The golden trail left behind by Halburn continued through the collapsed structure, faint now, little more than thin strands of light appearing between broken stones before disappearing beneath the rubble again.
Whenever Arthur’s King Mark pulsed, the trail brightened, revealing another section of the path, and they followed it downward.
At first he expected another underground passage. After everything they’d encountered beneath the ancient city, another tunnel hardly seemed surprising. But when they reached the bottom of the stairs, the passage suddenly widened.
Arthur stopped, and everyone behind him nearly walked into his back.
"What?" Sun asked.
He didn’t answer immediately, staring ahead. The passage had opened into an enormous district, stone roads stretching into the darkness in several directions, wide enough for entire groups to walk side by side.
Ancient buildings lined both sides of the streets, many covered in sand but still remarkably intact. Homes. Shops. Courtyards. Stone wells. Gardens whose plants had long since disappeared. Even the remains of marketplaces were still visible beneath the sand.
Scattered throughout the district stood enormous stone statues of Beasts. Some stood at the entrances of buildings. Others guarded intersections. A few were partially swallowed by massive roots that had pushed through the ancient stone over the centuries. The entire place felt less like a dungeon and more like a city that had simply been abandoned.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Sun slowly looked from one side of the street to the other. "This place is way too big."
Kong nodded.
Sun glanced at him. "Don’t encourage him."
Arthur was already walking away.
"Arthur?" Sun blinked.
"I’m looking at something."
"That’s what I’m afraid of."
Mithra giggled as she followed. "You know him too well."
"Unfortunately," Sun sighed.
Athena barely seemed to hear them, already stepping onto the ancient road, studying the buildings with an expression Arthur had learned to recognize, one that meant she’d found something interesting. "This isn’t a ruin built for a single purpose."
Luna looked at her. "What do you mean?"
Athena crouched beside the road and brushed away a thin layer of sand. "There are residential structures." She pointed toward a nearby building. "Storage facilities." Another. "Commercial structures." She turned toward the distant courtyards. "Public spaces." Her eyes moved across the district. "This was an actual settlement."
Luna stared. "So people lived here?"
"Yes." Athena stood. "And not recently." She looked toward the enormous roots twisting through the streets. "Very long ago."
Arthur walked past them, glancing into one of the buildings, stone shelves still lining the walls, a broken table, several clay containers, the remains of something that might once have been a fountain. Nothing valuable remained. But that wasn’t what interested him. He stepped back outside. The city itself was the valuable thing.
They continued deeper into the eastern district, the ruins growing more intact the farther they went. One marketplace still had stone stalls standing in rows. Another courtyard held a dry well surrounded by carved Beast statues. Some buildings had collapsed completely, while others had survived beneath layers of sand.
Athena examined nearly everything they passed. "This architecture is different from the structures we found above."
"Different how?" Arthur asked.
"The proportions." She ran her hand over a stone wall. "The upper ruins were built for defense and containment. These were built for ordinary life." She looked down the street. "Which means this district wasn’t constructed after the city was abandoned."
He raised an eyebrow. "You’re saying it was here before the ruins?"
"I’m saying the city had multiple phases of development." Her eyes narrowed. "And whatever happened here was important enough that someone went to great lengths to preserve certain areas."
Arthur looked around. "Preserve?"
She nodded. "Look at the walls." He did, and at first he didn’t notice anything. Then he saw it. The sand around several buildings had been carefully piled against the walls, not naturally, forming unnaturally straight lines.
He walked toward the nearest street, crouched, and brushed his fingers across the sand. "This wasn’t deposited naturally."
Luna came closer. "What do you mean?"
He looked at the road. "Someone buried it."
Athena followed his gaze and noticed it too, several streets covered by noticeably thicker layers of sand than the surrounding areas. Arthur walked toward one of them.
Sun watched him. "Please don’t."
He stopped. "Don’t what?"
"Whatever you’re about to do."
He crouched and started digging.
Sun closed his eyes. "I knew it."
Mithra laughed, and Kong immediately crouched beside Arthur, digging with both hands, sand flying everywhere.
Sun stared. "You too?"
Kong grunted.
"You’re helping?" Arthur asked.
Kong nodded enthusiastically.
"Of course you are," Sun sighed.
Vedas folded his arms. "This is probably a waste of time."
"Maybe," Arthur said, still digging.
"That’s not reassuring."
Athena joined them, brushing aside the sand more carefully. "Why are you interested in this road?"
He paused, looking at the buried stone beneath his hand. "If someone buried the road, I want to know what they didn’t want people walking over."
She went silent, then smiled slightly. "That is actually a reasonable question."
Sun pointed at Arthur. "Don’t encourage him."
A few minutes later, the sand had been cleared enough to expose several meters of stone. Something was carved into the road, decoration at first glance, until Athena’s expression changed. "Wait."
Everyone gathered around her as she brushed away more sand, revealing several lines running across the stone, some curved, others intersecting, small symbols placed at regular intervals along them.
She stared at the pattern. "This isn’t decoration."
Arthur crouched beside her. "What is it?"
"A map."
Luna’s eyes widened. "A map?"
Athena nodded. "Not of the district." She traced one of the carved lines with her finger. "Of the roads." She moved to another section. "These markings indicate direction."
"Like signs?"
"More than signs." Her excitement became obvious. "They’re a network." She stood quickly and looked down the street, then another, then another. "Wait." She ran toward an intersection, and everyone followed.
She crouched again. Another marking. She compared it with the one they’d uncovered, then looked farther down the street. There was another. And another.
Arthur’s eyes narrowed. "So the roads are connected."
"Yes." Her voice was almost breathless. "And they’re all following a pattern."
They moved through the district, uncovering more markings as they went, the pattern growing clearer the deeper they traveled. Roads split, then rejoined. Secondary streets fed into larger avenues. Several routes circled the central portion of the ancient city, but eventually nearly every major road pointed in the same direction, east, then southeast, then toward the deepest part of the ruins.
Luna pulled out her compass. The needle trembled.
Athena put the pieces together. "This city wasn’t built randomly." She looked at everyone. "The roads were designed around something."
Arthur stared at the enormous city stretching before them. "What?"
She pointed slowly toward the direction all the roads converged. "The Earth Mirror."
Silence. Even Sun stopped making jokes.
Luna’s fingers tightened around the compass. "So the city—"
"Was built around the Mirror," Athena finished.
Arthur looked at the ancient roads beneath his feet, the realization far more significant than simply finding a path. The people who’d built this city hadn’t merely discovered the Earth Mirror and constructed something nearby. They’d designed their settlement around it. Every major route eventually led toward it. The Mirror had been the center, and the city had grown outward from that center.
He smiled. "Then we’re not following the compass anymore."
Luna looked at him.
He pointed toward the roads. "The city itself is showing us where to go."
She stared at the ancient streets, then slowly smiled. "You’re right."
Athena looked toward the converging roads. "If these markings are accurate, the original route should lead directly toward the central chamber."
Sun crossed his arms. "So we finally have a direction."
"Looks like it," Arthur nodded.
He turned to leave, then stopped. Something had caught his attention. One of the massive roots beside the road had grown through the remains of an ancient building, and unlike the other roots, this one was strangely smooth, its surface covered with faint lines that almost resembled writing.
He approached it.
"Arthur?" Athena noticed.
He reached out, his fingers touching the root, and the world changed.
For a brief moment, the ruined city disappeared. He saw stone roads beneath a clear sky, people walking through the streets, Beasts moving between buildings, children running through a courtyard. The city was alive.
Then the image fractured. Sand covered the streets. Buildings disappeared. The roads were buried, the same root stretching through the ruins, growing year after year. And beneath everything, a faint pulse, something buried deep beneath the earth.
His vision snapped back. He pulled his hand away.
A notification appeared before his eyes.
[Ancient Root Memory]
[A fragment of information stored within an ancient root has been accessed.]
[New Trait Acquired: Buried Relic Sense]
He blinked.
[Buried Relic Sense]
[Allows the user to sense traces of ancient structures, pathways, and objects that have been deliberately concealed or buried.]
He stared at the notification. That was actually useful. Not powerful, not something that would win a fight, but in a place like this it could be incredibly valuable.
He looked at the sand-covered streets again, and a faint sensation tugged at his awareness, not toward the Earth Mirror, not yet, but toward several places around them, places where something had been deliberately hidden.
He smiled.
Mithra noticed. "What?"
"Nothing."
She narrowed her eyes. "You’re smiling."
"Am I?"
"Yes."
He walked toward another section of the road, and she followed. "You’re definitely planning something."
"Maybe."
Sun groaned from behind them. "I hate that word."
He ignored him, brushing away another layer of sand. Nothing. He moved to a second location. Nothing. Then a third, and his hand stopped. Beneath the sand was another carved stone. He cleared it, revealing a small symbol.
Athena crouched beside him immediately. "Another directional marker."
He looked at the line it formed. It connected to the road network. Then another. And another. The entire eastern district was filled with hidden markers. Someone had deliberately buried the original road system, but they hadn’t destroyed it. They had hidden it.
He stood. "Why?"
Athena looked toward the center of the ancient city. "Perhaps they didn’t want anyone following the roads."
Luna’s expression darkened. "Because of the Mirror?"
"Possibly."
Arthur stared at the distant ruins. Or perhaps, he thought, because they didn’t want anyone finding what was beneath it. He didn’t say that aloud.
There was something else bothering him. The compass. Luna checked it again, and the needle had become unnaturally steady. She raised it slowly. "It wasn’t this precise before."
"Because we weren’t close enough," Arthur said.
The needle pointed straight ahead, toward the deepest section of the eastern district, toward the point where the ancient road network converged.
Luna swallowed. "That’s where the Earth Mirror should be."
He nodded. "Then let’s go."
They started down the ancient road, moving more carefully now. The discovery had changed the atmosphere. They weren’t wandering through ruins anymore. They’d found the original route, and the road itself was guiding them. Ancient Beast statues stood on either side as they advanced, their weathered faces pointed toward the same destination. Some were enormous. Others were small enough to fit inside a person’s arms. A few had broken apart entirely. But all of them faced the center.
Athena noticed too. "They’re all facing the same direction."
Arthur glanced at one. "Like guardians."
Luna nodded quietly. "Maybe they were."
They continued, the road descending gradually, the buildings growing larger, the roots thicker, the sand deeper, the compass more precise with every step. Arthur could feel something beneath his feet, not with his ears, not with his eyes, something else, a vibration, barely noticeable. He stopped.
Vedas immediately looked back. "What is it?"
He didn’t answer, staring at the road. The others stopped as well.
Sun glanced around. "Did you hear something?"
"No," Athena said.
Kong crouched and placed one hand against the ground. His expression changed, and he looked up. "Something’s moving."
Mithra’s smile disappeared. "Under us?"
Kong nodded. The ground trembled, only slightly, sand slipping from the nearby buildings before everything went still again.
Arthur looked down. The Buried Relic Sense he’d just gained was reacting, not toward the road, not toward the Earth Mirror. Something was moving beneath them. Something enormous.
A shadow passed under the sand, so large it crossed the entire width of the road.
Luna’s face went pale. Sun slowly reached for his weapon. Athena stepped back. Vedas moved in front of Arthur.
Then the sand began to rise.
Arthur stared at the shifting ground. "...That’s not a small Beast."
The sand suddenly sank, a massive shape disappearing beneath the ancient road.
And then, from somewhere deep below them, came a low, rumbling growl.
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