The moment Raven passed through the now-unlocked gate, the air changed again.
The suffocating pressure of the Bladed Furnace faded—but what replaced it wasn't relief.
It was silence.
Not peace, but the kind of silence that made his instincts bristle.
Where the left fork roared with fire, steel, and rage, this place whispered. The flames here were no less dangerous—they simply waited until you stopped paying attention.
The corridor narrowed, its blackstone walls inscribed with curling lines of molten red. Dwarven runes danced across the surface, flickering like heat mirages. Unlike the scorched and brutal furnace path, this place had been crafted. Designed. It wasn't just forged. It was recorded.
[Entering Subzone: Archive of Three Flames]
[Environmental Threat: Heat Saturation + Flame Traps Active]
[Puzzle Encounter: Memory Mechanism - Incomplete (0/2 Keys)]
Raven paused for a moment and took a deep breath, rolling out his shoulders.
"That's one bellow active. Now comes the thinking part."
Duskrunner sniffed the air ahead and let out a low whine. "This place stinks of magic and dust."
Phantom Seer hovered beside them silently, eyes open and glowing in every direction. "A vault of memories. How poetic. Let's hope the fire doesn't burn the answers away."
Raven crouched briefly, running his fingers along the edge of the nearest rune-marked wall. The glyphs weren't just visual flair—they pulsed to the rhythm of something beneath the surface, like veins carrying heat instead of blood.
"Focus," he muttered. "This part's not about brute force. If we screw up, we trigger traps, not fights."
He brought up the dungeon notes in his UI—his mental archive of the old beta map.
'Three seals. Each one locked by a memory-key. Pull the wrong rune, and the chamber vents. Try to brute-force it, and it backlashes with fire.'
Only a few parties ever made it to this part during beta, and only a good party survived the triple vent collapse when they failed the puzzle three times in a row. Raven remembered that bug vividly. No gear drop. Just vaporized bodies and silence.
This is the best thing about Primordial Abyss, Raven thinks. The medium and high level dungeon was designed for team, not for solo play.
They pushed deeper into the archive.
Instead of enemies, they were met with etched history—dwarven events carved directly into the walls in meticulous layers. Flames flickered along torch sconces that hadn't been lit in centuries, reacting to their presence with a ghostly blue hue.
At the first chamber, a prompt appeared in his UI.
[Memory Node #1: The Descent]
"The forge fell not to siege, nor to sabotage—but to our own pride. We sought to bind flame to form, and found it turned to hunger instead."
"Cryptic as always," Raven muttered.
A circular platform extended in the middle of the room, ringed with rune glyphs—twelve of them, each pulsing faintly. This was the puzzle.
Only three glyphs needed to be activated.
The correct ones would stabilize the chamber. The wrong ones would trigger flame jets from the walls, the ceiling, and beneath the floor.
Trial by memory.
"Phantom Seer," Raven said without turning. "Disrupt the room's aura. Slow any reaction delay from trap triggers. Duskrunner, keep to the ceiling paths—if something vents, you're our mobility backup."
"I see no wisdom in pressing ancient buttons," Phantom Seer said in its low whisper, "but chaos does make excellent teachers."
Raven knelt at the edge of the platform. He remembered the trick.
'Follow the warmth, not the brightness. The true glyphs always pulse in heartbeat rhythm, not constant shine.'
He watched the glyphs carefully.
One pulsed fast. One slow. One flickered with irregular cadence. And three glowed in a rhythm that matched the pulse of the forge behind them.
He touched the first.
Click.
Then the second.
Click… click.
The third—
—he hesitated.
Something about it felt off. The timing was too perfect.
His instincts screamed trap.
"Wait," he muttered. "That one's mimicking the real rhythm… just slightly delayed."
He swapped targets.
Pressed a glyph three tiles to the right.
Click.
[Sequence Complete. Trap Bypass Successful.]
[Memory Node #1 Cleared – 1/2]
The far wall opened with a heavy groan, revealing a narrow, slanted corridor ahead. Red heat-light spilled down like sunlight filtered through blood.
"Two more," Raven said.
As they descended deeper into the archive, the temperature rose—not from ambient heat, but from the trapped pressure of failed forges. The entire corridor was alive, creaking and hissing as steam and residual mana drifted along the ceiling like phantom smoke.
The second memory chamber pulsed with danger.
This time, Flame Wraiths waited—humanoid spirits of smoke and fire, bound to failed glyph circuits. As they passed into the chamber, three of them blinked into view, their forms crackling with stored heat.
Raven reacted instantly.
"Split! Don't let them cluster!"
Duskrunner Shadow Shifted into position behind the furthest wraith. Phantom Seer let loose a field of Haunting Echoes, filling the chamber with whispering voices that made the wraiths stagger in place.
But one of them pulsed brighter.
Raven's eyes widened. "They're gonna explode!"
[Wraith Instability Detected – Self-Destruct Imminent]
He dove behind a scorched statue just as the first wraith detonated—blasting a cone of flame across the front of the room. Duskrunner, moving at max speed, blurred past the shockwave.
Raven whipped his chain across the floor, yanking the second wraith's leg and dragging it straight into Phantom Seer's Mind Shatter. The spell destabilized it just long enough for a precise claw combo from Duskrunner to end it.
The final wraith tried to flee. Phantom Seer didn't let it.
[Room Stabilized – Memory Node #2 Now Accessible]
They approached the second rune puzzle. This one was even more difficult—fifteen glyphs, rotating slowly on a timed track.
Raven closed his eyes for a moment.
He could feel it now.
The beat of the archive.
It wasn't visual. It wasn't sound.
It was thermal rhythm. A heat-pulse signature from the forge's lifeblood. That was the key.
One… two… three.
His fingers moved.
Click… click… click.
[Memory Node #2 Cleared – 2/2]
[Final Gate Unlocked – Archive Core Access Granted]
A gust of cool air flooded the chamber as the third and final path opened.
Raven stood, feeling sweat drip from his brow.
"One more," he said.
But he could feel it—this wasn't just a puzzle chamber. The next room held the mid-boss.
Something worse than flame or memory.
Something forged in vengeance.