The novice ranks shuffled, a herd of anxious lambs driven towards a chasm. Director Valdas’s gaunt silhouette loomed motionless while the proctors barked orders. “Form lines! Torches up! Flasks ready! Move!” Ignas kept his gaze on Rasa, who clutched a sputtering, oil-soaked torch, its meager flame barely cutting through the oppressive damp that clung to the air. Her knuckles were white on the brass ring, her pupils dilated as she tracked the shifting vapor. Saule, a few paces ahead, had already retrieved her equipment, her posture rigid, her amber eyes scanning the antechamber for threats not yet visible. “Forward! No dawdling!” A proctor shoved a trembling student, sending him stumbling towards the gaping maw of a subterranean gallery. The entrance was a rough-hewn archway, devoid of warding symbols, its depths choked with a mist far thicker than the usual citadel fog. It smelled of wet stone, decaying matter, and something metallic, like stale blood. Ignas felt the familiar thrum of the Whispering Crucible in his mind, a low hum beneath the rising fear. It was a cold promise of power, yet he dared not tap into it openly, not yet. He needed to be the useless freshman, the target, the fool. He needed to be Ignas Veliura, the incompetent. They descended, a straggling column of faint torchlight against absolute black. The air grew heavier, the mist denser, clinging to their clothes and hair, muffling their desperate whispers. The limestone walls wept with cold, mineral-laden water. Every few steps, the crunch of loose gravel underfoot seemed to echo infinitely into the oppressive silence, punctuated only by the occasional, distant skittering sound. After twenty agonizing minutes, the passage widened into a vast, cavernous chamber. Here, the mist wasn't merely atmospheric; it was a living, swirling entity, reducing visibility to mere feet. Shapes loomed and dissolved in the shifting vapor. The floor was uneven, littered with collapsed masonry and treacherous puddles of unknown depth. A low, guttural moan rumbled somewhere ahead, vibrating through the stone beneath their boots. “Stay together!” Saule’s voice cut through the rising panic, surprisingly steady. “Hold your flasks! We don’t know what’s out there. The vitriol might deter them.” Just as she spoke, a grating, metallic screech tore through the gloom. It wasn’t a human sound, nor a beast’s. It was the sound of heavy stone grinding against itself. A collective gasp rose from the novices as, looking back, they saw the archway they had entered through slowly, inexorably, grind shut. Massive, intricately carved rune-stones, previously invisible in the antechamber's shadows, glowed with a faint, malevolent crimson as they slid into place, sealing the only way out. A sickening *thud* reverberated through the corridor as the final stone locked. The crimson glow winked out. They were trapped. Valdas had not merely sent them in; he had walled them in. The implication was clear: they were not expected to return. Panic erupted. A few students screamed, their voices swallowed almost immediately by the dense fog. Others began to sob. Rasa stumbled, her torch dipping precariously. Ignas snatched her wrist, his teeth clicking together as fury spiked behind his temples. “Silence!” Saule’s voice cracked like a whip. Her face, illuminated by her torch, was stark with fear, but her eyes held a spark of defiant resolve. “Panicking helps no one! Form a circle! Backs to the wall!” She pointed towards a relatively clear section of the cavern wall. “We’ll use the vitriol when something gets close! We have to hold until the upper-years arrive!” *If they arrive at all,* Ignas thought, his gaze sweeping the swirling mist, searching, not for danger, but for the *exact* angle of its approach. He knew these catacombs. Knew the monsters that lurked. This wasn't a standard Grave-Spine Crawler hunt. This was a culling. The air grew colder, thick with an acrid, metallic tang. A soft, wet *thump-thump-thump* echoed, growing louder, closer. It was a heavy gait, something low to the ground, something powerful. “Hear that?” a novice whimpered. “It’s getting—” Before he could finish, a monstrous shape burst from the churning mist. It was a Marrow-Hound, but warped, corrupted. Its fur was patchy, matted with glowing crystalline growths that pulsed with a sickly green light. Its four legs were too thick, ending in claws like obsidian daggers, and its head was a nightmarish fusion of canine and insectoid, dripping with iridescent ichor. Two sets of eyes, one compound and multifaceted, the other milky white, fixed on Rasa. It moved with terrifying speed, a blurred green-black missile. Rasa froze, her torch falling from her grasp, the flame sputtering out as it hit a puddle. She remained paralyzed, locked onto the charging beast. Rage flared through Ignas's skull, hot and immediate. He’d seen Saule die once. He wouldn’t let his sister face the same fate. The 'incompetent freshman' façade shattered in a millisecond. His body moved, a blur, pushing Rasa behind him. He didn’t think. He didn’t hesitate. [Hesitation breeds agonizing phantom pain in your veins. Embrace the Crucible's whispers.] His hand, hidden by the swirling mist and the general panic, snapped open, palm facing the charging beast. He didn’t utter an incantation. He didn’t draw on ambient energy. He simply *willed* it. A flash, impossibly bright, erupted from his open palm, silent and searing. It was a pure, concentrated burst of destructive alchemy, channeled directly from the Crucible’s arcane heart. The air shimmered, distorting, then *rippled* with an impossible heat. The beast, mid-lunge, didn't even have time to shriek. It simply *vanished*. Not exploded, not disintegrated. Vaporized. The very atoms of its corrupted flesh and bone ripped apart, leaving behind only a smoking, perfectly circular crater in the stone floor, and at its center, a single, pulsating shard of emerald-green ossified crystal, too volatile to be anything but the core of the beast. The blinding flash was over as quickly as it began, plunging the immediate area into deeper darkness, though the residual glow of the crystal shard pulsed erratically. The other novices, momentarily blinded by the light and disoriented by the chaos, were shouting, stumbling, their torches casting wild, dancing shadows. No one had seen Ignas’s action, only the result. Only the sudden, violent end of the threat. He knelt, swift and silent, before the others could recover their vision. His fingers snapped down, seizing the hot core from the crater. It was hot, almost burning, but he felt no pain, only the quiet satisfaction of a grim task completed. This was it. The material he needed for the first stages of the God-Slaying Elixir. He slipped it into a concealed pouch beneath his tunic, the warmth of it radiating against his skin. He turned, expecting to resume his role as the trembling freshman, to let the others assume the beast had simply… self-destructed in the fog. But Saule was standing there, a few feet away, her own torch casting long shadows across her face. Her eyes, now adjusted, were not wide with fear, but narrowed, fixed on the faint wisp of smoke still curling from the crater, then back to Ignas’s seemingly empty hands. “You didn’t trip, did you? You cast that.”

Descent into the Catacombs