Chapter 17 | Part 5

He couldn’t leave it alone.

In the sixteenth hour of waiting, with Srietz dozing fitfully and no sign of Elion’s return, Drusniel went back to the wall. Back to the words that had been carved and then destroyed.

The ancient drow dialect was familiar enough that he could read it—barely. Annariel’s lessons had been thorough, her insistence on learning “dead languages that serve no practical purpose” finally proving useful. He’d argued with her at the time. She’d been right, as usual.

She was right about so many things. I was wrong about so many more.

The first fragment he’d found wasn’t the only one. Following the chamber walls, running his fingers across obsidian surfaces, he discovered more carvings—scattered, broken, as if someone had tried to destroy an entire library and only partially succeeded.

Fragment: “…the realm was shaped to contain what could not be destroyed. The barriers were not protection but imprisonment. Those inside do not guard against what’s outside. They guard against what’s within…”

Fragment: “…dual affinities occur naturally but rarely. The old texts suggest one in ten thousand. Among these, fewer still survive the crossing. The barrier was not designed for them—they exist outside its parameters, anomalies that the system cannot predict or prevent…”

Fragment: “…Zaelar’s work built on foundations we do not fully understand. The dragon claimed the barriers were his creation, but the writing style predates his known activity by centuries. Either he lied, or he found something older and claimed credit for maintaining it…”

Each fragment raised more questions than it answered. Drusniel copied them into his memory, building a puzzle from pieces that didn’t quite fit together.

But not all the writing was cosmic. On a lower section of the wall, closer to the ground, he found something different. Not carved with the careful precision of a scholar. Scratched fast, by someone in a hurry. Someone who’d been down here and survived long enough to leave practical advice.

Fragment: “…follow the small ones through the fire roads. They know the paths that cool…”

Fragment: “…go fast when the heat turns. The stone breathes and closes. Count to forty, no more…”

Fragment: “…jump high where the stone breaks. The gaps swallow the slow. Do not stop. Do not look down…”

Survival notes. Someone had navigated the deep places beneath the volcano and come back to write instructions. Follow the small ones. Go fast. Jump high. Not philosophy. Not prophecy. Just how to stay alive.

He read them twice more, fixing each instruction in his memory. He didn’t know when they’d matter. But they felt important in a way the cosmic warnings didn’t—immediate, practical, written by hands that had touched fire and lived.

Prison realm. Dual affinities. Barriers that contain rather than protect. Zaelar claiming credit for something older. And somewhere deeper: survival instructions left by someone who’d walked the fire roads before him.

The implications were unsettling. If Wyrmreach was a prison rather than simply a dangerous realm—if the barrier existed to keep something in rather than keep things out—then his presence here wasn’t just exile.

It was intrusion.

Something is imprisoned here. Something they couldn’t destroy. And I walked through the wall of its cage.

The final fragment was the most damaged. He had to trace each letter individually, some of them gouged too deeply to read, others preserved only as shallow scratches.

“…the warning must be heeded. Dual nature may serve as key as well as passage. What crosses in may carry things out. The barriers were built assuming nothing could survive both sides, but if assumption proves false…”

The text ended. Not destroyed this time—just unfinished. Whoever had written this had been interrupted, or had died, or had simply run out of things to say.

Drusniel sat in the darkness for a long time, thinking.

Dual nature may serve as key as well as passage.

He had dual affinities—air and water, combined in ways that shouldn’t work but somehow did. He had crossed the barrier. He was here, in a prison realm, carrying an artifact that screamed to anything listening.

What crosses in may carry things out.

The Voice wanted something from him. The Beacon was connected to something outside this realm. And he was apparently one of the only beings capable of moving between inside and outside.

They didn’t build the barrier to stop people like me. They built it assuming people like me couldn’t exist.

The weight of that realization settled over him like a second exile. He wasn’t just trapped here. He was a vulnerability—a gap in ancient defenses, a door that someone might try to use.

Who, though? The Voice? Whatever the Beacon connects to? Something else entirely?

Too many questions. Not enough answers. And no way to find them while trapped in a cave, waiting to see if a shapeshifter would return with food.

He made his way back to the main chamber slowly, each step heavy with knowledge he hadn’t wanted. Srietz was awake now, watching him with those calculating eyes.

“Drusniel found more writing.”

“Yes.”

“Writing that disturbs. Writing that changes things.”

“Yes.”

The goblin nodded slowly. “Srietz will not ask. Srietz suspects knowing would make things worse. But Srietz will say this: Srietz once carried too many secrets. Barely survived the weight.”

Sound advice. Advice he couldn’t follow.

“I can’t unknow what I know.”

“No. But you can choose whether to act on it.” Srietz curled back into his resting position. “Srietz has found that many terrible truths become bearable when treated as someone else’s problem.”

Drusniel almost laughed. “Whose problem would this be, if not mine?”

“Whoever built the prison. Whoever wrote the warnings. Whoever will exist long after we die in this cave or escape it.” The goblin closed his eyes. “Srietz recommends focusing on survival first. Cosmic mysteries second. The order matters.”

He was right. The writings weren’t going anywhere. The ancient secrets could wait.

Their immediate survival could not.

Drusniel settled against the wall and resumed counting hours. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the caves, Elion was running toward a goblin village with supplies they desperately needed.

The writings had ended mid-sentence.

Whatever came next had been deliberately destroyed.

Some warnings, apparently, weren’t meant to be finished.

End of Chapter 17.5 —> 17.6: The Second Choice: The Return