RAVEN'S GAMBIT | Episode 77: The Vault That Hungers
The party stood in tense silence before the wall, each breath misting faintly in the stagnant, chill air of the chamber. The scent of ancient dust and scorched ozone lingered. Lira Valesong, her fingers still twitching with residual magic from the last chamber’s trap, stepped forward cautiously.
"There," she said, voice low, gesturing to a hairline crack in the wall. "There’s a door here. It's well-hidden."
Tessa ‘Quickfingers’ Vell knelt beside her, eyes glinting. “Aye… and a keyhole. Fancy stonework too. This isn’t just a door—it’s a vault.”
Sir Cedric Lightbringer unslung his shield and took position beside Thog Skullsplitter, both ready for whatever fresh madness waited on the other side.
Lira produced the golden key they’d taken from the statue chamber and gently eased it into the narrow slit.
Click.
The wall trembled.
Then a shuddering grind of stone-on-stone echoed through the chamber as a square section of wall—a perfect adamantine-sheathed cube—sank smoothly into the floor. Dust burst upward in a lazy cloud, revealing a cavity beyond: twenty feet deep, with an arched ceiling disappearing into shadow. At the chamber's heart lay a shallow depression, no more than a few inches deep.
Empty.
Unsettlingly, impossibly empty.
Thalia Emberbranch whispered, “This… feels wrong. The Weave is strained here.”
Elric Duskwind nodded gravely, his eyes already scanning for magical traps. “This room is reacting to us.”
As the group edged inside, Elowyn Mosswhisper crouched and examined the depression in the center of the floor. “There’s another keyhole,” she muttered, brushing her fingers around the stone groove. “Smaller. More refined.”
“Why so many locks?” Thog growled, his massive frame filling much of the chamber's entry.
“Because whatever's down here doesn’t want to be disturbed,” Cedric replied grimly.
Tessa hesitated before drawing out the key of antipathy—a strange, rune-covered relic they’d unearthed in the twisting corridor traps days earlier. Its cold metal made her skin crawl. “We could try this one...”
“Wait!” Lira hissed. “There could be—”
Click.
Tessa had turned the key once. Twice.
“Don't—!” Elric barked.
Three times.
Then silence.
A terrible rumble began. The floor vibrated. The arched walls shimmered with waves of heat as a sudden surge of magical energy roared up from beneath. A sharp crack sounded as the southern third of the room erupted—something was rising.
From the stone floor, a mithral vault surged upward like a beast rising from a crypt, the sound of grinding metal and screaming stone deafening. A wall of impossibly dense silver slammed into the ceiling with a boom that knocked several of the party off their feet.
Lira was closest—too close. The corner of the vault clipped her shoulder as it rose. She screamed as she was thrown backward, armor ripped, shoulder dislocated.
Elric grabbed her before she could collapse fully. “Gods, she’s bleeding—check her arm!”
Meanwhile, Thog had tackled Thalia away from the rising vault with seconds to spare, the crushing walls missing her head by inches. She gasped, dazed but alive, though a jagged gash split across her thigh.
Tessa rolled to the edge of the vault, coughing as dust and glowing embers rained from the ceiling.
“That’s not a lock,” she wheezed. “That’s a damned guillotine disguised as architecture.”
Sir Cedric helped Elowyn to her feet. “Is everyone—alive?”
Barely. Bruised. Battered. But breathing.
The room groaned once more, and the mithral vault’s surface shimmered with arcane runes. Embedded in its front was a door—a flawless sheet of mithral with a single pull ring.
Thog rose to his full height, eyes dark. “We go through.”
“You're hurt,” Elowyn cautioned, tending to Lira's shoulder with a healing touch.
“We all are,” Cedric said grimly, blood trickling from a split brow. “But whatever's behind that vault is what this whole nightmare has been leading to. We end it. Together.”
The half-orc nodded once, planted his boots, and gripped the pull ring with both hands.
With a growl of effort, Thog yanked.
The mithral door gave way with a hiss of vacuum-sealed air, revealing only more darkness beyond.
They didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.
One by one, they stepped through into the unknown.