(A/N): school is killing me dead I'm so sorry. Someday I'll actually learn to write longer chapters, but today is not that day. Happy spooky month/day if I don't post on Halloween! Go rot your teeth out with the candy.
Again, thanks so much to everyone who reviews and puts up with the wait times! I love you. And also my beta Park, the literal best.

Two pairs of footsteps. One light and brisk, the other heavy and powerful.

Both pounded hard and fast against aged wooden floor, echoed in the still darkness. From time to time, they stumbled or briefly petered out, whether because of exhaustion or unseen obstacles. But they always started up again with a gritty tenacity.

Now, they stopped again, quite abruptly, and a dull, heavy 'clang' rang through the air.

"Seriously?" A sigh. A faint, flickering flame lit the faces of both the person fueling it and the person sheepishly pulling himself off the ground next to a knocked-over vase.

"Well, maybe if you don't want Karlof trip so much, you should make better flame."

"Heyyy, I'm trying here." Kai pushed the little fistful of fire in his hand a bit further, anyway; he'd left his flashlight with all of his other stuff. "Karlof, I swear, you're gonna be the death of us both if you keep this up — whoa, what the —"

The wall nearby had fallen away with a rumble, leaving a clean hole. Kai tentatively held his fist to the darkness, revealing a flight of roughly-hewn stairs. Karlof squinted at them behind him, breath still quick from running, like his own.

"Do we go?"

Great question. For now, it looked like they'd lost the spirit chasing them down, but the slight chill going down his spine only strengthened Kai's uneasy feeling that they weren't truly safe in the open. And at the thought of seeing it again, the pain throbbing through his arm felt even worse. He winced, and made his decision.

"I dunno what you did, but gift horse is a gift horse. Let's not look it in the mouth."

And with that, he ducked inside.

Karlof hesitated a moment — "What horses have to do with this? Will never understand Ninjagians …" — before following.

"Hmm …"

On a hunch, Kai fumbled with the wall near the opening, finally hitting upon a switch that pulled the wall shut when flicked.

That only confirmed the inkling he'd gotten, once the surprise had worn off a little. Whatever this was, its mechanics worked a lot like the little room Cole had found earlier. Was that a coincidence? It couldn't be.

Ack. Cole. He'd left him — and everyone else — alone on a whim.

Not his smartest move.

Sure, if he hadn't Karlof would probably be much worse off, but …

Kai was just going to have to hope they remembered the way back.

But for now, there were stairs, and he wasn't about to just gonna walk away from them without investigating. Heavens knew in this place the more they knew, the better.

So the only thing to do was keep moving.

Karlof fell into step behind him, both their breaths evening out slowly. With Kai holding his hand out in front to light the way, they picked their way down the stairs, each step clapping softly in the dark.

You must not have heard. Take heed.

Consciousness filtered in slowly, along with a persistent throb in her head that wrested her attention. Wincing, Skylor cracked her eyes open, glad when they tolerated the dimmed lighting. Embarrassingly, she'd fallen asleep sitting up, but she didn't try to stand; more hassle than it was worth right now. Trying to remember everything that had happened before she'd gone to sleep was uncomfortably slow work, like trying to think through a fog, but once it came back, she had to suppress a displeased groan.

Presently, she noticed a noise that she hadn't pinpointed before, almost quietly buzzing in her skull. It was a voice, a somewhat familiar one. Hushed and tense. Who was that, again …?

It took a moment to remember the answer: Jay.

Carefully, she looked over, trying to find where he was. The blue ninja was sitting against a wall, bag next to him, peering intently at a book of some kind and muttering the words under his breath. Despite her better judgement, she found herself curious as to what he was saying. Something was bothering her, she just wasn't sure what. She'd always been a good spy, perceptive and sharp; maybe if she strained her ears …

No luck. He was too quiet, and concentrating on his voice was exacerbating it from a mild, buzzing annoyance to a worse, droning pain.

"Hey," she called. Then she winced again — too loud, especially coming from her own throat. Thankfully, she wouldn't have to repeat herself. Jay almost snapped to attention, head whipping up from his book.

"O-oh. Hey, you're up." he whispered. "How's the concussion?"

"Take a guess," she replied, lowering her voice this time. "Would you mind keeping it down? I know it's a bit rude of me to ask, but …"

"But the noise is too much?" Jay zipped up his bag quickly and set it back down. "Don't worry about it, I can do that."

"Can you?" she said sarcastically. It felt a little weird to hear him so quiet when she remembered him as one of the louder ninja. Jay dramatically placed a hand on his chest.

"You've got a concussion and you're still going to be mean to me?"

Skylor huffed, unable to think of a good reply. She looked around the room instead, trying to better recall what was so wrong about it, what was bothering her.

Then she realized.

"Where is everyone else?"

"Ohh, them." Jay sat down on the other bed. "They're out looking for Kai and Karlof."

"Beeeecause they're missing."

"Yep. I'm here because they figured someone needed to keep a watch with you here."

"Oh."

Skylor felt a little bad about being the dead weight thanks to her concussion, if she was being honest. Already she'd been the objectively weakest of all of them, having lost her powers far before ever entering the mansion, but this was just a slap to the face. Or the back of the head. Same difference.

But, as she had no trouble remembering, there was some horrid abomination walking around out there that apparently couldn't be permanently killed but was very capable of inflicting that much upon them. (After all, it was its fault that she even had a concussion right now.) So it was probably for the best that she stayed put and had a little protection, as much as her pride smarted at the idea.

"So." Skylor fumbled for something to talk about. "Whatcha reading?"

"Oh, this?" Jay hurriedly stuffed a bookmark into the pages and shut the book, setting it down near his bag. "Eh, picked it up somewhere when we split yesterday. Just figured I needed something to pass the time."

"Cool," she hummed. Jay'd never struck her as the reading type, but then, it wasn't wise to judge a book by its cover. Pun entirely intended.

It was awkwardly quiet again. The fire crackled.

Her mind drifted. She tried to recall just how bad their situation was, but her woefully concussed brain had a hazy grip, at best, of what exactly was wrong. She could ask about that now, try to cement the knowledge a little better. All she remembered was something to do with magic.

Jay looked ill-at-ease as he explained in a low voice that, yeah, there was magic everywhere, messing with all sorts of things from powers to electricity to … time?

And as if that wasn't enough, it was keeping them trapped inside this mansion.

And if he looked uneasy, she definitely felt it. Skylor couldn't exactly say that she was clear-minded enough to completely comprehend the effects, but as it sunk in that there was magic involved, she felt a slow-rising dread take form and plant itself in her gut.

Magic.

Sure, she knew of it. Knew plenty about it, too — she'd grown up around Clouse. She'd had a long time to get accustomed to how dark magic felt.

But she'd never liked it. When she was a child, Clouse had tried to teach her the art, and sure, she could probably remember a few basic spells if she tried hard enough. But she had never taken to it well, and Clouse was not a kind instructor, and eventually they'd all thrown in the towel and instructed her in martial arts and close combat instead.

… Then they'd set her to work on years of scoping out elemental masters for their plan. And she remembered pretty well how that went.

Ugh. Moving on.

At least now she knew what it was that she'd sensed walking in. And come to think of it, the same intuitive warning bell was going off now, subdued by her cloudy mind but still very much there. Of course it was, she was currently completely submerged in an entire mansion's worth of magic.

Except it didn't even feel like how she remembered it being. It was … different; probably why she didn't immediately recognize it. Except trying to puzzle out why that was the case made her head hurt, too, so she decided to try not to dwell on that, either.

Yeesh. There wasn't much in the way of thinking she could do, was there? Stupid concussion. This was easily the most uncomfortable Skylor had been in ages, and she'd had her moments. (Working too hard trying to get a noodle shop out of the pits your evil father threw its reputation into would ... do that to a person.)

For one thing, her head was getting on her nerves with its constant dull throb. For another, even the soft lighting from the dimmed kerosene lamp on the other end of the room was starting to feel a bit bright, and it was all she could do to keep her eyes even a little open.

"You alright?" Skylor started at Jay's question, waiting for the spike of pain to recede before she nodded. "You didn't say much when I tried to explain it."

Jay looked at her for a second, and Skylor couldn't read the look on his face nearly as well as she might have been able to otherwise. Then, he got up and started rummaging through a bag. She found herself bemused, because unless her memory had been thrown completely out of whack, that wasn't Jay's bag — his was navy blue, not red. That bag was red, right? Or was the lighting messing with her eyes …

Evidently having found what he was looking for, Jay came back and held something out to her. Grabbing it, she realized that it was a pair of sunglasses. Blinking, she looked back up at him and raised an eyebrow.

"Kai always has a pair of those on him, somehow," Jay said, grinning. "You were squinting, so I figured they might help …"

Huh. Touched by the gesture, she slid the glasses onto her face. The tinted lenses really did help.

"Hey, not bad! You look pretty cool in those shades."

Skylor wagged her eyebrows. "Tell me something I don't already know." Jay snorted.

Smiling a little, she cautiously pulled herself off the bed, ignoring Jay's "hey, careful …", and grabbed the bag she'd brought with her. "You can go back to your own business now, if you want. For now, I've got something to do."

"Alright, then." Jay walked off. Whatever it was he settled for doing, she wasn't really paying attention. Instead, she focused herself on digging out for herself a pencil and notepad. Then, not trusting her clouded brain to remember the details of what she'd just learned, she started to write.

No one among these lands know what happens if you ignore our warnings.

Three pairs of footsteps pattered against stone. Lloyd led the way, his power lending them light so as to save flashlight battery, and they warily descended down the stairs that had been revealed in the gallery's secret room upon closer examination and a lucky stumble on a switch. Every so often, they came across a scattered weapon, or dully gleaming white fragments that none of them dared look at too long.

Eventually, the ground leveled out, split between a straight path and one turning to the right.

He held the ball of energy in his hand out, hoping to illuminate both paths a little. The rightward path revealed no hazards, but as his green light lit up the way dead ahead …

Lloyd gulped.

On the way down, there had been skeletons littering the stairs — pieces of hands and hips and arms and a cracked skull missing some teeth, and that was just what he couldn't avoid looking at. The sight had shocked them into silence, chased away the last vestiges of calm in their minds.

The implications came to him quickly, but he tried to set them aside — this was a wartime refuge, and with the beast that roamed the grounds, death-touched like everything else, they were bound to stumble into signs of what went down. He did his best not to think about it.

(His heartbeat felt uncomfortably loud in his ears anyway.)

But this … topped all else.

… None have come back to tell the tale.