Round 26

The manor house spire ground to its final rotation above them with an audible tearing of wood and stone—something structural giving way under immense pressure. The figure descended faster now, grappling equipment retracting in controlled drops until it...

Silra crouched beside the exposed mechanism—the ward stones were obviously hidden in plain sight—and traced connections between components, trying to understand exactly what kind of system this was before it killed them all. But every stone served different purpose in sequence: some channeled energy upward toward the spire, others fed a grid below ground level, and a few seemed designed as... feeding stations? For what? The manor house groaned overhead—creaking wood and grinding stone as its mechanisms engaged beneath the architecture.

Jeane wouldn't run from this—not when her own bloodline was tangled deeper in these ruins than she'd imagined possible. The stones were cracking in sequence too precisely for random damage; someone had designed this horror to function exactly like this. The creature climbing through solid stone wasn't natural, but it was very real and speaking with purpose rather than hunger-driven rage. And the manor house groaning overhead? That felt like something worse waking up above them while whatever slept beneath Gravehill responded to disturbance.

Sister Hale moved forward aggressively despite her horror—something in her cleric training driving her toward confrontation instead of flight. But Silra was right; this thing was ancient and intelligent enough to build entire infrastructure around its containment. The stones were cracking faster now, less than thirty seconds before the whole system collapsed.