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Rune’s Words of Wisdom - What he learned from this experience
Something ancient is waking beneath Troalstone. And it remembers what Mortigogg did.
Every year, one troll is chosen to carry the Bone Lantern into the Hollowing Tunnels to silence the Wailing Roots.
This year, Mortigogg volunteers.
This year, Rune follows.
This year... the gate opens.But when Rune stumbles across a cryptic message carved into the tunnel wall, written in his own handwriting, he’s faced with an impossible choice:
“Leave him. He is the key. Let him open the gate.”
Does he save Mortigogg or doom them all by trying?
If you're not already afraid of what memory can do when it's hungry… you will be.
Read the full story below
If you dare to follow the light.
The Hollowing Tunnels had no wind
But something breathed behind the stone.
Rune pressed himself to the tunnel wall, his heart hammering like a trapped moth. Mortigogg’s lantern was just ahead, its pale flame casting thin shadows across the twisted stone. The flame didn’t flicker. It pulsed, like it was alive. Or remembering something it wished it could forget.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Rune muttered to himself.
Too late. He’d already followed him past the bone-marked stones. Already stepped into the hush of the deep-earth that never echoed. Already felt the weight of something waiting.
Mortigogg moved slow and deliberate, his crooked staff tapping against the stone with each step. He hadn’t turned around once.
He didn’t know Rune was there.
Or maybe… he did.
The Bone Lantern began to glow brighter as Mortigogg entered the Rootmouth—a cavern where the Wailing Roots pierced through the ceiling like petrified fangs.
Rune stepped closer, careful not to disturb the dust.
Every sound felt too loud down here. Even his thoughts.
That’s when he saw it, the message carved into the wall beside a broken tunnel fork.
Leave him. He is the key. Let him open the gate.
The words were jagged. Familiar.
He stepped closer.
The carving shimmered in the lantern light.
His own handwriting.
Rune staggered back.
“No no no… I didn’t write that did I?”
The roots above creaked.
A soft, dissonant hum drifted through the stone.
“Leave him…” a voice rasped through the walls. “He is the key…”
Rune shook his head, backing away.
“They want me to leave him. They want… they want me to let him finish this.”
The message burned into his thoughts.
Let him open the gate.
Let him die.
Let the tunnels have what they want.
“No,” Rune whispered. “I won’t.”
He turned. He was going to pull Mortigogg out of here.
Ritual be cursed. Rules be damned.
If Rune had to drag him out by his beard, so be it.
He didn’t know that the gate was not a door.
It was a mouth.
And Mortigogg wasn’t supposed to open it
He was supposed to feed it.
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