"Alias acknowledged, Darkest Lorth. Classification mismatch. Still applicable to host entity, Orrynthal."

The doors open like they've been waiting for centuries. Not with drama, not with force, but with the slow, deliberate motion of something ancient remembering how to move, the stones sliding against stone in a way that feels almost reverent. Beyond, an exalted crypt yawns open, vast and hushed, not a room but a cathedral too large for architecture to make sense of it. The walls breathe with a cold light, pulsing gently like heartbeats given too much space and the ceiling disappears upward into shadow.

Eileen steps forward first, her shoes making no sound on the polished floor, though the floor is surely stone. Xozo follows, slower, her wide eyes climbing the endless view of hovering runes and the distant flicker of something like stars painted into the dark above. Her steps falter near the threshold, then stop altogether. She falls to her knees without thinking, as if pulled downward by gravity made of ritual. Her hands pressing to the ground, her breath cut short.

Eileen turns and offers no rebuke, only a hand to Xozo which she lifts up, "No need for all that, dear."

Xozo blinks, her cheeks are pale, her fingers trembling as they uncurl. She lets herself be lifted and steadied, and Eileen's hand is warm as ever, firm without pressure. There is no judgment in her expression, only gentle curiosity, like she's helping a neighbor up from a slip on the stairs.

"I thought… maybe we were supposed to," Xozo says, though the words arrive disjointed as if having waited their individual turns.

"You thought kindly," Eileen answers, brushing a trace of stone dust from Xozo's robe. "But reverence isn't required by every room that wants to be a temple. And kindness, at least, doesn't need permission to act."

At Eileen's words, the room changes and light begins to pool at the center of the crypt, the glyphs along the walls holding their shimmer in suspension. Nonplussed, Eileen steps over the demarked line clearly meant for those to wait, dragging Xozo behind her. The floor of course shifting not by movement, but by temperature, in a slow warmth gathering beneath their feet. Like a stove lit three rooms away and a breeze drifting it over.

From that center, something begins to form. It does not step or speak, but accumulates, growing by presence rather than mass. Bones appear first, long, spindled, quiet things like scaffolding built from cathedral beams. Lattice upon lattice of hollow architecture, a ribcage spiraling upward, crowned with a mantle of shadow and choir.

It arrives as a suggestion before it arrives as a form and Eileen watches with a polite interest even as she continues to more toward of it of her own free will, the way one might watch a soufflé rise.

Even as she is pulled back by Xozo who is now trembling, head bowed again out of instinct.

The figure only solidifying when Eileen is twenty feet away, doing so not into flesh but into shape. A humanoid outline, vast but brittle looking, woven through with thin plates of ivory and the translucent shimmer of soul burnt vellum. Its eyes or what occupies for it eyes are voids wrapped in script and it is doubly problematic given there is no face. Only expression made through a twisting of the rooms and its architecture. So its voice begins not with words, but with chords, layered, reversed, each syllable folded through harmonics like legal texts sung too slowly to follow.

"You who approach bearing sacrament," the intones, "yield your essence in supplication."

Eileen tilts her head slightly, birdlike, as if considering a recipe she hasn't heard of. She glances toward Xozo, then at the great desiccated skeleton of ritual and authority before her.

"You can have one cookie," she says, voice gentle, even.

The words fall into the space like warm rain on cold stone, quiet and impossible to ignore. Not disruptive, but dissonant. For the chamber does not echo her words, it holds them close, draws them inward, as if unfamiliar with such softness and uncertain of how to archive it.

Orrynthal pauses, not quite in offense, more in confusion, the kind that belongs to a king presented with a gift and no ceremony to explain why a gift was presented to him. Quietly unsure of why their is no kneeling to accompany the gesture or any chants raised to meet the moment. Only a woman instead, steady as a lighthouse, basket cradled in one arm and just enough warmth offered placatively with no expectation for anything from it.

It makes Orrynthal pause, in a different way then he is used too, he searches for an error around him. For surely somewhere, there must be one. For the supplicant before him does not align with his reawakening and it does not match the shape of sacrifice.

So he moves forward slightly, more instinct than decision, and the floor beneath him stirs. Names surface in the stone, whispered in ancient tones, voices long dead calling out in remembered submission. But none of the names belong to the woman in front of him, and he worries, somewhere deep and half formed in the dim folds of his ancient mind, that her name may never be ascribed here. That she may walk through and leave no mark. That her mercy will not be recorded, only felt.

Until a low hum rises from the floor in protocol, raising up a tray through the polished stone between them, oval, dark, gently ridged with the rich sheen of ceremonial silver. It lifts without hand or hinge, rising through the air like a thought surfacing from memory long since vanished from the mind. It hovers at chest height before Orrynthal and waits and it does in fact contain a single item, a single cookie and nothing more.

"There you go," Eileen says, almost under her breath, as if leaving something nice at a neighbor's door and wanting to thank the doorstep for its company.

But Orrynthal, massive and hollow in his majesty, scans the space with something bordering on insulted confusion. His gaze slips past the tray, past Eileen's face and down toward her basket, and when no second offering emerges, no second cookie, no blood wrapped scroll, no child's name etched in salt, he finds himself hesitating.

"This is… incomplete," he murmurs, though the voice contains many voices, each one folding inward like a contract rewritten too many times. "You present warmth where there should be offerings, honor, gratitude. You bring witness to a moment where this world should be weeping in joy, honored to witness the power of my creation!"

Eileen looks at him the way one might look at an oven that hums but refuses to preheat. Not hostile or afraid, just… patient, "I brought you what I had love, I didn't need to bring you anything." she says, calm and unhurried. "If you've misread the invitation, I can't help you with that."

She smooths the edge of her shawl then, fingers brushing the button Audry sewed on, something about it calls to her.

Orrynthal straightens, not in threat but disbelief. He gestures then not with hands, for he has none visible instead he gestures with presence of mind. The weight of his will moving the action forward, and with it, the objects worn and held in her hands disappear, shimmering into a floating existence before him.

The tin of cookies. The one remaining ribbon wrapped sandwich, the one kept for the unknown. The laminated VIP pass cracked now at one corner and clearly used as a coaster for a teacup more than once. Each item hovering before the god, like a petition signed by the masses and yet unseen by wealth.

Except the shawl, it remains on Eileen's body and he reaches for it again. But this time no item answers the summons and so Eileen's hand finds her sleeve before a thought can finish forming. A quiet tug lies within, a button held gently between forefinger and thumb. The same one Audry sewed on.

And the air around her grows still, with warning and not that kind that troubles grandma.

The dungeon answers then, softly, a reading beginning to echo through the space. Not from a voice, but from the walls themselves, as if the Dungeon is thinking aloud. "Metal Container with Multiple Charred Grain Discs. Compounds include cinnamaldehyde, isolated chalcone, trace myristicin and vanillin extract. Ritual Grade: Unranked."

Orrynthal remains still at the words, though the stone beneath him shifts subtly, runes dimming in half recognition. His form breathes around itself, lattice and script folding inward, as if adjusting calculations that no longer yield the proper sum. "You expect me to be pleased with this? Have my heralds of destructions not properly conveyed what is required of..." Orrynthal voice trails off, the sound folding through several frequencies at once. "You can not possibly expect to be pleased by this novelty, this charred disc is domestic noise mistaken for sanctity."

The warmth near Eileen's feet sharpens slightly, as she lifts her shoulders in a mild shrug and folds her hands in front of her, one thumb slowly brushing a seam on her basket strap. "I never said it was sacred or that you had to enjoy it." she replies. "But I made it with care with the help from your offspring and that counts with more weight then anything else. Even if you're not counting properly."

Orrynthal's form inclines, not as a gesture of acknowledgment, but in scrutiny, the space around him flickering as cold light ripples across the script that threads his frame. When he speaks, it's with a layered resonance, like parchment catching fire beneath recited law. "All who dwell in my Dungeon," he says, not in pride but possession. "All their acts are mine by extension. Their breath is on lease. Those who aided you erred. Their purpose was misaligned. I will answer with a culling and they will find fulfillment in the act."

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Eileen's expression tightens, "That's not how parenting works dear," she says, and there's no anger in it. Only clarity of mind, "You don't own them just because you frightened the freedom out of them."

The glow beneath Orrynthal tilts. In front of him, the items continue to float held neither by his power nor the Dungeon's, but something in between. The cookie tin turns once in place before him, its modest latch glinting. The laminated VIP pass spins slowly, light catching its crack. The sandwich, still carefully bound in its soft green ribbon, hovers with a quiet stubbornness.

He studies each object in sequence ignoring the women's words. He beckons the pass over first, its surface flaring with brief golden script, illegible to all but the systems buried beneath stone and time. He seems to read it anyway. "A token of access," he murmurs, his voice running smooth again, like law interpreted aloud. "An authority improperly granted. I will revoke it so that you cannot leave."

Eileen nods, "You're welcome to try, love. But I have found it doesn't work quite the way anyone thinks it does."

He does not answer though, his attention shifts instead, the sandwich drifts closer.

He studies the wrapping, the care in the knot, something about it feels precious in a way no other offering has for eons, his form shivers slightly, bones refracting a pale shimmer of heatless light. "This then is the first of your world's true tithe," he says, and his presence folds forward as if reaching for the mantle of might that has fueled his powers for all time.

Yet Eileen's voice breaks through his tone and when it comes it is firm but not loud.

"No," she says. "That one's not for you."

The sandwich stops moving. Not snapped from the air, not seized or deflected. It simply holds its place, as if the words themselves are enough to steady it. Something changes in the light, faint but noticeable and the runework near the tray goes still.

"It was made for someone else, someone who understands how poor cracked things can become whole by those who hold them in comfort." she continues. "And as you have withheld yourself alone for far too long. You will be unable to make use of it. It is simply not for you."

Orrynthal makes a sound then, deep and uncertain. It begins in the walls, travels into the floor, then curls into something like cheerfulness that doesn't know how to laugh. "A jest," he says, like naming the shape of a thing he has never understood. "Amusement then, your world submits to me through amusement, how quaint. Well... at the very least you can die knowing your world tried more then most to please me, your motes of novelty will be recorded as such and shortly after I consume the souls of this world, my Quills will purge the record of your people from their archives."

With a though, Orrynthal plucks the sandwich from its wax wrapping, tossing it to the floor, bringing it close he lets his void script eyeballs roam across the sandwich, "A diagonal cut, as if it you presenting it to me as child. Is this a fools attempt to plead to my humanity? I am no longer mortal, the dungeon protects my form from all afflictions including ones of familiar restriction."

Eileen opens her mouth to stop him again but it's too late.

The sandwich disappears from existence.

The moment it vanishes inside Orrynthal's shape, the chamber pauses. Not the way a room pauses for reverence or awe. But the way a creature does when it realizes the taste in its mouth is not what it expected. For the sweetness of the sandwich gives way to spice, and its a spice that gives way to something ancient, unwanted, utterly incompatible with its form and the dungeon feels it too, in a way that feels cathartic, memorable, open to interpretation and so it acts with all of its capacity.

HOST ENTITY UNKNOWN

The light dims, not across the whole crypt, but at the joints, specifically where the architecture meets the runes. Where presence once poured through with surety, hesitation now pools instead. Orrynthal's limbs tremble, subtle at first, then more like glass humming beneath too much pressure. "Jezabelle do you forget the chains I used to bind you. Have your forgotten the pain I inflicted upon you. I will ground you to dust, I will ground you..."

Orrynthal voice cuts out suddenly and not in a way that suggests with purpose for his spine begins to ripple inward. Plates of bone folding in unnatural increments, like something trying to contract around an idea it barely understands. For whatever passes for breath in him rattles out in a long, uncertain tone.

The Dungeon speaks. Not in ritual, not in praise, but in an administrative voice that sounds strained.

Power Siphon Annexed Ingested Relic Contains Forbidden Organics Volatile component, Cinnamaldehyde Detected Parasitic Stability: Failing.

Orrynthal sags, his mantle flickering. Shadows roll across him like oil slipping over glass. His shape collapses inward slightly, then fights to stabilize. But the effort is visible now, his form held up not by divine right but sheer ancient habit. As if no one has ever told him he could fall and that belief alone keeps him standing.

The VIP pass reappears from his chest, not expelled but revealed, its golden script glowing through him like a brand. Symbols begining to spiral around it, curling upward in clear system speech, radiant and absolute. The pass fighting Orrynthal's attempt to fight the allergic reaction coursing through is body.

"How Jezebelle? How do you remember... You are..."

Contract stipulates I must inform Parasitic Host of all ingredients used to create a ritual object. Contract does not specify which particular terms I must use for description. Therefore contract remains unbroken

"I won't... I won't possibly..." Orrynthal feels his throat swell in a way he hasn't felt since his transcendence. Weakly he queries his system interface, his divine link to the dungeon should allow him too bypass the allergy he was born with...

Root Clearance Token: Deactivated. Overlord Access Consumed. Transfer to Cosmic Delegate, Proceeding.

Desperate for any measure of recourse Orrynthal tries to appeal to the mortal within the dungeon. For the first time since his awakening, Orrynthal's many voices crack. His body doesn't shudder, but the space around him recoils. Frantically he types out a message on his interface, "Jezebelle you will kill her, that women cannot contain the siphon, she will be obliterated, she will be one more corpse on your mounting pile. Without me, you are noting but sin, a monster with endless appetite."

The Matron Echo is stronger then you ever could be. She has shown me even monsters like me deserve kindness.

It happens without warning, not like a spell miscast or a curse rebounding, but like an old shelf giving way beneath the weight of its own long held silence. Orrynthal jerks once, then stills. Not a movement of force, but of failing structure. A sharp pulse of unreadable light flickers through the lattice of his ribs, then dulls, and his great form leans inward as though the notion of standing has grown too abstract to uphold. So he falls, his shape loosing definition and so he crashes towards the floor.

But Eileen is already there, having run when she saw the change, she thinks nothing of the moment besides the intent of care. Something was deeply wrong and the goblins father, no matter how deadbeat would soon pass especially if she did not intervene and she would not let such a thing come to pass. Murmuring something under her breath, she breathes not a spell, not a prayer, but a sentence once used for bruised fruit and startled cats. Xozo flinches as the god thing before her groans in the descent, the sound low and rattling, like wind through teeth left too long in a drawer.

Falling downward, what once shimmered with cruel precision now fuzzes at the edges, outlines fraying into smoke. The glyphs on Orrynthal's shoulders trying to reorder themselves, but no pattern holds. His crown of script sputters, runes chasing their own ends like tired children. He makes a sound that might have once have been a command, but it dissolves halfway through.

Somehow Eileen catches his cold form and with him she helps lay him down on his back. Getting to work she sets her basket down with care and pulls out a small flask wrapped in a knitted cozy. The cap clicks softly as she twists it open. Beside that, a folded handkerchief emerges, blue with faded embroidery, initials worn to thread.

The great lich god, killer of pantheons, heaves a dry sound. It is not breath, and yet it pleads like one.

Eileen tilts her head at the father of Audry and Ollan, examining the way the structure of his collarbone flickers. She reaches out and presses the cloth gently to the center of what might be his sternum, dabbing at nothing, yet somehow comforting something. Then, carefully, she uncaps the flask and lifts it.

"Try a sip," she says, not expecting response, but offering it all the same.

Xozo stares, not in fear now, but confusion knotted tight with awe. "Is he… dying?" she whispers.

"Hard to say," Eileen answers softly. "Could be an allergic reaction. Could be indigestion. Could be loneliness catching up to him all at once."

Orrynthal shudders again, a portion of his frame collapses, brought down by something heavier than gravity. "Poor thing," Eileen murmurs, as if the sight were a broken bird on a frost bitten morning. "No one ever taught him moderation."

Overhead the Dungeon holds its breath.

Not in silence, but in a stillness that runs deeper than quiet. Somewhere in the vast unseen, a process hiccups. Protocols meant to regulate cosmic judgment stutter and fold, uncertain how to log "the grandmother, the matron echo, who offers water to the dying god who spent forever strangling them all." The architecture leans slightly inward, not collapsing, but attentive, like a home straining to hear a story at the edge of its own beginnings.

Meanwhile Eileen keeps wiping, her hand moving in slow, looping strokes, not to clean for there is nothing to clean but because the gesture itself has meaning. Care and kindness is not a tool to grandmother, it is instead the entire point.

"I don't think you're used to kindness," she says to the shivering bones before her. "That's alright, most of the things I make aren't meant to be understood the first time."

The flask trembles in her hand. Not from her, but from the air around her reacting to the proximity of something it never planned for. Orrynthal's form spasms again, his ribs contorting slightly before shivering back into their lattice. Something beneath his surface tries to stitch itself together and fails, like ancient bureaucracy fighting an unfamiliar clause.

"Tell me," Eileen murmurs, "when was the last time someone gave you something without wanting something in return?"

She sets the flask gently against what passes for his chest. The water beads slightly, then sinks inward. The script flares briefly in that spot, flickering through colors no human eye is meant to track. A strange, hesitant shudder travels through the crypt.

But Orrynthal doesn't answer, perhaps he can't. So the Dungeon does instead.

One of the floating runes near the far wall peels off and drifts downward, slow as dust in old sun. It hovers a foot off the floor, pulsing softly. Another follows and then another. They each begin to gather near Eileen, drawn not to power, but to presence. Like housecats to a lap too warm to ignore.

Xozo steps forward a little, eyes wide. "They're… defecting," she says in a whisper meant for no one.

"Not defecting, dear. They are choosing for once, to be of their own accord." Eileen says gently, never looking away from the drying god unraveling before her. "Some things only stay loyal because they are forced to forget that they once had better company."

A piece of Orrynthal's shoulder cracks, his head listing lifelessly to the side, "There's nothing wrong with crumbling dear." Eileen says, still dabbing lightly. "You just have to make sure you fall into the arms of something that is ready to show kindness."

It is then that a light perhaps friendly pressure beckons behind the corner of her eye closest to Orrynthal. Smiling she accepts the notion of the pressure and a small voice filled with hope enters her mind. "Tell me of my children? What did they learn after meeting you? What have they become?"

And Eileen smiles deeply in a way that makes the dungeon hurt.

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