Chapter 105: Gray-White (Thanks to the Patron

William never thought he’d return here so soon.

Perhaps after months of torment, fortune finally turned. Soon after they parted, he encountered a local villager who claimed he could guide them downward.

Driven by the desire not to delay because of Kraft’s attitude, the frustration of standing before the treasure vault unable to enter, and perhaps other reasons he couldn’t quite grasp at the moment—it was as if his feet moved on their own, carrying him by inertia once more over the rocky slopes, lighting a torch at the mine entrance and stepping straight inside.

By the time he realized he’d been too hasty, he was already standing at the end of the mining area, where the stooped old man walked ahead.

In the flickering light of his torch, William halted, quietly wondering if his actions were unreasonable—but found no answer. The sailors behind him stopped as well, waiting for their captain’s command.

Hearing the footsteps cease, the old man turned his bony, spined neck, twisting half his body to fix one clear speck within his sunken, clouded eyes upon them. His barrel-shaped ribcage, ribs sharply defined, stretched his loose clothing; the deep hollows in his chest matched those of every other aged man in the region, and the loose skin beneath his neck sagged, strangely reminding William of a torn sail tangled on a broken mast by a gale.

Given his age and physical condition, this old man should long ago have been incapable of labor, and unfamiliar with this new mine, only in use for a few years. Yet some astonishing force sustained his seemingly frail body, carrying him without pause up mountain paths even young sailors struggled to climb, stepping with precision through the interplay of light and shadow in the cavern.

"What's wrong? Can't part with two silver coins?" His voice was sharp, like the edge of a pick scraping across mineral crystals—a grating tone that seemed mocking, or perhaps just the result of dusty, labored breathing.

This feeling unsettled William. The guide’s age made him doubt the man had ever worked here, yet he had not stumbled once on any uneven ground along the way—something only experience could explain for a man with yellowed, dim eyes.

“Did you really mine here? I heard this tunnel’s only been used a few years.”

“No.” The stooped old man grinned, revealing a mouth with few teeth left, hollow and empty. As William and the others felt tricked, he added, “But I’m the one who knows it best—even deeper down.”

He raised the torch, its dying flame loosening and dropping embers that skittered across blackened ash. “Come. I know where you want to go—somewhere no one else will take you.”

The torch’s feeble light dimmed further, but the old man made no move to replace it. He passed beyond the deepest human mark—a small niche where torches were placed—and advanced into the deeper, more primal part of the cavern, as if he didn’t care whether they followed.

The group exchanged glances, then hurried after him before he vanished.

Footsteps echoed through the crimson mine passage. The slope grew steeper as they descended, leading deeper into the mountain’s core, forcing them to watch their footing carefully to avoid losing balance. Yet the old man moved as if on level ground, never slowing.

As William and the sailors strained to keep pace, they barely noticed the redness—not deepening with depth, but fading. When they lit a second torch, they suddenly realized the time spent descending far exceeded the journey from the mountain’s base to the entrance. They had left the iron-ore layer and now walked through a passage with cooler tones.

Not just the red—the pervasive, irritating yellow dust that had accompanied them for days was also fading. Ashen, pallid, dry rock pressed in from the walls, displacing and dominating the dominant hues of ravines and low hills.

The old man set down his crude torch. The flame died completely, the charred remnants unraveling, leaving only a bare stick.

He had never carried a second one. Even after it went out, he walked straight ahead. William followed close behind, intending to light his path—then realized it was unnecessary.

The stooped figure stood at the edge of the light, half his body plunged into darkness, yet his steps were surer than those of the others with torches—each footfall grounded, certain. As if the mine passage had been paved with steps just for him, descending in measured stages, maintaining a distance just far enough to be seen, yet close enough to vanish if you slipped even a step behind.

Perhaps because his clothes were too thin, as the gray-white began to seep into the walls, William felt a damp, chilling cold—not from moisture, but like icy water that passed through fabric, turning cloth into accomplices of the cold, siphoning warmth from his body thread by thread.

It was as if the journey of a single torch had carried them beyond the southern hills, into...

They couldn’t name the place. Even though the Ice Mountain had docked at countless ports between the kingdom’s heart and the ice plains, William had never seen a cavern like this. It belonged here alone—to the southern hills buried beneath thick dust and yellow rock, beneath layers of barren, alien gray-white stone.

It first appeared like mold stains—like reaching into a cargo hold’s food storage and brushing against a cabinet door left unlatched last time, finding hardtack and salted meat speckled with needle-thin white dots. An inexperienced sailor would simply shut the door. But a seasoned one knew: when you find the first cluster, it means the depths beneath are entirely different.

Further down, the gray-white spread, crowding out yellow rock from beneath their feet, on both sides, above. Unlike iron ore that seeped into and stained the mountain, it layered like oil and water—sharply defined boundaries.

Déjà vu surged. William traced back to the strangest, most alien fragment of his recent memory—they had faced nearly the same scene just last night: walking a long, dark path, standing before the boundary of yellow and white rock. But he had no time to pause. The old man showed no sign of stopping. William could hear his chest heaving like a bellows, breathing deeply and labored.

His pace quickened. They crossed the patchwork of yellow and white, the transition unnaturally brief—felt like only a moment before they were left behind, fully within the gray-white stratum.

William pinched his nose, feeling himself shrink, crawling through a rotting, foul-smelling hide like a worm through a burrow, seeking unspoiled flesh below—only to fall into endless white rot. There was nothing he wanted here, only a dry, spoiled texture, resembling sun-dried, brittle gray-white bone, dusted over, with faint, worm-like shapes writhing beneath, boring holes open for entry.

He drifted off. In the urgency of following, William didn’t understand how he’d conjured such vivid associations. They arose from memory—the contrasting rock layers at the trail’s end, possessing some symbolic weight, clear in certain moments... too clear, guiding his thoughts toward that direction. Within the gray-white, coiled long, segmented, neither snake nor insect, connecting the poles of yellow dust and gray-white stone.

“Old Gory! You’re Old Gory!” William shouted toward the front.

At the edge of the light, the old, withered face turned darkly toward them, jaws gaping toothlessly. The torchlight illuminated his mouth and the bottomless cavern behind him—his bloodless mucous membranes as gray-white as the rock. A horn-like resonance rose from his throat—or from some deeper, white, hollow place in the cave—transmitted and amplified by the walls and an unknown cold current, drawing near, swelling until it shook them off their feet, dislodging rock fragments and dust, snuffing the torches.

The vibration wound on, endless, from some colossal, elongated body that had carved its way through the rock.