"Who the fuck are you?" Zander snapped, stepping directly into the guy's space. His voice echoed off the rock, sharp, aggressive, and entirely ready to escalate into a fight if he didn't get a straight answer immediately.
The stranger didn't even flinch. He just stood his ground, watching them with a heavy, dead-serious composure that felt totally unnatural. "Grímtöskr. Guardian of this cave, where my mother has rested for thousands of years."
Zander let out a harsh, dry bark of a laugh. He wasn't buying a single piece of the ancient guardian routine. "Right. Sure," he said, throwing pure, heavy sarcasm straight at the guy's face to see if he could crack that unbothered attitude. "And what, your father isn't hanging out here either?"
"He left no body," Grímtöskr replied. His tone stayed completely flat, totally unfazed by the mockery, as if he were just stating a simple, undeniable fact. "But his soul is finally free."
Behind Zander's shoulder, Jöstr’s entire expression shifted. The fear completely vanished, replaced by absolute fascination. He leaned in, staring at Grímtöskr like he was looking at a miracle, completely hooked on the story and totally oblivious to how tense the room actually was. His mind was clearly running a kilometer a minute, putting the pieces together.
Zander kept pressing, keeping his tone mocking and dangerous, trying to get under the guy's skin and force some kind of real reaction out of him. He stepped even closer, getting defensive, but Grímtöskr just held his ground like a stone wall, calm and entirely unmoved.
Meanwhile, Tösk couldn't take it anymore. He finally dropped his grip on Zander's arm. The itching inside his ears had flared up into a sharp, blinding headache that made his vision blur and his stomach turn. He needed to get away from the noise of the argument, so he took a few dizzy, unsteady steps backward into the shadows of the cave.
His foot came down hard, right on top of a faint, shallow groove painted into the stone floor.
Instantly, the entire cave woke up. The lines on the ground turned out to be a massive network of ancient runes, and they burst into a bright light that shattered the darkness. Before anyone could even gasp, both of them started glowing. The markings around Tösk's eyes and ears flared to life. At the exact same time, that electric light was suddenly spreading through the tattoos all over Zander's body.
Grímtöskr stumbled back, his arms dropping to his sides. The stony confidence vanished from his face as he stared at the brilliant, pulsing patterns on Zander’s skin and then over at Tösk.
"It can't be..." he whispered. "Are you... them?"
Zander looked down at his own glowing arms in pure confusion, then glared straight back at the guardian. "Who the hell are 'them'?"
Grímtöskr didn't answer. He just stood paralyzed, the ancient blue light bathing his face as the entire cave continued to hum around them.
![[C] - Lydano](https://sf.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/6048/6048685_ZanderTheRaccoon_mariosnow-comm-wm.jpg "[C] - Lydano")