Round 29

The corridor bled darkness into their souls—ancient magic seeping from the stone itself, thick and suffocating like grave soil packed too tight. The walls pulsed with symbols that writhed when you weren't looking directly at them, feeding some unseen thing deep within the tower's bowels. Halie stumbled backward instinctively, her silver cross catching what little light remained as she whispered something divine for protection.

"This isn't right," she breathed, eyes wide with genuine fear. "This is... deliberate. Cultivated." The magic here tasted wrong—like something had bled into the stone itself and left its essence behind to rot. Each pulse of those symbols seemed to drain the warmth from the air around them, leaving only a thick malevolence that coated their skin like oil.

Seraphine moved forward with predatory grace despite her exhaustion, sharp eyes tracing the intricate patterns carved into the stone. "These sigils serve as conduits," she murmured, more to herself than anyone else. "Feeding power to something far worse than mere undead taint." Her fingers hovered just above the surface without touching—too much residual energy even for an elf scholar accustomed to dangerous arcana.

Jeane felt it too—the demonic signature layered over whatever ancient magic had come first. This was no simple haunting; this was a feeding ground for something that had been awake far too long, and it was hungry. The air tasted of blood and fear and old power, thick with the promise of violence. She knew that magic when she sensed it—this was her kind of corruption, but on a scale that made even her demonic blood run cold.

They needed to move carefully or whatever was sleeping down there would wake up hungry. And if that happened, none of them would leave this place alive.