rope, iron pitons, leather harnesses, a grappling hook. Crude climbing kit, but sound — they packed what would fit.

At the tower door, stone steps descended into darkness. From far below came muffled voices — a deep growl, then a frightened reply. The camp fight had been loud, but the stone had swallowed most of it; whoever waited in the depths had no idea anyone else had reached the tower.

Nibbles peered into the black. “They don’t know we’re here.”

“Good,” Thorn said. “Quiet steps.”

---

The spiral stair was narrow and damp, cut from pale Ethium blocks so well dressed the joints might have been laid yesterday. Ornate carvings ran along the walls, the work of hands that had cared about beauty as well as strength. The air grew colder with every turn.

At a landing where the stair opened into a side passage, the stonework changed, older and grittier — a corner heaped with sludge, rotted wood and the debris of looters who’d come decades too early and never left.

Nibbles saw something glint in the muck — as he always did — and was reaching before Thorn could tell him not to.

“Shiny,” Nibbles said.

A hand shot from the rubble and seized his wrist. Another followed, and a whole body dragged itself upright — a forlorn figure in tatters of old leather, slumped awkwardly in the alcove corner as though sitting on an invisible bucket. A tarnished copper necklace glinted at its throat, and in its stiff grip it held a fine steel axe. Two more shambling forms rose beside it, eyes burning with a pale, unliving light.

“Adventurers,” Derek said grimly. “Old ones.”

The fight in the alcove was close and foul, the zombies slow but relentless, the stink of them worse than their claws. Thorn cracked one apart with his axe. Derek shattered another’s skull. Nibbles, freed at last, darted behind the axe-bearer and knocked its legs out, leaving it propped stiffly against the wall, mouth agape and eyes staring with a strangely sad, pathetic expression.

Thorn pried the glinting weapon from its fingers: a battleaxe, finely made, the head etched with an old Ethium rune. The metal was sound and had not rusted, but there was no blue gleam, no hum — only the mark, as though the blade were waiting.

“Ethium work,” Derek said, examining the head. “The rune is carved, but the magic is dormant.”

“Still a fine edge,” Thorn said, testing the balance with a nod of approval and slinging it through his weapon belt.

Nibbles watched Thorn claim the axe with a pout, then looked back down at the slumped, defeated figure. He unhooked the tarnished copper necklace from its throat, examined it, then fastened it right back around the creature’s neck. He poked one of its sturdy leather boots.

“If Thorn gets the axe, we’re keeping him,” Nibbles declared.

Derek stared at him in utter disbelief. “He’s a zombie, Nibbles.”

“He has a very sad face,” Nibbles said defensively. “And excellent boots! Besides, Thorn gets a shiny new axe and has Loki. Dave gets Peggy. Derek summons glowing hammers. I got no loot and I want a companion.”

“He is not loot, he’s a corpse,” Dave said, backing away with a hand clamped over his snout. “And he smells like a clogged pigsty.”

“He smells of pure poop,” Derek agreed, nostrils flaring. “Absolute manure.”

“His name is Joe,” Nibbles said stubbornly, grabbing the slumped figure under the arms. “Poopy Joe. And he’s coming with us. Help me haul him down.”

Derek groaned, rubbing his forehead in despair, but grabbed the stiff leather boots. “If Poopy Joe tries to bite anyone, I am healing him last.”

They propped Poopy Joe upright in the corner of the landing for safekeeping, then crept down a second winding flight of stone stairs. The steps descended deep beneath the tower’s foundations, ending at a massive Ethium stone doorway set into the solid rock. Engineered with extraordinary precision, the thick stone slabs turned on masterfully crafted counterweight hinges, gliding silently despite their massive weight. The depth of the descent and the solid stone door had muffled all noise from above; inside, the occupiers remained completely unaware of the fight on the landing.

Thorn gently pushed the heavy stone portal ajar, peering through the gap.

The doorway opened into a broad chamber walled in pale stone, every block hand-carved with runes — lines, curves and old Ethium symbols crawling up the walls and across the floor, dormant and colourless. Papers, books and copied diagrams lay scattered everywhere, kicked aside and trampled alongside brass lenses, ticking copper callipers and little gnome tinkering devices meant for measuring magical currents.

A large orc in battered armour loomed over a young adult gnome kneeling on the stone floor — short and scruffy-looking, with a wild mop of bright red hair sticking up in all directions. His eyes darted nervously behind round spectacles between the runes on the floor and a leather-bound folder of parchment sheets he was frantically writing in, an ink-dipped quill clutched in his trembling hand and a fine charcoal pencil for sketching tucked behind one ear. Two Hammer thugs flanked the far wall.

“Read it again,” the orc snarled.

“I did read it again — the angle is wrong, the light is wrong, your shadow is blocking the copper dial —”

The orc raised a meaty fist.

“Now,” Thorn said, and charged.

The orc jerked round with a roar, plainly startled — it had been bullying the young gnome, not watching the stair door. The thugs scrambled for weapons they had barely time to raise. The red-haired gnome threw himself flat behind a fallen pillar, clutching his leather folder and brass measuring lenses, muttering that he’d said this might awaken something, oh dear, oh dear. Then an orc backhand nearly caught Derek, and something snapped in the little fellow’s terror.

“Look out!” he squeaked — and suddenly there were two Derek’s, one stepping left, one right, both confusing the thug who’d been about to swing.

“Helpful!” Derek called.

“I know! I’m sorry! I’m still sorry!”

The young gnome scrambled up from behind the pillar, spectacles flashing, and thrust out both hands. A firebolt cracked across the chamber and struck the nearest Hammer thug in the chest. The man yelped and dropped his club. The red-haired gnome fired again — less steady, but the second bolt scorched the orc’s shoulder and made it roar with pain and fury.

Thorn drove the orc back with heavy blows. Nibbles appeared behind the thug the gnome had burned and did what he did best. Dave sent a sleep spell straight into the other thug’s face — simple, but remarkably effective. Loki seized the orc’s leg and hung on like a dog who’d found something worth keeping.

When the fight ended, the orc lay unconscious, the thugs groaned, and the red-haired gnome sat slumped on the stone floor among his scattered parchment sheets and brass dials, spectacles askew, panting as though he had just sprinted for his life.

“I’m Garnel,” he said eventually, wiping ink from his fingers. “Garnel Stoneblender. Thank you. I think. Are you real? Both of you?” He pointed at Derek.

“One of me is,” Derek said.

“The Hammers took me in Sunfall,” Garnel said, the words tumbling out as though he’d been waiting days to say them to someone not threatening to hit him. “They found my grandmother’s book — Mala Stoneblender, who researched the Ethium Stones before anyone thought they were waking — and pressganged me to unlock everything she knew about Ethium. They brought me up here to map these ruins, starting with this chamber. Every rune on the wall, every line on the floor.” He looked at his scattered parchment sheets. “This room is as far as they’ve forced me to work. They’re too afraid of what’s below.”

“What’s below?” Thorn asked.

“The pool chamber.” Garnel swallowed. “Grandmother wrote about it — an ancient Ethium pool older than the Hammers, older than Fallcrest. She called it a sacred place of restoration, but the Hammers were too terrified to go down there. They said something unnatural was waiting.”

---

They went down together.

The stair beyond Garnel’s chamber had partly collapsed, leaving a gap bridged by a single rotten plank. Nibbles stopped at once.

“Trap,” he said.

Derek studied the walls. Thorn studied the ceiling. Garnel peered nervously over the edge and said, “There is almost certainly a —”

The click was very small.

The maul swung from a chain in the shadows with the patient malice of a mechanism that had waited years. Thorn pulled Nibbles back by the collar. It smashed into the plank, which cracked and sagged over the chasm, dust raining into the dark below.

“Nobody walk on that,” Derek said.

Thorn uncoiled the rope looted from the camp above, drove a piton into sound stone, and made the line fast. One by one they crossed above the chasm, boots finding the far side while the plank groaned on its nails.

“Glad we kept that rope,” Nibbles said, the moment his feet were on solid stone again.

“I know,” Thorn said.

He wedged the pressure plate with a piece of iron, and the maul hung still, grumbling on its chain.

Beyond the plank, the passage opened at last into a chamber that took everyone’s breath away.

The room was wide and pale, floored in smooth Ethium stone. At its centre the floor dropped away in broad steps, like a bathing pool sunken into the earth. Water entered from somewhere unseen and filled the basin below, glowing faintly blue, pulsing like a slow heartbeat — old magic held in the water, not the rock. Four pillars stood around the pool, one at each corner, each carved with a socket meant for an Ethium Stone. Three of them held stones already, pale grey and blue-veined, humming with a dormant light. The fourth socket stood empty.

On the eastern wall, a corridor that must once have led deeper into the ruins had collapsed. Rubble filled the opening to the ceiling — a cave-in of pale blocks and dark earth, sealed tight. Thorn could not tell how far the passage had run before it fell, or what lay beyond.

Beside the nearest pillar stood a makeshift table built from a fallen slab and broken crates. On it lay a crumbling leather book, scattered iron callipers, and loose notes covered in cramped script — alongside the fourth Ethium Stone, taken from its pillar and set among the papers as though someone had been studying it. A silent figure in rotted robes centuries out of fashion sat behind the table, head bowed, perfectly still — not a recent prisoner of the Hammers, but something that had waited here since long before Garnel’s grandmother was born.

The pool chamber — pale pillars, a sunken pool, and something in the far corner that had waited a very long time.

Garnel stopped in the doorway, eyes wide behind his spectacles. “That’s… that’s not in Grandmother’s notes. Don’t touch anything — don’t wake it!”

The figure lifted its head.

The face beneath the hood was withered and wrong — a man dead for hundreds of years, eyes lit by the same pale fire the zombies had carried. Ethium energy crawled along his skin like veins of cold light. In life he had been an ancient scholar of Ethium who tried to force the pool’s magic to his will. The magic had corrupted him instead, and death had not finished the work.

“You,” the thing said, in a voice like stone grinding on stone, dry with centuries. “More thieves.”

It rose. Two zombies shambled from alcoves behind the makeshift table. The wizard raised one hand; a pulse of pale light rippled outward, enough to make the air shiver and the three stones in the pillars flare in answer.

The fight was the hardest they’d faced since leaving Fallcrest. The wizard fought with spells that tasted of Ethium — bursts of light, distortions that tilted the chamber, commands that pulled at the stones in Thorn’s pack — while the zombies pressed from the sides. Derek held the line, Dave hurled potatoes and fire, Nibbles darted and stabbed, and Garnel conjured illusions of falling stone that bought precious seconds.

Thorn drove forward and struck deep with his axe. The wizard screamed — half memory, half magic — and struck back with a pulse that dropped Thorn to one knee. Derek healed him; Dave’s fire seared the wizard’s robe; Loki latched onto a zombie’s leg and didn’t let go.

At the last, the wizard’s form came apart, light leaking from his eyes and mouth and the cracks in his skin. He raised both hands to hold himself together, failed, and burst outward in a wave of Ethium energy that threw everyone from their feet.

Nibbles, closest of all, hit the wall and slid down without getting up.

“Nibbles!” Dave shouted.

Derek was already moving, hands on the rogue’s shoulders. Light flowed. Breath returned. Nibbles coughed, swore, and opened his eyes.

”…I’m fine,” he said unconvincingly.

The chamber was quiet at last. The wizard was gone — scattered dust and a fading glow above the sunken pool, the last corruption of a man who had died centuries before any of them were born. His great book on the makeshift table crumbled to ash at a touch; the zombies lay still. But his loose notes had survived, pinned under tools and the fourth Ethium Stone where he had left them.

Garnel picked his way down the steps into the pool chamber, one hand on the nearest pillar for balance.

“Four stones,” he said softly, looking from pillar to pillar. “Grandmother wrote about this — power in the sockets, water from somewhere else, a source beyond the cave, she thought. He’d taken one out.” He lifted the stone from the wizard’s table with both hands, careful and reverent, and set it into the empty socket on the fourth pillar.

Blue light ran through the carved channels in the pale stone. All four stones answered at once. The pool below brightened, its pulse steadying, warm and deep, like a breath held and released.

Garnel spoke two words Thorn had heard once before in a Fallcrest tavern — careful, reverent, slightly mispronounced. “Vaelum Thrae.”

The water answered, warmth rolling out across the chamber. The bruises on Thorn’s arms ached less; Dave felt the tiredness of three days’ fighting and travelling ease from his bones. Even Loki, unhurt, sighed and lay down with his tongue out.

“The pool works,” Garnel whispered. “She was right. Mala was right about all of it.”

Derek tested the water with his fingers, sitting on the top step of the sunken pool. “Healing?”

“Once a day, I think — bathe properly, and it mends what the road has done.”

Garnel gathered the wizard’s surviving notes from the table and read by the pool’s light, lips moving as his spectacles slid down his nose.

“It’s all here,” Garnel whispered, wiping charcoal dust from his face. “He was an ancient wizard from centuries ago — long before the Ethium Stones started to wake again. He was experimenting on the pool’s magic, trying to force it to his will. He captured wandering adventurers and used them as test subjects…”

Nibbles glanced toward the upper stair. “The alcove zombies. Including Poopy Joe.”

Garnel paused, raised a single eyebrow over his spectacles, and stared at the rogue for a long moment. “Er… yes. Quite. In any case, the wizard’s dark experiments corrupted the pool’s waters and turned his captives into undead. Eventually the corruption took him too, binding his corpse here. The pool water was tainted by his dark magic until we set the fourth stone and cleansed it.”

He turned the parchment sheet over to a charcoal sketch. “And he knew there was more. Look at this…” Garnel held up the sketch — a corridor running east from the pool, marked with small circles Garnel recognised at once as stone sockets. “Chambers beyond the collapse. More stones, he thought — or places built to hold them. He never got through.” He looked towards the rubble heaped against the eastern wall. “Neither did anyone else, by the look of it.”

Thorn studied the cave-in. Pale blocks and earth filled the opening completely, but the shape of a passage was still visible beneath the fall — buried, not gone.

“We could dig,” he said.

“We should,” Dave agreed, too tired to sound as eager as he meant to.

“Not tonight,” Derek said. “Tonight we rest. Tomorrow we see what’s on the other side of that rubble.”

Nobody argued. They had food rations and rope looted from the camp above, weapons, and a healing pool at their backs. That was enough to start with in the morning.

Thorn unslung the rune-marked battleaxe from his belt and held it out. Garnel took it carefully, tracing the etched lines with one finger.

“Grandmother wrote about blades like this,” he said. “The rune is cut into the steel, but the magic sleeps until you wake it with Ethium — a stone, a socket, the right words. We’ll work out how.”

“Later,” Thorn said.

They made camp where the air was warm and the water glowed gently, the collapsed corridor a dark heap at the edge of the light, and for the first time since the wolves on the river road, nobody felt the need to sleep with a hand on a weapon.

Outside, far above the plateau, the ruined tower stood against the stars.

Somewhere beyond the rubble to the east, old chambers waited — and old magic stirred.