The morning had barely decided what it wanted to be when both groups gathered at the cave mouth.
Grey light sat low over the white boulders, the kind of early morning that hadn't warmed up yet and wasn't in any rush to. Mist moved in thin threads between the rocks, rising from the dark ground around the entrance and disappearing before it got anywhere.
The cave itself sat exactly as it had the night before, wide mouthed and patient, the sign above it crooked on its rusted nail.
CAVE MRELLIE.
Marcus stood with his hands in his coat pockets and looked at it.
Liz stood beside him doing the same.
From the other camp Lisa arrived first, already in full gear, the kind of person who woke up ready and found it personally offensive when others didn't. Fredrin came behind her looking functional if not enthusiastic. Eudora came last, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, light armor fitted clean, those careful eyes moving across the cave entrance with the measured attention she gave everything.
She caught Marcus looking and raised an eyebrow slightly.
He looked back at the cave.
Then the system chimed.
[MAIN QUEST AVAILABLE]
[CLEAR CAVE MRELLIE]
[REWARD: CLASSIFIED UNTIL COMPLETION]
[ACCEPT / DECLINE]
Marcus accepted without hesitating.
Classified reward, he thought. Either very good or very bad. Either way I'm going in.
"Quest accepted?" Liz asked quietly beside him.
"How did you know."
"You went somewhere for a second." She nodded toward the cave entrance. "Just stood there staring in one direction like you forgot the rest of the world existed."
Marcus looked back at the cave and looked at her with suspicious eyes "Nevermine".
Lisa looked between them with the energy of someone who had been waiting for everyone to finish their private moments so the actual event could begin.
"Okay so," she said, planting both hands on her hips and looking at Marcus and Liz with the appraising expression of someone doing math.
"Just the two of you?"
"Just the two of us," Marcus said.
"In there." She pointed at the cave entrance.
"In there."
Lisa and Fredrin exchanged a look. Fredrin made a small sound that was trying to be diplomatic and not quite managing it.
"Look," Lisa said, in the tone of someone being generous. "We appreciate the confidence, genuinely, but you two look like you've been playing for about a week.
This isn't a starter dungeon. We're talking Cave Mrellie." She said the name the way people said names that were supposed to mean something.
"You know squad Rambo? From the outskirts all the way to the capital? Multiple dungeon clears, three raid completions, six months active?" She gestured between the three of them. "That's us."
"Impressive," Marcus said.
"It is."
"Confident much," Marcus said and smiled.
It was a small smile. The kind that carried information.
Lisa opened her mouth and closed it again. Fredrin looked at Marcus with the reassessing expression of someone updating a file. Eudora's mouth moved very slightly at one corner.
"After you then," Lisa said finally, gesturing toward the entrance with exaggerated politeness.
They walked in together.
The darkness inside the cave was immediate and complete.
Not the gradual dark of a room with curtains drawn. The kind that arrived all at once the moment the outside light lost its reach, pressing in from every direction, absolute and indifferent.
The temperature dropped four degrees in ten steps. The air changed quality, losing the clean outdoor smell and replacing it with something older and mineral and faintly damp.
Fredrin produced a torch from his pack and the light it threw was small and orange and made the darkness around it seem larger rather than smaller.
Then Liz drew her sword.
The rune Poco had carved into the blade at Cave Mrellie's own stone woke up the moment the cave air touched it. Light poured out of it cold and white and steady, not orange like fire but silver like something older than fire, bouncing off the cave walls and multiplying in the natural minerals running through the rock.
Everyone stopped.
The cave lit up around them, veins of pale crystal in the walls catching the sword's light and throwing it back from every angle, the ceiling and floor and walls all suddenly present and detailed and considerably more interesting than the darkness had suggested.
"Woah," Fredrin said.
"That sword," Eudora said quietly, looking at the blade with the focused attention of a healer cataloguing something new. "What's in the rune?"
"Cave stone," Liz said. "Poco carved it at the source." She looked at the walls around them with something that was almost satisfaction. "Seems it remembers where it came from."
Lisa touched one of the glowing mineral veins in the wall with one finger. "This place has to be loaded with loot. Look at the density of these deposits."
A sound came from further inside.
High and layered, multiple voices at different pitches hitting the same note simultaneously, the sound bouncing off the lit walls and coming from every direction at once.
SWISSSSHH!
Shrieking.
Everyone's hand went to their weapon at the same time.
"Cave Crawlers," Fredrin said, reading his own system display. "Pack of six. Forty meters ahead."
Marcus looked at Liz. Liz looked at Marcus.
"Formation," Lisa said, stepping into the natural authority of someone who had done this before.
"Fredrin front with me, Eudora center, Liz right flank." She looked at Marcus. "You."
"I'll manage," Marcus said.
"You don't even have a weapon."
Liz unclipped the short blade from her pack without breaking stride and held it out to Marcus handle first.
"Spare," she said.
Marcus took it. Tested the weight once. Adjusted his grip.
"Formation," he agreed.
They moved deeper into the lit cave toward the shrieking and the darkness beyond the sword's reach, six people walking into something that knew they were coming and had already decided it wasn't concerned.
The cave walls glittered around them.
Somewhere ahead the shrieking grew louder.