RAVEN'S GAMBIT | Episode 51: Sanctum of the Shifting Soul
The crawlspace seemed endless.
Their hands scraped along stone polished smooth by time and repetition. Their breath grew shallow. Joints ached. Sweat beaded. Crawling single file in choking silence, every minute felt like a lifetime.
“I swear this thing curves back on itself,” Khopesh muttered.
“You don’t breathe,” Tessa replied, muffled, “so don’t complain.”
Theron chuckled softly. “Says the rogue who’s been in front for an hour.”
“Hour and a half,” Elowyn corrected from somewhere in the middle.
Eventually, the passage ended.
An illusion—subtle and clever—veiled what appeared to be a blank stone wall. Tessa’s hand paused mid-crawl, fingers brushing an unnatural seam. She pulled a slender tool from her belt and began feeling for catches.
“Found something,” she whispered.
A click. A shift. A gentle grind of moving stone.
Light spilled through a crack as the secret door opened into a room that immediately chilled their blood.
It was a chapel.
Once holy—perhaps—but now… wrong.
They entered slowly, stepping into a grand, divided chamber. The northern section held rows of ancient wooden pews split by a faded mosaic walkway leading to a tiered altar dais. The southern portion of the chapel sat behind a low wooden rail like an exclusive sanctum. And all around them were paintings.
Scenes of farmers and merchants, of families and lovers.
But each figure bore rotting flesh, skeletal hands, worm-chewed eyes.
Every familiar, benevolent symbol of gods and good faith was corrupted with decay, but… oddly, the symbols themselves still radiated faint good. Like echoes. Like a memory that refused to die.
Lira whispered, “This place… doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” Sir Cedric replied grimly, “it doesn’t. Holy symbols in an unholy shell. Heresy.”
“Or misdirection,” Theron offered.
Tessa prowled the pews while the others kept guard.
She tapped each one. Found hinges. Opened them.
Jackpot.
The northernmost pews each held 4,000 silver pieces. The next pair: 500 gold each. The third: 2,000 gold apiece.
But the front pews… nothing. Trapped.
Tessa sniffed. “Poison gas traps. Cute.”
She disabled both, but her skin crawled.
Something was watching.
Beyond the railing lay the southern chapel.
An opalescent blue altar pulsed faintly with inner light, standing vigil before a tiered dais and a padded wooden chair—almost a throne. Two brass candelabra flanked the scene. Two sealed white urns squatted in each corner.
A rusted skeleton sprawled in the far corner, its arm outstretched toward a wall.
There, a mist-filled orange archway loomed.
“I’ll check the altar,” Tessa said.
“Carefully,” Elric murmured.
She crept forward.
The blue stone glowed ominously under her inspection. She found the glyphs—lightning bolt trap. Disabled.
Then a second mechanism. Far more sinister.
“Explosive trap too,” she muttered.
“Double layered,” Theron noted. “They didn’t want anyone touching this.”
Both traps disarmed. She exhaled. Her brow was soaked with sweat.
Elric withdrew the gem of seeing. The world shimmered as he held it before his eye and looked toward the misty archway.
“I see a passage,” he said. “Beyond the mist. There's… a cove.”
Marcus ‘Tank’ Rourke rolled his neck.
“Fine,” he grunted, shouldering Whelm. “I’ll scout it.”
He stepped into the mist.
Immediately, something pressed against him. Not with hands, but with… purpose. Magic surged through his skin, his bones, his mind.
And then… something changed.
The world tilted. His sense of self splintered and reformed.
He emerged from the mist…
Different.
The armor still fit, though tighter in places. Marcus blinked as strands of long auburn hair brushed his cheeks. He looked down.
Breasts.
His hands traveled lower—his anatomy had changed. Completely. The strength remained, but everything else…
Was… feminine.
“I—what the hell—” Marcus patted his chest, then groin. “I have—wait… I had—oh, fuck me.”
Kaela coughed, barely hiding a laugh.
Tessa bit her lip.
Marcus flushed and turned to glare. “You better be able to f**King fix me!”
“Oh, don’t blame us,” Lira smirked. “You volunteered.”
“I’m still stronger than all of you,” Marcus growled, his voice now huskier, feminine, and pissed.
Sir Cedric was visibly shaken. “This place defies all logic.”
Theron eyed the mist. “And you said there's nothing of value back there?”
Marcus nodded. “Just regret.”
No one else stepped through the mist.
Not that day.
They turned their attention back to the altar. The strange room. And the ever-growing realization that the dungeon’s traps weren’t just designed to kill them.
They were meant to change them.
And slowly, they were.