The Harvesters came in a wave.
Kaelen moved before thought, his body answering the call of instinct. The first creature fell to a thrown dagger, the second to a sweep of the crystal bow's limb. He was a blur not fast, not yet, but efficient. Every strike found a throat. Every dodge carried him clear of reaching claws.
Lysander fought beside him.
The Duke's blade was nothing special to look at a simple longsword, dark steel, unadorned. But in his hands, it became something else. He did not swing wildly or hack at limbs. He pierced. Each thrust was economical, precise, aimed at the exact point where a Harvester's parchment skin stretched thinnest. They unraveled at the touch of his steel, dust spraying into the dead air.
Between them, the cultists huddled in a tight knot, Silvara at their head. She had found a broken spear from somewhere one of the dungeon's discarded weapons and held it with trembling hands.
"Move!" Kaelen shouted, gesturing toward the far side of the depression. "Toward the tower!"
The tower had not been visible before. Now it rose from the darkness beyond the core a spire of black stone, jagged and crooked, leaning at an angle that defied physics. Its surface was covered in carvings that seemed to writhe when Kaelen looked at them directly. Teeth. Thousands of teeth, carved in stone, interlocking like a puzzle made of molars and canines and the flat grinding teeth of herbivores.
The Tower of Teeth.
The Watcher stood before it, still wearing its child-skin, its too-long hands clasped behind its back. It did not join the fight. It watched, head tilted, mouth curved in a smile that did not reach its empty eyes.
"Run," the voice whispered, from the core, from the air, from the inside of Kaelen's skull. "Run to the tower. It will not save you."
Kaelen grabbed Lysander's arm and pulled. "Go. Now."
They ran.
The tower's entrance was a gaping archway shaped like an open mouth.
The cultists stumbled through first, Silvara dragging the unconscious young man by his collar. Kaelen followed, daggers still wet with ichor, and Lysander brought up the rear, his sword tracing slow, deliberate arcs that discouraged pursuit.
The Harvesters stopped at the threshold. They did not enter, they stood in a half-circle, heads bowed, as if in worship.
The Watcher did not follow either. It remained outside, its child-face tilted up toward the tower's peak, and its smile widened.
"Inside," it whispered. "Inside, the real hunger waits."
Then the archway sealed itself with a grinding of stone teeth, and they were in darkness.
Lysander's silver light flared to life, illuminating the tower's interior.
It was not a room. It was a shaft a vertical tunnel that stretched up into impossible heights and down into impossible depths. The walls were the same black stone, covered in tooth carvings, but here the teeth moved. Slowly, grinding against each other, producing a low, rhythmic sound like a giant chewing.
The floor beneath their feet was not stone. It was a tongue. Wide, flat, pale grey, pulsing with a slow, wet rhythm.
The cultists screamed.
Kaelen forced himself to breathe. It's just a dungeon, he told himself.
But the tongue was warm through the soles of his bare feet, and it moved, subtly, as if tasting them.
"We need to go up," Lysander said. He was already scanning the walls, looking for handholds, ledges, anything. "The core is below. The exit will be above."
Kaelen looked up. The shaft disappeared into darkness, but he could see faint pinpricks of light crystals, embedded in the walls, growing in clusters. The same crystals he had harvested from the cave. The same ones the Watcher wanted back.
"They're lighting the way," Kaelen said.
He touched the ring on his finger. The crystals inside pulsed in recognition.
Lysander nodded. "Then we climb."