Year 217 After the Era of Scourge
16th Day of the Month of Ashes,
Kael hadn't slept all night.
The journal he had found the day before weighed heavily in his satchel—more than just a collection of notes, it was a testimony from the past, a warning written by a man who had likely perished trying to understand the horror buried beneath this ruined world.
At dawn, the camp was packed up in silence. A heavy tension hung over the men. They all felt, in one way or another, that something was following them.
Darius approached Kael as they left their campsite.
— "Where exactly are we headed?" he asked, pulling his cape tighter against the morning cold.
Kael took a deep breath before answering.
— "South. We need to reach Naram Outpost by the end of the week."
— "And if we don’t make it?"
Kael shot him a dark look, and Darius shrugged with a sigh.
— "Yeah, yeah, I get it. ‘Then we die.’ You really know how to keep morale high, boss."
Kael didn’t respond. He was too preoccupied with what he had read. Weapons from another age. Abandoned Guardians. Secrets buried under layers of ash.
He glanced at Lysara, who was walking silently beside him.
She, too, was troubled.
The night before, after seeing the journal, she had asked only one question:
— "Do you think there are more of them?"
Kael hadn’t known how to answer.
Yes. There were certainly more.
And they were going to find them, whether they wanted to or not.
After several hours of walking, the group arrived at the edge of a massive canyon. A gaping wound in the earth, deep and dark like an open scar.
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Kael stopped at the edge and looked down.
The canyon walls were smooth, almost glass-like. As if extreme heat had melted the rock centuries ago.
Lysara knelt and picked up a handful of earth between her fingers.
— "This is strange… The rock here doesn’t feel natural."
Darius frowned.
— "What do you mean? That this hole wasn’t carved by time?"
Kael clenched his fists.
— "No. This isn’t nature’s work. It’s something else’s."
He reached into his satchel and pulled out the journal he had found the day before. Flipping through the pages, he stopped at an illustration depicting a fissure similar to the one before them.
An ancient base.
A subterranean complex built by those who came before their era. A remnant of the past, forgotten by the world… until today.
— "We’re going down," he finally declared.
Lysara lifted her head, startled.
— "What?! Kael, that’s insane!"
— "We need to know what’s down there."
— "And if it’s a trap?!"
— "Then we’ll find out soon enough."
She stared at him, searching his face for any sign of hesitation.
He wasn’t joking.
With an exasperated sigh, she shook her head.
— "One day, this obsession of yours—wanting to understand everything—is going to get you killed."
Kael allowed himself a faint smile.
— "But not today."
Then, without another word, he began the descent.
The canyon was deeper than he had expected.
The air grew heavier the further they went, as if something was waiting for them in the darkness.
They finally reached a rocky platform where ancient structures emerged from the stone. Buildings, blackened by time, half-buried beneath debris.
Darius let out a low whistle.
— "Damn… We’ve just stumbled upon a real ghost town."
Kael moved cautiously through the ruins, his eyes scanning every corner. He knew they were not alone.
Then, he saw it.
A door.
Embedded into the rock face, massive, metallic, covered in faded symbols.
He approached it and ran a hand over the cold surface.
A shiver ran down his spine.
— "This is it," he murmured.
Lysara and Darius joined him, staring at the structure with apprehension.
— "And how do we open it?" Darius asked.
Kael didn’t answer immediately.
Because at that very moment, he heard a deep sound.
A mechanical noise, old, rusted…
The door had just opened on its own.
And beyond the darkness stretching inside, something was already watching them.
