The first morning in Phandalin dawned quietly.

Too quietly, perhaps.

After the road dust settled and the echoes of goblin arrows faded into memory, the party found themselves doing what all new arrivals in a frontier town eventually do: wandering back to Barthen’s Provisions in search of supplies, rumors, and something—anything—that felt like direction.

That was when they met Ander.

He couldn’t have been more than a teenager, all sharp elbows and nervous energy, lingering near the back of the shop like someone waiting to be asked a question they already wanted to answer. And when he spoke, it wasn’t about bandits, or dragons, or lost mines.

It was about the well.

The one behind the shop.

Someone had vandalized it. The water had gone dry. And worse than that, a strange odor had begun seeping up from below—dry, stale, and wrong in a way that made people wrinkle their noses and walk a little faster past it.

It sounded like a small thing. The sort of problem adventurers expect to solve before lunch.

Down the Well

The well was easy enough to find. Climbing down it, less so.

Sagora and Akkira went first—or rather, tried to. Their descent turned into a spectacular failure of rope, footing, and coordination, ending with both of them tumbling bodily onto Zend and Lazmr at the bottom. Bruises were earned. Pride was not spared. Laughter echoed up the empty shaft.

It was the kind of moment that reassured everyone this was still a simple job.

Still.

Once the dust settled and the groans faded, Zend’s posture changed. The bugbear crouched low, nose twitching, attention drawn away from the comedy and toward something deeper in the dark.

There was a smell.

Not rot. Not blood. Something older. Dry. Musty. Like a place that had been sealed too long and only just remembered how to breathe.

It came from around a corner the light didn’t quite reach.

Zend followed it.

The others followed Zend.

Go Find the Smell

The tunnel bent sharply, swallowing the torchlight. Shadows pressed in close as the smell grew stronger, tugging at Zend’s instincts in a way words couldn’t quite explain. Then—just ahead—the darkness fractured.

Amethyst light glimmered faintly in the distance.

They advanced carefully, boots scraping stone, until the tunnel opened into something that didn’t feel like a cave anymore.

The walls changed first.

Rough stone gave way to smooth, glassy black rock—perfectly dark, polished like obsidian, its surface reflecting torchlight in warped, unsettling ways. The air grew cold. A low hum vibrated through the chamber, not heard so much as felt, resonating deep in bone and breath.

The floor sloped downward, forcing them single file, the sound growing louder with every step.

And then the tunnel simply… ended.

The Shimmering Wall

Where the cave wall should have been, there was nothing—no stone, no earth—just a vertical expanse of shimmering water, standing impossibly upright. Its surface rippled faintly, glowing with a soft amethyst sheen, like light trapped beneath ice.

A pebble sailed through it and vanished.

Ripples flared across the surface, then faded.

Someone reached out, fingers brushing the veil. Cold shot up their arm, followed by a nauseating sense of disconnection—as if part of them existed somewhere else entirely. They pulled back quickly. Their hand was unharmed. Dry. Whole.

But the certainty lingered.

Whatever lay beyond that wall did not obey the rules of the world they knew.

Zend leaned closer, nostrils flaring. The smell was stronger here. The source was close—inside the shimmering wall.

He asked for a closer look. An investigation. One more answer.

Then he didn’t wait for it.

The Leap

Zend jumped.

One moment he was there—hulking, curious, impatient—and the next he vanished into the amethyst glow without a word.

For half a heartbeat, the table laughed.

Then the laughter died.

“Oh gods,” someone said. “We have to go after him.”

There was no longer a question to debate.

One After Another

Yami went next.

Then Larn.

Akkira followed, then Sagora—each leaping into the unknown with the same reckless certainty.

Lazmr lingered only a moment longer, casting one last look back at the familiar darkness of Faerûn… and then he jumped too.

The wall swallowed them all.

Through the Veil

The world dissolved.

Nausea crashed over them as solid ground vanished, replaced by a spiraling void of inky blackness. Sound became chaos—whining, grinding, hissing—while unseen forces pulled at their limbs, threatening to tear them apart.

Then, suddenly, silence.

They floated, weightless, directionless, suspended in nothing at all. For a brief, exhilarating moment, there was freedom—pure and total, a blissful absence of fear, gravity, and consequence.

It didn’t last.

They fell.

Wind screamed past them as the world snapped back into shape. Seconds stretched into eternity. Then light exploded around them—

—and everything stopped.

The Door Closes

They stood atop a massive block of polished black stone.

Not a platform. A block. Perfectly square, its edges sharp and unnaturally precise, like a single piece placed by a hand that never slipped. The surrounding cavern looked familiar at a glance—stone walls, shadowed corners—but the illusion broke under scrutiny.

Everything here was wrong.

The walls were stacked in uniform blocks, fractured not by erosion but by collapse—chunks torn cleanly along invisible lines. Angles met at perfect right degrees. Even the darkness felt different, stopping abruptly where light failed instead of fading naturally.

Behind them, the portal flickered.

The amethyst glow sputtered, dimmed, and died.

Hands reached out. Passed through the frame. Found nothing.

No hum. No warmth. No magic left to coax.

The portal was dead.

The silence that followed was heavy and absolute.

They were not going back the way they came.

Darkness and Blocks

With no other choice, the party pressed forward.

Torches revealed tunnels carved from stacked stone blocks, some collapsed into neat piles of rubble, others ending abruptly where entire sections had fallen away. The geometry of the place felt intentional, even in ruin—as if the world itself had been built piece by piece, then abandoned.

Eventually, the tunnels opened into a larger chamber: the heart of an ancient dwarven excavation, rendered in this strange, block-built reality.

They barely had time to take it in.

Temple Jelly

Something moved above them.

A gelatinous mass dropped from the ceiling, its ochre form splattering across the blocky stone with a wet, unnatural sound. Combat erupted in a flurry of blades, spells, and shouted warnings. The creature split and recoiled, its body reacting violently against the rigid geometry of the chamber.

When it finally fell, the silence returned.

The party breathed. Explored. Let themselves believe, for just a moment, that the danger had passed.

Then the ceiling moved again.

A second ochre jelly descended, delayed and patient, punishing complacency with perfect timing. The fight was shorter, sharper—but no less dangerous.

When it ended, the chamber was still once more.

Tunnel Goo

As they caught their breath, old habits asserted themselves.

Bodies were looted. Questions about experience were asked. The rhythm of adventuring reasserted itself, even in a world that no longer felt real.

Zend crouched by the remains of the jelly, rifling through the dissolving mess with purpose.

“Is there any mistletoe?” he asked.

There wasn’t.

No Mistletoe

The answer lingered longer than the question.

No mistletoe. No easy solutions. No portal home.

Only a party stranded in a world of stone and shadow, bound together not by planning or foresight—but by the simple, dangerous act of following one another into the unknown.

Whatever this place was… they would have to face it together.