Snow whispered across the ruin's rim, settling like ash on steel-clad shoulders.
Six figures stood at the edge, backs to the trees, eyes on the black mouth below.
"Still warm," said Veyna, crouching beside a footprint half-filled with frost. "They shouldn't have gotten too far."
The torchlight guttered in the wind. Behind her, Sergeant Tarl scowled.
"Commander says clear the ruin. Tag the bodies. Bring back the heads if they're intact."
Veyna didn't look up. "You think they're already corpses?"
Tarl spat into the snow. "No. But that place eats time. If we don't drag 'em out quick, we'll be following ghosts by midday."
From the rear came a dry chuckle. Arken, their gray‑bearded ruin‑cartographer, tapped the iron of his sword. "Or joining them."
* * * * *
The party of 6 slowly descended after a strategy meeting, being met with the sight of crumbling ceilings strung with roots and ancient iron chains. The air was thick with a sour, metallic scent—the scent of old magic, blood-soaked stone, and something worse hiding behind both. The party's boots echoed faintly across cracked mosaic tiles, where half-seen murals writhed beneath centuries of grime and spiritual residue.
Above them stretched a vast vertical chamber—a ribcage of stone, arched and cavernous. A stair spiraled downward along the walls, hollow at the center like a pit carved by a forgotten giant's hand.
"Hold," whispered Veyna.
She raised a palm. The arcane tattoo along her arm shimmered, and a spectral ripple pulsed through the chamber like a sonar wave.
The woman had long raven-black hair and exuded a strong aura, befitting of an echo bearer.
"Three floors down," she said, pupils dilating "And moving too."
Her last remark attracted the attention of the whole group. Ruins were full of dangers, from traps all the way to deadly monsters that lurked in the dark. So it was hard to believe that two starving fugitives made it all the way to the third layer.
Slowly, the group started descending the stairs, the light dimming with each step taken.
"Storm me," muttered Jory the scout, wiry and sharp‑eyed. "How'd two half‑dead adventurers make it that deep in an hour?"
Meryn, the archer—tawny‑haired, clouded left eye—hooked a grin. "Maybe they're clearing our path."
"Unlikely," Arken rasped. "Ruin geometry is complicated. Traps can arm themselves again. Monsters respawn from Echo residue. Getting through that fast while clearing it with just two people is unbelieveable."
The sergent, a hulking Echo-bearer named Tarl, grunted. "I don't like this. Feels like they're leading us deeper."
"They're fleeing," Veyna said calmly. "Not baiting. But their trail's deliberate. Purposeful."
Arken chuckled softly. "I'd wager my second heart they're first‑timers here."
Tarl raised a brow. "Second?"
The old man grinned and tapped a faintly glowing gem embedded under his collarbone. "Echo artifact. Lets me survive minor organ trauma. Comes in handy more often than you'd think."
Hask, the warrior of the group waved a hand forward. "Less chat. Stairwell ends here."
They came to a halt before a vast threshold—arched stone choked with vines of dark crystal. The doorway yawned into a vaulted chamber, half collapsed and bristling with rubble. Frozen glyphs twitched faintly on the floor like they were trying to wake up.
Veyna stepped forward and whispered a detection phrase in an old tongue.
The glyphs sparked, flared, then fizzled out.
"Trap's already triggered," she said. "Not by us."
"Not recently," muttered the scout. "Still warm, though. Something walked through here and didn't die."
They pressed on, threading a maze of narrow passages where walls bowed inward and ancient statues leaned as though eavesdropping.
They moved fast, the group fanning out with practiced formation: scout ahead, tank to the front-right, Veyna center, archer and melee support to the flanks, Arken at the rear muttering notes into a small slate etched with living ink.
Then—a sudden flutter.
The air warped.
The scout dove left just in time as a blur shot from the ceiling—a pale, tall and scrawny looking creature, it's body covered in ash and dust. It screeched, lashing out with claws that threatened to slice anything it came in contact with.
"It's a Whisper!" shouted Arken.
Tarl stepped forward, shield flaring with red sigils as the thing slammed into him. The blow rang out like a cathedral chime. The creature recoiled, regaining its posture shortly after. Veyna slashed the air—violet chains wrapped the creature's ribs.
Meryn's arrow clipped the skull but didn't penetrate, her second pinned the creature's left shoulder to stone.
"Careful, it's fast." Veyna muttered, eyes narrow.
"I hate these things," the scout growled, flinging a dart laced with a liquid substance. It passed through the air and pierced the other shoulder of the whisper, stopping any attempt on escaping.
"Kill it!" Veyna shouted.
Tarl hammered the thing into the floor, a stone crater forming right under the impact. The Whisper's screech warped the corridor—but died as its organs spilled out. Ash and ink misted the air, then sank into silence.
The team stood still for a moment, moving again after making sure their confrontation didn't attract any other Whispers.
* * * * *
The assaults of the Whispers continued but as long as the party chose good fights their lives were not in any danger at all. If anything, the traps were much more of a problem.
The deeper halls angled unexpectedly, forming switchbacks like a spider's labyrinth. Floors canted beneath their feet, every third tile threatened to spit arrows or collapse into hidden pits.
Tarl triggered a blade‑fan trap, Veyna froze half the mechanism with quick glyphwork while Jory disarmed the final latch. They progressed room by room—rarely stopping, always marking their route with chalk sigils.
"Kael," said Veyna. "He's not just a fugitive. He knows how to move. Doesn't trigger traps. Doesn't bleed."
"Does now," muttered Tarl. He pointed toward a smear of red across the floor leading toward a hallway thick with thorned vines and half-collapsed statues.
Hask sniffed. "Light blood. Maybe an arrow graze?"
"And the white‑haired one?" Meryn asked, stringing a fresh shaft. "Report said Kael's paired with a ghost‑pale boy."
Arken wiped dust from a mural—an ancient figure crowned in broken chains. "White hair? Pure white? That line's supposed to be extinct."
"Tarl's folk call 'em ghostborn," Jory added. "Rumor is they used to carry pieces of a saint in their blood."
"That's tavern drivel," Hask muttered while waving his hand.
"Maybe," Veyna said softly—too softly. Only Arken heard the tension there. "But hair white as ash? If he's truly ghostborn, Kael's dug up more trouble than debt collectors."
Tarl grunted. "Doesn't matter. Commander wants Kael—alive or not. The kid's collateral."
Veyna's jaw tightened, but she nodded. "Eyes open. Next junction, we breach—"
A roar cut her off—stone splitting ahead, followed by a tremor through the whole ruin.
* * * * *
Dust curled in slow spirals around their boots as Kael and Lethan staggered through a narrow passageway, breaths shallow and limbs aching. Behind them, somewhere in the gloom above, came the rasping, high-pitched shriek of a Whisper.
"Keep moving!" Kael hissed through clenched teeth, his cloak torn, one hand pressed against a deep gouge in his side. His Echo—once a gleaming lattice of energy around his palm—now flickered with sickly light, barely holding shape.
"I thought you said there was another exit!" Lethan growled, ducking low under a broken arch.
"There is!" Kael shot back, wheezing. "These places always have—fail-safes. Old escape lines. For the ancients. Or maybe smugglers. I can feel it... just—just escape from this first!"
The Whisper behind them shrieked angrily, clinging to walls while keeping its eyes on the 2 survivors.
They burst into a vine-strangled chamber where the wall seemed collapsed—until Lethan noticed the faint outline of a circular seal hidden behind the rubble. Symbols long faded, but still pulsing with buried energy. Without thinking, Kael raised his hand, and the seal hissed open, parting into a downward stairwell that descended in steep angles.
They rushed down the stairwell, the Whisper behind them shrieked again, its bone-thin form slamming into the stone wall too late.
The secret chamber closed and they vanished into the dark.
Kael collapsed beside a stone basin choked with moss and lichen. "Just—just a minute," he gasped, fingers twitching as he forced his Echo back into silence. "I'm burning through too much. That was close."
Lethan knelt beside him, scanning their surroundings. "You saved us back there," he admitted. "Again. But you're running on fumes."
Kael gave a weak grin. "What else is new?"
They were now on the third layer of the ruin, it felt colder and much older. The stonework shifted from cracked mortar to seamless obsidian slabs, each etched with looping glyphs that shimmered faintly under their breath. Broken columns arched over their heads like the ribs of a fallen colossus, and in the distance, a soft hum throbbed through the floor like the beat of a buried heart.
They sat in silence, the ruin pressing in around them. Then Lethan spoke again, quieter this time.
"What's down here?"
Kael's eyes drifted toward the faint pulsing light far ahead. "A heart. A power source. Could be a sealed Echo, or an artifact, no way to tell."
"We should avoid it," Lethan said immediately. "Can we go around?"
Kael's expression darkened as he slowly shook his head. "No other paths. The ruin's folded inward down here—this is the axis. Unless we turn back… and we both know what's waiting behind us."
They didn't speak again. Just moved.
Unlike the ruin's upper floors—scarred and splintered from time and violence, this level was disturbingly intact. The air was colder, tighter, like it had been sealed off for centuries and had never meant to be disturbed. Arched hallways ran smooth and quiet. There were no Whispers in sight, no resetting traps, no bleached skeletons marking past explorers' ends.
Just silence. Too clean. Too still.
The only sounds were the soft crunch of their boots on soot-laced stone and the occasional drop of condensation from the ribbed ceiling far above. Even the ruin itself seemed to hold its breath.
Kael walked slower now, not from fatigue alone—though his every step came with effort, but from a sense of caution that clawed at the edge of his instincts. Something was wrong.
They crossed a threshold carved with indecipherable runes, and the space beyond opened up like the inside of a forgotten cathedral.
The central chamber was vast, round and symmetrical, shaped like a coliseum fused with a mausoleum. Time hadn't broken this place. It had preserved it. Stone pillars soared upward, carved into twisted shapes of chained angels and screaming beasts. Ancient banners hung limp from the upper balconies, their gold-threaded sigils blackened by age. On the cracked walls, mural fragments depicted celestial wars, but every divine figure had its face violently scratched out.
And at the center of the chamber, where the eye was inevitably drawn, hovered the source of a glow.
A crystalline relic floated inches above a pedestal of fused bone and basalt. It pulsed with quiet power—its core swirling with embers of red and golden light, as if something inside it still breathed.
The pedestal itself looked grown, not built, spinal columns spiraled together with ossified ribcages, hands emerging from its base as if the stone had once tried to escape whatever now rested atop it.
Kael exhaled slowly. "A relic..."
Lethan took a half-step back, jaw clenched, eyes sweeping the vast chamber. "This place feels wrong. All of it."
Kael didn't answer.
The silence was suffocating.
Kael and Lethan stepped into the main chamber, their boots echoing off the ancient stone floor. The air here felt denser somehow, thicker with time, or perhaps memory.
It was eerily empty.
No Whispers. No shifting shadows. No traps. Only the steady, low hum that seemed to resonate from the chamber itself.
Lethan took the lead, the soft flicker of their torch catching the edges of his bare torso. The tattered cloak he once wore now hung loosely around his waist, knotted like a sash. His upper body bore the grime of travel, thin cuts and bruises crossing his skin like a map of trials. An inky mark shimmered faintly on his spine, pulsing in quiet rhythm with his breath. The pants and boots he wore had been salvaged from a dead adventurer several levels above—patched, mismatched, but functional.
Reaching the center of the chamber Kael and Lethan observed the relic with great curiosity.
A ring-like circlet, almost crown-like, but irregular in design, jagged, hollow, forged from material that shimmered like obsidian laced with veins of rust-red crystal. It gave off a sensation rather than light. A presence.
"That's not… that's not a relic," he whispered. "Not exactly."
Lethan tilted his head. "It doesn't look dangerous."
"That doesn't mean it isn't." Kael stepped forward and cautiously took the artifact into his hands.
The moment his skin made contact, a wave of cold pressure coiled around his fingers. The object was light—almost unnaturally so, but dense with layered Echoes. Not one signature, but several, knotted and fused in ways that defied classification. The red veins flickered briefly in response, glowing like embers under frost… and then faded, ignoring him.
"It reacted," he whispered. "But then… nothing."
Lethan didn't answer. He was staring at Kael, more specifically—at the object in his hands.
Kael turned it over again, holding it close. "It might be dormant. I'll keep it. Could be worth studying after we get out of—"
Kael didn't get to finish as a low, guttural groan rumbled through the stone beneath their boots. It wasn't the metallic shift of a trap or the creak of ancient mechanisms. This felt organic, like the growl of a beast, a titan that has been awakened from his slumber.
Lethan froze.
"What was that?"
The groan built into a tremor, then stone cracking, banners swaying as dust rained from the domed ceiling. Then came the roar.A sound so deep it shook marrow, a howl that came from something that was only meant to destroy. The entire ruin shuddered, fractured stone echoing as smaller chambers began collapsing under the sheer pressure of its awakening fury.
From the far end of the hall, behind a collapsed colonnade, a beast entered.
It crawled from the dark like a shadow made of bone and violence, low to the ground, shoulders coiled with thick, plate-like ribs that flexed with unnatural grace. Its tail scraped along the floor with a rhythmic clatter, tipped with spines like barbed spears. Red light pulsed in the cracks of its skeletal body like blood beneath skinless muscle. Its empty sockets glowed, not with hunger, but recognition. It looked similar to the Whispers of the ruin, much bigger and monstruous though.
It had been waiting.
It had been guarding.
Now it had come to take back what was stolen.
Kael took one step backward. "It's coming for the relic."
"How can it know?" Lethan asked, reaching instinctively for the dagger at his hip.
"I don't know," Kael said, voice sharp with panic. "But we have to move."
The beast didn't lunge right away.
It watched them, head tilting like a crow examining a corpse. Then, without warning—it charged.
"Run!"
They broke into a sprint, Kael hobbling slightly under the weight of exhaustion, the relic thrumming in his chest like a second heart. The sound of claws on stone roared behind them, a machine of bone and fury tearing through anything in its way.
They dashed into some narrow corridors connected to the main chamber, the narrow stone path barely wide enough to keep distance. A burst of debris exploded as the beast plowed through the columns, too large to follow directly but too smart to let them go.
It vanished from sight only to reappear, breaking through another wall ahead of them with terrifying precision.
"It's—it's cutting us off—!"
Kael skidded to a halt. "It's tracking the relic. Not you. Me."
"What?!"
Kael turned, heart pounding. "I think… I can draw it off. If I run, it follows me. You go the other way."
"No." Lethan's voice was steel. "I'm not leaving you."
"You don't get it—if it's after me, then you're just in the way!"
"And if it kills you?" Lethan snapped. "What then?"
There wasn't time to argue.
The beast crashed through another corridor, cutting off their route again. It herded them, methodically pushing them deeper until there was no escape. Kael and Lethan ran as hard as they could, trying to avoid both the beast and the destruction it provoked by crashing into the ruin's structures. It was a miracle they survived so long, alas, their luck was bound to have a limit.
The walls closed around them, covered in eroded carvings and the crushed skeletons of failed adventurers and unfortunate Whispers. They squeezed through a narrow path and their eyes widened in horror as the grand sight of the main chamber unveiled itself before them.
"Damn it—"
"Back here..." Lethan panted, blood running from a gash across his ribs where he'd taken a near-miss from the collapsing masonry. He looked ready to collapse.
Another roar echoed through the ruin, followed by a small tremor and the sound of claws scratching against hardened stone. The beast jumped from one of the upper chambers of the dome-like structure.
It turned to its prey.
Approaching slowly.
Kael gritted his teeth.
Then, a whistle through the air.
An arrow slammed into Kael's leg.
He cried out, collapsing forward.
From the upper ledge of the ruin, figures appeared—dark silhouettes in layered armor and hunter's gear, weapons already in motion.
Iron Ledger.
"Still alive, huh?" came a cold, mocking voice from above.