Chapter 9: Beneath the Stones

Chapter 9: Beneath the Stones

Lancelot’s clue was a poisoned dart, and it had flown true. "Beneath the stones of the old court." There was only one place that could mean: the Royal Catacombs, a place Sir Kay had sealed under a Class-4 historical preservation ward two decades ago, effectively making it a no-go zone for anything short of a city-wide emergency. Mordred, it seemed, had a different definition of "emergency."

The entrance was hidden beneath the ruins of what might have been a grand chapel, a gaping maw leading down into absolute black. The air that rose to meet them was ancient and cold, carrying the scent of damp earth, powdered stone, and something else, something cloying and familiar. It was the smell of forgotten sorrow.

"Kael, establish a sensor net. Full-spectrum thaumic and kinetic," Elara commanded, her voice crisp in the oppressive silence. "Borin, you have the rear. Ambrose," she turned to him, her eyes hard, "you're with me. Do not touch anything. Do not wander off. Your 'attunement' makes you a liability here as much as an asset. Report any significant change in your… condition."

Chase gave a humorless smirk. Condition. That’s what they called the gaping wound in his soul now. He could already feel it starting to resonate with this place. The Lex System on his arm glowed a steady, cool blue, but the diagnostic glyphs were already starting to shift, noting the rising ambient grief-mana. It was like being a walking Geiger counter in a room full of plutonium.

They descended into the earth, their mag-lights cutting sharp, sterile beams through the millennia of dust. The catacombs were a labyrinth of hewn stone, lined with countless burial niches. Some held the remains of ancient knights and ladies, their bones brittle and white. Others were empty, their occupants long since turned to dust. The silence was profound, a physical weight that pressed in on them.

"The ambient grief-mana is off the charts, Commander," Kael's voice crackled over their comms, laced with a mixture of academic excitement and raw fear. "But it's passive. Stagnant. Like a deep, still lake. There are no active signatures like the one we encountered."

"It's deeper," Chase said, his own voice sounding rough in the silence. He stopped, placing a hand on the cold stone wall. "Can you feel it? It's like a current, pulling us down."

Elara looked at him, her expression a mixture of suspicion and grudging acknowledgment. "Kael, confirm."

A pause. "He's right, Commander. The readings are stronger on the lower levels. There's a definite gradient. But the archives show these passages are all collapsed. There is no lower level."

They followed the pull. For an hour, they navigated the maze, Borin occasionally clearing passages blocked by fallen rock with carefully controlled shoves that barely made a sound. Chase didn't need Kael's sensors. He could feel the source, a cold spot in his soul that was calling to a matching coldness deep in the earth. It was the same hollow feeling he’d had standing in the ruins of his workshop.

They finally arrived at a solid wall of bedrock. It was a dead end.

"This is it," Kael announced. "The cartography archives are clear. This is the terminus of the original construction."

"No," Chase said, stepping forward. He ran his hand over the rough-hewn stone. It was like touching a block of ice. The cold seeped into his skin, making the scar on his palm ache. "It's through here. It's so… loud."

Elara raised an eyebrow, about to dismiss him, but Kael held up a trembling hand. "Commander, look at my slate. The energy readings are spiking, but they're being dampened. Something on the other side of this wall is actively absorbing thaumic scans. It’s a magical dead zone."

That was enough for Elara. She scanned the wall, her tactical mind dissecting it. "This isn't natural bedrock. Look at the seams. It's a plug. A door." She traced a faint, almost invisible line in the stone. As her fingers passed over it, a network of ancient, powerful runes flared into existence with a soft, golden light. Arthurian runes. Wards of sealing.

"A royal seal," Kael breathed. "But the configuration… this isn't a ward to keep people out. It's a cage to keep something in."

"Can you bypass it?" Elara asked.

"Not with force," Kael said, his fingers flying across his data-slate. "It's tied into the very foundations of Camelot. Trying to blast it would bring the whole level down on our heads. It’s a lock, and the key is a specific resonant frequency of… oh, stars above." He looked from his slate to Chase, his eyes wide with horrified understanding. "The key is grief. Concentrated, high-level grief-mana. It's designed to only be opened by something that resonates with what it's holding."

All eyes turned to Chase. The walking skeleton key.

"Ambrose," Elara’s voice was tight. "Can you… interface with it? Gently."

Chase stepped forward, his heart pounding. Gently. As if the source of his entire life's agony was a tool he could calibrate. He placed his scarred palm flat against the central rune. He closed his eyes, ignoring the part of his mind that was screaming at him to run, and focused on the memory. He didn't just remember it; he let himself fall back into it. The smell of ozone. Lily's smile. The flash of unmaking. The blinding, soul-shattering agony of his failure. The ash.

The Lex System on his arm shrieked, flashing crimson. [WARNING: PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA THRESHOLD EXCEEDED.]

The golden runes on the door wavered, then turned a deep, sorrowful violet. With a groan of stone that sounded like a sigh of relief, the massive plug of rock began to slide inward, revealing a dark chamber beyond.

The air that washed over them was thick with a pressure that stole their breath. It was the smell of ozone and old sorrow, magnified a thousand times. The room was vast and circular. The floor was a single, massive slate of obsidian, scorched black and carved with an impossibly complex array of runes. These were not the golden, noble runes of Camelot. They were jagged, desperate, and written in a language of pure containment.

In the absolute center of the room stood a single, man-high crystal, black as a starless night. It pulsed with a faint, internal light, a cold, dark heartbeat. This was the source. This was the heart of the rot.

As they stepped into the chamber, the air shimmered. Psychic echoes, trapped here for centuries, began to bleed into their consciousness. They weren't clear images, just fragments of intense emotion and sound.

A flash of a golden crown, heavy with the weight of a kingdom.

The glint of Excalibur, not in triumph, but held in a trembling hand.

And a voice. Not the booming, heroic voice of legend, but the voice of a man pushed past his limits, strained with desperation and sorrow.

"It cannot be destroyed… its nature is memory itself…"

"By my own sorrow, by the grief for all I have lost… I bind thee here…"

"May this kingdom never know the taste of this despair… May my failure be buried forever…"

They all stood frozen, piecing together the horrifying truth. Kael stared at the containment runes, his face ashen. "He didn't banish it," he whispered. "Gods, he didn't banish it at all."

Elara’s tactical composure finally cracked, her eyes wide with the sheer scale of the revelation. "This is a prison," she said, her voice hollow. "He found a primordial entity of grief and memory—a sentient despair—and he couldn't defeat it."

Chase stared at the pulsing black crystal, the words of the long-dead king echoing his own deepest shame. My failure. Arthur hadn't been a perfect, infallible king. He had been a man with too much power, faced with an enemy he couldn't comprehend, and he had made a desperate choice. He hadn’t solved the problem.

He’d just buried it, deep beneath the stones, and built a shining new world on top of a tomb of his own making, praying no one would ever discover the rot in the foundations.