"Actually, yes. Do you happen to have a map, even if not totally accurate, of your best reckoning of what the cave is like? And may I have a look at your seals, as well as, if possible, a record of the rates of their decay over time and how many undead have been emerging? Also..."

"This is about as far as I can go," says the person Mother Ga-in got to serve as their guide. According to the map, every other path in this cave leads to a dead end, and this corridor is the only one that'll take them further down. And rather than just a few paper seals taped to the walls, a proper wooden fence and door were built there, with multiple seals hanging from ropes attached to the ceiling and walls.

All but three of the seals are completely burnt off.

Taharqi whistles, low and long. "Something's gone down here, huh? I suppose we'll have to find out what."

"Good luck, and may the light of the Goddess guide your path," he says, before bowing and turning back the way they came.

"Did you hear that capital-G Goddess there?" Taharqi says in an undertone to Annika when their guide is gone. "'Cause I heard it. I did not expect this place to be Feyjan."

She shrugs and turns back around to examine the door and the remaining seals. The undead they've dealt with so far have not been particularly dangerous, and while unlike some monks she is not particularly specced for Life- and Light-elemental attacks she can modify her stuff on the fly to include it and that makes her punches hit the zombies quite a lot harder than they otherwise would, which was already pretty hard.

They were really very numerous, though, and she can hear the vague echoing of their collective shuffling in the distance.

"These seals are more powerful than the ones outside."

"That's probably why they've held this long, yeah. Seems like they've been under assault for a while."

Annika nods then closes her eyes and concentrates for a second... and a ball of blue flame bursts into existence in front of her and starts orbiting in circles around her, slowly.

"What's the duration?"

"Indefinite."

"—really?"

She tsks. "Thirty seconds, but I can renew it indefinitely."

"Understood. The range is as far as the light hits?"

"Seven meters around me."

"Alright. And you can except me?"

"Yes." She's said all of this to him before but she supposes it's good to confirm it before it becomes necessary or any of them makes an assumption. "Your poison affects spectral targets?"

"Yeah. Don't ask me how, but Vallynn definitely had a point when he said all of this is magic so I'm just not questioning it. Magic poison that hits ghosts, sure."

"Hmm."

"Ready to rumble?"

"Yes."

"Then let's go."

And he steps into the shadows.

...that was very strange to witness. It was like he walked somewhere except it wasn't anywhere and then he was gone.

She pushes the door open and steps through.

She felt some of this when she stepped into the cave but past these seals she feels it a lot more keenly: a sudden drop in temperature, like she just got past some invisible barrier that was keeping the cold isolated from the outside. Except it's not cold—they were already deep enough in that it was very cold already—but rather something like the absence of a more fundamental kind of warmth, like the feeling of being surrounded by life.

Annika isn't surrounded by life, here. She is surrounded by its distinct lack, and her soul is pushing against its boundaries to try to fill the negative space left by it, and that feels... cold.

Her soul is very well-secured, thank you very much, so she's going to ignore the cold. Her clothes are enough to keep her actual physical warmth, and everything else is a matter of skill.

There are more undead here, shambling zombies and skeletons aiming for the adventurers as soon as they notice them. Despite Mother Ga-in's worries about the resting places of souls, it is deeply unclear if anyone's souls are still in there, with the way these creatures don't seem to respond to any stimuli and just mindlessly attack. And they go down easy, as easy as the ones closer to the surface, even if they're more numerous.

The first new thing down here is horongs: small floating purple balls of flame that often hang around haunted sites and cemeteries. No one really has an idea of why they exist or what they are—people have theorised that they might be ghosts, but most scholars and priests agree that they're probably not—and they tend to not be very aggressive—except when they are. But that doesn't mean they're harmless; even when they're not being aggressive, just their presence starts draining the vitality of any living thing around them, and spending too long near one will make you feel cold and lethargic and tired until you either waste away or (more often) are picked off by something more dangerous nearby.