The Big Evil Beast groaned under its own weight as it lumbered toward the outskirts of the town, its iron wheels clanking against wet stone as thick clouds of steam hissed from its side vents into the night air. The mist hung low, like it had crept up from the very soil, curling between stones and wrapping around the caravan’s armored flanks like a thing alive. Even the fires in the lanterns burned low, choking in the damp. This was Hodda’s Hollow—a place avoided when choice allowed it, but tolerated when necessity demanded. It sat like a growth beside the ancient iron gates of Uld Imbus, barely a twenty-minute detour off the trade route proper.

Most caravans gave it a wide berth, even though its smiths were good and the ore processed there pure. The problem wasn’t above the ground. It was what lay beneath. Half of Hodda’s Hollow had been built into the bones of the earth itself, carved from the mausoleum tunnels of its earliest inhabitants—stone-worshiping primitives who honored their dead not with pyres, but with cold walls and deep silence. Those same corridors now served as crude basements, storerooms, and winding alleyways that connected under the town like the veins of a great corpse. But the dead had never truly left.

Tarris stood on the deck of the Big Evil Beast, watching the dark mouth of one of those sunken corridors yawn wide beneath the mist-choked eaves of the street. Something about the place made it feel like the mist itself was rising from below—like the town was exhaling, and what it breathed out had been held in too long. The dwarves being a subterranean people, even they were still not entirely at home, some mixture of the aura of the place, and the feeling of being inside one of man’s primitive underground excursions. barbarous, though none would dare say it with Tarris about, they, did not entirely know where he was from.

A soft rattle echoed from the underground. Not loud. Just enough to not be imagined. No one spoke. The guards tightened their cloaks. Even the captain, not known for superstition, walked with his hand resting on the butt of his iron-butted pistol. “The job’s clean,” he muttered. “Crates to the steward. Tools from the smith. Don’t open a single gods-damned door. And if you smell anything sweet, you turn around and you run.” Tarris gave a slow nod. He knew that part already. Sweet smells were bad. Always. It meant one of them was leaking.

The caravan’s ironclad escort pulled to a halt in the town square, such as it was. Cobbled stones, sunken from centuries of weight and moisture. A crooked statue of some forgotten matron, worn faceless by time, leaned over the square like she’d been left to guard nothing. From the looks of it, no one had lived fully above ground here for generations. The lower town awaited. Whatever passed for “commerce” here had been buried with its first dead.

They would have to go below. Not far. Just deep enough to make it unpleasant. There were things that stirred, especially when heavy machines rolled in and disturbed the unnatural quiet. The plan was simple: finish the delivery, handle the undead. The gates of the old fortress-city were close—Tarris could feel it in the ground beneath his boots, how it sloped just so. Hodda’s Hollow might’ve been a warning sign carved in stone, but Uld Imbus was the real thing.

One wrong move in this town, and the road to Uld Imbus might be paved in fresh graves. And so, the Big Evil Beast hissed in place, the mists thickening around its frame. Somewhere below, a door creaked open—not by any hand they could see. And the Hollow began to wake.

The underground corridor breathed with stale air and old sorrow. As the crew descended, the firelight from their torches danced across the damp stone, revealing carved walls and tight corners long claimed by the Hollow’s stillness. They were met not by phantoms, but by people. Pale, thin, well-dressed humans waited in the main vestibule—tired, drawn, but unfailingly polite. Most wore fine coats or dresses in faded hues, as if they had once aspired to something grand and had chosen to keep up appearances, even as the world above forgot them. “We’re glad you came,” the woman at the gate said. Her tone was formal, though her eyes shimmered with exhaustion.

“I apologize… several of the wings are no longer living.” She gestured toward the right-hand corridor. It was sealed with heavy iron bars, each etched with silver kennings that shimmered faintly in the torchlight. Beyond them, a single corpse stood in the corner—slumped but watching. Its eyes glowed an unnatural blue, and though it didn’t move, it gave the distinct impression it could.

The dwarves shared a look. One of them, an older fellow with a leather satchel and a broad hammer strapped to his back, muttered under his breath, “Humans aren’t meant to live beneath the earth. I pity them for trying.” Still, the work began. Deliveries were made. The smith’s goods exchanged hands with brief, murmured thanks. No one lingered. Meanwhile, Tarris, Jarlin, and Tolkur did what they always did when the Beast stopped near trouble: they knocked on doors. Most were met with silence. Some opened. A few offered soft words of thanks and nothing more. One elder gave them a pie, wrapped tightly and warm.

A young woman—grateful just to see someone in armor—handed Jarlin a pair of hand-knitted gloves, one size too big, stitched with little blue runes that didn’t mean anything but were made with care. “Just… thank you,” she said. “No one ever comes.” Tarris heard the same phrase from more than one voice, usually in hushed tones: the sealed wings still carry the growls of the dead.

Yuul, when told, only nodded. “Happens every year when the warmth returns. Soil loosens, air stirs. Too many old wars in these hills. Some of the dead don’t know whose side they were on. Aesir. Hyperboreanmen. Doesn’t matter much anymore.” By midday, they’d taken care of what they could. And then came the goose. The woman who brought it was tall and tired and didn’t mince words. “My husband’s come back,” she said. “He was a bastard when he was breathing. Now he’s just louder.” She held up a roasted goose in offering.

“I want him put down. Properly. He’s in the crypt now. Past the lock-gate.” They weren’t eager, but they agreed. It was part of the work, and if nothing else, the goose smelled incredible. The lock-gate was where the town ended and the true crypt began—a yawning stone arch sealed with a vault-grade wheel lock and iron sigils welded into the frame. Just as Tarris touched the gate’s mechanism, the woman returned. “I’m coming with you.” They turned, surprised. Jarlin opened his mouth to refuse, but she stepped closer, eyes fierce.

“The last one who went to kill him didn’t come back,” she said. “And I know his voice. He hated light. I’ll be useful.” At first, they denied her. It wasn’t custom. It wasn’t safe. But then a roar came from the depths—not beastly, but human, twisted through layers of stone. It was angry. Familiar. “I know that voice,” she said through gritted teeth. “You want him dead? So do I. I promise you, I’ll do better than you think. Just let me walk with him.” She pointed to Tarris. “He looks strong. And he’s easy on the eyes.” Tarris raised an eyebrow but didn’t protest. She was older, sure—but she held her torch like someone who had thought about this moment for a long time. “Fine,” Tolkur said, tightening the strap on his elfbroom. “You walk with him. But stay close.” He pulled back the weapon’s charging handle with a hiss.

The glyphs inlaid in the barrel flickered with pale green fire—dragon breath rounds. Good for dispersing rot. Not so good for walls. With the woman lighting the way, they stepped through the lock-gate and into the true crypt of Hodda’s Hollow. The air changed at once. Older. Colder. As though the past still slept in the stones. Somewhere ahead, a dead man waited. And this time, he was going to stay dead.

The crypt swallowed the light. Even with three torches burning and Tolkur’s elfbroom humming with charged fire, the dark ahead felt thick and near—like a curtain waiting to drop. The corridor was narrow and wet, its ceiling low enough that even Tarris had to duck. The carved walls were uneven, filled with old niches where ancestors had once been laid with care. Now, many were empty. Too many. Something was moving. They felt it first. That subtle, wrong rhythm—shuffling, dragging, slow-but-many. Feet that didn’t know they were feet anymore. The sound bounced through the stone like breath through a flute.

Tarris looked to the others. Tolkur had already stopped, head cocked, nostrils flaring like a hunting dog’s. “There’s too many,” he whispered. “Way too many.” Jarlin raised his torch—and that’s when they saw him. The husband. What was left of him. He stood maybe thirty feet down the hall, beneath a broken archway, lit half by flame and half by the glow of blue, unnatural eyes. His jaw was missing, torn away entirely, leaving a slack, gaping maw. Flesh hung like wet cloth from his face, and his fingers curled and uncurled as if trying to remember how to make a fist. The woman froze.

Tarris turned to say something—to ask if she was all right—but she was already stepping back, eyes wide. Her torch hand trembled, and without a word, she flung it. The fire arced through the dark and hit the stone just short of the corpse, bouncing once before sputtering. The shadows shifted. “Aw, shite,” Tolkur hissed. “Run.” They didn’t wait. Jarlin grabbed the woman.

Tarris covered their retreat, and Tolkur was already behind them, shotgun raised but not firing—too narrow, too many unknowns. They bolted, boots hammering the old stone, the crypt echoing with sudden noise and something deeper—movement—rising from beyond the first corpse. The dead had heard them. They reached the lock-gate in seconds, slammed it shut, and spun the wheel lock until it groaned back into place.

Only then did anyone speak. “I’m sorry,” the woman whispered, breath hitching. “I—I thought I was ready. I was. But his face—he looked like he was waiting for me… like he knew—” “It’s all right,” Tarris said, gently but firmly. The others said nothing. Not because they were angry. But because they understood. Dead flesh had a way of casting the fear. Every warrior knew it. A creeping magic buried in the marrow. Didn’t matter how tough you were—sometimes it reached inside and turned the bones to jelly. The dwarves had seen it before. And they didn’t judge. Tolkur only nodded grimly and handed her back her torch.

“We’ll go again,” he said. “With fire.” They marched back to the Beast in silence, grim and determined. Time to bring out the heavy tools—flamethrowers, heat scanners, containment gear. No more rituals, no more formalities. Now it was burn-and-clear. The Hollow had stirred. And it was time to shut it up.

It was time. Tarris, Yuul, and Jarlin stood beside the Beast, silent as they suited up—pulling on thick flame-resistant coveralls, iron-reinforced gloves, skullcaps, and masks shaped like grim visages of dwarven war. Each carried a flamethrower strapped to the back, hoses coiled like serpents, nozzles already weeping volatile gel. No one spoke. Yuul gave a nod toward the woman.

“Stay here. We’ll be back” She didn’t argue. She just nodded once, tight-lipped, and stepped back as the heavy door to the crypt was unsealed once more. The trio disappeared down the passage, the torchlight swallowed behind them. She lingered by the monitoring station, part of the Beast’s inner wall—an old-tech screen split into flickering panes. She hadn’t realized the station had been live until it moved. The grainy footage shifted: the dwarves descending again, now methodical, now without fear.

Fire licked the shadows from the walls as they swept the passage, clearing rooms, hallways, stairwells—flame lighting the damp stone with brief, angry brilliance. She could see them now at the spiral stair. Down and around. Down and around. Always deeper. And then—movement. From a shoulder mounted seeing-lens pointing to the lower vault, something stirred. Not just corpses retreating—but a flow. A direction. As the fire drew near, the undead turned—not to fight, not to freeze—but to flee.

Down a long, low trench. A corridor? No, not a corridor. A tunnel. Narrow. Ancient. Sloped subtly downward. She stared at it—at the shuffling dead slinking into its depths—and felt her breath go cold. Something about the shape. The way the stone had been worn, dragged by tides not of water but of time. The tunnel was not made for people. It was a passage. And it led to the sea.

A chill ran through her—not a physical one, but the kind that nestles in the ribs, that rises from something older than language. A warning, maybe. A memory. Or something deeper. Leave this place, something in her whispered. Leave. This. Place. She said nothing. Just watched. An hour passed. Maybe more. Then, at last, the lock-gate groaned open.

The dwarves returned in silence. Tarris came through first. His suit was scorched and blackened with streaks of white and gray ash. He carried nothing else—just walked forward, slow, deliberate… and dropped something at her feet. Boots. Her husband’s boots. Still faintly smoldering. She stared at them, breath caught. Only a few wisps of ash remained. They scattered, as if ashamed. “I saw the trench,” she said softly. “The tunnel. It… goes to the sea.” Yuul knelt beside the Beast’s core interface, ran a query through the old cartographic logs. The machine’s voice answered flatly, without ceremony.

Confirmed. Tunnel linked to the Grand Crypt of Uld Imbus.
Connection: Active.
Pathway: Oceanward.
Historical Note: Unknown.

No one spoke for a moment. Then, from somewhere deeper in the Beast, a dwarf muttered without turning: “Eaurud’jardjegaahn.” The word fell like a coin in a well. No one asked who said it. No one wanted to know. Yuul stood. “Summon the magistrate.” A short while later, the high, distant crack of a demolition charge echoed through the hollow. Smoke rose above the town as the abandoned mayor’s lodge, long vacant and unknowingly perched atop the trench’s mouth, collapsed in on itself. Black powder sealed what fire could not. The iron kenning gate below was left intact, just in case the tunnel forked deeper than anyone knew.

It often did, in places like this. The people in the wings of the living emerged slowly. They watched the smoke rise with quiet reverence, murmuring thanks, nodding to the crew, to the Beast, to the fire. They were grateful. But wary. There were always more. There always would be.

LOG ENTRY — YUUL ARBAUBANDIS

Pathwarden, Senior Engineer, Guild Circuit Eight

Location: Hodda’s Hollow, Lower Vaults
Date: 18th of Frostwake
Designation: Incident Closure Report
–
Vault Seal Operation They don’t remember. Not properly. The villagers speak in fragments—half-formed tales of hauntings, odd dreams, sickness that stirs only in spring. But the deeper truths—the ones shaped in stone and silence—those are gone. Worn down by time, shame, or perhaps something darker.

It’s always the same in places like this. People live atop the dead long enough, and they start pretending it’s just stone underfoot. But I saw the tunnel. I saw the way the dead moved—not like men, not even like beasts, but like obedient things, retreating down a path they had walked before.

That trench wasn’t for them. It was made for something older. Something that called to them still. The name was spoken… Not by me. I don’t know if it’s just a word. Or a warning. Or a wound. But the tunnel’s sealed now. Collapsed under black powder, iron, and half a dozen ward-anchors.

We’ve logged its shape. Mapped it. Marked the gates that remain. Some of the townsfolk wept when the smoke rose. Others stood silent, clutching hands or relics or nothing at all. It’s hope, I suppose—rooted in the idea that maybe, just maybe, the worst part is over. But it never really ends. It just sleeps.

Still, let it sleep.

Let no pickaxe or shovel wander near that stone again.

Let the sea keep its secrets.

Flame remains.

Stone endures.