The tunnel journey was a descent into a living geology. The walls, striated with veins of glowing green and soft blue minerals, pulsed with a slow, sleepy light that reflected in the wide, dark eyes of the rams. The air grew warmer, carrying the smell of wet clay, roasting tubers, and the musky scent of the great beasts. The echoing clack-clack of hooves was joined by a distant, rising murmur—the sound of a crowd.
They emerged not into another cavern, but into a cataclysm.
Maru-Tinton was not built. It was the corpse of something greater, dressed in the rags of a new civilization. The space was so vast the far walls were lost in a permanent, dusty twilight. And looming over it all, embedded into the ceiling like a forgotten crown, was a colossal stone arch. It was made of the same slick, dark alloy as the Abyssal Glider, and from it protruded massive, angular runes that glimmered like petrified lightning bolts. At the city's heart, stood an ancient pedestal carved from ancient stone, stood a silver bell of impossible craftsmanship, its surface reflecting the city's scattered lights like a frozen moon.
But the city below… Charlie's jaw went slack. His academic heart stuttered, then began to pound against his ribs.
Towering, shattered spires of the same black alloy thrust up from the ground, but their tops were sheared off. Between these monoliths, the Ruru-Gin had constructed their "Upside-Down Villas"—not by building, but by occupying. They'd carved homes into the sides of the broken towers, their rounded doorways and wool-lined interiors glowing with warm, fire-pot light, a stark contrast to the cold, angular ruins they infested. Bridges of woven moss-goat rope and salvaged girders swung between the spires. The ground was a mosaic of cracked ancient paving stones and packed earth, bustling with hundreds of Ruru-Gin. Stalls sold sago-grub skewers and mugs of thick, dark stout. The air thrummed with the vibration of their laughter—that constant, rolling "Ru-ru-ru!"—and the bleating of moss-goats corralled in pens made from snapped support beams.
It was a vibrant, chaotic slum built in the skeleton of a cavernous stone giant. The sheer, tragic scale of it hit Charlie like a physical blow. "Have you ever seen—" he breathed, his voice tremulous with awe.
"Charlie, don't—" Aurélie's warning was a whip-crack, but she was too late.
He bolted, driven by an academic fever, toward the nearest intact rune on a fallen pillar, his satchel flapping. He didn't get ten paces. From shadowed alcoves in the great, broken spires, Ruru-Gin guards emerged. They were an inch taller, older, their horns more pronounced, clad in patched-together armor of metal scrap and hardened leather. They moved with a startling, silent speed, surrounding him, their weapons—heavy mining picks and axes with Grav-Ore heads—held ready.
"Who are you?" one growled, his voice like grinding stones. "What are you doing in Maru-Tinton? How did you find the path from the Realm of Statues?"
The commotion turned all heads. As Aurélie and Ember hurried forward, the guards' eyes widened further. "More tall ones!" another shouted. "From the cursed light! Seize them!"
In that moment, the absurd truth of the Ruru-Gin's memory revealed itself. Tori-Rick, Gin-Becy, and Nito-Dunc, caught in the sudden tension, wheeled their rams around. The rodeo, the friendship, the invitation—it all vanished from their minds, overwritten by generational instinct. Tori-Rick drew his Gilded Tiger-Claw, his young face set in a fierce mask. "The Realm of Statues! How did you find your way down here?"
Aurélie released a groan that carried the weight of millennia. Ember, however, giggled—a bright, nervous sound that confuse the rams.
"Tell us who you are," Tori-Rick demanded, "or we'll force you back to the surface! Back to where you'll turn to stone!"
Charlie, still surrounded but now utterly captivated, tilted his head. "Realm of Statues?"
The Ruru-Gin guards nodded as one. Nito-Dunc, from his saddle, explained as if to a simple child, "The realm above. In the terrible light that shines. Everyone becomes stone when it touches them. It's why the smart people live in the Great Dark."
"But," Charlie sputtered, trying to correlate, "you mean your… dermal calcification is photo-reactive? You become stone in sunlight?"
Tori-Rick snapped, "Of course we do! Everyone does! That's why we live here!" The utter, unshakable conviction in his voice was terrifying. Their entire worldview was built on this one, catastrophic truth.
Ember took a small step forward, her hands open. "But we're friends. Remember?" She smiled, a fragile, hopeful thing.
Tori-Rick cocked his head. The fierce commander's expression melted into open confusion. "We… are?"
Ember nodded slowly. "Yeah. You invited us. To the rodeo."
The word acted like a magical incantation.
"Rodeo!" all three young Ruru-Gin exclaimed in unison, as if slapped.
The transformation was instantaneous. All hostility evaporated. Tori-Rick sheathed his sword with a clumsy shunk. Gin-Becy gasped, fumbling for her ledger. "The guest log! I haven't updated the guest log!"
Nito-Dunc just yelled, "We're gonna miss the horn!" They scrambled away, their rams bleating, pushing past the bewildered guards to dive into the crowd towards the distant bleating of goat pens, the interrogation completely forgotten.
The lead guard stared after them, then back at the intruders, his pickaxe lowering slightly in profound confusion.
Charlie, freed from the circle, immediately turned to Aurélie, his eyes wild. "Aurélie, this is no ordinary settlement! Look at the metallurgical consistency of that arch! The stress-fracture patterns on the central spire suggest a catastrophic tensile failure, not geological settling! This was a—"
Just then, a hush fell over Maru-Tinton.
It didn't build; it dropped. One moment the city was a cacophony of life, the next it was wrapped in a thick, watchful silence. The hair on the back of Ember's neck stood up. Tori-Rick, Gin-Becy, and Nito-Dunc came rushing back, not on their rams, but on foot, their faces uncharacteristically solemn. They crowded close to Aurélie, Charlie, and Ember.
"Shhh!" Gin-Becy hissed, placing a thick finger against her lips. Charlie opened his mouth to protest, but her ensuing scowl was so fierce he snapped it shut, frowning in utter frustration.
Through the silent crowd, a path cleared. An elder Ruru-Gin woman processed forward. This was Glinty-Hoshly. She was stooped, her horns long and spiraled with age, draped in robes of patchwork moss-goat wool that had been dyed in deep, earthy patterns. Her face was a map of wrinkles, but her eyes held the same unsettling, ancient void as the Karakuri robots' lenses. She moved with a slow, rhythmic step, a procession of other elders behind her, all holding small, smoldering braziers that gave off a sweet, smoky incense that smelled of crushed rock and old roots.
She ascended the steps of the dais upon which the great Silver Bell hung. Turning to face her people, she clasped her hands before her, concealed within her wide sleeves. When she spoke, her voice was a dry rustle, yet it carried to every corner of the dead city.
"Once," she began, "before the 'Stone-Skin' became our cloth and the dark became our home, the Ruru-Gin walked upon a world of endless blue and soft winds. We were the tiny shadows of the Great Heavy Ones… the architects of the bridges to the dust."
Charlie trembled, his hand itching for his notebook.
"The sky grew jealous. The golden mouth that breathed light was swallowed by the night. A Great Storm shattered the bridge. The Heavy Ones fell like leaden raindrops into the deep ocean, dragging us, their loyal laborers, down into the mud."
Ember listened, her good eye wide. The fable felt familiar, a nightmare dressed in metaphor.
"Fearing the 'Weight' of the stars that stole the fishes' sky, the first of us were the 'Mountain Walkers,' who turned their backs on the stars to guard the mud. The second was the 'Great Shell' who pressed us into the deep, until skin turned to crust and eyes turned to stone. Those who remember the sun will always try to climb. With the Gift of Fog, all is forgotten, and all that is left is what the 'rhythm' tells us."
She paused, her ancient eyes sweeping the crowd, lingering for a ghost of a second on the tall outsiders. "Every sixteen days, we strike the Silver Bell with the Silver Hammer. We simply ring the bell, laugh our 'Ru-ru-ru!' laugh, and wait for the 'Big Brother' to tell us it is time to sleep."
An elder handed her a hammer, its handle wrapped in hide, its head a mirror-bright disc of the same alien silver. With a motion that was more ritual than effort, Glinty-Hoshly turned and struck the bell.
A single, pure note rang out.
It was not loud, but it was deep. It vibrated in the teeth, in the bones, in the very alloy of the ruins. In response, the massive arch in the ceiling awakened. The protruding runes glowed with a fierce, internal white light, and complex, geometric patterns of the same light spider-webbed across the arch's surface, forming a brief, stunning schematic of… something. A coordinate? A circuit diagram? A lock?
The entire Ruru-Gin population gazed up and let out a soft, collective sigh of "Awwww," as children watching fireworks.
Charlie swallowed hard, his academic fervor momentarily doused by a chilling understanding. This was a maintenance ritual. A systems check for a machine they lived inside but didn't comprehend. He turned to Aurélie, his face pale. "That arch… it's a structural integrity field generator or a… a dimensional anchor point! The 'Gift of Fog'… memory suppression? Aurélie, this isn't a culture, it's a… a custodial program!"
Aurélie didn't look at him. She watched Glinty-Hoshly, who was now looking directly at them, her expression unreadable. The Silver Knight pinched the bridge of her nose, a profound headache blooming behind her eyes. The mission had just become infinitely more complicated.
As the light in the arch faded, Glinty-Hoshly turned back to her people, all traces of the solemn elder gone, replaced by a cheerful festival organizer. She spread her arms wide.
"Now!" she cried, her voice suddenly bright. "Let the Rodeo commence!"
The silence shattered. The "Ru-ru-ru!" laughter erupted anew, twice as loud. The ominous, ancient machine was forgotten, buried again under the joyful, oblivious chaos of goat-herders preparing for their games. The door to the past had not just creaked ajar; its ancient guardians had just cheerfully polished its hinges, utterly unaware it was a door at all.
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