Galthor studied the bridge with narrowed eyes. It was wide enough for ten men to walk abreast, but time had not been kind. Massive chunks were missing, and what remained was held together by something that made his skin crawl.

Bones. Thousands of them. Fused into the stone like mortar, calcified and yellowed with age. Skulls stared out from the railings. Ribcages formed archways. Finger bones filled the cracks between stones.

It was as if they weren't there before, but now they were! The stones were actually held together by bones!

Brakthar took a deep breath. "I'll see you on the other side, Chief."

"You will."

The barbarian stepped onto the bridge. The bones groaned beneath his weight, and for a moment Galthor thought the whole thing might collapse. But it held. Brakthar walked forward, steady and careful, testing each step before committing his weight.

Lady Pelica activated her leg-mounted relic. The metal pieces hummed with power as she lifted off the ground, hovering a foot above the stone. "I'll stay close to the bridge in case he needs assistance."

Galthor shrugged. At least the force isn't preventing her this time.

She glided forward, keeping pace with Brakthar.

Galthor waited until they were a third of the way across before he stepped onto the bridge himself and the moment his foot touched the bone-studded stone, something changed.

A vibration ran through the structure, deep and resonant. The bones began to glow with a faint blue light, and Galthor felt something brush against his divine senses.

No.....recognition. The bridge was recognizing him.

No. Not recognizing.

Rejecting! It was rejecting him!

Ancient runes flickered to life along the railings, carved into skulls and vertebrae. They pulsed with power that felt old, older than the Abyssal land itself. Wards. Defensive wards designed to repel something specific.

Something divine. Galthor couldn't help but frown. '...is this from the space time as well?...'

"Chief!" Brakthar shouted from ahead. He'd felt the vibration too.

Galthor didn't have time to respond. The stones beneath his feet cracked, and a spike of bone erupted from the bridge, aimed directly at his chest.

He twisted aside, the spike grazing his ribs instead of impaling him. Blood welled from the shallow wound, but he barely noticed. More spikes were emerging, the entire bridge coming alive with deadly intent.

Even with his speed, they still touched him!

"Keep moving!" he roared at Brakthar, as he shot forward himself. "Don't stop!"

There was a reason he told Brakthar not to stop for anything earlier. He had felt the wrongness with the whole thing. There are dangers things around besides the weeping canyon!

Another spike. Another dodge. The bridge was collapsing behind him now, stones and bones tumbling into the fog below. Whatever these wards were designed to repel, they'd found their target in Galthor's divine presence.

He ran.

The bridge shattered beneath each footfall, giving him barely a second before the stone crumbled away. Spikes erupted in waves, forcing him to leap and twist and dodge while sprinting at full speed.

If it was on land, then he might have actually stopped to use Obsessed with charm. But he was running for his life on a crumbling bridge!

He didn't know how long he ran, and how many bones he dodged. Or how many times he prevented himself from falling into the deep below.

Ahead, Brakthar had reached the far side. Lady Pelica hovered at the edge, her face unreadable as she watched Galthor's desperate race.

He was going to make it. The far edge was only thirty feet away.

Twenty.

Fifteen.

Ten.

Five.

He was going to make it.

But then...

....the bridge exploded!

It did not crumbled, not collapsed, it exploded.

The wards discharged all their remaining power in a single catastrophic burst, and the section beneath Galthor's feet simply ceased to exist.

For a moment, he hung in the air, momentum still carrying him forward.

Then gravity took hold.

"CHIEF!" Brakthar's scream echoed across the canyon.

Galthor fell into the white fog, into the Weeping Canyon, into the domain of the entity he had silenced but not destroyed.

The last thing he saw before the fog swallowed him was Lady Pelica's face.

She had a complicated expression on her face that Galthor couldn't describe.

Galthor fell.

The fog wrapped around him like cold fingers, thick and cloying. He couldn't see more than a foot in any direction. Couldn't tell which way was up or down. The only constant was the sensation of falling, the wind rushing past his ears.

'...How long have I been falling? Seconds? Minutes?...'

Time felt strange here. Stretched. Each moment lasted longer than it should, giving him too much time to think. To remember.

He thought of Brakthar's scream. Of the masters trapped in the Drowning, not knowing what had happened. Of the mission they'd come here to complete.

'...They'll continue without me. Karathra will lead them. That's what I ordered. Complete the mission. Kill the Fiendish monster. And meet up with the banners. They're strong enough now and maybe with Lady Pelica...'

But even as he thought it, he felt the worship chains connecting him to his followers. They were stretched thin, vibrating with tension.

His only relief was that they hadn't broken. His masters could still feel him. They knew he was alive. That's enough.

Then fog began to whisper around him.

At first, it was just noise, the sound of wind through empty spaces. But gradually, words emerged, broken pieces of speech and snippets of conversation from a thousand different voices, crowding around his head.

"...please, not my children..."

"...hold the line, hold the..."

"...why did you betray..."

"...it hurts, gods, it hurts so much..."

Grief. The fog was saturated with it. Every droplet of moisture carried the final moments of someone who had died here, their sorrow preserved for eternity.

Galthor's divine senses flared. He could feel the entity now, the thing he had silenced with a glance. It wasn't gone. It had merely retreated, pulled back into the depths of its domain to lick its wounds.

And now Galthor was falling directly into its lair.

Fuck!

The fog grew denser and the whispers grew louder. Galthor felt pressure building against his mind, wave after wave of concentrated despair trying to crack his mental defenses.

'...The entity is attacking me. Using the grief of the dead as a weapon. Trying to break me before I even land...'

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