RAVEN'S GAMBIT

The new corridor loomed before them, a yawning passage shaped like a cone and filled with a wedge of unmoving stone—massive, ancient, and deliberately foreboding.

The group pressed on, descending the cracked stairwell beyond the passage and entering a westward-leading hallway, tension thick as the crypt dust that clung to every surface. Tessa crouched low, her gloved fingers ghosting across the stones as her eyes narrowed.

“Hold,” she whispered, then again, louder. “Hold!”

Before them, three separate points in the floor looked innocuous. Ordinary, even. But to her trained eye, they were death.

“Trapdoors. Three of them. Old but active. Just give me a moment.”

She worked quickly. Every click of her tools echoed louder than it should have, as if the corridor were holding its breath. One by one, she disarmed the hidden killers. “Safe now.”

They continued cautiously, rounding a final turn north. There, after one-hundred and sixty feet of polished silence, a new obstacle presented itself: a thick, iron-banded oak door, swollen tight in its frame, long unbudged by time.

Tessa inspected it and frowned. “No trap. No lock. Just… stuck.” She stepped back. “Someone stronger than me will have to break it.”

Marcus ‘Tank’ Rourke cracked his knuckles, then offered his maul to Thog.

“Hold Whelm,” he said. Thog hesitated, eyes narrowing with a hint of jealous fire—but accepted.

“Do it,” Thog growled, stepping aside.

Marcus took two steps back. Then he bellowed a war cry that made even the stone tremble—and smashed into the door like a battering ram made of pure rage.

CRACK.

The door exploded inward, shattered by force. Tank staggered through, shoulder smoking from the impact, but otherwise upright.

“We're in,” he grunted, voice tight from pain.

But the moment the door gave way, the air changed.

Music that none of them had realized was playing—soft, eerie lullabies from nowhere—halted abruptly.

In its place came panic.

A disjointed chorus of voices echoed up the alabaster corridor. Confused, frightened, hurried. Running feet. Muted shouting. Words—just out of reach of comprehension—drifted from the darkness. A soft, pulsing light like a torch in retreat flickered far ahead. It moved… away.

The passage was pristine—smooth white alabaster walls, floors of polished smoke-gray marble that reflected their grim faces in ghostly streaks.

Tank stepped forward, grimacing.

“Let’s go.”

And he took point.

Sir Cedric moved to his right, Thog to his left—Whelm still in his massive grip.

The rest of the party began to follow.

“WAIT!” Tessa shouted from the back, scrambling forward. “Let me check—”

Too late.

The ground vanished.

The corridor lurched and groaned as if alive. The echo of dozens of tiny gears whined behind the walls. And then—click.

Beneath Tank’s feet, the floor split.

The entire passage was one great counterweighted beam—designed for illusion and massacre. The beam tipped, smooth and silent, dropping its victims into a hollow throat of hell.

The screams began instantly.

Sir Cedric and Thog, with superhuman reflexes, leapt back just in time. Tank—ever at the front—fell.

Down.

Down.

Down into fire.

There was a beat—a heartbeat, maybe two—of silence.

Then came the screaming.

It tore through the corridor like a banshee's wail, loud and raw, filled with pain so immense it sounded inhuman. Muscles boiled. Bone cracked and popped. Skin burst into flame as Tank’s massive body was swallowed by lava, the magically-heated pit melting flesh from bone in a heartbeat. But he didn’t die fast.

No, the trap wasn’t designed for mercy.

It was designed to let you feel it.

His voice howled through the Tomb of Horrors—low at first, then rising, pleading, cursing, begging. Then came wet gargles and sobs. For nearly half a minute, the corridor filled with sounds that would follow them into every future dream.

Then silence.

Total.

A final bubbling pop was the only farewell.

No one moved. No one breathed.

Even the flickering magic of the tomb seemed to still in reverence to the horror it had wrought.

Tessa knelt at the corridor’s edge. “There’s nothing left,” she said softly.

Sir Cedric sank to his knees and whispered a prayer, voice tight.

Thog stared forward, expression unreadable, jaw clenched like a locked gate. His fingers gripped Whelm until the knuckles cracked.

Marcus ‘Tank’ Rourke, friend and wall of iron, was gone.

Only silence remained.

And ahead, the corridor waited—polished, perfect, patient.

Hungry for the next.

TO BE CONTINUED...