The lands of the Upper Chamber stretched far beyond what Aaren had imagined. Gone were the obsidian towers and training caverns of Levitine's domain. What lay ahead now was stranger. Wilder.
The ground beneath their feet had changed. It shimmered with fine veins of glowing green quartz, pulsing faintly with an energy that neither Levitine nor Withered Flame could identify.
"Feels like something's watching," Lenara muttered, crouched and prodding the earth with a stick. "Either that, or this land just hates shoes."
Aaren laughed, the tension easing for a moment. Lenara, ever the contrast to the two looming figures beside them, was unusually cheery. She spun the stick like a baton and whistled, eyeing the shadows.
"I can't tell if you're brave or just reckless," Withered Flame said. He'd been quieter than usual, his eyes scanning the jagged ridges ahead.
"A bit of both," she winked. "Mostly the second."
Levitine halted abruptly.
"We are not alone."
A faint breeze stirred. It wasn't wind—they all felt it. A breath, drawn not by air but by something buried. The quartz veins lit up briefly, brighter this time, in rhythmic pulses. Then silence.
Aaren turned. "What is this place?"
"The Outer Rings of the Upper Chamber," Levitine replied. "Once home to the Herald Watchers—keepers of forgotten gates. Now... corrupted."
"Corrupted how?" Lenara asked, suddenly less playful.
"Withered?" Levitine nodded toward his old companion.
Withered Flame stepped forward and brushed his fingers along the crystal veins. "Not just energy. Memory. This place... it remembers battles that never ended."
Lenara squinted at the horizon. Something dark slithered across the ridge, too large to be a person, too smooth to be an animal. It vanished before any of them could get a second look.
"There's something here," she said quietly.
They moved carefully, deeper into the ridge line. Strange stone spires stood crooked, carved with symbols none of them recognized. A single phrase, however, had been scorched into one of the largest rocks in Common Tongue:
"Eyes beneath. Soil above. Truth devours both."
Aaren frowned. "That doesn't sound very welcoming."
As if in answer, the earth beneath him cracked.
"Move!" Withered Flame shouted.
They leapt back just in time as the ground caved in. From below, a monstrous eye opened—wide, lidless, and glowing red. It stared at them. Unblinking.
Then, a voice echoed—not from the beast, but from the chamber itself.
"The Descendants have arrived."
Aaren's spine stiffened.
"What does that mean?" Lenara whispered, her earlier humor completely gone.
"We need to leave. Now," Levitine commanded.
But it was too late.
From behind the ridge, figures emerged. Tall, robed in frayed cloth, with metal stitched into their limbs and faces. Their eyes were hollow, and within those hollows danced the same red light from the eye in the ground.
"Welcome to the Memory Grave," one of them said.
Withered Flame stepped forward, placing a hand on his sword.
But Aaren moved too.
"Wait. Let me try."
He walked forward slowly, every step uncertain—but unafraid.
"I'm Aaren Vale," he said. "We're not here to fight."
The leader of the strange figures tilted his head. "You carry no scent of blood yet... but you walk with a king and a cursed heir. We cannot allow passage."
"A cursed heir?" Lenara raised an eyebrow toward Withered Flame.
"I'm not cursed," he growled.
"Debatable," she mumbled.
The figures didn't move. Neither did the beast below.
Then Aaren did something unexpected.
He knelt.
"I don't want to take your land. I just want to understand it."
For a moment, nothing happened. Then—one of the robed men stepped back. Just slightly.
A voice boomed again, this time older, deeper. From within the earth itself.
"Let them pass. The Chamber watches."
The figures vanished. The red eye blinked—and the earth closed up.
Silence returned.
Lenara let out a long breath. "So, what did we learn?"
"That I'm apparently a descendant of something," Aaren said quietly.
"And that the earth has eyes," she added.
Withered Flame nodded. "And that the Chamber... speaks."
Levitine remained silent. But even he looked unsettled.
The journey ahead had only just begun, and already the Upper Chamber was revealing its secrets—and its guardians.
But as they walked forward, deeper into the wild quartz-lit lands, Aaren knew this: whatever lay ahead, he wasn't the same boy who had entered the Downer Chamber.
Not anymore.