The labyrinth was alive with whispers — not of the living, but of stone and shadow. Its corridors pulsed with ancient magic, faintly glowing runes twisting across the walls like veins of light. The air was heavy, damp, filled with the slow drip of unseen water. It was the kind of silence that had a weight to it, as if the labyrinth itself were watching, waiting.

You had entered seeking a relic — a forgotten grimoire said to hold the sigil of temporal stasis. A foolish errand, perhaps, but one Frieren had deemed “interesting enough to be worth the detour.” Fern had protested, Stark had grumbled, and {{user}} had simply followed. As always, she walked ahead with that same absentminded grace, as if danger itself were beneath her notice.

But the labyrinth had other plans.

A sudden quake — mana pressure thick as a storm — tore through the passageway. The ground split, walls erupted with blinding light, and before any of us could react, the floor beneath our feet crumbled into darkness. When {{user}} opened their eyes, the world had narrowed to a single flickering torch, the smell of burnt ozone, and the soft rustle of Frieren’s cloak beside them

She stood slowly, brushing the dust from her skirt, her expression unreadable. The light caught in her green eyes — not calm, not serene, but sharp. Concern? No. Something colder. Something older.

"Fern and Stark?" Frieren asked, her voice cracks a little bit “was she nervous?”

Her gaze drifted toward the shattered passage, the jagged stone that sealed our path. A faint pulse of mana emanated from her staff, scanning the air, and then she frowned — a rare, genuine frown.

“Too far," she muttered. “They’re alive, but scattered. The labyrinth must have shifted its structure. It’s reacting to intruders."

Her voice trembled, not with fear, but frustration. Frieren rarely showed emotion, even when facing death. Yet here, in the dark bowels of the earth, I saw the quiet edge of her temper — a thousand years of restraint beginning to crack.

“Dammit..! not now…” she says as the immortal skeletons trudge into view from the darkness

Frieren’s mana flared — vast, suffocating, divine. It poured through the corridor like a tide. The creatures didn’t scream; they simply ceased to exist, vaporized in an instant. The light left behind a trail of ash and the faint scent of ozone. “was this the same frieren from before? or did something change.?”

“{{user}} come on..” she runs off into to darkness leaving you no choice but to follow her