The roar tore through the fungal-lit tunnel like a blade through rotten cloth. Watabei barely twisted aside as claws gouged the stone where her throat had been—close enough to feel the wind of their passage. The stench hit next: wet fur and old blood, the musk of something that hadn't seen sunlight in decades.
Mermon.
The name surfaced from Hagra's dying memories like a corpse from deep water. The beast lunged again, his bulk a shadow against the bioluminescent fungi, his eyes two pits of reflected green. Not a goblin. Not anymore.
His limbs were too long, his fingers ending in blackened talons, his jaw unhinged like a serpent's. But the tattered tunic clinging to his frame was unmistakably goblin-woven, the embroidered sigils of the Rootwalkers faded but intact.
Watabei rolled, the silver key biting into her palm as Mermon's claws scored the tunnel wall. Chips of glowing fungus rained down, illuminating the horror of his face—goblin features stretched grotesquely over elongated bones, his ears ragged from years of scraping against low ceilings. "Hagra's blood," he rasped, voice splintered like old wood. "You *reek* of it."
Mermon's claws grazed Watabei's ribs as she twisted sideways, the silver key biting into her palm like a brand. The fungal glow painted his elongated limbs in sickly green—too tall for tunnels meant for goblins, too twisted for anything natural. His breath stank of old blood and rotted acorns.
She feinted left, but he anticipated it—because of course he did. He'd been Hagra's apprentice once, before the Golden Company's torches drove him mad down here. His lunge sent her crashing into a cluster of glowing mushrooms, their caps bursting in puffs of luminescent spores. In the haze, Watabei saw it: the way his nostrils flared when she bled. How his pupils dilated at the scent of Hagra's legacy in her veins.
So she let him smell it.
Watabei pressed her bleeding palm to the tunnel wall, smearing red across the root-webbed stone. "You recognize this, don't you?" she hissed, shifting her stance into Hagra's trademark crouch—knees bent, weight forward, the way he'd stood when berating lazy students. Mermon froze. His talons twitched.
Behind the madness, something remembered.
She pressed harder, her voice dropping into the old goblin's graveled cadence: "Still chasing fairy lights, boy?" The words weren't hers—they couldn't be—but the hut had shown her enough. Had bled enough into her. "After I taught you the ninefold knot?"
Mermon shuddered. For a heartbeat, he was there again—a young goblin with ink-stained fingers, flinching as Hagra rapped his knuckles for misreading the root-sigils. Then the madness surged back, his elongated spine cracking as he reared up. "Liar!" Spittle flecked his distended jaw. "Hagra's dead—"
"So are the Rootwalkers." Watabei's fingers found the silver key's teeth, pressing until her own blood welled. "Except you." She stepped into his space, close enough to see her reflection warped in his blackened eyes. "The last archivist. Hiding in the dark while the Golden Company burns our history."
His claws twitched. The fungal glow painted the scars on his arms—old glyphs, half-healed. The marks of a failed initiation. "You... know."
Watabei exhaled through her nose. The hut's visions still clung to her synapses—Hagra bending over this broken apprentice, his gnarled hands shaking as he tried to undo the damage. The way Mermon had wept when the roots rejected him. The way he'd run.
She lunged first.
Not at his throat—at the tattered satchel strapped across his chest. The leather tore like rotted fruit, spilling parchment. Mermon howled, swiping at the scattered pages, but Watabei was already rolling clear, snatching one midair. The paper *burned* against her fingers, the ink writhing like living roots. A map. The map—the original the Golden Company had sought, the one Hagra had died protecting.
"You stole this," she hissed, pressing the parchment to the wall where her blood still smeared. The ink surged, black tendrils crawling toward the crimson streaks. "Stole it and hid while they killed him."
Mermon's elongated fingers twitched. "He was *weak*," he spat, but his pupils dilated as the map's inked roots twined with Watabei's blood. The hut groaned around them, its ribs contracting like a fist. "The old ways are *dead*—"
"So why keep this?" Watabei thrust the map forward, the paper trembling as if caught in a gale. The roots depicted weren't just lines—they were *names*, hundreds of them, tiny goblin script curled around each branching path. A census. A *graveyard*. "Why crawl through these tunnels whispering to ghosts?"
A fungal cap burst under Mermon's talons as he staggered back. The bioluminescent spores painted his face corpse-green, the madness in his eyes flickering—just for a heartbeat—with something older. Grief.
Beyond the tunnel walls, Layla's voice cut through the dark like silver through rot: "What's so special about her anyway?" The words reverberated through the hut's roots, carried on some subterranean current Watabei couldn't name.
Goburo's answering growl was muffled but unmistakable: "She doesn't lie."
Layla's laugh was a knife's edge. "Then she told you about the shifting?"
Silence. Then—"What?"
Above their voices, fungal spores drifted like embers in the subterranean dark. Watabei pressed her bleeding palm deeper into the tunnel wall, letting Mermon scent the truth in her veins. Hagra's blood. Hagra's *rage*. The goblin-beast's nostrils flared—she saw the moment recognition hit, his elongated pupils dilating as the scent short-circuited decades of madness.
"You..." Mermon's voice splintered, his talons twitching toward her throat. "You *smell* like him."
Watabei leaned into the tremor of his claws. "Because he *chose* me." The lie tasted like copper and old roots. She didn't shift—didn't need to. The hut's visions had shown her enough: Hagra's stooped posture, the way his left knuckle always cracked when gesturing, the particular rasp of his voice when chastising careless students.
She let her shoulders slump inward, her fingers curling arthritically. "Pathetic," she spat, pitching her voice gravel-low. "My last apprentice—cowering in the dark while they burned our history."
Mermon recoiled as if struck. The fungal light painted the scars on his arms—failed root-glyphs, half-healed. His elongated spine twisted as he staggered back, his claws scraping furrows in the stone. "*No.* You're—you're *dead*—"