The first tremor struck before dawn.
Reid was already awake, seated cross-legged on the highest balcony of the old spire. Below, the ruined city slumbered under a thin veil of mist, its streets hushed and still as the aftermath of war settled into dust. He felt the rumble not as sound but as a shift in the bones of the world, a deep vibration in the stone beneath him, followed by the faintest flicker of crimson light from the far horizon.
"Something stirs. Beneath what they buried. Beneath what they forgot."
The Bond's voice had grown quiet in recent days, no longer screaming, no longer clawing at his mind with violent urges. Instead, it whispered like the tide, always present, always pulling. There was a subtle intelligence to it now, one shaped by memory and hunger, but also purpose.
He stood and stared eastward. Beyond the veil of morning fog, past the line of crumbled watchtowers and broken battlements, the land sloped down toward the forgotten trench, a vast gorge where the Council had once dumped its failed experiments and magical waste. The same trench the Vault Guardian's new scans had pointed toward. A place the city had long pretended did not exist.
Behind him, footsteps approached.
"You're up early," Kaela said, tightening her cloak against the chill. She looked rested, but her eyes held that soldier's alertness, always reading the horizon.
Reid nodded. "Felt something shift. The Bond agrees."
"You're not the only one. The Council's old glyph towers near the trench flared last night. Lira says they haven't lit up in decades. Some of the city's shamans started dreaming in red."
Reid turned to her, eyes narrowing. "It's waking. The Guardian found a buried chamber, older than the Council. It pulsed when the last vault opened. That's what we felt."
Kaela stepped beside him, her jaw clenched. "Then we can't afford to wait. If there's another weapon down there… or something worse…"
"We move before they do. Rouse the others. Gear for descent."
By midday, the Red Fang expedition stood at the edge of the trench.
The gorge yawned like a scar upon the land, deeper than most buildings were tall, wide enough to swallow a dozen cities. The old rail path had long since collapsed, overtaken by moss and the slow hunger of time. The trench walls were lined with jagged stone and fragments of discarded council technology, golem limbs, fractured containment tubes, the husks of failed bio-weapons left to rot in the dark.
Among the wreckage, rusted mana cores pulsed faintly. The air shimmered with layered mana echoes, unstable and feverish. Even breathing the air here tasted wrong, like copper and ash.
Mara crouched beside a mangled automaton, brushing away layers of moss and old wax sealant. "This one's core is still active. Can't believe it."
Kaela knelt beside her, tracing a hand across the glyph-marked chassis. "The Council used this place as a dump for magical failures. But they never sealed it properly. Everything down here is still leaking."
Lira stood at the edge of a crumbled platform and whistled. "Looks like the world's largest graveyard. And I'm betting half the corpses haven't finished twitching."
Reid didn't answer. His gaze locked on a distant ridge, where a pillar of obsidian jutted from the trench wall, black against rust and ruin. It shimmered faintly in the light, veined with glowing chains of glyphs.
"That is not their structure. That is ours. Old blood was bound there."
He raised a hand and pointed. "There. That's the path."
Their descent was slow and tense.
The trench wall crumbled in places, forcing them to climb over twisted railings and cross narrow bridges of metal and bone. Long-dead machines blinked to life as they passed, some playing fragmented warnings, others simply groaning with the weight of memory. At one point, Mara narrowly avoided stepping into a half-collapsed pod still brimming with dark liquid mana.
The deeper they went, the warmer the earth grew. Mana heat, Kaela whispered. Not fire. Something older, woven into the stone.
They finally reached a wide platform carved of blackstone. Its center bore a massive glyph, half-burned, barely visible, but unmistakable. A chained flame. The same mark that had once scarred Reid's back.
Kaela stopped cold. "That's the same symbol from the Bond's binding."
Reid stepped forward, heart quickening. He pressed his hand to the glyph.
[New Objective: Unlock the Subterranean Gate]
[Warning: Glyph Matrix Detected – Unstable Sequence]
Heat rushed into his palm. The Bond stirred like a coiled serpent, threads of corrupted essence tracing the glyphs like fingers unlocking a code. The blackstone began to glow, rings of crimson light spiraling outward from where he touched it.
Behind them, Lira muttered. "I don't like this. Gates usually mean something's trying to stay locked."
Mara drew her blade. "Or something that doesn't want visitors."
The platform split with a hiss of pressure. The glyphs snapped apart like shattered bone, revealing a spiraling staircase descending into shadow.
A current of warm air rose from the opening, laced with old blood, oil, and something older still.
Reid drew in a breath and descended first.
"We return. At last."
The descent stretched longer than they expected.
The stone steps spiraled downward for hundreds of meters, the air growing thick and metallic. Flickers of crimson mana pulsed in the cracks of the wall, forming veins that hummed as they passed. At times, the staircase twisted in impossible ways, bending inward, then outward again, defying direction and gravity. Lira muttered that they had crossed into a folded pocket of space, but her voice was distant, distracted.
No one spoke much. The weight of the place pressed against their skin, against their minds. Reid's Bond grew louder the deeper they went, not in words, but impressions. Hunger. Anticipation. Recognition.
Finally, the staircase opened into a wide, domed chamber.
Its walls were carved from obsidian flecked with gold, but ancient, fractured in places, overgrown with crystal fungi and dormant glyphs. A massive vault door loomed ahead, sealed by interlocking chains of silver and bone. To its left, a console pulsed with dormant runes. And across the floor, dozens of dried bloodstains painted old battle lines.
Kaela's hand went to her weapon. "This isn't just a vault. It's a tomb."
Mara crouched by one of the stains. "Multiple blood types. Human. Shamanic. And something else."
Reid approached the console. He didn't recognize the language, but the Bond pulsed with sudden clarity.
[System Alert: Vault Lock Detected – Initiating Memory Reconstruction]
[WARNING: Ancestral Data Overlap Detected – Proceed with Caution]
The console lit. A faint shimmer filled the air. And then...
A vision.
Not a memory, not quite. An echo.
A figure in ancient armor, eyes burning with the same crimson threads as Reid's Bond, stood before the vault. He raised a hand, touched the console, and unleashed a wave of fire and ruin against the door. Behind him, other figures, warriors, mages, some part-beast, part-human, stood silent as the vault groaned open.
The image flickered.
Then silence.
Reid staggered back. The Bond whispered, almost reverent. "He was one of us. Long before you were born. This place remembers."
Lira exhaled slowly. "Well, that's not terrifying at all."
Mara raised an eyebrow. "We opening it or what?"
Kaela looked to Reid. "Your call."
Reid stepped toward the console again. "We didn't come this far to hesitate."
He placed both hands on the glyphs.
[Sequence Accepted – Vault Opening in Progress]
With a groan of metal, the chains unspooled. The vault door rumbled and slowly began to part.
Warm wind rushed from within, laced with sulfur, ozone, and memory.
They stepped into darkness.