The cemetery gate groaned behind him as Lucian slipped through, a low rusted whine that seemed to carry for miles in the dead silence. He didn’t look back. The town was already a distant memory, swallowed by the wall of trees and the thickening dark.

Ahead, headstones leaned at drunken angles, their inscriptions worn smooth by decades of rain and neglect. Some were cracked down the middle, others half-swallowed by grass that grew wild and untamed. This wasn’t a place where grieving families came anymore. This was a graveyard that had been left to rot, and something had made its home in the rot.

Lucian moved between the graves without disturbing a single blade of grass. The shadows welcomed him like an old friend, wrapping around his shoulders, hiding his face, muffling his footsteps until he was less a person and more a whisper between the stones.

The smell hit him before he saw the crypt—a low, squat building of blackened stone, its iron door hanging open like a jaw unhinged. The stench of old blood and something earthier, muskier, rolled out of the darkness within. Not rot, exactly. More like the inside of a predator’s den after a meal.

Lucian approached slowly, one hand resting on the hilt of his left blade. He didn’t draw it. Not yet.

The crypt was small, maybe ten feet wide, with an altar at the far end and stone shelves along the walls where bodies had once been stored. Now the shelves were empty, but the floor wasn’t. Fresh bones—rabbit, deer, something larger—lay scattered in a semicircle around a dark stain that had soaked deep into the stone. The Glimmertongue’s feeding ground.

And there, behind the altar, almost invisible in the gloom, was a crack in the wall. Thin, vertical, barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through. But air moved through it, cold air, and with it came that same musky smell, stronger now.

Lucian knelt, brushed his fingers across the stone floor near the crack. Residual warmth. The creature had passed through here less than an hour ago.

He was about to squeeze through when he heard something—a soft, wet sound from beyond the crack. A breath. A shift of weight. Then a whisper, so faint he almost missed it.

"...help me..."

A child’s voice. Young. Scared.

Lucian’s hand tightened on his blade.

The whisper came again, a little louder. "Please... I’m down here..."

He knew it was the Glimmertongue. He’d read the files. He knew it mimicked voices to lure prey. But knowing and hearing were two different things. The voice was perfect—the tremor, the sniffle, the way it cracked on the last word like the kid was about to cry.

Lucian closed his eyes for a second. Then opened them.

No. He wasn’t going to fall for that. Not today.

He pulled back from the crack and stood up. The creature was in there, wounded, probably agitated. But engaging it now, alone, in a dark tunnel where it had the advantage, would be stupid. He wasn’t here to kill it. He was here to scout and report.

Besides, he had a better idea.

He turned away from the altar and scanned the crypt. The stone shelves, the broken floor tiles, the iron door hanging loose on its hinges. This place was a chokepoint. If the rogues came in here looking for the monster, they’d have to go through that crack one by one. And if someone was waiting on this side...

Lucian smiled. A thin, cold smile.

He pulled out a small pouch from his jacket—tripwire, a few flash pellets, and a handful of small rune stones he’d gotten from the Keep’s armory. Nothing lethal. Just enough to slow someone down, blind them, make them noise.

He worked quickly, keeping his movements quiet. He strung a thin wire across the entrance, ankle height, tied to a loose pile of stones. He placed two flash pellets on the shelves where they’d roll off if the wire was tripped. He scratched a simple rune onto a stone—nothing fancy, just a noise trigger—and wedged it into the crack where it would scrape against anyone squeezing through.

The whole setup took less than two minutes.

He stepped back, checked his work, and nodded.

Then he pulled out his phone. One bar of signal. He typed a message to Cora: Crypt at the far end of cemetery. Creature is in a tunnel behind the altar. I’ve set some surprises for our uninvited guests. Don’t enter through the main door—come around the back. There’s a hole in the wall on the north side.

He sent it, then slipped out of the crypt through a gap in the back wall—a collapsed section hidden by overgrown ivy. The night air was cool on his face. He crouched behind a large headstone and waited.

In the distance, he heard voices. The rogues were close.

He looked up at the sky. No moon. No stars. Just heavy clouds that promised rain.

Perfect.

He pulled his hood up and settled in to watch. The trap was set. His team was on the way. Now all he had to do was make sure no one did anything stupid before everyone was in position.

The first rogue footsteps crunched on the gravel path leading to the cemetery gate.

Lucian’s eyes tracked the sound.

The night was just beginning.

A/N

I’m sorry for the inconveniences, I’m really tired, so I add to give a relative of mine to write this Chapter, after giving her the ideas and the layout, but I will take over from tomorrow.

Thanks 🙏 🙏