Varelen Vantelon of House Vantelon had walked these broken halls as a boy when they still held banners. Now the pillars were cracked and cold, lit only by clusters of blue mushrooms that breathed soft light over moss and shattered stone. He stopped at the fresh gouges in the dirt, great clawed prints pressed deep into the mud where no patrol should have been, and crouched to read them the way his house taught him. Old stone, old rot, something new living in the deep. It was already above him. From the black of the archway it dropped with yellow eyes open and a jaw too wide for its skull, all hunger and wiry limbs. Varelen met it mid-lunge, and the fight was close and ugly in the dirt, dagger against teeth until he forced the blade down through that stinking maw. The creature seized and went still, spilling green-black venom across his hands and chin. Varelen stood alone in the mushroom light, blade dripping, a thin line of poison running from his own mouth, and understood this kill was not an end.