Rune rides to the old mine near Seldom Harbor prepared to infiltrate it, using a blood-drawn invisibility spell she calls Ghost Walker. Dressed in black and masked, she leaves her horse, Lady, to graze and approaches the mine, where she spots Blood Guard sentry Laila Creed. To slip inside, Rune uses a high-pitched silver whistle only Lady can hear, prompting the horse to whinny and pulling Laila away from the entrance.

Inside, Rune finds an unsettlingly quiet entry room with a single ladder descending into darkness and only a faint shimmer of light below. Suspecting something is wrong but unwilling to risk losing Seraphine if the prisoner is moved, Rune climbs down. As soon as Rune reaches the mine floor, she is seized in the dark and pinned to the rock by Gideon Sharpe, who reveals the “holding cell” was bait and tells Rune the friend she came for is not there.

Gideon keeps Rune immobilized and taunts her silence. When Gideon hisses a flare to life and reaches for Rune’s hood, Rune realizes her identity will be exposed the instant her distinctive hair is revealed. As Gideon shifts his hands to unmask her, Rune takes the opening, grabs the knife strapped to her thigh, and stabs Gideon hard enough to force him off. Rune bolts deeper into the mine, knowing she is running away from the exit but trying to stay ahead of him.

Rune races through low tunnels and down another ladder into a colder, flooded level where cave-ins block passages and seawater has swallowed sections of the mine. Gideon follows, limping but relentless, the flare’s red glow closing in behind her. Rune reaches a cramped cavern that ends in a dark, seemingly bottomless pool with a submerged ladder leading to a deeper level, leaving Rune cornered with no dry escape route.

Betting everything on Ghost Walker still blurring Gideon’s attention, Rune quietly lowers herself into the icy water. As the blood marks wash away, the spell weakens and fades, so Rune takes a breath and submerges, clinging to the ladder in the murk while Gideon searches above with the flare. When darkness returns and Gideon finally leaves, Rune surges up for air—only for two firm hands to grab her and haul her out of the water.