Open Okay, but like they were Shiny!

The deeper tunnels always had this weird smell, like metal mixed with something sweet that Suisen couldn't quite place. He'd been told a hundred times—okay, maybe more like ten, but who was counting?—that the "Off Tracks" weren't exactly a playground. Something about sand worms and carmot and very dangerous criminals doing very dangerous work. But boring safety lectures weren't going to stop a curious homunculus from poking around where the shiny things lived.

Suisen crouched near the entrance of an unexplored shaft, his crimson eyes wide with wonder as they reflected the faint glow emanating from chakra crystals embedded in the rough stone walls. The seals covering his body tingled slightly—not painfully, just a gentle reminder that they were doing their job keeping all his spiritual energy from turning him into a crispy homunculus-shaped torch. He reached out with one small hand, fingers hovering just above the surface of a particularly bright blue crystal jutting from the stone.

"Whoooooa," he whispered to absolutely no one, because he'd definitely snuck down here alone. "Dad said these things power the whole village! I wonder if I could—"

He stopped mid-sentence, head tilting as he heard something deeper in the mines. Could be a worker. Could be something way less friendly. Either way, Suisen's curiosity was already doing backflips in his brain, and his feet were starting to follow suit.

The blonde homunculus adjusted his hoodie and crept forward, keeping low even though there was nobody around to actually see him. It just felt more adventurous that way. The tunnel opened up into a larger cavern, and Suisen's jaw dropped at the sight before him. Dozens—no, hundreds—of chakra crystals lined the walls like stars frozen in stone. Some pulsed with a gentle rhythm, almost like breathing. Others remained still and dormant, waiting to be harvested.

"This is rad as hell," he breathed, taking another step forward. His foot crunched on something that definitely wasn't regular stone. Looking down, Suisen spotted what looked like tool marks carved into the floor—evidence that miners had been here before, probably marking safe paths through the cavern.

A distant rumble echoed through the mines, causing a few loose pebbles to rain down from above. Suisen froze, crimson eyes darting upward. That was either settling stone or something much, much bigger moving through the tunnels. The smart thing would be to turn around and head back to the surface. The Suisen thing was to investigate just a little bit further.

"Just a quick look," he promised himself with an impish laugh, already moving deeper into the glowing cavern. "What's the worst that could happen?"

[MFT:250+]

The cavern split into three smaller tunnels ahead, each one glowing with a different hue of crystal light. Suisen was about to pick the brightest one (obviously the best choice) when something caught his eye in the leftmost passage.

The entrance was... wrong.

Unlike the other tunnels with their rough, natural walls, this one had smooth edges. Too smooth. Deliberate. And there were chunks of rubble scattered around the opening—not like a cave-in, but like something that had been carefully sealed and then broken through. Recently, judging by the lack of dust on some of the larger stones.

"Okay, that's either super cool or super bad," Suisen muttered, creeping closer. His usual grin faltered slightly. "Probably both. Definitely both."

The crystals here were dimmer, their light struggling to penetrate the darkness of the tunnel. But they were also... different. Where the other crystals pulsed with warm blues and greens, these had an almost sickly purple tinge to them, like bruises in the stone.

Against every bit of common sense screaming in his head—and there wasn't much to begin with—Suisen stepped through the broken seal.

The air changed immediately. Colder. Staler. Like nobody had breathed here in a very, very long time. His footsteps echoed weirdishly, too flat and too loud all at once. The purple crystals cast dancing shadows on the walls, and for the first time since entering the mines, Suisen felt the distinct urge to turn around.

But then he saw them.

Just a few steps into the tunnel, barely visible in the sickly purple glow... bones.

Not animal bones. The shape was all wrong for that. Human bones, arranged in a way that suggested the person had been crawling, trying to get out. Trying to escape. One skeletal hand was stretched forward, fingers splayed as if reaching for the sealed entrance that had been their tomb.

Suisen's breath caught in his throat. The seals on his arms suddenly felt very hot, prickling like they were warning him of something.

"Okay," he whispered, his voice cracking slightly. "Okay, this is definitely the 'turn around' part of the adventure."

But even as he said it, he noticed something clutched in the skeleton's other hand. Something that glinted in the purple light—not a crystal, but metal. A badge? A tool? And beyond the remains, the tunnel continued deeper, the purple glow intensifying.

Whatever had been sealed in here, someone had died trying to get out.

And somebody else had recently broken the seal to get back in.

The distant rumble echoed through the mines again, closer this time. Much closer.

The work in the tunnels was never finished.

Goro was deep in a secondary shaft, far from the polished halls of the Dojo. He was doing what the Tsuchigumo did best: maintenance. Using four of his arms to steady a heavy stone slab, his remaining two hands worked a chisel to clear a buildup of mineral deposits that were threatening to crack the masonry. It was repetitive, quiet, and safe.

Then, he heard a sound that didn't belong. A crunch of boots on stone that wasn't the rhythmic pace of a patrol.

Goro paused, his chisel hovering. Curiosity was a dangerous thing in the deep, but silence could be worse. He pulled his hair back and made sure it was tied, tucked his extra limbs close to his torso to avoid snagging them on the jagged walls, and moved toward the Off Tracks.

He rounded the corner of the large cavern and stopped. His red eyes adjusted to the shift in light. It wasn't the warm blue of the village crystals. It was a sickly, bruised purple.

It was then that Goro saw a figure. A kid maybe, they were roughly his size, wearing a hoodie that obscured their face. The stranger was standing right in front of a breach. Goro’s gaze dropped to the floor, and his breath hitched. The seal, a deliberate, crafted barrier had been smashed open.

Goro didn't know much about Fuinjutsu. The complex swirls and characters were a language he hadn't been taught yet. But he knew enough to know that a broken seal was a bad omen. It was a door that was meant to stay shut. He looked at the jagged edges of the stone, noting the lack of dust. This was fresh.

I need to tell the family about this, he thought, his pulse quickening. This isn't just a cave-in. Someone did this.

Then he saw what the hooded kid was looking at. The bones with an outsttrectech hand, reaching out to the seal. Goro felt a cold shiver run down his spine. He took a hesitant step into the purple light, his boots making a soft scuff on the floor.

"Hey!" Goro called out. His voice was raspy, muffled by the stale air. "You shouldn't be in here. That’s... that’s a restricted zone."

He didn't move closer yet. He stayed near the natural rock wall, wary of the stranger and the strange purple glow. He didn't recognize the boy under the hood; he just saw a trespasser in a place that felt like a tomb.

"The seal is broken," Goro added, pointing a trembling finger toward the shattered entrance. "We need to go back and report this to the village. It isn't safe."

Another rumble echoed, deeper this time. Goro tensed, looking up at the ceiling, then back at the hooded stranger. He was waiting to see if the kid would run, or if he was the one who had broken the door in the first place.

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