Adventure of Tuiwen 2

The heartstone is gone, but its death shakes the whole hill. Black vapor spills upward in ragged breaths as the chamber walls split and groan.

A deep pulse rolls from below, slower now, heavier somehow, as if something vast beneath Dol Guldur is waking to the wound.

Radagast throws himself toward the hidden stair, and the Sentry follows, while shards of black rock crash behind them. The passage back is narrowing fast, but the path to the surface still lives if Tuiwen seizes it now.

Tuiwen darts low through the choking ash, boots finding the last clear stones before they vanish under rubble. The stair behind her spits dust and broken rock.

Radagast stumbles after her with one hand up against the blast of falling grit, while the Hooded Sentry twists aside as a slab crashes down where they stood.

A jagged arch opens ahead, a narrow throat of surviving passage, and Tuiwen clears it in one clean rush.

Stone detonates behind them. The hidden stair seals with a grinding roar, burying the way in a wall of fresh collapse.

Ahead, a thin seam of gray daylight leaks through a crack in the fortress wall, and the air carries ash, cold stone, and the distant stir of something still waking below.