Round 15

The stones groaned again, deeper this time—a sound like something vast and heavy shifting inside the tower walls. The gate's runes pulsed faster now, their hungry light intensifying as if responding to the proximity of living flesh. Jeane stepped back instinctively, her wings rustling with sudden tension. "Did you hear that?" she hissed, eyes fixed on the seams where the massive stone doors met. "Something moved in there." The heavy footsteps were closer now, rhythmic and deliberate—something large approaching the far side of the barrier.

Merrin froze mid-reach for her lockpicks, fingers hovering just above the cold metal. She glanced at Jeane, then at Halie, her expression caught between curiosity and apprehension. "That wasn't the wind," she muttered, voice barely audible. The halfling's hand drifted away from her tools, instead reaching for the small dagger at her belt—a weapon more useful against living threats than mechanical ones.

Halie moved to stand beside Merrin, her hand closing around the human woman's shoulder in a gesture of solidarity. Her blue-grey eyes were wide with concern, but her voice remained steady when she spoke. "Whatever it is, we need to be ready. Varrika—" She broke off as the footsteps stopped on the other side of the gate, mere feet away. A low rumble echoed through the stone, like a voice too deep for human ears trying to form words.

Seraphine took a half-step back without thinking, her hand coming up in a gesture that would have summoned protective wards if she'd completed it. Instead, she let her fingers fall back to her side, clenching into a fist. Her dark eyes darted between the pulsating runes and the ominous silence beyond the barrier. "If that thing breaks through," she whispered, more to herself than anyone else, "we need to know what we're dealing with before it's too late." The wizard's gaze fixed on the lock mechanism Merrin had been examining moments before—a complex array of runes surrounding a central ward-breaker symbol that glowed faintly with trapped power.