The infiltration team forced open a wooden door and climbed the spiraling steps. They breached the upper levels and stepped onto the polished floorboards of the residential wing. The opulent hallways instantly transformed around them.

The walls slid outward and expanded into a massive maze of crystalline mirrors. The reflective surfaces moved with terrifying speed, slamming shut to physically separate the Vanguard operatives into isolated corridors. Blinding radiant magic flooded the narrow halls.

The intense illumination eradicated every single shadow in the room. Syra staggered backward as the absolute brightness stripped away her primary stealth magic. Raising her arms, she shielded her eyes from the glare bouncing across a hundred mirrors.

Stone talons scraped against the vaulted ceiling above them. Crystalline gargoyles dropped from the heights to block the mirrored pathways. The statues opened their carved maws to unleash concentrated beams of burning light.

The radiant energy struck the reflective walls and fragmented into dozens of intersecting lasers. Iron-Scale channeled his emerald core to sweep a howling wind blade across the hallway.

The magical light pierced straight through his elemental gale and scorched a deep groove across his chest plate.

"The reflections multiply the attacks." Iron-Scale kicked off the ground to evade another ricocheting beam. "Find the primary light sources."

Syra ducked beneath a sweeping laser. She pointed her dagger toward a massive glowing crystal embedded in the ceiling. The gargoyles drew their power directly from the overhead fixture.

Torix clattered his mandibles and directed his Deep-Weave Hunters forward. The spiders scrambled up the shifting mirrored walls to spray monomolecular webbing over the stone wings of the gargoyles.

The beasts shrieked and fired beams wildly into the trapped corridors. The chaotic crossfire shattered dozens of mirrors to send glass shards raining down upon the operatives.

Iron-Scale drove his boots into a shattered wall panel. Propelling himself upward, he used the spider silk as a makeshift ladder to scale the corridor. He reached the apex of the vaulted ceiling and drew his twin daggers.

"Syra, blind them." Iron-Scale braced his boots against the masonry.

Syra pulled pure darkness from the depths of her core. Hurling a condensed sphere of shadow directly into the center of the gargoyle formation, she swallowed their radiant beams for a single second.

Iron-Scale drove both blades deep into the primary focusing crystal. Twisting his wrists violently, he shattered the fixture into thousands of useless splinters. The blinding illumination died completely. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

The corridor plunged back into absolute darkness. The gargoyles lost their power source and collapsed into dormant heaps of carved stone.

Suddenly, the mirrored walls around the operatives began to bleed a highly corrosive crimson fluid. The entire floor vanished beneath their boots.

Iron-Scale plummeted into the darkness. He fired his clockwork grappling spools, driving the steel hooks into the shifting walls to halt his descent. The sudden stop wrenched his shoulders. He swung his body toward a protruding ledge and dropped onto a grid of rusted iron catwalks.

Syra landed flawlessly beside him. Her boots made zero sound against the grating. The infiltration squad stood inside the bowels of the citadel. Colossal, translucent veins lined the cavernous walls, pumping a blinding golden fluid upward.

The stolen soul mass illuminated the dark chamber with a brilliant glare. Iron-Scale pointed his dagger at the largest conduit throbbing in the center of the room. "This is the primary circulation system. The King uses the stolen souls to power the entire fortress."

"The casing looks incredibly dense." Torix clattered his mandibles as he descended the wall. "My spiders cannot bite through that material."

Iron-Scale sheathed his daggers. "We freeze the casing first to make it brittle. We break these pipes, and the upper doors lose their energy supply."

Syra drew her shadow blade and stepped back from the railing. "The architecture defends itself. Execute the plan quickly."

The crimson fluid pooling at the bottom of the chamber surged upward. Massive, amorphous blood-slimes climbed the support pillars, pulling themselves onto the catwalks.

The elementals dripped corrosive acid, dissolving the iron grating beneath their shifting bodies. They surged forward to swallow the Vanguard operatives.

"Spread out and sever their anchor points." Iron-Scale tapped his bracer. Torix directed his Deep-Weave Hunters to scale the walls. The giant spiders launched monomolecular webbing to entangle the advancing slimes.

The razor-sharp silk sliced through the gelatinous bodies, splitting them into smaller, aggressive fragments. Syra vanished into the shadows cast by the golden conduits.

She materialized behind a cluster of blood-slimes and unleashed a barrage of solid black spears. The constructs pierced the elementals, pinning the corrosive fluid to the iron walkways.

The slimes absorbed the damage and continued their advance. Their acidic bodies melted the shadow spears into nothingness. Syra vaulted over a lunging slime and landed next to the Kobold Inquisitor. "Physical strikes are ineffective since they reform instantly."

"Keep them distracted." Iron-Scale planted his boots against the iron grating and channeled his emerald mana core. A violent cyclone erupted from his chest plate, whipping across the enclosed chamber.

He pushed the wind magic to its absolute extreme, dropping the ambient temperature to a sub-zero wind chill. The gale-force winds slammed into the blood-elementals. The hyper-accelerated freezing air turned the corrosive fluid into brittle crimson ice.

The slimes froze solid mid-lunge as their acidic bodies rendered completely inert.

"Shatter them." Iron-Scale thrust his arm forward. The Deep-Weave Hunters dropped from the ceiling, driving their spiked legs into the frozen elementals. The slimes exploded into thousands of harmless, frozen shards.

Iron-Scale turned his attention to the central conduit to gather the remaining freezing winds into a condensed sphere between his claws. He hurled the sphere directly at the translucent vein. The sudden, extreme drop in temperature caused the conduit casing to turn extremely brittle. "Now, break the line."

Syra manifested a massive shadow blade and drove it directly into the frozen conduit. The structural integrity failed instantly. The casing shattered, spilling thousands of gallons of golden soul mass onto the catwalks.

The blinding fluid drained rapidly into the lower levels of the citadel. The brilliant light illuminating the chamber died instantly.

High above them, the massive mechanical gears of the grand seal groaned. Deprived of the stolen energy, the locking mechanisms disengaged to swing the vaulted doors leading to the royal heights wide open.

"The path is clear." Syra wiped her blade on a dry patch of grating. Iron-Scale looked up at the open doorway. "Let us deliver the Sovereign’s message to the King, or whoever is controlling this nightmare of a castle."