The silence didn't just shatter; it splintered, ripped apart by a dry, insistent, chitinous clicking that scraped raw against the stone walls and echoed horribly, unnaturally loud, in the Vespera-lit cavity.

The obsidian shapes flowed from the Corinthian tunnel mouth not like charging beasts, but like spilled mercury given malevolent life, unnaturally fast, their multiple, needle-tipped legs blurring into a skittering, flowing horror that seemed to glide just above the uneven rock floor.

The pale, cold light pulsing rhythmically between their carapace plates intensified, casting the glittering cavern walls in a sickly, phosphorescent, almost nauseating glare that fought against the Vespera's warmer, vital hues, making shadows leap and twist into monstrous shapes.

"Fall back!" Thorsten roared, the sound a primal Hrafnsteinn battle cry, raw and immediate, echoing his own shock and fury. He didn't wait for acknowledgment or questions, already planting his feet wide in a warrior's stance, axes flashing into his hands from their back-sheaths in a fluid, instinctive motion.

He felt Halvar and Sten step up beside him instantly, their bearded axes low and ready, forming a protective wall of bristling steel and muscle, blocking the Corinthian tunnel from their exposed companions.

"Get to the main tunnel!" Thorsten shouted again, not taking his eyes off the advancing swarm. "Reo, cover their retreat! Get them out of here now!"

Reo's response was a low, fierce growl followed by the rasp of drawn metal.

"Acknowledged," Evelyne's voice crackled tersely from Orby's external speakers, tightly controlled panic evident in her clipped, staccato words.

The first Cryptid lunged, covering the distance between the tunnel mouth and the warriors with astonishing speed. It didn't charge like a boar, head down and furious, or leap like a wolf, muscles coiling for the kill; it flowed, its segmented, low-slung body seeming to glide just above the ground on those multiple, articulated legs that blurred with their clicking, chittering motion.

Thorsten met it head-on, roaring defiance, bringing both axes down in a powerful, crossing chop aimed squarely at the creature's armored head section.

CLANG-SKREEE!

Steel shrieked in protest against the hard obsidian carapace. Sparks, white-hot and startling, flew in a blinding shower, momentarily illuminating the grotesque details of the creature's form.

The blow landed solid, the impact jarring Thorsten's arms to the shoulders, staggering the creature back a half-step. But the axes bit only shallowly into the incredibly hard shell, glancing off with a force that numbed his wrists and sent vibrations humming up the axe hafts.

No blood spurted, no satisfying crunch of bone rewarded his effort. Just hard, unyielding, alien material that felt dead and cold beneath the impact.

"Tougher than a troll's arse!" Halvar grunted through gritted teeth, swinging his own axe in a wide, horizontal arc as another Cryptid darted towards him with that same flowing, skittering gait.

His blow connected solidly with a leg joint, eliciting another high-pitched screech of stressed metal-on-chitin, a sound that set Thorsten's teeth on edge, but the creature barely faltered, its remaining five legs compensating instantly, its advance unchecked.

Sten met a third Cryptid's lunge with the flat of his heavy axe, deflecting its snapping, razor-sharp mandibles just inches from his face, the click-clack of their closing loud in the sudden proximity.

"Cold!" he gasped, recoiling slightly, his breath misting visibly despite the cavern's warmth. "Touching it... it drains the warmth right out of you! Like grabbing solid ice!"

The Cryptid Thorsten had struck recovered instantly, its segmented body whipping around with terrifying speed. It lashed out with a forelimb tipped with claws like obsidian needles, aiming for his throat.

Thorsten twisted, letting the blow scrape harmlessly—almost—off his thick leather shoulder guard, feeling the unnatural, penetrating chill seep through even the tough, boiled hide, a coldness that felt fundamentally wrong. He countered immediately with a low sweep of his left axe, aiming for the legs, trying to cripple its terrifying mobility, break its flowing advance.

Click-skitter-CLICK!

The creature evaded with that same impossible, flowing agility, its body seeming to flatten against the ground for an instant before darting sideways faster than his eye could properly track. From between its clicking mandibles, a globule of pale, sickly glowing energy coalesced in an instant and spat forward with vicious speed.

"Thorsten! Incoming!" Reo hissed urgently from the shadows.

Thorsten threw himself sideways without thinking, instinct overriding conscious thought. The projectile hit the rock wall precisely where he'd been standing a heartbeat before.

It didn't explode with heat or concussive force, but imploded with a sickening wet slurp, leaving behind a rapidly expanding patch of crystalline frost that glittered malevolently in the Vespera light.

The stone beneath the frost cracked audibly with the intense, unnatural cold, popping and groaning. The very air around the impact zone felt brittle, frigid, painful to breathe.

"Energy discharge confirmed! Sub-zero properties!" Orin yelled from behind the relative safety of Orby, frantically adjusting dials on his handheld scanner, his voice tight with a mixture of fear and scientific excitement. "Arcane signature is... chaotic! Unstable resonance! Definitely not standard elemental cold! Reading localized entropy spikes!"

Another glob of cold energy shot past Halvar, who ducked with a curse, narrowly missing him and impacting the main Vespera vein directly behind the warriors. The glittering, vibrant ore fizzled and dimmed instantly where the cold touched it, the rich, shifting colors momentarily muted, leeched away, leaving a dull, grey patch that looked dead and inert.

"Don't let them hit the main vein!" Thorsten roared, scrambling back to his feet, the potential loss of the valuable ore momentarily overriding the immediate threat. "That stuff's worth a king's ransom! Focus fire! Drive them back towards their cursed tunnel!"

Evelyne responded instantly, her voice crisp with commands to her machine. Orby's shoulder-mounted projectors whined as they charged, unleashing twin beams of concentrated thermal energy—raw heat designed to melt rock and slag metal.

The beams struck one of the Cryptids squarely on its back carapace, bathing it in searing white light that made the air shimmer.

The creature emitted a high-pitched, trilling, chittering shriek, a sound that grated on the nerves like fingernails down slate, staggering under the intense heat, its obsidian carapace beginning to glow cherry-red in patches where the beams focused.

But it didn't burn, not in the way wood or flesh would burn. Instead, the pale, cold light pulsing between its plates flared violently in response, pushing back against the heat, fighting it, creating shimmering waves of visible distortion in the air around it, like heat haze over a frozen pond.

"Heat resistance is abnormally high!" Evelyne reported, clear frustration evident in her voice even through the speaker. "Energy dissipation is off the charts! Compensating! Switching to kinetic impactors! Let's see how it likes brute force!"

Small panels snapped open on Orby's heavily armored chassis, and rapid-fire bursts of solid slugs—dense metal projectiles—hammered into the heat-weakened Cryptid with brutal, percussive force.

Thump-thump-thump-thump!

This time, the impact had a visible, satisfying effect. Chunks of the glowing red carapace flew off like shattered pottery, revealing a strange, glistening, fibrous, almost crystalline musculature beneath. The creature stumbled heavily, one of its six legs buckling completely under the kinetic assault.

Seeing the opening, Reo darted from the shadows, a grey blur against the Vespera's pulsating glow, moving with the silent deadliness of his namesake.

His twin knives flashed, silver streaks in the gloom, striking with blinding speed at the damaged leg joint Evelyne's kinetic slugs had exposed. He twisted, using the creature's own stumbling momentum against it, leveraging his whole body, and severed the limb cleanly with a wet, tearing, grating sound.

The Cryptid shrieked again, that horrible, nerve-shredding sound, and collapsed onto its side, flailing its remaining limbs uselessly, trying to right itself on the uneven floor.

Before it could recover, Halvar was there, bellowing a Hrafnsteinn war cry, his heavy bearded axe rising high and falling in a brutal, efficient, wood-splitting arc. The axe head cleaved through the creature's main head section with a sickening, final crunch.

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The cold light in its multiple eyes died instantly, leaving behind empty, obsidian facets.

"One down!" Halvar grunted, planting a boot on the twitching carapace and pulling his axe free with a wet sucking sound.

But their small victory was short-lived. Three more Cryptids skittered forward from the dark maw of the Corinthian tunnel mouth, their movements perfectly synchronized, their multiple eyes fixing first on their fallen comrade, then swiveling in unison towards the warriors. There was no sign of fear, no hesitation, no discernible emotion at all in their smooth advance.

"Gods' teeth, how many more are in there?" Sten muttered, spitting out a piece of rock dust, bracing himself beside Thorsten, his knuckles white on his axe haft.

"Too many for a stand-up fight in this unstable hole!" Thorsten decided instantly, his gaze flicking upwards again towards the ominously cracked ceiling, then towards the Artificers huddled behind Orby, their faces pale but focused on their instruments. The low, insistent warning tone from Orin's structural analyzer was becoming more insistent, a rising electronic whine beneath the sounds of potential combat. "Evelyne! Orin! Are you packed?!"

"Almost!" Orin yelled back, hastily securing the delicate crystal lens on his main analyzer. "Just need thirty seconds more to secure the primary scanner!"

"You have ten!" Thorsten bellowed, knowing even that might be too long. He met Sten's grim eyes. "We hold them here, buy the Artificers time, then fall back towards the main passage! Reo, cover their retreat when they move! Keep those things off Orby!"

"Understood!" Reo acknowledged, already repositioning himself with silent grace, moving closer to Orby, knives held low and ready.

The three new Cryptids advanced, spreading out with tactical intelligence, attempting to flank the three Hrafnsteinn warriors, forcing them to divide their attention.

Thorsten roared again and charged the one directly in the center, axes whistling through the air. He didn't aim for killing blows now, knowing the futility against their tough carapaces; his goal was deterrence, disruption, buying precious seconds.

He focused on leg joints, antennae, the vulnerable-looking spaces between plates—anything to slow them down, keep them off balance, make them hesitate.

He slammed his right axe into a foreleg, feeling the chitin crack but not break cleanly. He spun immediately, deflecting a lightning-fast clawed strike with his left axe, the impact jarring his arm to the shoulder socket, the cold seeping through the steel.

The creature spat another glob of pale, cold energy; he dodged instinctively, feeling the icy wash pass inches from his face, smelling the sharp ozone tang it left behind.

Beside him, Halvar and Sten fought back-to-back now, their movements perfectly synchronized from years of shield wall practice, their heavy axes forming a deadly, glittering wall of defiance.

They gave ground slowly, deliberately, step by careful step, forcing the two Cryptids attacking them to funnel into the narrow space between Thorsten and the hard cavern wall, preventing them from being fully outflanked.

"Ready!" Orin shouted, finally slinging his packed, reinforced case over his shoulder, his face slick with sweat.

"Moving!" Evelyne confirmed immediately. Orby's heavy legs churned, the Aetherframe backing away steadily towards the Ebonheim tunnel entrance, its shoulder projectors still firing suppressive bursts of kinetic slugs, hammering against the advancing Cryptids, keeping them momentarily pinned down.

"Fall back!" Thorsten ordered, disengaging from his opponent with a powerful shove using the flat of his axe. "Reo, go!"

Reo darted past Orby, a flicker of grey fur and flashing steel, his knives deflecting a reaching clawed limb aimed at the retreating Aetherframe's vulnerable leg joint. He then melted back into the shadows near the Deep Miners' tunnel mouth, knives held ready, poised to cover the warriors' final withdrawal.

Thorsten, Halvar, and Sten began their fighting retreat.

Every step backward had to be covered by a flurry of desperate axe blows, parrying chitinous claws and dodging spitting blasts of entropic cold. The Cryptids pressed relentlessly, their skittering, unpredictable movements making them difficult targets, their cold projectiles forcing constant, energy-sapping dodges that threatened to send the warriors stumbling on the uneven, debris-strewn floor.

One Cryptid, faster than the others, darted past Halvar's guard, its clicking mandibles snapping viciously close to his throat.

Sten reacted instantly, without thought, shoving Halvar bodily aside and taking the brunt of the attack on his own thick axe haft. The sturdy Ebonwood groaned under the impact but held. Sten roared, kicking out with a heavy, steel-toed boot, connecting solidly with the Cryptid's underside and sending the creature staggering back momentarily, clicking in apparent surprise.

"Thanks, brother!" Halvar gasped, recovering his balance, his face pale.

"Save it for the mead hall!" Sten grunted back, already parrying another lightning-fast strike from a different creature. "Move!"

They reached the relative safety of the tunnel entrance where Reo waited, knives glinting. "Artificers are clear!" the Aslankoyash reported, his voice low and urgent. "Orby is holding the passage further up, laying down covering fire!"

"Good!" Thorsten yelled, relief washing over him, quickly followed by grim determination. "Seal it! Now!"

This was the riskiest part of the hastily conceived plan.

As Halvar and Sten threw themselves bodily into the tunnel behind Reo, Thorsten planted his feet firmly in the entrance, axes raised high, a lone bulwark against the skittering tide, ready to hold the narrow opening for the precious few seconds needed.

Two Cryptids, sensing their prey escaping, lunged at him simultaneously, their cold eyes burning.

He met the first with a brutal, two-handed downward chop that shattered its foreleg, sending shards of obsidian carapace flying. The second he caught with a desperate cross-body block, using the flat of his left axe and his own considerable momentum to send it crashing heavily into the cavern wall with a sickening crunch.

Before either could recover, he spun on his heel and dove backward into the relative safety of the tunnel entrance, landing heavily but rolling instantly to his feet.

"Now, Orin! Do it now!" he roared back into the darkness of the passage.

From further up the passage, hidden from view, Orin, having hastily unpacked a smaller, cylindrical device wired with glowing runes, slammed his fist down hard onto a large red activator stud.

A deep, resonant WHUMP echoed from the cavity behind Thorsten, a sound immediately followed by the groaning screech of rock under immense stress. Dust billowed explosively from the tunnel mouth, momentarily blinding him.

"Resonance charge deployed!" Orin confirmed, his voice tight with exertion, already repacking the deployment device. "Should trigger a localized collapse at the weakest point—right at the breach point! Theory holds, mountain willing!"

A deafening, grinding roar filled the tunnel as tons of rock, dislodged by the focused sonic resonance, tore free from the ceiling of the Vespera cavity.

It crashed down in a thundering cascade of stone and dust, completely sealing the opening between their tunnel and the Corinthian breach, burying the Vespera vein and whatever horrors lay beyond under an impenetrable wall of rubble.

The ground shuddered violently beneath their feet one last time, then settled into an echoing silence.

They waited, tense, hearts pounding, listening through the settling dust.

The frantic skittering sounds from the other side abruptly ceased. Silence, thick, heavy, and absolute, descended once more, broken only by their own ragged, dust-choked breathing and the fading, almost apologetic warning chime from Orin's structural analyzer finally falling silent.

Thorsten lowered his axes slowly, peering back into the dust-filled tunnel mouth, the air thick and difficult to breathe. "Did it hold? Are we sealed off?"

Orin checked his handheld scanner again, wiping dust from the screen. "Structural integrity readings are... stabilizing. The collapse seems contained entirely to the cavity entrance. It should hold them back. For now, at least."

Evelyne's voice came over Orby's speaker from further up the tunnel, sounding shaken but immensely relieved. "Bio-signatures completely contained beyond the collapse. Nothing detected on this side. They're trapped."

Thorsten let out a long, shuddering breath, the adrenaline finally, slowly beginning to ebb, leaving behind a bone-deep weariness and a cold, persistent knot of unease in his gut.

He looked at his companions emerging from the dust cloud—Halvar nursing a bruised shoulder where a rock had struck him during the collapse, Sten wiping sticky, cold Cryptid ichor (or whatever the foul slime was) from his axe blade with a grimace, Reo meticulously cleaning his knives with a scrap of leather, Orin and Evelyne already checking their sensitive, likely damaged equipment with worried frowns. They were alive.

They were safe. For now.

"Alright," Thorsten said, his voice rough, thick with dust and fatigue. "Report time. What in the frozen hells were those things, Orin? Anything concrete from your scanners?"

Orin frowned deeply at his scanner readings, tapping the screen thoughtfully with his mechanical finger. "Preliminary analysis suggests... complex bio-mechanical signatures, not purely organic. Significant arcane resonance detected, heavily skewed towards planar cold and... void energies? That's the closest descriptor I have. Their chitin density is off the charts, far exceeding known subterranean species, which explains the resistance to physical damage. The energy discharge is potent, appears to function via localized entropy generation—sucking the heat out of the target area."

He shook his head, looking genuinely perplexed. "Frankly, Goddess Ebonheim's term 'Netherling Cryptid' seems disturbingly apt, though these specimens were significantly more robust, more aggressive, than the ones she described encountering previously near the other passage."

"And the cold energy Lilin felt? The instability?" Thorsten pressed, needing the full picture.

"Directly linked," Evelyne confirmed, stepping out of Orby now that the immediate danger had passed, her own face drawn and pale, her eyes dark with concern.

"The creatures themselves emanate the cold field; it seems integral to their biology or energy source. And their presence, or more likely, whatever allowed them through from the Corinthian side of that breach, is actively destabilizing the Vespera deposits and the surrounding rock strata. The Corinthians... they didn't just breach an adjacent tunnel, Thorsten. They breached something else. Something that wasn't meant to be opened."

Thorsten looked back towards the now-sealed tunnel mouth, the dust slowly settling, revealing the solid wall of fresh rubble. He thought of the Corinthian miners, their casual aggression, and their confident invocation of Xellos's name.

Did they know what they were digging towards? Did Xellos himself know? Or had their reckless, greedy pursuit of the Vespera simply, blindly, unleashed something terrible, something ancient and cold, by accident?

"Accident or not," Halvar muttered darkly, voicing Thorsten's own grim thoughts, spitting out dust. "Trouble's been well and truly unleashed now."

"And it's sitting right on Ebonheim's doorstep, sealed behind a pile of rocks that might not hold forever," Sten added grimly, testing the edge of his axe with a thumb.

Thorsten nodded slowly, his face hard set, the implications settling heavily upon him. "Let's get this data, and these... specimens," he gestured towards the severed Cryptid leg Reo was cautiously prodding with a knife tip, "back to the council. And directly to Ebonheim."

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